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The Information Age has fuelled many transitions in thinking about environment, security and world politics, including the growing need for states to engage in and secure access to space technologies not simply for power projection, but because of the lifeline they provide to the world economy and knowledge about resources and the environment. From a backdrop of economic liberalization, growing dependencies by large and small states on Earth observation and communication satellites, and the tenuous balance between private, civilian and military interests in space for commerce, environment and defence, this paper will address the potential opportunity for international collaboration in Earth observation to hedge against policies of unilateral space control by dominant military actors. Through an examination of a need for cooperation in global change research utilizing Earth observation from space, the paper characterizes this cooperation as a form of environmental governance consistent with a power shift beyond U.S. dominance. As an original leader in global change research and a growing stakeholder in the competitive commercial remote sensing market, the U.S. has created unique challenges, responsibilities and opportunities for itself in balancing dominant military discourses of space control with global demands for environmental information. Past and present proposals for institutionalized cooperation in Global Earth Observing Systems, the European Union's recent Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative and the U.S. Earth Observation System will be discussed as potential models for responding to these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US relationship with technology has a religious undertone. Greatly influenced by the epitomizing and mythic frontier experience, American statesmen, bureaucrats, and military leaders have traditionally relied upon a blind faith on technology, especially with respect to warfare technology. This blind faith has led them to steer the R & D of destructive weaponry without fully acknowledging the consequences, and where the technology was not fully grown, to believe that it would eventually catch up to fulfill the role ascribed to it in the first place. It has not been different with the Space technologies and nuclear strategy of the Cold War. The decision to develop ballistic missile defense systems and the fear of a "Space Pearl Harbor" follow the same preventive logic: outer Space is seen as being free from warfare technology and the US prepares itself not to be caught unprepared should one entity choose to develop Space weaponry and deploy warfare technology that would undermine its sovereignty and Space leadership. In reading US military Space power discourses featuring Space weaponization as an integral part of a US grand strategy of global dominance, this paper wishes to reflect on the "US religion of technology". Long-rooted in US governmental thinking in its national historical experience, now that it is applied to Outer Space, it leads astropolitical strategists to believe that what is today impossible will eventually be technologically possible. This paper therefore addresses the US relationship with technology and pushes for a theoretical/political activism and advocacy that question the US astropolitical discourse of Space weaponization and the technological determinism that sees technology as inevitable and where society must follow the path drawn by the technology. Assuming that Space weaponization is not inevitable, it puts forth the idea that a certain technological atheism à la Virilio could and should be promoted by scholars/practitioners of international security in rebuttal of Space warriors' nightmarish vision. In any case, it believes that a ban on Space weaponization could still very much be put on the agenda and reveal an efficient path to "peace" in Outer Space. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will engage with some of the space technologies that the US Space Command are thinking of deploying in the near and more distant future. Some of the ideas and schemes for the development of space weapons systems may not be desirable, practical or feasible. The US military believe that 'who rules space, rules the earth'. However, is it actually possible for one nation to control space to that extent? Even if it were technically feasible, would it be practically achievable (i.e. at what cost)? Then again, how will other nations react? Is this really the best way to ensure peace and security? The paper will address these and other questions. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the efforts of developing nations to gain access to the economic, security, and political benefits of space. The analysis in this paper compares the efforts of several developing nations and identifies the extent to which developing nations have been successful in gaining access to the many benefits of space. In measuring ?success? the analysis focuses on whether developing countries individually and/or collectively have been able to develop space capabilities and thus the essential elements of national ?space power.? Particular attention is given to the cases of India, Brazil, and China. However, attention is also given to the efforts of several other developing nations in regions such as Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The paper concludes by identifying several common factors that have constrained the respective efforts of developing nations and ensured that they have remained dependent upon the space capabilities and assistance of more developed nations. This dependency undercuts the ability of these aspiring space powers to improve their respective positions vis-à-vis the more developed nations. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates the explanatory value of using Gramscian concepts to explain outer space politics. It establishes a framework for understanding periods of change within the outer space development regime in terms of three epochs. The power politics intertwined with causing these changes are linked to the ascendance of free market neoliberal dominance over time and across different epochs. U.S. law has been used by political and economic elites to commercialize and privatize space technologies in order to encourage the growth of satellite telecommunications, remote sensing, space launch and transportation services, space stations and spaceports. Historical and ideological blocs are hidden sources of power which have served to maintain a pattern of dominance and the international political economy. Institutions have ushered in the consent for these trends. There is a myriad of new space laws and policies being created in rapid succession for the encouragement of private-sector participation in a newly proposed free market approach to outer space development. This paper argues that a Gramscian analysis provides a more adequate explanatory framework than the mainstream theories of realism or neoliberal institutionalism to elucidate current outer space politics. It takes into account the dominance of free market ideology, capitalism and U.S. power, in the Post Cold War era. This analysis reveals how U.S. power and globalization processes have impacted the outer space development regime and how this will continue to shape space law and international institutions as humankind ventures into the final frontier. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its inception, the European space programme has been part of a self-concious political project. The original developments in the early 1960?s were driven by a desire that Europe develop the use of space for purely peaceful purposes, in contrast to suggestions that NATO should play the lead-role in developing European space capabilities. Secondly it was felt that space exploration lent itself to the structural integration approach to European unification and that a joint space programme would help to bridge the divides in democratic Europe between the NATO and neutral states and between the EEC and EFTA groupings. This rationale was even more explicit after the merger of the existing European space organisations into the European Space Agency in 1975. Since 2000 ESA has begun to formalise a more explicit relationship with the EU, so that while the EU has its own space policy, ESA is essentially the body tasked to implement that policy, effectively creating the possibility of a future European Space Community. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]