When President Kennedy made his famous pledge to put a man on the moon, we had no idea how far space would take us. Today, we are exploring the outer planets and building an international space station, while hundreds of satellites circle the globe.

Nearly half of those 600-plus satellites are American. They represent an investment of more than $100 billion. U.S. News and World Report estimates we will spend more than $250 billion in space by the year 2000, and that another 1,800 satellites will be on-orbit by the end of the next decade. This "skyrocketing" investment must be protected -- from natural and man-made threats, accidental and intentional threats.

Beyond economics, we in uniform came to fully appreciate the value of space during the Gulf War. We used Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites to guide precision weapons and navigate in an unfamiliar, often featureless, land. Satellites with infrared telescopes saw the faint heat of SCUD missiles from more than 22,000 miles away, so we could warn our troops and allies. Weather, communications, and intelligence satellites contributed in many, invaluable ways to the success of our operations halfway around the world.

Satellites do far more today than just help us defend American interests. Commercial communications satellites keep our financial institutions connected ... and beam the Super Bowl into our homes. Weather satellites tell us when violent storms threaten our homes and loved ones ... and when to plan the family picnic. Imagery satellites monitor climate changes and help farmers best use their land to grow food for our tables. The same GPS satellites that tell our military forces exactly where they are anywhere in the world also keep airliners on course and map out directions for drivers on our highways.

Space provides us with so many services that we are now reliant on it. Simply put, space is becoming a vital national interest -- in the information age we are entering, no less important than oil is to our world today. And just as availability of oil was used against this country during the oil embargo of the 70's, this new source of national strength also could become a vulnerability.

Any threat to our use of space is a threat to our nation's security. Here's where the United States military must play an important role: as we have protected national and economic security on land, sea and air for more than 200 years, we must be prepared to defend our interests in space tomorrow.

We need to develop ways to protect our investment in space from rapidly developing threats. From computer hackers tampering with satellites, to electronic jamming of satellite signals, to actual anti-satellite weapons -- man-made methods already exist to challenge America in space.

Our satellites also face a different threat -- space debris. There are more than 8,000 objects orbiting the Earth at 17,000 m.p.h. Ninety percent of it is junk. Today we can see and track objects about the size of a softball or larger. As the number of satellites grows, costly damage from collisions between expensive, working satellites and worthless space junk is inevitable.

The first step in protecting our satellites must be to improve our ability to see what's happening in space. We need to detect and monitor objects less than half the size of what we can see now. Our satellites need to be designed to survive collisions with the debris we can't see -- and maneuver out of the path of debris we can see. Today, the first indication we would get that a satellite has been damaged would be when it quits working. We need to build in sensors that can tell us if satellites have been damaged by solar flares, debris, or someone on Earth.

For us to protect our space assets and ensure we receive the bounty of space, the military, civil, commercial, and international space communities must work together. We've all tasted the fruit of space systems and we have developed a voracious appetite for them. But none of us has a checking account big enough to pay the bill alone.

With the military, other government agencies, the business world, and our allies working together as partners, we can leverage each others' investments to reduce the cost of space for everyone. This will allow all of us to do far more than any of us could do alone.

We must, and we will, continue to explore and develop space -- bringing the benefits home to help us here on Earth. But while we do so, we shouldn't forget to allocate some limited resources -- not unlike buying an insurance policy -- into protecting our investment.

General Howell M. Estes III is the commander in chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the United States Space Command and is the commander of Air Force Space Command headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. He authored this article at the invitation of Mission HOME (Harvesting Opportunity for Mother Earth), a national initiative to rekindle enthusiasm for U.S. space endeavors.

Air Force Space Command

Related Links

SPACEDAILY

Titan Awarded $13M Mini-Dama Contract
San Diego - May 21, 1998 -
The Titan Corporation today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Linkabit Wireless, Inc., has received a $13.8 million order for Mini-DAMA UHF satellite communications terminals. While the entire order was placed by the Navy's San Diego-based Space and Naval Warfare (SPAWAR) Systems Command, a significant percentage of the terminals will be provided to the naval forces of U.S. Allies around the world.