Introduction to Astropolitics: an opportunity for Catalonia?
13/09/2021
During the last decade, we have witnessed an increasing number of rocket launches and a renewed competition between countries to send probes and even humans into Space. But what’s behind this new Space Race that makes private companies such as SpaceX flourish? Let’s have an introductory look at the intertwined economic and geopolitical reasons behind this new Space Race and the opportunities that can arise for the Space Sector in Catalonia.
Geopolitics is the study of the effects of Earth’s geography on politics and international relations. Mountains, valleys, rivers, the resources beneath them, and their location, create conditions for trade opportunities but also military challenges. The United Kingdom is a sea power because it’s an island surrounded by navigable sea currents. Russia is an arctic power because most of its coastal line surrounds the north pole. These are just two examples to show how geography can make things easy or difficult.
The same happens with countries’ access to outer space. If a country is near Earth’s equator it needs less energy to launch a rocket and reach outer space. That’s the reason why American rocket launches are mostly from Florida or Texas, and the European Union launches most of its rockets from French Guiana in South America. Another geographic advantage is for a country to be surrounded by big chunks of the ocean so if something goes wrong, the rocket launch debris doesn’t cause damage, especially in a neighboring country. That’s the case of New Zealand and its booming space industry; the country is far away from the equator but very safe to launch from.
Furthermore, the relation between power and space applies also within the bodies of our solar system; exposure to sunlight and sun radiation, atmosphere density and composition, gravitational pull, water, and other resources make some celestial bodies more appealing to human interests than others. Same as on Earth, different countries are already competing and collaborating between them to reach and control locations outside our planet.
A booming economy creating a domino effect.
Space-related activities have boomed during the last decade. And that’s related to very down-to-earth matters: data consumption and geolocation applications. Satellites taking pictures for our weather forecast and also satellites providing geolocation for dating apps such as Tinder. Probably the one we are more familiar with is the American military geolocational system GPS, but Russia uses Glonass, China uses Beidou and the European Union is trying to break away from American dependency using its own system called Galileo. Satellites provide precious information not just to private enterprises or governments but also to armies. Weather conditions, location of troops, factories, or basic infrastructure are vital information that nations need to treasure and protect from foreign intelligence in order to keep their position in the geopolitical chessboard.
According to a Space Foundation report, space-related economic activities reached US$440 billion in 2020. It’s a growing economy besides the Covid19 pandemic or because of it depending on the source. Some rocket launches have been postponed during periods of lockdown but on the other side, this same lockdown has provoked that more people working from home consume and demand even more data provided by satellites. And demand for satellites equals demand for rockets to deploy them.
The outer space economy is even expanding over the exosphere where satellites orbit. We are seeing how billionaires are competing for a slice of the forthcoming space tourism market. Private companies are using the International Space Station to take advantage of low gravity and experiment with 3D printing of human organs, next-gen fiber optics, or semiconductors. New technologies such as nanosatellites and reusable rockets are bringing down prices at an incredible speed creating a domino effect that will make this new economy reach the Moon and beyond sooner or later. Several countries do not want to lose this train and are creating their own space agencies even if they don’t have any sort of rocket launch capability. More than 70 countries have done it so far, including developing nations such as Ghana.
The space economy’s next target is the Moon and its resources. Our satellite has metals, Rare Earth materials, Helium-3 (able to fuel nuclear power), and water (vital for human hydration but also for producing oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to produce rocket fuel). It doesn’t yet make economic sense to bring these resources down to Earth. But they are going to be vital to create and sustain permanent outposts on the Moon. These outposts are going to push scientific research and might even create opportunities for luxury tourism but let’s not ignore that the location of the Moon above the earth makes it the highest ground for the military.
The power politics dimension of astropolitics.
When the former president of the United States Donald Trump, announced the creation of a Space Force some people mocked the idea but it makes perfect sense from a national security point of view. These satellites providing data to Earth are vital assets to American security, economy, and international alliances. So even though Netflix created a comedy series laughing at the idea, other countries such as Japan and France immediately followed suit creating their own Space Forces. France even announced that its next-generation satellites could be equipped with machine guns or lasers. China showed off its anti-satellite weapon capabilities by destroying one of its own satellites, using a laser from Earth. This is not science fiction, the American Space Force birth back in December 2019 belongs already to the recent past.
But who is the referee in this international competition in outer space? We have already seen a near-miss collision between a Starlink satellite and a Russian cargo mission heading to the International Space Station. Space legislation does exist but it’s clearly outdated. It dates from the 1960s and the 1970s and it does not cover the changes space has been through lately. Especially, when it comes to activities from the commercial private sector in the present time in general, and the mining of resources in the near future in particular. So, what are the stances of the main space powers?
The United States makes the first move
In this context, the United States Government promoted the Artemis Accords, announced by NASA in October 2020. This first ad-hoc coalition for space governance is joined, however, only by allies of the United States. Many other countries have refused to sign them, seeing these accords too focused on America’s public and private interests. Russia and China have been especially vocal against them. But many other (and weaker) countries find themselves between the rock and the hard place. If they wait for alternative powers to lead rule-making for space governance, the standards might have already been set.
Furthermore, even though international space treaties forbid the establishment of military bases on the Moon, the American Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, released last February 2021 a new program to develop designs and materials for building large structures in the Earth’s orbit and on the Moon. According to DARPA manufacturing off-earth maximizes mass efficiency and at the same time could serve to enhance stability, agility, and adaptability for a variety of space systems. This program, called NOM4D, assumes an established space ecosphere by 2030 comprising reliable logistics, facilities, and validation. Competing space powers, such as Russia and China, suspect that behind the United States’ urge to return to the Moon, establish a permanent human presence and start mining resources has a lot to do not just to keep the United States at the forefront of Space exploration but also with keeping the United States of America’s position as Earth’s main military power.
