Wars being fought in space are the bread and butter of almost any acclaimed sci-fi film, but China and the U.S. have just taken the first steps to stop that space war from happening for real.
In an effort to avert star wars, the United States and China have set up a “hotline,” or direct line of communication, to share and coordinate information regarding space activities, the Financial Times reported Nov. 20.
Assistant Secretary for the Department of State Frank Rose told the Financial Times that originally, communications with China about “potential collisions, approaches or tests” of satellites had to go through their foreign affairs ministry. “The chain would go from JSpOC [Joint Space Operations Center, at Vandenburg air base in California] to the Pentagon,” he said “to the State Department, to the US embassy in Beijing, and then on to a contact there.”
The hope is that with the new hotline, communication with the Chinese will be streamlined. (RELATED: NASA Spacecraft Flies By Pluto, Continues Hurtling Into Space)
Space has become the new ideal frontier in order to obtain a strategic advantage over adversaries and China, along with the U.S. and Russia are all jockeying for the best position.
Rose said that both Russia and China are “developing a full spectrum of anti-satellite capabilities,” or weapons that are designed to dismantle satellites. (RELATED: Hillary Emails Said To Contain Spy Satellite Info Of North Korean Nuclear Weapon Movements)
“[The Chinese] have done numerous tests . . . They view space as an asymmetric vulnerability of the United States. And if they can deny the United States, and its allies, access to space systems,” Rose said “they can gain military advantage here on earth. That’s fundamentally what this is about.” (RELATED: Russia To Leave US Space Partnership, Go Its Own Way)
As of now, aside from the hotline, it appears that China, Russia, and the U.S. still have a ways to go before concluding on a diplomatic solution.
According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security non-profit organization, European delegates met May 2014 with a United Nations proposal titled the “International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities.” This plan has garnered some support from the U.S. (RELATED: Senate Votes To Legalize Asteroid Mining, Ban Alien Slavery)
The proposal from Russia and China, however, is not acceptable to the U.S. because it lacks specificity regarding anti-satellite platforms. Both China and Russia were working on a co-proposal to present to the United Nations titled “Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects (PPWT).”
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