Guest: Risk Fisher; Topics: Why returning to the Moon is a national security priority, controlling the Moon, Chinese space program threats and challenges, lunar cancellation programs aided China and more.
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The Space Show welcomed back Rick Fisher for another look at national security space, policy and happenings. Before the show started and Rick and I were chatting, he mentioned that the return to the Moon program pushed by Bush and cancelled by Obama was a big hit on our national security and killed our changes for a 5 year head start over the space program and their goals as put forth by China and the PLA. I was surprised by these comments, so we started the show with this discussion which dominated most of our program.
As I introduced Rick, I asked him to explain to us why the Obama cancellation of Constellation was a big national security hit for the US, especially since the program was likely to be cut or cancelled for financial/economic reasons anyway. Rick went into quite some detail explaining the connection to the cancellation of Constellation to furthering China's space program which is a function of the PLA (People's Liberation Army). In explaining this to us, Rick cited a few examples of actions conducted by the Chinese several years ago that got little media attention. One was a pre-attack on the ISS and the other example was about establishing radar on the Moon for lunar observation of Earth and our military sites. Rick sent me his two articles and papers on these examples which have been posted to the archive site for this program. Later in the discussion when a listener asked him about the Chinese spy balloon, he said it was spying on our military and nuclear sites in case of nuclear war. One thing the balloon was doing was getting detailed weather information over the sites because their hypersonic glide weapon is disrupted by certain types of weather conditions. By having detailed weather information over several of the sites, he said it helped in military attack planning. Rick said the balloon should have been shot down when detected and talked about our not acting on intelligence that show the intent of China and their capabilities.
Listeners and I asked Rick multiple questions about our response capability, preparedness, and capabilities. The best Rick could offer us was that he thought the Space Force, members of Congress and others were informed and were in a position to plan appropriately for these threats but that they would not be made public, transparent or discussed in any way. When asked about political policy as compared to what might be going on in the background for national security, unfortunately nothing satisfactory to me exists so it is clearly an enhanced security area not for the general public.
As we neared the end of the program, Rick was asked about private sector commercial satellites and the upcoming private space station in terms of their building in defenses to space attacks from space hardware or attacks from bad actors down here on Earth. He did not know the extend to private sector companies building in defenses to their software programs and hardware, but he did think that the information is extensively out there so the assumption would be in favor of at least limited defensive and protective capabilities. The next time I have a guest on with sats or other assets going to or already in space, I will ask if they build in any defensive capabilities against bad actors.
Please post your comments/questions for Rick on our blog for this show. You can reach our guest through me here at The Space Show or through his strategy center think tank mentioned earlier in this summary.
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