From Sagres to Boca Chica. From the V2 rocket to combat stations at the libration points. Part 1

(Source: pixabay.com)

 

Therefore, war will also come to outer space. In any case, war was the main reason people started sending objects into space. It started with the German V2 rocket. Then there was the satellite program during the Cold War, which was primarily used to detect enemy troops and rockets. First of all, it was used to detect launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles. At that time, it offered the possibility of a retaliatory strike, which had a stabilising effect on the state of armed peace at the time.

In war, you hit the enemy’s centre of gravity. In modern wars with powerful nations, the point will be the mechanism to control the escalation ladder that allows you to shift the level of violence and agency in order to achieve your own political goals by using force or by threatening to use force.

 

The Americans are very strong in low Earth orbit, so they control the transition from the planet’s atmosphere to deeper space. The Chinese – like the Europeans of olden ages – want to go around the American low orbit corset straight to the lunar zone and to the moon, like the Portuguese sailing around Africa, who bypassed the Arabs blocking the passage of the Levant, separating them from the riches of Asia.

 

After the great plague epidemics, Europe was slowly recovering. The failure of the Crusades wiped out plans for Europeans to break into Asia, so they dreamed of conquering a new domain – the World Ocean. And then there was Henry the Navigator, the school of navigators in Sagres on the Atlantic coast of Portugal, thousands of daredevils, great visions, new technologies, innovations, and then great money and ocean fleets. As early as around 1600, it could be said that we had a new economy in Western Europe focused on Atlantic communication and benefiting from it.

Strategic Chinese documents already in 2015 stated that outer space has become a new domain, like a mountain that dominates the valley. You have to dominate it to be the arbiter of the new economy that is already emerging. It is just around the corner. The domination of space is also necessary to control the battlefield on Earth. Contemporary systems for controlling situational awareness and controlling the rungs of the escalation ladder are located or are directly dependent on objects in space.

 

That’s why Donald Rumsfeld talked so much about the threat of a Space Pearl Harbor. This phrase is also a threat today in the Pentagon and was the main motivation of the group of people who led to the creation of the US Space Force. The task of this new type of military force is to prevent a Pearl Harbor in space at a time when the American ability to project global power is so dependent on free access to orbits around the Earth. As can be seen from the concept of an Air-Sea Battle with China and the Chinese concept of a war with the US in the Western Pacific known as the “Assassin’s Mace”.

 

In 2015, the Chinese established the Strategic Support Force to strengthen combat capabilities in the broadly understood electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace, both domains necessary for combat in space and control of their own command and communication systems, which contribute to situational awareness on the modern battlefield. Space is therefore the gravity center of an operation based on information superiority today. So it’s worth paying attention to which secrets American allies within the Five Eyes are admitted.

China, meanwhile, wants to control the Earth from the Moon and at the same time the emerging new economy. And most importantly, they do not treat space as a research program, but as geography that can be used for one’s own exploitation. So that the Chinese would prosper on Earth and that China would become rich and powerful.

 

Chinese manned station in low Earth orbit, Chinese spacecraft, a moon base (on its invisible side), access to lunar water necessary for space fuel production, silver globe mineral mines, 3D printing in space, fuel and equipment production on the moon orbits, robotisation, production lines in space (managed by artificial intelligence algorithms), production of pharmaceuticals in weightless conditions, solar energy converted into microwaves generating electricity on Earth (theoretically unlimited its resources). The list of Beijing’s space-related plans goes on and on.

 

An important example is solar energy. China wants to use huge satellites to obtain solar energy. The satellites would be assembled in orbit thanks to 3D printers also placed in the Earth’s orbit, which will reduce problems with transporting such vast structures from Earth. Work has already begun in Chongqing on a station to receive microwave energy from solar satellites. The next step will be to test the system using high-altitude stratospheric balloons, and by the end of this decade, the launch of the first solar satellites. The result could be wifi for free and electricity for free (everywhere).

Under the Artemis program, Trump promised that the Americans would return to the moon by 2024. This time not for a flag and a sweet photo, but to set up an orbital station in the moon’s orbit and establish a base near the silver globe. The moon could also serve as a base for trips to further parts of the solar system, in particular to the asteroid belt beyond Mars, where there are huge deposits of minerals.

The new economy in space is already worth trillions of dollars. Space exploration will affect four traditional growth drivers: transport, information, production and energy supply. These are the four key elements on which the development of civilization rests. And whoever builds a new market and controls the basic parameters of the market determines the prices and rules (values) of the exchange and the functioning of the new economy. First, therefore, comes content and substance on the basis of the benefit and communication calculation, and only then the values, which are defended over time, if they ensure modernisation, which in turn ensures prosperity.

First “substance” and then “values. A new place of exchange, creating a new economy, must have a guardian who will ensure (with its strength) predictability and compliance with the rules. Who will be the guardian? The Chinese or the Americans?

 

Autor

Jacek Bartosiak 

CEO and Founder of Strategy&Future, author of bestselling books.

 

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