Space: Competition, Dual-use

U.S. Finds It’s Getting Crowded Out There
(Washington Post)…Marc Kaufman, July 9, 2008, Pg. 1

…Although the United States remains dominant in most space-related fields — and owns half the military satellites currently orbiting Earth — experts say the nation’s superiority is diminishing, and many other nations are expanding their civilian and commercial space capabilities at a far faster pace.

In a recent in-depth study of international space competitiveness, the technology consulting firm Futron of Bethesda found that the globalizing of space is unfolding more broadly and quickly than most Americans realize. “Systemic and competitive forces threaten U.S. space leadership,” company president Joseph Fuller Jr. concluded.

Joan Johnson-Freese, a space and national security expert at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, said the United States has been so determined to maintain military space dominance that it is losing ground in commercial space uses and space exploration.

“Other nations are falling over each other to work together in space; they want to share the costs and the risks,” she said. “Because of the dual-use issue, we really don’t want to globalize.”