Philosophical and Material Foundations of the Space Patrol
Brent Ziarnick
Brent D. Ziarnick started his career as an Air Force space operations officer in 2003 and has been involved in space ever since. Initially a GPS crew satellite vehicle operator, Brent went on to be an engineer and tactician on active duty. After joining the Air Force Reserve in 2007, he worked for two years as a launch engineer and planner at Spaceport America, New Mexico, the world’s first purpose-built inland commercial spaceport for space tourism. He was recalled to active duty to attend Air Force professional military education and was selected to attend the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS), the Air Force’s elite school for military strategists. Upon graduating, Brent joined the faculty of the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. As a civilian associate professor of national security studies there, he developed the curriculum, founded, and led the space concentration that is now considered the premier educational institution for the United States Space Force. In Brent’s sixteen years of reserve service, he has been an Air Force Space Command staff strategist, squadron commander, director of operations, deployed combat plans staff officer, and professional military education professor. He has written the nonfiction books Developing National Power in Space (2015), 21st Century Power (2018), and To Rule the Skies (2021), and more than a dozen articles on spacepower, military theory, and air power history. He holds a master’s degree in space systems engineering and doctorates in economic development and military strategy. He lives in Alabama with his wife and children.
Chapter 2: Philosophical and Material Foundations of the Space Patrol (1914–2020)
The many functions of the Space Patrol seem today to be quite commonplace, but upon reflection seem rather odd for a military organization. Why does the Patrol manage the currency of our interplanetary civilization? Why isn’t the Patrol governed by any nation, or council of nations? Indeed, thinking seriously about the Patrol without a firm grasp of its theoretical origins often raises many more questions than answers. However, the political logic of the Patrol was established as far back as the seventeenth century. Furthermore, when we look at our civilization’s military history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we can clearly see that the embryonic Space Patrol was being formed in the intellectual and popular imagination at the very beginning of the Atomic Age.
The Atom and the Leviathan
Political scientist Thomas Hobbes identified the rationale for the Space Patrol in his immortal classic Leviathan in 1651. Though antimatter weapons and mass space travel were centuries into the future, the “father of realism” confronted war and how it could be stopped with brutal clarity and purpose. Hobbes wrote that men fought over competition, diffidence, and glory (echoing Thucydides’ fear, honor, and interest) and that “during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.” [2] In such chaotic conditions, according to one of the most famous phrases in political science:
there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society and, which is the worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” [3]
Only a dominant power that could keep all men in awe could keep the peace and allow humanity and its arts to flourish. Only a Leviathan—an organization of insurmountable power with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence—could prevent the life of man from being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” For centuries, political philosophers from the Liberal, Marxian, Constructivist, and countless other schools rejected or attempted to prove Hobbes’s conclusion wrong. Over those centuries, man’s wars became increasingly violent, destructive, and brutish. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, man’s increasing mastery of the physical sciences led him ever closer to unlocking the destructive power of the atom. With this power, mankind itself could hasten its own extinction with a Hobbesian nightmarish nuclear fire engulfing the world.
Interestingly, and by no means the only time in the history of the Space Patrol, a science fiction writer offered a way forward out of the fatal dilemma at the nexus of Hobbes and the atom. British futurist Herbert George (H.G.) Wells captured the perils and promise of nuclear weapons, in his most prescient, if not most famous, 1914 novel The World Set Free. In it, Wells identifies the horrors of atomic weapons by describing the world’s first nuclear war. Wells did not anticipate the correct method of atomic destruction. His “Carolinum” bombs were not the city-destroying orgies of instant death produced by fission and fusion explosions. Rather, these atomic weapons were equally horrific but slow-burning, unquenchable fires that poisoned and killed everything surrounding them for decades.
Wells correctly grasped that humans would not survive wars fought by nuclear weapons, even if he mistook the character of their destructive power. After a nuclear war rendered many of the European capitals and major cities uninhabitable, the surviving world leaders of the novel commit to ensuring such a catastrophe would never happen again. Wells looked to Hobbes to provide the solution to set the world free from war. Wells’s character King Egbert of Britain convinces the major nations of the world to establish a Leviathan—the World State—that would forever keep the peace through a monopoly on atomic weapons. Further, the first order of the World State is to “get every atom of Carolinium and all the plant for making it, into our control.” [4]
Perhaps Wells’s greatest act of vision was to identify that the World State’s monopoly on atomic weapons relied upon a monopoly on atomic material and refining and production methods. No one can miss the parallels between the World State’s monopoly on the radioactive fuel Carolinum and the foundation of the Space Patrol’s military might and power—its monopoly on the production and distribution of antimatter. Controlling the power of the atom through a monopoly on the resources necessary to harness it is a common theme throughout the Atomic Age up to and including today’s antimatter economy. Wells’s reputation as a brilliant futurist should be secured indefinitely for pioneering this insight alone.
Wells’s combination of a World State, atomic weapons, and the monopoly on atomic energy, to create a Leviathan that secured peace among mankind is a critical moment in the history of the Space Patrol. Even though today the Space Patrol is not beholden to any state or political hegemony, rather being an honest policeman that exists outside politics yet regarded as legitimate among all human powers, there can be no doubt that The World Set Free and Wells’s vision is a direct ancestor of the Space Patrol.
