Star Wars: the nuclearisation and weaponisation of space

‘It is time for America to take the next steps. Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit.’ So spoke US president George W Bush at the end of a rousing speech delivered at the Washington headquarters of the US space agency Nasa in January.

Earlier on he had delivered his new vision for the US space-exploration programme. He declared: ‘Today I announce a new plan to extend a human presence across the solar system… We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own.’ This ambitious agenda would initially be funded by ‘reallocating’ $11 billion from NASA’s current budget and by the injection of an additional $1 billion of federal funds. (Bush didn’t say how much it would cost in total, but estimates range from $500 billion to in excess of $750 billion.)

More specifically, the money would be spent on developing ‘human missions to Mars’ and on ‘new power-generation propulsion,...

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