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[scriver]

Yes, that makes sense. My own theory was that it it could be like "children" was the same in both singular and plural or something. Thanks for the guidance!

[Strongpoint]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57219860

Meanwhile, Belarus forced an international flight to land in order to arrest a journalist.

Is this not enough to go beyond deep concerns?

[feelotraveller]

Belarus have tried blaming Hamas but no-one is buying it.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/24/hamas-rejects-belarus-claim-over-plane-bomb-threat

[anewaname]

I need a political cartoon, with Lukashenko pouting, and Putin patting him on the shoulder, saying, "Not everyone can successfully fake a democracy. So, do you need a gulag for the families of your protestors?"

[feelotraveller]

The UN Human Rights Council will investigate violations that may have occured during the most recent 11 day conflict; it will also look into systematic abuses and the root causes of the conflict.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/27/un-rights-council-to-investigate-crimes-during-gaza-conflict

Isreal denounced the move while Hamas welcomed it.

While it's a step in the right direction I agree with the sentiment that it does not go far enough.  The council/commission does not have the power to punish even when/if it finds guilt.  What is needed to solve the conflict is international action rather than just condemnation.  The ongoing discussion should be about what form that action will take.

[Lidku]

I don't think any serious international accountability will be levied at Israel anytime soon, due in part to ol' Uncle Sam in the midst of things. Though any investigation by this UN commission to parse out and straightly rule that Israel is guilty of some of the glaring violations it has committed, goes a long way by some margins.

[Toady One]

(deleted various fighting and also a bunch of posts between the different fights that weren't directly involved)

[Duuvian]

Is membership in an international Space Force something that could be offered to Putin and others?

Would it be better to have it be extra-national and ideally be outside of control of nations though supported (willingly) by them, or would it be better to have it be compartmentalized as necessary by nation or bloc as it's influencers? Or a mix of the two extremes, with national offices under the umbrella of the extra-national Space Force?

This could keep militarized space navies from being the new boondoggle and keep human ships scientific and commercial at least until there are space pirates or some such other need that may call for arming them, while having an organization that can fund research and concept design for sweet spaceships for us space monkies to tool around the solar system in.

I also saw on CNN the US government is saying it's not sure what some new high performance aircraft they are spotting are. If others are not sure either, it seems it would make more sense to pool the data in one space force rather than spread it out over many. In theory it could also be a barrier to diplomacy if there are visitors; it would be easy to imagine that a representative of human nations would be easier to choose to talk to than choosing a nation or basically using a loudspeaker and saying "Who's in charge around here?" To be fair I also don't know much about the subject so I don't know how silly this particular rationale was.

Finally, I would note that with all due respect to the dinosaurs, I am shamefully glad they did not have an International Space Force and promise to try to learn from them. Perhaps bring them back some day if I can... perhaps some sort of zoo at first...

[Starver]

I would have thought this question is well beyond the scope of non-EU Europe, why not the actual Space Thread?

That aside, a 'Space Force' seems to require an opponent, whether that's a rogue (ostensibly?) Terran mission that needs to be faced off against or some actual incoming threat for which a pan-national response seems necessary. (So the US inaugerated one, in an invidualistic act driven more by personality than the (not entirely vapourware) threat from certain non-allied space programmes. It remains to be seen if that leads to Starship Troopers, de-orbitting response troops, Star Wars (in either Lucas or Reagan sense), Iron Skies or Iron Dome, above and beyond the mere consolidation of MilTech space assets out of the various original hands of the USAF, NASA and the like.)

If we're not going all "Space NATO" (and/or "Cosmic Warsaw Pact"), and perhaps even if we are, it should be possibly considered better as a UN(TLA) construct, held under the most global non-private umbrella there is, least it actually becomes a dish best served as Cold War, and it could be a very Cold War in space...

And although inevitably we'll one day have private/corporate force-projection (if we don't already, albeit not so overtly), I don't think we should attempt to keep it arms-length from individual or bloccy nations by this means either.


I have no real problem with the likes of ESA cooperating or partnering with non-ESA countries' existing or embryonic space agencies. There's ESA components going to Venus on NASA probes and NASA ones on the ESA mission, I think I saw recently. Though Roscomos might be looking to pull out of the ISS, whether or not they link up with the Chinese effort, they were a welcome enough part of that particular alliance of effort (including a significant time being the sole provider of man-rated rocketry).

For nominally civilian things, there are going to be various amounts of bed-sharing, and I'm only inclined to worry about it when (re)militarisation of space is a thing. Either that we're getting it, or that there's actually a frighteningly good reason for it.


There's a few points in your post I haven't really addressed (not sure if I understand the inspiration for them), and maybe I've drifted from the other points I thought I was addressing. But consider this my first thoughts to something that I'm only partly confident I understand enough to reply to.

[Duuvian]

That was an excellent response. I myself am mostly ignorant of how things work. However I've played many video games over the years including with players from Russia, both on the same team and on opposing ones. I wanted to dedicate this quick remix of a midi file I found online to them because I thought sure why not I already made the dang thing (in order to continue the joke I made in the previous post about the idea this song is affiliated with, but it turned out sort of nice if unpolished as a quick effort so I thought I could do something nice with it. If it was too rough I was going to dedicate it to the dinosaurs instead but it turned out ok I guess)

Jurassic Park Theme in mp3:
https://app.box.com/s/l22w48v372mtv6h0a35g4t012sch132z

I personally found the US's Space Force to likely end up a boondoggle that while surely would be in the running for world domination but would be expensive when words could be much cheaper. It could direct public space spending for example, and help facilitate private ventures by planning for infrastructure off planet. I'm not knowledgeable of existing Space Law, but updating and maintaining those could also be a role it plays.