Wells also identified that the world could only be set free if men were willing to commit violent acts of barbarity to defend it. Shortly after the declaration of the World State, King Ferdinand Charles of Serbia hatches a plan to secretly build a stockpile of Carolinum bombs and destroy the World State headquarters, its leaders, and its arsenal of Carolinum bombs in a devastating air attack that “aimed at no less than the Empire of the World. The government of idealists and professors away there at Brissago was to be blown to fragments, and…aeroplanes would go swarming over a world that had disarmed itself, to proclaim Ferdinand Charles, the new Caesar, the Master, Lord of the Earth.” [5]
Of course, the “aeronauts” of the World State anticipate King Ferdinand Charles’s treachery and destroy his attacking bombers in flight, capture the illegal stockpile of bombs, and kill King Ferdinand Charles while the fugitive is attempting to escape. When the World State’s aeronauts secure the area and he learns of the human cost of the fighting, ex-King Egbert ponders, “I wonder…if there are any more of them?” “Bombs, sir?” “No, such kings…The pitiful folly of it!” [6]
As the Space Patrol has constantly learned and relearned centuries later, there have always been more “such kings” to threaten peace and security of the human race. And, just as Wells foretold, there would always be the need for strong and determined men to keep that peace through the exercise of extreme—and some critics claim genocidal—violence to keep that peace. Any member of the Space Patrol reading The World Set Free would immediately identify the Wells aeronauts as the direct antecedents of himself.
The Impossible Dream
Wells may have anticipated the Space Patrol in The World Set Free, but it took the American Manhattan Project in World War II to discover the destructive power of a real atomic bomb. They were not the slow-burning wraiths of Wells’s imagination. Instead, they were apocalyptic holocausts of destructive power burning brighter than a thousand suns that could make entire cities disappear in the blink of a demonic eye. The rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the first crude fission bombs in 1945 and the anticipation of society-ending fusion bombs brought the need to confront the control of atomic energy away from the musings of science futurists directly into the hands of the world’s diplomats.
In 1946, an American committee chaired by Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal wrote the Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy that outlined a method by which the United States could cede its monopoly on atomic weapons to the United Nations to prevent a destructive arms race that many feared could end civilization. The father of the atomic bomb himself, Robert Oppenheimer, helped develop the report’s recommendations. The document was a far-reaching exercise in developing a binding international agreement to end the menace of atomic weapons while also seeking to unleash the benefits of atomic energy to help develop the entire world. Although the plan focused more on gaining international acceptance by inducement rather than military might, the plan’s echoes of the ideas set forth in Wells’s The World Set Free ring loudly.
The plan’s centerpiece was the establishment of an International Atomic Energy Authority, vested under the authority of the United Nations, that would conduct “all intrinsically dangerous operations in the nuclear field” while allowing “individual nations and their citizens free to conduct, under license and a minimum of inspection, all non-dangerous, or safe, operations.” [7] The Authority would control the world’s supplies of uranium and thorium; own, construct, and operate nuclear production plants; conduct atomic research; license individual states’ and other organizations’ nuclear activities; and conduct inspections to ensure compliance.
The first purpose of the Authority was “to bring under its complete control world supplies of uranium and thorium.” The Authority would also control the stockpiles of both elements around the world, manage their mining and production, and continually search for new deposits in order to have complete control of the supply. These supplies would be leased or sold to other organizations to support lawful and peaceful atomic research and development while restricting any non-UN military atomic development entirely. Through this monopoly, the Authority would ensure that there would never be “lawful rivalry among nations for these vital raw materials.” [8]
The second duty of the Authority would be to build, own, and operate the production facilities necessary to refine uranium and thorium into usable nuclear fuels. The report’s writers were insistent on this ownership because refining activities were “regarded as the most dangerous, for it is through such operations that materials can be produced which are suitable for atomic explosives.” [9]
The third role of the Authority was to conduct further research into atomic explosives. “Only by preserving its position as the best informed agency will the Authority be able to tell where the line between the intrinsically dangerous and the non-dangerous should be drawn,” the report argued. New discoveries could yield new methods of atomic weapons development and production, and in order to ensure no clandestine weapons programs could be developed “it is important that the Authority should be the first to know.” [10]
The fourth responsibility of the Authority was to license its fissionable materials to allow the construction and operation of nuclear power plants for peaceful development and private research activities to provide continuing benefits of atomic energy to the world. Furthermore, “through its own research and development activities and through establishing cooperative relationships with research and development laboratories in this field throughout the world, the Authority would be in a position to determine intelligently safe and unsafe designs of reactors for which it might lease its fissionable materials.” [11]
Finally, the Authority would inspect all atomic energy activities around the world to ensure that no dangerous nuclear weapons programs were being conducted throughout the world. Through inspection the Authority would retain its nuclear monopoly. Authority-licensed programs would be routinely inspected to ensure that they were really legal. Furthermore, the Authority would inspect operations to ensure they were operationally effective and followed appropriate safety protocols. The Authority “would be in a position to insure that in the plan of operations, in the physical layout, in the system of audits, and in the choice of developments, full weight and full consideration can be given to the ease of detecting and avoiding diversion and evasion.” [12]
Oppenheimer and the other authors of the report consciously avoided the problem of enforcement in order to make the proposal more acceptable to the Soviet Union, which by 1947 was accepted as the United States’ adversary for the foreseeable future. The writers favored inspections and argued the plan made inspections easier because “it is not the motive but the operation which is illegal.” Mining uranium or building nuclear reactors outside Authority approval would be illegal. “The fact that it is the existence of the effort rather than a specific purpose or motive or plan which constitutes an evasion and an unmistakable danger signal is to our minds one of the great advantages of the proposals we have outlined,” the writers argued. [13]
No historian of the Space Patrol can deny that the enforcement of its antimatter weapon monopoly across the solar system would be possible if the Patrol did not also maintain its monopoly on the production and storage of antimatter. It is remarkable that the Report’s logic of inspection stated in 1946—more than a century before the establishment of the Space Patrol—would outline the Patrol’s necessary strategy so well.
