Lecture 8a

weather satellite image from http://www.weather.gov/satellite

Space in our lives

How does space affect our lives?

The influence of space is pervasive in our lives today, and not only in the developed world. I saw the very first transatlantic TV satellite broadcast (Telstar) in the 1960s. Now, every TV news program has video from around the world as it happens. Vast amounts of telephone and computer data are transmitted that way as well. Think about the frequency with which you make use of, or see, these space services:

communication

Most trans-oceanic communication is through underwater cables, but satellites carry a lot as well. Cables are expensive and difficult to build, just like satellites, but they are also vulnerable to accidental or deliberate damage. Also, cables are point-to-point routes, working really well for large volumes of data between major cities. But a satellite can receive from or broadcast anywhere. Imagine communications in the Arctic or on Pacific islands with many small communities very far apart. Satellites work better there than cables would. Communications are not just phone calls - internet traffic also uses satellites as well as cables. TV news is full of video from around the world - even live communications from video-equipped telephones have been used on TV news. Businesses also transmit huge amounts of data - think about using a credit card in another country. So often when you use or watch any of these services you are probably linking through space, at least for part of the process. The global economy and information culture is deeply entwined with space.
communication satellites - a brief history
Canadian satellite communications
Intelsat
Satellites in Geostationary orbit

meteorology

Do you ever watch weather forecasts on TV? Obviously, many people do. The forecast (even if you get it from other media) is made in part by using satellite observations, but most of the impressive graphics on TV are generated from satellite data. Hurricane warnings based on tracking storms by satellite can help millions of people evacuate as needed, or prepare for the storm. And in the longer term, environmental monitoring satellites help keep track of larger issues such as climate change.
US weather satellite images
Environment Canada - satellite images

global positioning

A more recent invention which is now essential for navigation, route finding, search & rescue and even inventory tracking. GPS uses radio signals from a constellation of orbiting satellites to provide very accurate measurements of location anywhere in the world. GPS is found in cars, planes, boats, cell phones, and is used in scientific field work to locate sites for data collection. Russia has its own GPS system called GLONASS, and Europe has started building a new system called Galileo. China and India are building their own versions as well. Why the duplication? GPS is American, developed by the US military and later made available for civilian uses. But other nations know it could be shut down or restricted during future military operations, so they need independent systems of their own for security.
how GPS works
GPS news
Keeping track of transportation
GPS around the world
GPS (courtesy Peter H. Dana, The Geographer's Craft Project, Department of Geography, The University of Colorado at Boulder.)

environmental monitoring

The climate change mentioned above is just part of this subject. Satellites can photograph any place on Earth at intervals of a few days or weeks. They are ideally suited to large area surveys. So they monitor natural hazards (floods, forest fires, volcanic eruptions etc. - for instance to warn planes to avoid a volcanic ash cloud or to spot fires in remote areas). They help with environmental inventories - how much forest is logged or burned in the Amazon basin? They can track pollution in water or air over large areas, including oil spills, observe erosion on coasts or river banks, and help enforce regulatory compliance if a resource is being overused. The last link is to Copernicus, a remote sensing website from the European Space Agency, with further links to examples of their studies including floods in northern Europe and brush fires in southern Europe. Browse a bit to see how satellites are useful.
Satellite images
oil spill from space
United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs
more environment from space

scientific research

Satellites contribute to many areas of scientific research. On Earth this includes climate change, ocean studies and geological exploration. For instance, quite unexpectedly it has been found that excellent maps of ocean floor topography can be made from measuring the height of the sea (a mountain on the ocean floor has enough of its own gravitational attraction to pull water towards it, making a tiny bump in the water). In astronomy and planetary exploration satellites are major contributors... as we saw in a previous lecture.
Ocean research from space
Google maps - satellite views
geology from space
Astronaut photography of Earth
Terra remote sensing mission
DSCOVR daily Earth images

DNEPR - the payload cover of a Russian nuclear missile, converted for use as a commercial satellite launcher. Image: ISC Kosmotras

Military use of space

If space is just another part of the human environment, will we extend all our activities into it? Space 'assets' - satellites, launchers, associated ground infrastructure - are crucial to modern security and defence. The ability to monitor 'the other side' has been credited with helping to stabilize the Cold War and prevent the ultimate catastrophe of global nuclear war, which was a very real danger until quite recently. But military actions in space are supposed to be forbidden under UN treaties (see below). Can we, and should we, militarize space? Can we avoid it?

