The irony was particularly delicious in that The Economist is a British periodical, and Britain has already been through its own retreat from space. Ironically, one of the best pieces of evidence for that was the shrill reception given to an article in The Economist announcing The End of the Space Age. It’s time to start coming to terms with the winding down of the age of space. There will still be rockets surging up from their launch pads for years or decades to come, and some few of them will have human beings on board, but the momentum is gone. A tide that was expected to flow for generations and centuries to come has peaked and begun to ebb. In America, a few big corporations have manned space projects on the drawing boards, angling for whatever federal funding survives the next few rounds of our national bankruptcy proceedings, and a few billionaires here and elsewhere are building hobby spacecraft in roughly the same spirit that inspired their Gilded Age equivalents to maintain luxury yachts and thoroughbred stables. ![]() The International Space Station still wheels through the sky, visited at intervals by elderly Soyuz capsules, counting down the days and the missions until its scheduled deorbiting in 2016. There are still rockets lifting off elsewhere, to be sure, adding to the globe’s collection of satellites and orbiting space junk. On the Florida coast, where rusting gantries creak in the wind and bats flutter in cavernous buildings raised for the sake of a very different kind of flight, another set of lauch pads sinks slowly into their new career as postindustrial ruins. The screens are black now, the mission control rooms empty, and most of the staff have already gotten their pink slips. In Houston, the same silence creeps through rooms where technicians once huddled over computer screens as voices from space crackled over loudspeakers. There will be no countdown, no pillar of flame to punch them through the atmosphere and send them whipping around the planet at orbital speeds. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.The orbiters are silent now, waiting for the last awkward journey that will take them to the museums that will warehouse the grandest of our civilization’s failed dreams. This workshop was made possible in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and the U.S. The Role of International Cooperation for Stabilizing Potential Friction Points in the Space Domain, by Peter MartinezĮlements of the Cooperation and Competition Dynamics in the New Space Environment, by Xavier Pasco Reduce Friction in Space by Amending the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, by Douglas Ligor (published by War On The Rocks) Great Power Competition and/or Cooperation in Space: The State of Play, by Namrata Goswami Terran Politics by Other Means? How Cooperation and Competition Among Allies and Adversaries Changes in the Space Domain, by Paige Cone (forthcoming) Solving the Problem of Space Debris: A Normative Approach to Space Debris Governance, by Robin DickeyĪ New Space Age.for Space Debris?, by Jill Stuart Cooperation and Competing Visions in Space How to Solve the Problem of Space Debris., by Christophe Bonnal ![]() The Future of Space Technology and Economy, by Naoko Yamazaki How to Solve the Problem of Space Debris The Future of Space Technology and How It May Benefit Humanity, by Svetla Ben-Itzhak Thought Pieces The Future of Space Technology and Economy Read our report, Challenges and Opportunities at the Dawn of the New Space Age. The workshop report-complemented by a series of thought pieces from participants-sets out expert ideas for maximizing the opportunities and managing the challenges of this new era. ![]() To address this, Perry World House convened a workshop in March 2022, titled "Challenges and Opportunities at the Dawn of the New Space Age." It brought together experts from the policy world, academia, and the private sector to explore how both policy and research might address some of these challenges, including the future of the space economy how to solve the problem of space debris and managing both cooperation and competition in space. The current global legal framework for the space domain, which originated over fifty years ago, is insufficiently robust to handle these emerging and urgent challenges. This carries the promise of prosperity, but has also led to daunting problems, including a proliferation of dangerous space debris from collisions and anti-satellite tests a burgeoning private sector presence and growing international competition. ![]() Improvements in technology and reductions in cost are making space increasingly accessible, opening it up to a diversity of actors. Gone are the days when space was exclusively the preserve of the nation-state.
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