The Acheson-Lilienthal Report did not mention an enforcement activity to secure the treaty. It almost entirely relied upon inspections and the promise of development support from the Authority to persuade states to abide by the agreement. Bernard Baruch was placed in charge of selling the International Atomic Development Authority to the United Nations. But Baruch added the critical element of enforcement of the provisions of the agreement to the plan, regardless of how the Soviets might react. Baruch added that “once the treaty was ratified, any government violating its treaty obligation and developing or using atomic energy for destructive purposes should be subject to swift and sure punishment; and in the case of violation no one of the permanent members of the Security Council should be permitted to veto punitive action by the council.” [14]
Additionally, Baruch demanded swift and sure punishment without the possibility of veto by the United Nations Security Council position for anyone who detonated an atomic bomb without Authority approval, in illegal possession of an atomic bomb or of atomic material suitable for use in an atomic bomb, or anyone seizing a plant or other property belonging to or licensed by the authority by force. [15] The Soviet Union was completely opposed to eliminating the veto in the Security Council and the Baruch plan ultimately failed in the United Nations, but the resemblance to this first plan for international control of atomic energy and the Space Patrol’s monopoly on the supply and production of antimatter is unmistakable.
The Space Patrol Proposed
While the Baruch plan was being debated in the United Nations, a new science fiction writer emerged to champion the cause of the Space Patrol in print. But unlike H.G. Wells, Robert A. Heinlein was a military veteran of the US Navy and a Naval Academy graduate who would have likely enjoyed a successful career—perhaps even becoming an admiral—if tuberculosis had not forced his medical retirement after only a few years of service. Robbed of a Navy career, Heinlein turned to writing science fiction and, in 1947, he began to write a series of articles that, without doubt, were the most articulate vision of the Space Patrol devised. It is nearly incontestable that Robert Heinlein is the most important intellectual father of the Space Patrol.
In the heat of the debate over the Baruch plan, Lieutenant (retired) Heinlein and his friend and Naval Academy classmate Captain Caleb B. Laning, wrote “Flight into the Future” in Collier’s magazine, published on 30 August 1947. Set in 1967, the two naval officers describe a voyage on the orbital United Nations ship Jupiter on patrol in Earth orbit. The story begins with them departing from the UN moon base on the Jupiter en route to relieve another cruiser on patrol. The military crew is under the orders of the UN Security Council, as the Baruch Plan presented. Heinlein and Laning describe the international crew, the “captain is in his middle thirties, a former [US Army Air Forces] jet-bomber pilot. His navigator has an Oxford accent and was formerly an assistant astronomer at Greenwich. There are many accents aboard—Russian, French, Texan—and as many backgrounds.” In addition to military personnel, the crew also includes scientists from the “U.N. Atomic Commission.” [16]
The mission of the Jupiter is to service orbiting nuclear missiles aimed at Earth to be used “should the Security Council find it necessary to order them to blast an aggressor nation off the face of the earth.” [17] The missiles are the “prowl cars” of the “peace patrol” that cover the entire globe so that “no spot on earth is ever more than an hour away from the swift punishment of the Security Council.” [18]
Heinlein and Laning argued that the peace patrol from space was absolutely necessary because “We must have space ships to preserve the peace… If we don’t develop space ships, someone else will.” The writers then make a startling claim that, centuries later, we know to be the fundamental power of the Space Patrol. “Once developed,” the visionaries announced, “space travel can and will be the source of supreme military power over this planet—and over the entire solar system—for there is literally no way to strike back from ground, sea, or air at a space ship, whereas the space ship armed with atomic weapons can wipe out anything on this globe.” [19]
Knowing that they would be accused of being warmongers by at least some readers, they argued that “We want peace. We of the armed forces, as human beings with kids and homes of our own, most especially want peace, for we know how frightfully catastrophic another war would be.” The writers also stressed that the space corps should be under United Nations control and serve as the “backbone of the U.N. Security Forces.” [20]
Heinlein and Laning also charged the American people with an important duty. If the UN could be made to work, the technologically most-advanced member nations (including the United States) must supply that backbone. However, if the world “can’t make the U.N. work, then we’ve got to develop a space corps to enforce a Pax America because the big cities of the United States can’t survive an atomic war.” [21] If the world wouldn’t build an international space corps to control atomic weapons to keep the peace, the United States would have to build it itself.
Heinlein revisited and expanded upon his international space peace patrol in his juvenile science fiction novel Space Cadet a year later (1948). Drawing from his experience at the Naval Academy and as a junior naval officer, Heinlein told the story of Cadet Tom Dodson, a young American who joins the Interplanetary Patrol in 2075. In it, Heinlein greatly expands on the mission and culture of the Patrol.
Earth and the other humans in the solar system are united under the banner of the Federation, the seal of which incorporates three closed circles representing Freedom, Peace, and Law. [22] Even though Heinlein’s Patrol still uses nuclear weapons to keep the peace—and has used them against aggressor nations, independent space settlements, and cities in the past—the Patrol has also assumed the mission of rescue and recovery in space, working as an international coast guard of space. The legendary Commandant of the Interplanetary Patrol Academy, Commodore Arkwright, is permanently blind from a “spectacular, singlehanded rescue of a private yacht in distress, inside the orbit of Mercury.” [23]
Commodore Arkwright gives a speech to the new class of recruits from every nation and planet before swearing them into the Patrol. Arkwright declares that “Each living, thinking creature in this system is your neighbor—and your responsibility” to the new cadets. He also warns the cadets to “expect to spend long hours studying your new profession, acquiring the skills of the spaceman and the arts of the professional soldier.” However, those skills are not the most important attributes of a Patrol officer.
Arkwright explains, “An officer in command of a ship of the Patrol, away from base, is the last of the absolute monarchs, for there is none but himself to restrain him. Many places where he must go no other authority reaches. He himself must embody law, and the rule of reason, justice, and mercy.” The Patrol officer must embody these virtues because the Patrol is “entrusted such awful force as may compel or destroy, all other force we know of—and with this trust is laid on them the charge to keep the peace of the System and to protect the liberties of its peoples.” [24]
Patrol members are “the soldiers of freedom” and as the cadets wish to become officers of these soldiers, it “is not enough that you be skillful, clever, brave—The trustees of this awful power must each possess a meticulous sense of honor, self-discipline beyond all ambition, conceit, or avarice, respect for the liberties and dignity of all creatures, and an unyielding will to do justice and give mercy. He must be a true and gentle knight…” [25]
After delivering his speech, Arkwright administers the oath of office to the cadets:
Of my own free will, without reservation—
I swear to uphold the peace of the solar system—
to protect the lawful liberties of its inhabitants—
to defend the constitution of the Solar Federation—
to carry out the duties of the position to which I am now appointed—and to obey the lawful orders of my superior officers.