China follows suit
China is the only country in the world whose space department functions within the military (directly under the People’s Liberation Army), and it is preparing countermeasures against the US’ progress. In March 2021 leaders of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) together with Russia’s federal space agency (Roscosmos) signed a memorandum of understanding on the construction of a moon outpost called the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). Chinese officials described the station as “a comprehensive scientific experiment base with the capability of long-term autonomous operation, built on the lunar surface and/or [in] lunar orbit that will carry out multi-disciplinary and multi-objective scientific research activities such as lunar exploration and utilization, lunar-based observation, basic scientific experiment[s] and technical verification.” With these characteristics, the potential for military operations in case of need seems clear.
China’s aim to compete with American leadership in Space also reaches other areas outside the Moon. A Chinese presence at the International Space Station has been vetoed by the United States under accusations of technology theft. China’s response to that has been to create its own Space Station and open it to other countries and private ventures to compete directly with the International Space Station.
Russia doesn’t want to be China’s junior partner in Space
Even though Russia partners with China in this Lunar Research Station, with the United States in the International Space Station (for now), and even with the European Space Agency in exploratory missions in the Solar System, Russia has its own agenda. Russia wants to show that it is second to no one in Space. It might not have the economic might of its competitors but it does have inherited know-how from the very successful Soviet Space programs. Russia will use one of its main hard power assets to show it: nuclear power technology. Nuclear-powered rockets have been pursued for decades as they’ve got the potential to cut travel times in Space by half. China and the United States are doing their research too. But just like in the Soviet times, Russia may score a world first.
The Russian Space Agency Roscosmos announced in January 2020 the development of a nuclear-powered spacecraft scheduled to launch in 2030. Roscosmos also declared that before the end of 2030, a testing and experimenting facility must be built, and the future nuclear engine must be perfected on the ground, including conducting resource tests. Some suspect that these tests have been happening for years as cruise missiles tests.
In August 2019 United States officials reported that a nuclear-powered cruise missile was likely to have caused a fatal explosion in Northern Russia killing 7 people and injuring several more. Days after, the Russian Defence Ministry acknowledged there had been an explosion at the Nenoksa Missile Test Site in north-western Russia and admitted that radiation briefly doubled after the explosion.
The first Mission of this nuclear-powered transport and energy module called Zeus is scheduled to last 50 months. It would visit the Moon, orbit Venus and reach Jupiter but completely skip Mars. Quite a statement to other Space Race competitors with quite literal down-to-earth military applications and consequences.
But the United States, China, or Russia aren’t the only countries seeing the challenges and opportunities that outer space brings. The European Union, India, Japan, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Turkey, South Korea, New Zealand and even tiny Luxembourg have plans too. The game is on.
The return of the chartered companies. A window of opportunity for Catalonia?
Many people are familiar with American private space companies such as Blue Origin or SpaceX in the United States. Private space companies are starting to appear in other countries too, such as Arsenal in Russia and i-Space in China. Private companies provide flexibility, agility and have been able to cut costs dramatically. That’s the reason why they have been winning contracts for public space companies such as NASA. But they have got their own agendas too. Turning humankind into a multi-planetary species is Elon Musk’s personal obsession. SpaceX has its own Mars program that aims to facilitate the eventual colonization of Mars. SpaceX’s aspirational goal is to land the first humans on Mars by 2026 and end up having a city of 1 million people living there permanently by 2050. And this plan is going to be pushed with or without NASA’s partnership.
Still, SpaceX has been winning NASA contracts to take cargo to the International Space Station and develop a spacecraft to take people to the Moon and beyond. It looks like we might potentially return to an age of exploration in which chartered companies take first the lead, then potentially go bankrupt sometime after and end being bailed out or even owned by national governments. Just like the East India Company and the British Crown from the 1600s to the 1800s. But that could take us at the same time to potential sovereign claims on Mars and raise geopolitical (even astropolitical) tensions to unknown scenarios.
But it’s precisely in the private sector where Catalonia might find windows of opportunity. In October 2020 former Catalan Minister of Digital policies Jordi Puigneró, announced the creation of a Catalan Space Agency after the launch in Kazhakstan of a nanosatellite sponsored by the Catalan Government. The objective of the Space Agency would not be sending astronauts to outer space like the Apollo missions, or doing interplanetary research aslike NASA does. The idea would be for the Agency to create a public commercial demand to boost the local Space Economy. The idea is good, but not realistic in the Catalan case. The Catalan Space Agency is yet to be seen, and might not happen at all under the current political status of Catalonia as an autonomous territory under Spain.
Until that changes, what the Catalan Government could do is push legislation under its current autonomous powers to make its modest but flourishing space industry grow. That’s the path being followed at the moment by Scotland and it’s yielding results already; Glasgow manufactures more satellites than anywhere in the world outside Houston.
Catalonia has good potential for that to happen; its car manufacturing industries hold much in common with satellite construction, the academic research and engineering capabilities are there too, thanks to the hard work of the prestigious Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) and last but not least Catalonia hosts a European Space Agency Business Incubator Centre. But the competition is fierce, time is running and the window of opportunity might close soon. Time to make a move.
Marçal Sanmartí is an analyst specializing in the Politics of Outer Space. He is a member of the Planetary Society and a Research Assistant for the New Zealand International Review.