Launch vehicles

The first launch vehicles were missiles, developed for the purpose of dropping nuclear weapons on cities but adapted to launch satellites. Wernher von Braun and Sergei Korolev, the architects of the US and Soviet space programs, began their careers designing missiles and only dreaming of space. Today, Russian missiles which have to be eliminated under the conditions of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty are being converted into satellite launchers (Kosmotras). The links between military and civilian space programs are difficult to separate. In the US, NASA and the Pentagon have separate space programs, but the civilian/military distinction is not so clear in many other jurisdictions.
ISC Kosmotras
US launch vehicles
Russian launch vehicles
All launch vehicles (no longer updated)
Launch vehicles - general

national security

Military and intelligence services use satellite images to see what other nations or groups are doing. They might check for troop movements, activity at military airfields, locations of missile launchers etc. Ships are tracked as they approach a coast to check for smuggling, illegal immigration or security issues. Like it or not, this surveillance is all around us, and a lot of it happens from space. It didn't stop 9/11, but it might prevent the next one... (well, that's the idea anyway). In fact, it has been argued that surveillance helped stabilize the Cold War and keep us from the nightmare of global nuclear war. It is certainly important today for military and national security operations. Beginning with high resolution photography, surveillance has expanded to include electronic intelligence gathering. Early imaging satellites returned film in re-entry capsules, but now transmit their data. Commercial imaging satellites are now nearly as good as 'spy' satellites, so military users often buy commercial data rather than obtaining their own. During specific operations (such as in Iraq recently) the military has sometimes bought up all available images exclusively, to prevent their use by the enemy.
Spy satellites
US Air Force Space Command
Spy Satellites
Spying from space
surveillance satellites

Weather and Communications Satellites, and anti-satellite concepts

These systems are also essential for military operations. Although there are commercial systems with similar capabilities, Armed Forces around the world have their own parallel systems for security reasons. All these surveillance, GPS, communications and weather satellites make up the 'space assets' which shape warfare today. If they are so important, could they come under attack? (for instance, sensors blinded by lasers?). Should they be defended? Is this how space gets militarized? Right now several Russian satellites are practicing maneuvers in orbit, perhaps testing future space warfare capabilities. And what is the real purpose of the U.S. Air Force X-37 mini-shuttle, now in orbit?
Protection of Space Assets - PDF file.
Military weather satellites
Military communication satellites
Russian satellite suspected of having military intentions
Space warfare analysis
X-37 mini-shuttle

Star Wars?

Not the movie... Ronald Reagan proposed a system of orbiting sensors and lasers (or other possible architectures) as a means of rendering ballistic missiles obsolete. This Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars, faced enormous technical difficulties and strong opposition from around the world, as some versions would break the UN treaty ban on weapons in space. Nevertheless, some people believe the Soviet economy collapsed trying to keep up with this development, so Star Wars might have ended the Cold War. It is also considered likely that effective countermeasures to missile defence would be cheaper and easier than the missile defence itself. The program ended without making obvious progress.
Ballistic Missile Defense.
Reagan's 1984 proposal.

Assured Access to Space

You own assets in space, and want to defend them. Or you need rapid access to space to put up new surveillance systems to deal with a new threat. Or - maybe - you want to deny an enemy the use of their space assets before they fly over your bases. In each case you may need guaranteed access to space at very short notice. Military planners have tried to create their own satellite (and even human) launch vehicles, to avoid relying on systems like the Shuttle which are less reliable or take a long time to prepare. Secrecy shrouds these efforts, but the message is clear - a largely hidden space program runs parallel to the civilian efforts we usually hear about. What is not so clear is how far this has gone along the road to space. It's worth remembering that the 'moon race' of the 1960s began with plans for military bases on the moon.
Protecting space assets
Protecting space assets

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield playing David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' on the Space Station, 2013.

Space in culture; Science Fiction

Popular culture has embraced space in a variety of ways. From blockbuster movies to video and role-playing games, from UFO-shaped hamburger stands to 'face-on-Mars' websites, space images and themes are widespread in the cultural landscape.

Space in pop culture

It's hard to limit this to a few lines. The power of space imagery has attracted attention from many aspects of popular culture. The image of planet Earth as a fragile blue marble floating in a hostile void became an icon of the environmental movement. The Whole Earth Catalog, the great 1960s hippy guide to all things useful, featured space imagery on its cover. David Bowie and Neil Young - among many others - sang space songs in the 70s, some positive, some negative. Stanley Kubrick's movie 2001 depicted spaceflight fairly realistically, but it was far from the first space-themed movie (1902 - Le Voyage dans la Lune, by Georges Melies, is presumably the first). Space topics are a common theme on the cover of the Weekly World News, at your local supermarket checkout (and on professors' office doors, including mine). Buck Rogers... Flash Gordon... the "Space 1889" and "GURPS Terradyne" role-playing games - the themes and images are everywhere. And what about art in space? Google Lunar X Prize rovers might draw art with their wheels on the lunar surface, and a Dutch artist has reflected digitized images off the Moon to create new art.