To these ends I subordinate all other loyalties and renounce utterly any that may conflict with them. [26]
Every member of the real Space Patrol throughout its long history will see an uncanny overlap between Heinlein’s oath and their own. Especially relevant is Heinlein’s insistence that members renounce local tribal loyalties and acknowledge their loyalty to the higher ideals of the Patrol. The Earthlings, Martians, and Venusians in Heinlein’s fictional account are easy stand-ins for the Terrans, Cerites, and AI cultures all blending together into one Patrol to serve all of civilization. The real Space Patrol oath has been altered several times in its history, but has never strayed far from the oath of the Interplanetary Patrol first written in a children’s book a decade before humans even launched a satellite.
Heinlein wrote a final piece on the Interplanetary Patrol in his short story “The Long Watch” in 1949. Expanding on the story of a hero of the Patrol mentioned in Space Cadet, the story recounts how Lieutenant John Dahlquist sacrifices himself by sabotaging the Patrol’s lunar nuclear missiles in order to stop a coup of renegade Patrol officers on the Moon from taking over the world. Young Dahlquist, an inexperienced bomb officer with a doctorate in physics, is invited to join the coup by Colonel Towers, a distinguished Patrol officer, combat veteran, and executive officer of the Patrol command post on the Moon. The colonel tells Dahlquist that “it was not safe…to leave control of the world in political hands; power must be held by a scientifically selected group. In short—the Patrol.” [27]
Even though Dahlquist thinks the idea plausible, he recoils when Towers says the conspiracy will need to bomb “an unimportant town or two. A little bloodletting to prevent an all-out war. Simple arithmetic… Think of it as a surgical operation. And think of your family.” Dahlquist pretends to play along with the conspiracy until he can sabotage the bombs by cracking their nuclear fuel casings, resulting in Dahlquist receiving a lethal dose of radiation, but also defanging the coup and saving the day. [28]
“The Long Watch” is still used in ethics classes in Space Patrol officer training today.
An amusing thought to ponder is that, historically, the “villain” Colonel Towers was proven correct…in a way. Many human governments—both those with local jurisdictions ranging from Earth nations to isolated space colonies and habitats as well as those with broader global and even system-wide aspirations—have come and gone during the Space Patrol’s existence. Today, the Space Patrol as a whole is beholden to no government. Human peace and prosperity is not secured by any world government, but by the officers of the Patrol just as Towers wanted. However, it did not require a coup or the destruction of innocent cities. The Space Patrol and its personnel simply proved to be a more stable and just organization than unified governments for humanity to rely upon. Of course, many human governments—as well as perhaps the so-called Sentient Artificial Intelligence Network (SAIN) that appears to be gaining in political recognition by some, of which many AI members of the Patrol serve as leaders—exist today and have great freedom in organizing the societies they represent without interference. But the governments have all agreed that the Space Patrol is a worthwhile organization and accept as legitimate the Patrol’s inherent function in the larger system-wide society. Perhaps Heinlein’s dedication to justice, law, and life itself has won the Space Patrol’s valued and treasured role as humanity’s military.
The Hunter in the Stars
The Space Patrol is certainly a military organization with a war-fighting culture. Many are surprised to learn, then, that many Patrol personnel don’t see anything resembling combat for most of their careers. Actual use of antimatter weapons against aggressor polities by the Patrol is extremely uncommon. Some members, beyond minor engagements with pirates, never engage in combat at all. Individual Space Patrol glory is most often found in heroic actions during rescue operations rather than fighting. Yet, Space Patrol members spend most of their time in fully immersive virtual reality combat simulations that are so exacting and lifelike that some members develop stress disorders usually only seen from traumatic combat experiences. How is this possible?
The answer is that the Space Patrol is a deterrent organization that also performs rescue and antipiracy operations on the margins of its primary responsibility. As it happens, the Space Patrol shares much of its military character from the twentieth-century military formation charged with wielding America’s nuclear monopoly.
The American plan to invest the United Nations with the monopoly on nuclear energy was defeated decisively in 1947 when the Soviet Union completely rejected Baruch’s International Atomic Energy Authority. The lack of an international solution to nuclear weapons forced the United States to build the Pax America Heinlein and Laning argued was the second best option. The result was the Strategic Air Command, better known by its acronym “SAC.” SAC was the aviation nuclear striking arm of the United States from 1947 to 1992, and was a major contributor of American defense in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Every minute of the Cold War, SAC had hundreds of bombers and thousands of missiles and their crews constantly on alert to launch a devastating nuclear counterattack on the Soviet Union with only fifteen minutes’ notice.
The similarity in military character between SAC and the Space Patrol is uncanny. SAC’s force of nuclear-armed bomber aircraft and later ground-based missiles intended to keep the peace by threatening massive retaliation against any Soviet military aggression. In its almost half century of existence, SAC never launched a nuclear weapon in anger. However, it was considered one of the most aggressive war-fighter cultures in military history because it drilled and exercised nuclear war-fighting constantly. It acted, like the Space Patrol, as if it was always at war through vigorous and unforgiving training and simulation. The Space Patrol’s motto, “Preserve and Protect, At Any Cost,” echoes SAC’s own “Peace is Our Profession.” Much of the Space Patrol’s training and operational philosophy was pioneered by SAC.
