U.S. Spurs Space Race, With Musk's "Occupy Mars" Dream As Ruse

Space hegemony is among the core strategies the US is using to maintain its primary global superpower status, Harrison Raskin wrote for Truthout, and the military-industrial complex is betting on it, from Elon Musk, who dreams of occupying Mars, NASA director Bill Nelson, who claims the Moon is US property and China must get out of it, and the Pentagon.

Photo Insert: Then-Vice President Mike Pence and Mrs. Karen Pence were greeted by Jim Bridenstine, NASA Administrator, Elon Musk, Founder and CEO and Lead Designer of SpaceX at Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Facility.

In the 1980s, the Strategic Defense Initiative — better known as “Star Wars” — was designed by Ronald Reagan’s administration as a space-based missile defense system complete with space-based laser stations, nuclear x-ray laser satellites, and ground- and space-based missile systems to intercept hostile intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Derided as expensive and technologically unfeasible, the program was ended by the Clinton administration in 1993.

However, it demonstrated a nationalist recommitment to technological superiority in the Cold War and a temporary, dangerous reneging of détente.

In addition to withdrawing from nuclear treaties, the US has proceeded to ramp up investment in space technology. In 2019, President Donald Trump diverged from President Barack Obama’s promise he would “not weaponize space,” and created an official Space Force.

The move made explicit the military significance of space today, systematizing GPS and satellite security and defense as a sub-department of the Air Force.

As TJ Coles writes in CounterPunch, countersurveillance and counter-communications have been central goals of U.S. military space operations since the 1990s, alongside attaining the US “full spectrum dominance” of all potential conflict sites — including space.

Evidence of this fact: The Biden administration has continued the Space Force, which was seen as ridiculous by liberal commentators during the Trump administration.

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