The Final Frontier is a late 80s science fiction movie from the Star Trek franchise. This title is of course an echo of the New Frontier term used by John Kennedy during the presidential campaign of 1960. I have just read the speech that he gave, it is worthy of reading again.
We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats. ... The pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort, and sometimes their lives to build our new west. They were determined to make the new world strong and free - an example to the world. ... Some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won. That there is no longer an American frontier. ... And we stand today on the edge of a new frontier, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils. ... Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. ... I'm asking each of you to be pioneers towards that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age. ... Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new breakthroughs in weapons of destruction, but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space, and the inside of men's minds? ... All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world waits to see what we shall do. And we cannot fail that trust, and we cannot fail to try.
It is painful to see how profundly we have collectively slipped, and slept, into the material comfort after the end of the cold war. JFK did go to moon —right?— few years after having delivered this speech. Read again “Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus”. A bit different than “follow the science” by Joe Biden isn’t it? I can safely and effectively make this case. The recent striking results, mostly by SpaceX, made me think again at spatial exploration and exploitation. The more I am thinking about it, the more I am seeing it as a symetric twin of the advances that have been done in the digital world.
Harmonious topology
The development of information technologies has completely changed our perception of proximity. This is what I call “the topological revolution”. We are closer to people with whom we have exchanges online than our next door neighbor. Distance is rather understood in terms of ideological differences than geographical terms for social-media natives. The problem came from the fact that for the first time in human history words and swords were not moving at the same pace. It is one of the root causes of the decay of our political institutions (human flaws may also contribute to it) that are no longer fit to the technological environment. I struggled for a long time around this issue, and it was one of my main critics towards the "network state” ideology. I tought it was an utopia because the problem of power projection was not at the level of information broacasting possibilities. The statues that embody justice always have two tools: a scale and a sword. If the internet is ok for the scale, there was no equivalent on the sword side. And as the international system proves day after day, a justice system without force is a farce.
Now with weapon systems in orbit, the problem of reach becomes the same for every point of the globe. From a satellite in orbit any point of the earth is equally accessible. Of course not for a single satellite, but Starlink has already shown that the entirety of the globe can be covered. In the case of Starlink it is about internet acess, but even at a constant technology, it could be for some weapon system. The game changer was the impressive lowering of the price to put mass into orbit.
The ambitious goal of Musk is to reach 10$/kg to LEO (Low Earth Orbit). As always Elon is very Trump-like in his commercial promises but he has also shown that he delivers. Right now the cose is aroud 1,500$/kg. Musk’s goal is very ambitious but not utterly crazy either. Remember that it started at 100,000$/kg when JFK made his speech. Also don’t forget that SpaceX is not the only actor in the field, Blue Origin already sell tourist’s ticket to space.
With so low prices everything has to be rethought. The first application was the GPS: it became possible to locate yourself with arbitrary precision (controlled by the US military) anywhere on earth. Just like the internet was a DARPA project at first… Another global application is precisely internet connection with Starlink. The space, the orbit around the earth in a first time, is the door to truly global services. As I mentioned it is just a geometric property. It is not going to work as Amazon for the deliveries of goods by space drones —local manufacturing and 3D printing is the technological evolution that is going to deal with this aspect— but it can totally works for delivery of force. And force delivery is the basis of every political institution.
Discordant Institutions
The political institutions were shocked by the cultural transformation induced by the evolution of information technologies. A second shockwave is coming, this time on the objective side. Will it look like orbital bombing or giant mirors (more probably a distributed version with a constellation of satellites of regular size) acting as sun guns as Nazi were already projecting to do in the 40s? Actually from an institutional point of view it doesn’t really matter. What matters is: sufficiently powerful entities (not necessarily nation-state actors) will acquire global force projection based on space technologies. It is no longer science fiction material. It can already be done with the current state of technology. It will certainly be done in a time horizon of a decade. Maybe less so. My point is that it is going to change international relations. Even the concept of nation state is going to changer more than when we entered the nuclear age. The nuclear bomb changed the dynamics between nuclear powers that were no longer able to wage direct wars agains another peer: cold wars, prowy wars and a whole new geopolitical lexicon was developped. I suspect the same thing will happen on steroids. As I mentionned the very notion of nation-state can evolve because a distributed state, for the lack of a better word, could use space based weapons as defense mecanism. The problem for nation states is that there is no geographically clear enemy to whom they can retaliate. Imagine a distributed institution that can project force anywhere on earth from anywhere. Because only with a smartphone it is possible to communicate with satellites right? So we are no longer in an era of immobile and well identified targets. If the constellation of satellites is large enough, it is not going to be possible to make it disapear so fast that no retaliation is possible, and for that matter the very idea of nation-state implies that there are fixed target like the presidential palace or whatever. Moreover, as the weapon systems are not necessarily ones of mass destruction, they can actually be used: for instance by targeting military assets like a carrier group, a military airfield etc.
The notion of border is going to change. Geographical peculiarities will fade into insignificance in terms of power projection. Maybe it means that territorial wars will no longer be a thing. And maybe it will produce an even more unstable environment because of that. What are going to be the next equilibrium is a 9 billions human question.
maybe exopolitics?
https://maryroswell.wixsite.com/serpo-org-backup/intro
https://exopolitics.org/papers/recommended-reading