Peace may have been SAC’s profession, but the unofficial motto included “War is Just a Hobby.” Even so, it was a vigorous hobby. SAC combat crews were constantly tested by mentally brutal exercises using the most realistic wartime simulators the technology of the time allowed. Furthermore, SAC demanded perfection from every crew in every simulation. Anything less than one hundred percent on any of the hundreds of tests and simulations of World War III crews were exposed to could end an officer’s career. Space Patrol personnel today hone their own skills on fully immersive virtual reality (VR) simulators that can provide thirty years of brutal conflict experience in the mere first year of a Patrol officer’s half-century career. Simulation performance largely determines promotion in the Patrol. In addition to being potentially harmful, VR technology is so potent and subject to addiction that its use is highly regulated and restricted among civilians. Space Patrol VR simulations would be nothing short of magic to SAC airmen. But SAC airmen would immediately recognize in Patrol standards the same exacting military professionalism required for a military charged with the security of humanity itself. Both services needed to train to superhuman standards to preserve the peace “at any cost.”
While SAC was a deterrent organization that used its fission and fusion weapons in a similar manner that the Space Patrol uses its antimatter weapons to secure peace, its use of aircraft and missiles does not seem all that similar to the Space Patrol’s space focus. However, a little-known element of SAC’s history is that its leaders attempted to build a SAC space force in the mid-twentieth century through a novel application of nuclear energy.
Project Orion, the US Air Force nuclear pulse propulsion (NPP) research program carried out from 1957 to 1965, was the twentieth century’s greatest attempt to develop a capability like the Space Patrol. The NPP technique used small nuclear explosives detonated at the rear of a spacecraft to ablate a pusher plate and carry the spacecraft into orbit and throughout the solar system in ways comparable (but vastly inferior) to modern antimatter systems. Orion was the most powerful space engine developed to any level of sophistication until well into the twenty-first century.
Air Force officers Donald Mixson and Frederick Gorschboth developed concepts of operations for Air Force Orion spacecraft to extend SAC’s deterrent force into orbit in the late 1950s and early 1960s—much along the same lines of Heinlein and Laning’s space corps. Mixson developed the concept of a SAC Deep Space Force of Orion spacecraft distributed into three main forces differentiated by orbital altitude: a low-altitude force (in a two-hour period, one-thousand-mile altitude orbit), a moderate-altitude force (twenty-four-hour orbit) and a deep-space force (lunar orbit). These three forces would be assigned intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance duties during peacetime, primarily collecting intelligence of Soviet nuclear forces. However, the ships would also carry nuclear weapons as part of the United States nuclear deterrent (a deep-space bombardment force), ready to strike the Soviet Union in case of nuclear attack. The ships would be the ultimate in survivable nuclear deterrence, virtually immune from a first strike (being specifically designed to use nuclear blasts as propulsion!) and capable of indefensible retaliation in case of a Soviet nuclear attack on the United States. [29]
Gorschboth expanded on Mixson’s concepts by adding that with Orion “it would be possible to move the scene of battle from earth to space, so that the military decision would be rendered there among the combatants, without incidental destruction to the earth’s surface or the danger of the consequent long-term radiation effects of fallout—if this could be done, it would provide perhaps the first step back toward a sane strategy in the nuclear age…” [30] Physicist Freeman Dyson was more sanguine about Orion’s military utility, mockingly explaining Mixson and Gorschboth’s plans as “Great fleets of space battleships were to patrol the ocean of space… Cruising majestically in orbits beyond the moon, manned by air force captains as brave as the English sea captains of old, the ships of the Deep Space Bombardment Force would stand between the tyrants of the Kremlin and the dominion of the world.” [31]
Nonetheless, these young captains were able to convince SAC of the utility of a robust space capability. On 21 January 1961 SAC Commander-in-Chief General Thomas Power issued a SAC Qualitative Operational Requirement for a “Strategic Earth Orbital Base.” In the only SAC space requirement letter signed by General Power himself, Power demanded Orion and warned that a “capability less than desired; a number of unmanned special-purpose or inadequately manned vehicles, and/or other vehicle compromises, afford only a partial solution to the long-term space capability problem. Integrated facilities and systems for effective mission accomplishment must include all functions that permit survival, surveillance, and weapons delivery. The capability to accommodate the obviously large payloads makes necessary many tons to orbit rather than many pounds. A long-term strategic earth orbital capability, virtually unrestricted by propulsion or payload limitations, is required.” [32]
The SAC Deep Space Force would have been a twentieth-century American version of the Space Patrol, accomplishing the same deterrence mission with similar spacecraft. Unfortunately for SAC and Project Orion, the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 made any nuclear explosions under the sea, on the ground, in the air, or in space illegal, including those used for propulsive purposes. With the stroke of a pen, the entire flight profile of a nuclear pulse spacecraft was made illegal. Orion was cancelled just as dedicated nuclear tests and prototype construction were planned to commence. Orion, and SAC’s plan for it to extend nuclear deterrence into space, was ended.
From Air Force to Space Guard
SAC itself was disbanded in 1992, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War after it had completed its mission of keeping the Cold War free of nuclear warfare. Its nuclear weapons and its space assets (imagery, navigation, weather, and communications satellites) were transferred into Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). Established in 1982 to manage Strategic Defense Initiative weapons that were never developed, AFSPC saw its space assets assist the great American victory in Desert Storm against Iraq in 1991. Instead of committing to the strategic mission of nuclear deterrence and taking SAC’s mantle to push nuclear deterrence into space, AFSPC instead sought to subordinate America’s space assets to the tactical concerns of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. This shift toward the tactical caused the Air Force space mission to become more visible to the flying community, but virtually eliminated any official discussion of extending deterrence to space or even expanding any military missions into space beyond those that could assist the tactical warfighting forces. AFSPC officially did not consider anything like Heinlein’s Interplanetary Patrol or SAC’s space efforts to be appropriate.
