Geo-politcs of the space

These are the years of the space exploration, very soon we will travel so much and for a such long time that will arrive many politics and legal problems to which we must start to think about. The geopolitcs of the space starts to make people talk about itself and it needs careful and meticolous studies.

Like the recent debats between Usa and China for the “ownership” of the moon. Or the legal fight between two spouses that created, from one side, the first space crime made by an astronaut. What will happen in the future if the first child will born in the space? Will he have all the nationalities or no one of them? Do we have to consider the space as international water? And what about the satellites and the planets where the human being put the feet?

The moon race

The moon race pushed, in the last century, United States and Russia to use all they knowledges and skills. But behind a fictionalised ambition to become the first man to walk on the moon surface there was a military conflict between the two powers.

Today all of us know that on the moon surface flies the american flag. The cooperation between the countries brought in the modern days to big space conquers. Like the realization of the International Space Station, where every day cooperate astronauts and scientists from all over the world.

Many of the probes that travel in the solar system, even if they have the american flag, are the result of cooperations and they hide in themselves a little piece of every space organization.

The moon race finished, America shown to the world its supremacy, but the recent fights demonstrated that the flag that flies on the moon surface doesn’t matter in the scenario of the geopolitics of the space. The moon isn’t american. And while we are focused on a new space race, the Mars one, to global powers ensure that this time will be different. This time, infact, the mission is under the flag of the cooperation, as much as that the flag that will fly on the powdery martian ground will be the one of the planet Earth.

So, we finally understood that the cooperation brings to better results or will still be the ambition to push the human to do his best?

The new frontier of the space war

There aren’t any more the big wars like before, however the big global powers are still fighting, but in a different way. Probably the United States of America that always considered the space of its own, doesn’t agree to consider it like this.

Some months ago the Northrop Grumman, a company that cooperate with the pentagon, launched a drone that for the first time was able to catch and to supply a satellite that was running out of its propellant.

After the success of the mission, the pentagon chosen right the Northrop Grumman to realize a whole fleet of space drone. All of it was seen as a politic move, to confirm the supremacy of the America on the space.

Right the satellite interested by the mission that involved the first drone of the new fleet, infact, was “spied” years ago by a russian satellite, that got close to it and there remained for many weeks, even though Washington asked Mosca to move it away.

Geopolitic of the space exploration

All we must know about the geopolitic of the space, all the implications and the hypothesis currently made about how the future of the space exploration can be about the politic, are collected inside the book written by Marcello Spagnuolo: “Geopolitica dell’esplorazione spaziale”.

With the introduction made by Luca Parmitano and the foreword made by Carlo Pelanda, the book explores the geopolitc of the space starting from the moon race until the informatic threaten of the Cyberspace.

“This book in an instrument to move in the world of the science and the politic of the space exploration. It’s a compass to travel with the author in an amazing Space-Time trip toward one of the most imaginative purpose of humanity” – Luca Parmitano.

This post is also available in: Italiano