I posted the idea here rather than the Space Thread as Biden is about to meet with Putin. I considered the Ameripol thread as well but this seemed appropriate.

[Starver]

For a starter on Space Law, you could do worse than read up on the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and follow up the other listed treatie/agreements. Including the technically toothless 1979 Moon Treaty that (with the exception of the Chandrayaan probes/lithobraking-modules?) isn't actually ratified by anyone with skin in the game.

Putin's Russia has certainly done a lot of things I'm sure Biden wants to talk to him about, and several of these things are indeed aerospace/orbital developments. Honestly, I don't see the solution to be to offer a Joint Services alliance. Some sharper hilateral de-escalation plan might be better. But it'd need huge hooks to keep him and (potentially) someone like Trump re-elected as President from just ignoring/bypassing the limits, and that'd be less attractive unless that was the long game anyway (trying to get your opposite number to 'force' you both to abstain, so you no longer have to do it to keep up with the Joneses/Ivanoviches).

I've not read up much about the post-G7 parley you mention (I knew it was happening, but hadn't paid enough attention) so I'm probably going to see what might have been mentioned, where there's a space twist. Aggresdive satellite repositionings, hypersonic missiles and all the rest are what I know of from the past, but haven't come up on my (figurative) radar in such recent times.

[Duuvian]

That's a pretty neat law, I think I read it sometime a long time ago as I knew from somewhere some of the stuff like no weapons of mass destruction in space, but that a sneaky way to get around it was to have a kinetic impactor or some such.

I got to this point and I was wondering about this in the past:
Being primarily an arms-control treaty for the peaceful use of outer space, it offers limited and ambiguous regulations to newer space activities such as lunar and asteroid mining.[8][10][15] It therefore remains under contention whether the extraction of resources falls within the prohibitive language of appropriation or whether the use encompasses the commercial use and exploitation.[16] Seeking clearer guidelines, private U.S. companies lobbied the U.S. government, and space mining was legalized in 2015 by introducing the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015.[17] Similar national legislation to legalize the appropriation of extraterrestrial resources are now being introduced by other countries, including Luxembourg, Japan, China, India, and Russia.[8][15][18][19] This has created some controversy regarding legal claims over the mining of celestial bodies for profit.[15][16]

[feelotraveller]

[unashamed snipping]

...a 'Space Force' seems to require an opponent...

Why concieve of it as a primarily military conflict oriented organisation?  (Rhetorically, 'What opponent does a Police Force have?')

Instead how about a body that does something about the dumping of booster rockets in dangerous orbits - for example.  Given the growing number of nations and private organisations bringing the 'junk the earth' mentality into space that seems like it could be a good thing.

[Starver]

[unashamed snipping]

...a 'Space Force' seems to require an opponent...

Why concieve of it as a primarily military conflict oriented organisation?

It's sort of implied in the naming.

(Rhetorically, 'What opponent does a Police Force have?')

(Space Police or Space Patrol would suit a 'police force' IN SPAAAACE!! far better. I don't know about everywhere, not encyclopedically, but it tends to be the Police Service ("PS of Foo", or "Foo PS") or Constabulary over here, or just qualify the word Police....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's from Devon & Cornwall Police to Police Scotland, the Police Service Of Northern Ireland (successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary) to the Metropolitan Police Service (i.e. London, outwith the area for which the City Of London Police have jurisdiction), then there's the British Transport Police, the Ministry Of Defence Police and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary

...while I believe the US goes for Police Department (or Sheriff's Office/similar) and worldwide it looks like Agencies, Bureaus, Inspectorates get added to the list of titular stylings. I'm not sure that 'Force' is more than a popular coverall term to cover any or all the generic national/regional/contextual/private organisations or sub-organisations, probably as a holdover from the earlier paramilitary roots) and thus purely colloquial/rightfully uncapitalised, such as "I spent more than thirty years on the force".)

Instead how about a body that does something about the dumping of booster rockets in dangerous orbits - for example.  Given the growing number of nations and private organisations bringing the 'junk the earth' mentality into space that seems like it could be a good thing.

And probably better described as an Agency, though perhaps a Directorate (implying control) or Partnership (implying inter-agency cooperation/coordination) would be a less military-implying title element. Semantics, I know, but you can be sure it'll be a harder thing to get membership signatures for if it comes with the wrong 'tone'.

[Duuvian]

I think partnership would be the one that sounds least vaguely ominous.

We could even say "Put 'er there Partner" when we high five in space and shoot off in opposite direction, or at least I assume that would happen. Possibly en route to the pilot seat of the vehicles to form a mecha with. That sounds like Space Partnership (Force?) to me.

https://geology.com/nasa/diamonds-in-space.shtml

Lol I also found this, awesome

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_Absorbency_Garment

Spoiler: Joke in the spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now I won't have to call for the bucket anymore.

Here are more serious links:

https://www.permanent.com/asteroids-telescope-spectroscopy.html

https://www.llnl.gov/news/lab-instrument-will-explore-asteroid-psyche.

https://futurism.com/new-generation-gamma-ray-spectroscope-can-detect-hidden-minerals-in-asteroids

https://futurism.com/ambiguous-laws-could-prevent-us-from-taking-full-advantage-of-celestial-resources

Imagine an agency that had a reverse budget and paid taxes back to the people or some such. That would be neat. Especially if you factor in the potential of automation, perhaps it could be a way to provide a global basic income.