However, some space personnel began to feel that there was a better way forward for military space. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Cynthia McKinley published “The Guardians of Space: Organizing America’s Space Assets for the Twenty-First Century” in 1999. In it, McKinley outlined the case for reorganizing AFSPC into the United States Space Guard (USSG).
McKinley’s USSG would function as a fusion of civil, commercial, and military space personnel and missions in a uniformed service modeled after the US Coast Guard. The USSG would need to strike a balance among competing civil, commercial, and military space missions and interests. It would operate as a multi-mission service with responsibilities for space operations, mission areas of space support (global positioning systems, government satellite communications, etc.), force enhancement (spacelift, infrastructure security), and space control (space surveillance, satellite jamming and defense) as well as providing space range management and debris mitigation. [33] It would merge separate mission requirements, core competencies, visions, and responsibilities to form a coherent federal response to the extension of the space enterprise and support the expansion of space commerce. [34]
In her USSG proposal, McKinley identified many of the peacetime emergency services the Space Patrol currently provides. While her concept of the Space Guard was visionary and may well have led directly to the Space Patrol, McKinley was removed from the colonel’s promotion list by Air Force leaders who did not want any discussion of space independence from the Air Force.
Over the next twenty years, space continued to grow in commercial importance, leading to a $415 billion worldwide space economy in 2019. The Global Positioning System alone was assessed to have provided $1.4 trillion to the American economy. Anticipating future economic growth, the American Secretary of Commerce predicted that the international space economy would be valued from $1 to $3 trillion by 2040. [35]
Realizing that changes in space, especially commercial space, would soon drive change to the military space force, AFSPC strategists and scientists, led by Chief Scientist Joel Mozer, committed to a study assessing the potential role of space and space forces in 2060. These visionaries drew many groundbreaking conclusions that departed from standard AFSPC thinking in radical ways. Among its conclusions, the workshop advised that the “U.S. should establish space settlement and human presence as a primary driver of the nation’s civil space program to determine the path for large-scale human space settlement and ensure America is the foremost power in achieving that end.” Furthermore, the “U.S. must continue to lead in developing a rules-based, democratic international order for space. The U.S. must commit to having a military force structure that can defend this international space order and defend American space interests, to include American space settlements and commerce.” Also, the members concluded that the “U.S. military must define and execute its role in promoting, exploiting, and defending the expanded commercial, civil, and military activities and human presence in space driven by industry, NASA, and other nation-states.” [36]
Many of the workshop’s findings reaffirmed McKinley’s conclusion that AFSPC should adapt many “coast guard-like” missions for space and identified many opportunities that would eventually turn into regular missions of the Space Patrol. However, Air Force leadership generally ignored the workshop’s findings. But Air Force leaders also soon lost the military space mission altogether.
The Space Force
SpaceX founder billionaire Elon Musk broadcast “@SpaceForceDOD Starfleet Begins” at 10:37 p.m. on Friday, December 20, 2019, over the popular Twitter mass-communication system of the time. Only a few minutes earlier, President Donald J. Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 and established the United States’ sixth branch of the armed forces, the United States Space Force.
The Space Force initially held little promise of eventually evolving into the Space Patrol. Its early leaders never strayed from the classic AFSPC missions of tactical support to fighting forces on the ground. However, visionaries such as Mozer and the eventual popular dissatisfaction among younger officers over the service’s lack of vision drove the Space Force ever further into adopting a McKinley-like “Space Guard” mindset. More people believed the Space Force was meant to protect the increasing wealth the United States and its allies derived from space activity and, as human spaceflight began to explode in number, to provide rescue services to ensure public safety.
Early agreements between the US Space Force and other governments, militaries, companies, and universities to partner for “space situational awareness” to protect everyone’s space assets from the threat of debris or deliberate attack began to evolve slowly but inexorably into more formal arrangements. [37] Eventually, the space forces of allied nations merged in operation and cooperative command structure if not in political ownership. Increasingly more partners merged together and enticed neutrals and even adversaries into these cooperative military space structures. With time, all major spacefaring nations and most other polities merged into a single global space management system that, as will be discussed later, resulted in the Space Patrol. Therefore, the Space Patrol was not born of a unitary or hegemonic state with a monopoly of military power on Earth. Rather, the Space Patrol emerged from a natural evolution of cooperation among the space services of all the world over generations.
This evolution was driven by the bounty all of humanity received from space activity and a common understanding that this bounty was fragile and that all nations wanted space to remain free of war and open to all. In fact, the evolutionary nature of the Space Patrol is likely another important reason for the Patrol’s continued existence and relevance even during the collapse and rise of multiple human governments. The Patrol now exists beyond any one government or alliance. The US Space Force may not have been intended to become the Space Patrol, but its early actions to collect as many international partners as possible started that critical evolution.
Interplanetary Banking
Of all the Space Patrol’s responsibilities, their management of interplanetary currency “credit” is perhaps the most surprising. The standard credit is a blockchain “basket” of scientific data, other information, physical commodities (primarily claims on antimatter), energy, and other services. The credit is not simply a number in a Space Patrol bank, but serves as a stand-in for real goods that make interplanetary finance easier than barter across literally astronomical distances. It should be noted that the Space Patrol is not the first supranational military organization to operate in the economic sphere. The Knights Templar from 1119 to 1312 created the world’s first international banking system as it protected Crusaders, pilgrims, and their finances, across Europe in the Middle East—an equally astronomical distance in the Middle Ages.
Humanity’s rapid expansion across the solar system was underwritten by rigorous economic activity. Scientific information, space resources and abundant energy became the primary drivers of human economic growth in the mid-twenty-first century. Cryptocurrencies—electronic money based on blockchain cyber technology—gained in popularity at the same time due to national “fiat” currencies predisposition toward inflation under rampant deficit spending.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin operated on a “mining” structure where system users could earn cryptocurrency by using their computers to “mine” more. In actuality, these mining operations were computationally intricate services that confirmed transactions, increasing security, and essentially operated the cryptocurrency networks. Quantum computing and other advances, including artificial intelligence, eventually made the percentage of calculations critical to operating cryptocurrency networks far less computationally intensive. However, the networks still required high volumes of computations of any sort to keep the networks secure.
