So there is water on Mars, and with water on Mars we actually COULD establish a self sufficient outpost there, leading to the eventual conquest of all the solar system.  This is great, but the cost of establishing even a small self sufficient outpost on Mars would be astronomical, certainly in the billions if not trillions of dollars.

So, why go there in the first place?  The main benefit of establishing a foothold in space is to make it easier to exploit resources in space, but why do we need the resources in the first places?  What is inherently valuable about space?  This argument has been made time and again in the history of the debate of the human exploration of space.  How can any nation, or mankind as a whole, justify the cost of space conquest, if the only return on that investment is simply the ability to get at all the resources in space to begin with?  Never mind all the fantastic riches of the asteroids, some of which are made of nickel iron and other precious and semi precious metals.  Never mind the icy bodies, which could supply water, since water in space is only valuable if you want to go to space in the first place.  Never mind the dreams of harnessing nearly unlimited solar power in space, with vast solar collectors operating in orbit in permanent daylight.  Those projects would be even more expensive than a self sustaining outpost on Mars.

The Elephant in the Room

But, there is one simple and obvious answer, but which is so taboo it has become the elephant in the room.  The fact is that any nation which can exercise military control in space can also exercise military control on earth.  To begin with, military control of space implies the ability to deny access to space.  It also implies the ability to render satellite communication systems inoperable.  This would severely degrade communications and navigation systems of any modern military.  But, if a nation had even small scale industrial capability in space, they could make a simple free fall bomb.  Just imagine dropping a 1 ton inert impactor from space.  An object dropped from orbit would impact somewhere between 9.7 and 11.2 km/s, or roughly the orbital velocity at LEO and escape velocity, because essentially this is the starting height from which the object is dropped.  A 1000 kg impactor would have an equivalent impact energy of 15,000 kg of tnt.  That’s about the same as 143 Mk 82 bombs, in a single impact.  Put a GPS guidance system on it and it becomes capable of causing serious damage anywhere on earth.  You could also get more creative.  Want to hit a wider target area?  Package 100 10kg impactors instead of a single 1000 kg impactor.  Need a bigger punch?  A  100 ton impactor would hit with the impact energy of a 1.5 kiloton nuclear bomb.

Controling the High Ground

Even if a man made meteor shower may seem like the ultimate doomsday weapon, the real strategic importance of military power in space is the fact that it is easy to strike targets on earth from space, but nearly impossible to effectively attack targets in space from the earth.  The same voracious gravity well we are sitting in which makes it so difficult to reach space in the first place also becomes a sort of gravity shield protecting any space based platform from attack from the earth.  Space is the highest of high ground.  It is easy to attack “downhill” into the gravity well of the earth and very difficult to attack “uphill” to strike targets in space from earth.  Really the only way to do it is literally launch a rocket into space to intercept your target.  Even though you do not need to achieve orbital velocity to strike a target in space, you do need at least enough energy to reach the target, and for targets in higher orbits this can be quite difficult.  Imagine how difficult it would be to launch a weapon from the earth to attack a target on the moon.  It would be the equivalent of launching a mission to the moon just to attack one target.  If that’s not hard enough, imagine if the target you wanted to attack were on Mars.

A Cold War In Space

Obviously, military control of space would allow you to attack targets on earth with impunity.  And if you can attack targets on earth with impunity, effective military control of space, from a self sufficient military base in space, either on the moon or even on Mars, would give you the ability to exercise military control of the earth.

The idea of a shooting war in space would be terrifying.  Maybe not as terrifying as a global nuclear war, but it’s close.  And, the fact that space is the ultimate high ground means that, eventually, one nation is going to move to secure military control of space.  However, the first move to secure military control of space won’t necessarily be building a weapons or weapon systems. The first steps might look rather peaceful, because the first step would be to build the infrastructure to support a military presence in space.  You would need water, fuel, and other resources available in space.  For example, you would not want to build a 100 ton impactor weapon on earth and then launch it into orbit.  Most of the impactor is just inert mass, you could use ANY material in space to build it.  So, the first steps to military control in space would be to try to build a self sufficient outpost on the moon, or maybe Mars (there is more useful stuff there).  And when a second nation starts to do the same thing, that would be the start of a cold war in space.  But you would never have to build actual weapons.  The cold war would be all about position and resources.  Who can gain access to the materials and equipment you would need to support a military effort in space, without actually building the military hardware.  You wouldn’t ever need to actually build the military hardware unless you intended to use it, in which case its no longer a cold war, it’s a hot war. 

A cold war in space wouldn’t be so bad after all.  We’d have all the national urgency of a cold war, so we would not be afraid to invest the billions necessary to make it work.  But, we wouldn’t necessarily have a shooting war, or even actual weapons in space.  It is more the ability to do it if we had to that would be the deterrent force.  In fact, the beginning of a cold war in space would look like a second space race, a race to be the first nation on earth to conquer space.

The Real Reason for the Apollo Program 

That brings us back to the first space race, the race to put a man on the moon.  Why were we willing to invest so much money it what appeared to be a meaningless gesture?  Was it really that important to put a man on the moon?  The real point is we were in a cold war with the soviet union.  By showing we could put a man on the moon, we also demonstrated we could easily deliver as many nuclear warheads wherever we wanted on earth, using the same technology.  Why did we not stay there?  Because once we had shown the soviet union we could do it, we did not need to.  It was simply a matter of demonstrating the ability to launch a payload, from the united states, to the moon.  It did not matter if that payload was 3 astronauts or a pile of nuclear warheads, we had shown we could do it either way and that was all we needed to do.

Justifying the Human Conquest of Space

Many people would think that the militarization of space would be a disaster for mankind.  I think it is inevitable.  Conflict between competing groups is human nature.  However, international diplomacy has evolved to the point where the threat of war can be more effective if not more so than an actual shooting war.  We have at least become enlightened enough, most of the time, to recognize that war is expensive and destructive.  Unfortunately, sometimes we still need a refresher coarse to relearn that lesson, but one can hope that future wars will be limited at best.  However, the need to demonstrate the ability to win a war, if necessary, is still important.  And since the beginning of a cold war in space would also mean the beginning of the human conquest of space, I say, let’s go!