President George W. Bush's plan to expand the exploration of space parallels US efforts to control the heavens for military, economic and strategic gain.
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld long has pushed for technology that could be used to attack or defend orbiting satellites as well as a costly program, heavily reliant on space-based sensors, to thwart incoming warheads.
Under a 1996 space policy adopted by then-President Bill Clinton that remains in effect, the United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space "by all nations for peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humanity."
"Peaceful purposes allow defence and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national security and other goals," according to this policy.
"Consistent with treaty obligations, the United States will develop, operate and maintain space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space, and if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."
No country depends on space and satellites as its eyes and ears more than the United States, which accounted for as much as 95 percent of global military space spending in 1999, according to the French space agency CNES.
"Yet the threat to the US and its allies in and from space does not command the attention it merits from the departments and agencies of the US government charged with national security responsibilities," a congressionally chartered task force headed by Rumsfeld reported 10 days before Bush and he took office in 2001.
Theresa Hitchens of the private Centre for Defence Information said the capabilities to conduct space warfare would move out of the realm of science fiction and into reality over the next 20 years or so.
"At the end of the day it will be political choices by governments, not technology, that determines if the nearly 50- year taboo against arming the heavens remains in place," she concluded in a recent study.
Outlining his election-year vision for space exploration last week, Bush called for a permanent base on the moon by 2020 as a launch pad for piloted missions to Mars and beyond.
One unspoken motivation may have been China's milestone launch in October of its first piloted space-flight in earth orbit and its announced plan to go to the moon.
"I think the new initiative is driven by a desire to beat the Chinese to the moon," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defence and space policy research group.
Among companies that could cash in on Bush's space plans are Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp, which do big business with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as well as with the Pentagon.
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