The economic breakthrough of the twenty-second century was matching the excess computational capacity of the cryptocurrency systems to the enormous amount of scientific and economic data received from the expanding human presence in space to create a truly commodity-based cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency networks transformed information from collected space data and generated blockchain information with inherent economic value. Thus, the “standard credit” backed by space-derived scientific and economic data became one of the most successful currencies in human history.
Why the Space Patrol eventually became the custodian of this new credit was the result of four incontestable facts. First, the credit was reliant on space activity and space activity relied on the Space Patrol. Second, the Patrol defended the cyber backbone of space as well as the physical space systems, so defending the credit was a natural mission. Third, since the credit quickly became the favored currency among all human civilization and only the Space Patrol operated across the entire span of that civilization, the Patrol could most easily provide branch offices. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Space Patrol eventually proved more resilient than any human government, therefore it seemed naturally the best organization to keep the credit resilient as well.
With the Space Patrol acting as an honest and benevolent Leviathan, space was navigated freely and its resources harvested to bring life, liberty, and prosperity to mankind across first the planet, and later the solar system. Arts, letters, and sciences abounded because the life of man—even in space—was secured from being poor, nasty, brutish, and short. [38]
The peaceful, cooperative, and development-driven global agglomeration of military space forces that would eventually become the Space Patrol may have lost its military character altogether given time. By the twenty-second century, the “proto-Space Patrol” had no real war-fighting character to speak of, preferring to see themselves as solar lifeguards. Unfortunately, with rapid expansion into space and technological development, mankind began to realize that there were still demons in the darkness of space—and most of those demons were of human design.
Confronting Dark Skies
In his 2019 book Dark Skies, political scientist Daniel Deudney challenges the positive view of human space expansion and concludes that it is too dangerous to be allowed because the effort “enlarges the probability and scope of catastrophic and existential risks confronting humanity in six ways: malefic geopolitics, natural threat amplification, restraint reversal, hierarchy enablement, alien generation, and monster multiplication.” [39]
“First,” Deudney argues, “large-scale solar space expansion will produce a radically novel political and material landscape that is extremely inauspicious for security, freedom, and human survival, a perfect storm of unfavorable possibilities and tendencies.” He calls this tendency malefic geopolitics. “Extensive mutual restraints would be vitally necessary, but they will be nearly impossible to materialize.” [40] King Ferdinand Charles from The World Set Free exemplified this malefic tendency. Development of weapons derived from the vast energies required to operate in space would have to be restrained, but Deudney believes they could not be enforced over a human diaspora across the solar system.
“A second way in which colonizing solar space poses catastrophic and existential threats,” Deudney continues, “is through natural threat amplification.” Mining asteroids and comets inherently came with the ability for states to alter their orbits to attack adversaries. Instead of facing only the threat of natural impacts, Deudney believes, humans may begin to intentionally redirect celestial bodies as weapons. [41]The Patrol’s history bears testament to Deudney’s prophecy.
Deudney next warns of restraint reversal. “Instead of mitigating the effects of multiple catastrophic and existential risks, large-scale space expansion promises to multiply them… If humans are living on multiple worlds subject to different governments, regulations and relinquishment will be more difficult to establish, there will be more places for potential breakdowns, and verification of compliance will be vastly more difficult.” [42] Deudney is particularly worried about any international agreements regarding researching artificial intelligence. “To the extent uncontrolled [artificial superintelligence] is deemed something to avoid at all costs, large-scale space expansion must be viewed similarly.” [43] Fortunately, artificial intelligence research was not avoided and now sentient AI are among the most important agents of civilization. Many AIs serve as important Patrol members. However, it will be seen that the Patrol played a critical role in shepherding the earliest AI developments through a maze of fear and real dangers to enable today’s partnership between humanity and its offspring. Deudney may have provided the warning necessary for us to confront AI successfully.
“Fourth,” Deudney argues, “solar expansion poses catastrophic and existential risks to humanity through hierarchy enablement.” Deudney posits that “large-scale space expansion into Earth orbital space is very likely to enable the erection of a highly hierarchical world government, either from one-state military dominance of the entire planet or from the control of a major infrastructure for resources or energy” that could be “prone to become totalitarian.” [44] The Patrol monitors the culture and governments of all space settlements and even Earth itself to ensure that this totalitarian nightmare does not become real. Such totalitarian cultures have sometimes emerged and were either cured or removed by the Patrol, as several radioactive craters on the moons of Saturn demonstrate.
“The fifth way in which ambitious space expansion poses catastrophic and existential risks,” to Deudney, is “through alien generation.” The human species radiation anticipated by expansionists will generate significantly different forms of life suited to other worlds. Since humans fought amongst each other for millennia over the smallest differences in look and outlook, creating different versions of humans suited for Earth, Mars, and microgravity would only increase the chances of conflict. [45] This threat was manifested by the Cerites, an offshoot of humanity that used genetic engineering to enhance their ability to survive low-gravity environments and high-radiation backgrounds. Distrust between the Cerites and Terrans could have easily led to genocidal war. However, the Patrol prevented active conflict and actively sought measures to increase trust and understanding among humanity’s new subspecies. The Patrol integrated Cerites into equal service before these colonists even began to identify as Cerites (due in large part to their superior abilities to perform in space) and proved that friendly partnering is possible. Now, traditional humans and Cerites are equal partners running an interplanetary civilization.