Le Voyage dans la Lune
Weekly World News - covers space like nobody else...
Space movies
Buck Rogers
Some space art.
More space art.
Art at the Moon
Music and space.
A space playlist.

The Great Apollo Hoax?

Not all attention to space in popular culture is positive. A widespread urban legend promotes the notion that Apollo was a hoax, filmed in a movie studio. Much as we like to think we can really know things, it is very difficult to prove anything. Tiny doubts can be built up into complex webs of nonsense, leading to bizarre stories about (for instance) the Loch Ness Monster, the Bermuda Triangle, the sasquatch, ancient astronauts building the pyramids, crop circles and so on. The 'Apollo Hoax' hoax is just another example. And hoaxes are not new - look at the link for the 19th Century moon hoax based on telescopic observations.
Debunking the bunk! (Let's start with the good stuff)
And now for something completely different...
The wackiness continues...
The Face on Mars?
A 19th Century moon hoax

Science Fiction

Obviously a vast subject - I'm not going to discuss it in much detail. Its history can be taken as far back as Lucian of Samosata, nearly 2000 years ago. Jules Verne wrote about a trip to the moon in 1865, the "spacecraft" a huge shell shot from a cannon in Florida. Today, novels, TV series and movies make science fiction a major industry. Role-playing games and video games extend this in other directions. For our purposes it is interesting to think about science fiction from this perspective: to what extent does it reflect what was known about space when it was written? If you read fiction about Mars written over the last half century you can follow changing ideas - from canals and life (Edgar Rice Burroughs; C. S. Lewis; Ray Bradbury) to dusty deserts (Arthur C. Clarke), to terraforming (remaking Mars to be habitable) (Kim Stanley Robinson).
Lucian's story of a trip to the Moon.
science fiction

Future hope or future doom?

Some science fiction is positive - our technology will save us or let us do great things (The movie 2001 is a good example, Star Trek is another, and 'The Martian' is another, more recent, very popular book and movie). Some is negative - like Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. Some seems to say that no matter how clever we are, the bad side of human nature is always ready to interfere (Red/Blue/Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, maybe). One theme spilling out from positive fiction to form a justification for space travel is that of having a frontier, or needing room to grow. If we are shut in by a finite, overpopulated world, we need to move on. This echoes the American experience of the western frontier, but how realistic is it?
2001 - A Space Odyssey (see 'meanings' especially)
Star Trek
The Martian
RGB Mars website
space as the frontier

Selling lunar land. Get yours now! (Lunar Embassy illustration from http://www.lunarembassy.com/, the company website.)

Space Business, Space Law

National Sovereignty

Nations own their territory, but how far does that ownership extend? Mineral rights extend sovereignty underground, as far as we can drill (a few kilometers), and in theory perhaps to the centre of the Earth. Nations also exercise sovereignty over their 'air space', the atmosphere directly above their territories. Sovereignty has also been extended into the sea (e.g. Hibernia oil field). But it doesn't reach above the atmosphere, initially because nobody could go there and then because orbital flight cannot be confined within national borders. So sovereignty may be thought of as extending from the centre of the Earth to the upper atmosphere, usually taken to be about 100 km high. Beyond that, different laws apply.

United Nations Treaties

The United Nations has drawn up a series of treaties to govern space activities. Read through the list below to see details. First, they banned nuclear weapon tests in space (both the US and the USSR initially considered exploding nuclear weapons on the Moon as a way of proving they had reached it). Next they insisted that space activities be conducted for the benefit of all nations, not just the two superpowers, including this important statement:

International space treaties.
Institute of Air and Space Law, McGill
International Institute of Space Law
Space Law
Moon Treaty commentary. (PDF file)

Owning the Moon

In the last four decades various organizations including the Astronomical Society of the Pacific have 'sold' lunar land to raise money, but only as a novelty without a real claim of ownership. More recently, true claims of ownership have been made. The quote above disallows national claims, but apparently not individual claims (in fact this is not true... the treaty requires states to impose its obligations on their citizens). On the basis of that 'loophole', one company called Lunar Embassy has claimed to own the Moon and sells deeds to parcels of land. Another approach is favoured by The Lunar Republic, a group seeking to return to the Moon to build a colony. They argue that only the actual occupation of land grants the right to ownership. They have licensed a company, The Lunar Registry, to sell 'claims' to property, which would become legally owned when the colony is established. These ownership claims have not been tested in court and general legal opinion is strongly against them. Similarly, Gregory Nemitz of Orbdev claimed to own asteroid 433 Eros, and charged NASA a 'parking fee' when its NEAR spacecraft landed on it in 2001. That claim was rejected, an appeal was lost, and Nemitz has given up the fight.
Lunar Embassy.
Lunar Registry.
Space Pioneers.
Lunar property rights.
Extraterrestrial real estate.
Owning asteroid Eros.
Owning the sun - a critique of ownership.