Lastly, Deudney’s sixth risk is monster multiplication. “Ambitious space expansion will clearly entail the development of powerful new technologies,” Deudney explains, “and the actors developing these technologies will be spread in multiple worlds across the solar system. Therefore, it stands to reason that the number of monsters posing potential terminal threats will inevitably increase as ambitious space expansionist projects are realized.” [46] Again, the history of the Patrol is largely the history of protecting civilization from these monsters whenever they arise. Later chapters will show that Deudney’s monsters have, in fact, emerged. Every time, the Patrol has slain these dragons, often with diplomacy. Sometimes it took antimatter.
To the pessimistic political scientist, “these six ways in which the realization of the space expansionist program for solar space pose catastrophic and existential threats demolish the core proposition of space advocates that large-scale expansion is desirable.” [47] Today, it seems easy to scoff at the ridiculously myopic and Malthusian irrationality of Deudney’s conclusion. Many of Deudney’s “existential threats” such as artificial intelligence, and even potentially “species radiation,” in the form of the Cerites, have come to pass…only to emerge as manageable problems with great advantages. However, the threatening aspects of these advances anticipated by Deudney were chillingly accurate.
It is especially ironic that it was the hegemonic power of the Space Patrol that has allayed these threats and has allowed humanity to thrive in freedom and peace. But the Space Patrol regained its violent martial character as the soft commerce-enabling lifeguards were forced to confront Deudney’s demons one by one. In fact, the military history of the Space Patrol can be rightly considered little more than humanity’s attempt to survive each of Deudney’s threats as they emerged…
The year 2587 / 4 AA
It has been three years since the events of “And a Child Shall Lead Them.” The starship Copernicus, crewed by normals and sentient AIs, entered orbit around Liber roughly two years ago. Also in orbit around Liber were the Guardian E and the remains of Ceres’ Chariot, which was being cannibalized to help build the Cerite settlement on Liber. The Copernicus had been planning to arrive at Eden but the Space Patrol placed the planet off-limits. The four thousand normals on Copernicus were forced to evaluate their options while working with the Cerites to construct their settlement on Liber. Then a young woman on Copernicus made a discovery, one that led to some interesting legal questions and a practical one: Should humanity’s first starship include lawyers?
Footnotes
2) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651); selection reproduced in Alan Ebenstein and William Ebenstein, Great Political Thinkers, Sixth Edition (Independence, Kentucky: Cengage Learning, 1999), 365.
3) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 365.
4) H.G. Wells, The World Set Free (New York: E.P Dutton and Company, 1914), 173.
5) Wells, The World Set Free, 191.
6) Wells, The World Set Free, 209.
7) The Acheson-Lilienthal Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy (Washington, DC: US Department of State, 16 March 1946), 34.
8) Acheson-Lilienthal Report, 37.
9) Acheson-Lilienthal Report, 38.
10) Acheson-Lilienthal Report, 39.
11) Acheson-Lilienthal Report, 40.
12) Acheson-Lilienthal Report, 42.
13) Acheson-Lilienthal Report, 42–43.
14) Burns and Siracusa, A Global History of the Nuclear Arms Race, 77.
15) Burns and Siracusa, A Global History of the Nuclear Arms Race, 77.
16) Captain Caleb B. Laning, “Flight into the Future,” Collier’s, 30 August 1947, 19.
17) Laning, “Flight into the Future,” 19.
18) Laning, “Flight into the Future,” 19.
19) Laning, “Flight into the Future,” 36.
20) Laning, “Flight into the Future,” 36
21) Laning, “Flight into the Future,” 36.
22) Robert Heinlein, Space Cadet (New York: Tor, 1948, reprint 2005), 46.
23) Heinlein, Space Cadet, 23.
24) Heinlein, Space Cadet, 47.
25) Heinlein, Space Cadet, 48.
26) Heinlein, Space Cadet, 49.
27) Robert A. Heinlein, “The Long Watch,” 1949: www.baen.com/Chapters/1439133417/1439133417___4.htm
28) Heinlein, “The Long Watch.”
29) Ward Alan Mingle, History of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory for 1 January–31 December 1964, Volume 1 (Kirtland AFB, NM: Air Force Weapons Laboratory, December 1968), 183–184. Document classified Secret. Excerpt declassified.
30) Frederick F. Gorschboth, Counterforce from Space TN-61-17 (Kirtland AFB, NM: Air Force Special Weapons Center, 1 August 1961), 8–9. Document is now declassified.
31) Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope (New York: Harpercollins, 1985), 65–66.
32) General Thomas S. Power, Strategic Earth Orbital Base (Strategic Air Command Qualitative Operational Requirement, 21 January 1961). Document is now declassified.
33) Lieutenant Colonel Cynthia McKinley, “The Guardians of Space: Organizing America’s Space Assets for the Twenty-First Century,” Aerospace Power Journal (Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Spring 2000), 44.
34) McKinley, “The Guardians of Space,” 42.
35) “Remarks by Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross at A New Space Race: Getting to the Trillion-Dollar Space Economy World Economic Forum,” Davos, Switzerland, 24 January 2020.
36) Air Force Space Command, “The Future of Space 2060: Implications for U.S. Strategy,” 5 September 2019, 17: www.afspc.af.mil/Portals/3/The%20Future%20of%20Space%202060%20-%203Oct19.pdf.
37) .“US Space Command signs data-sharing agreement with Libre Space Foundation,” Space News, 3 July 2021: spacenews.com/u-s-space-command-signs-data-sharing-agreement-with-libre-space-foundation/.
38) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 365.
39) Daniel Deudney, Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 357.
40) Deudney, Dark Skies, 357. Emphasis original.
41) Deudney, Dark Skies, 358. Emphasis original.
42) Deudney, Dark Skies, 359.
43) Deudney, Dark Skies, 360.
44) Deudney, Dark Skies, 360–1. Emphasis original
45) Deudney, Dark Skies, 361. Emphasis original.
46) Deudney, Dark Skies, 361–2.
47) Deudney, Dark Skies, 362.