The JSpOC                                                                                           2 June 2012

The last couple of posts have talked about SSA and how space surveillance data is obtained.  This post will briefly discuss U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Space Operations Center – the JSpOC.  There are plenty of launch and satellite operations centers across the US and, in fact, around the world.  However, the US has exactly one space operations center that covers the entire gamut of SSA, command and control of US military space forces, and interaction with commercial and foreign space entities.  That is the JSpOC, located at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. 

The JSpOC has a wide variety of functions, most of which I won’t get into here because they are either dependent on SSA or are aimed at providing command and control of the US’s military space forces.  What I want to discuss is how space surveillance data is taken in and used to develop a space catalog, that is, a complete listing of the position and velocity of any satellite or piece of debris that US space surveillance sensors in the SSN can track. To date, that’s in excess of 22,500 objects.  I’ll start with observations from the radar and telescope sensors arriving at the JSpOC, the analysis that goes into forming orbits, associating those orbits with RSOs already in the space catalog, and finally providing that catalog to a wide variety of users.

Sensors are tasked to track a set of RSOs during a set period – usually 24 hours – so that the RSO positions etc can be updated in the space catalog.  More about the tasking in a bit.  A sensor will take the information it receives at the radar face or the telescope’s focal plane and converts that information into observations – data on the position and velocity of an RSO.  Observations are commonly grouped into tracklets and sent back to the JSpOC for processing, meaning analysis and conversion into orbit data.

A number of things happen to the sensor data – observations – when it reaches the JSpOC.  But first I need to explain a little bit about the equipment at the JSpOC.  The key piece I have in mind is the Space Defense Operations Center computer, commonly known as SPADOC.  SPADOC is the workhorse of the JSpOC in terms of creating and maintaining the space catalog.  SPADOC is an old system – it was originally designed in the 1980s and was finally operationally accepted in 1995 – I know this because I was on the Space Control Center operations floor when it happened.  The system is a set of IBM S390 machines and associated peripherals.  Think “Big Iron” and you’ve got the picture.  Definitely not a modern computing environment – or hardware! – at all.   SPADOC is assisted in its catalog maintenance efforts by on off-line system called CAVENet, which performs some high-precision computations for conjunction assessment and SSN tasking.

So observations and tracklets arrive at SPADOC from the sensors.  The first thing to happen is to ensure that the sensor has tagged the observations to the correct RSO.  Most of the time there’s isn’t a problem but on occasion the association fails and SPADOC corrects it.  Then the observations are used to compute an orbit.  There are as many ways of doing this as there are celestial mechanics (oops – lousy pun!).   SPADOC uses a somewhat brute force method that is quite useful for the quality and amount of data it gets from the SSN – variable and sparse.  In essence, SPADOC uses the observations as input to a series of integration cycles (think back to your calculus – if you never took calculus, consider yourself blessed).  The integration cycles, called differential corrections or DCs, are expected to converge on an orbital solution.  That is to say, the computed error between any given integration cycle and the expected orbit grow smaller and smaller to some arbitrary level, at which point the orbit is considered solved for this round of data.  If for some reason the DCs fail to converge, then a human orbital analyst gets involved and essentially forces the issue by handpicking the observations to be used. 

The upshot of all this is an updated orbit for each RSO.  Keeping the orbits updated is important for military purposes but it also has a very important safety of flight purpose.  Although collisions are incredibly rare – though not impossible as we have seen over the past three years – near misses are more common and every satellite owner and operator wants to know about the, beforehand if possible.  Analysts at the JSpOC run a series of conjunction analyses several times a day – usually once every shift.  Notifications go out to different customers different ways but owner/operators get the updates in the form of Conjunction Summary Messages – CSMs – that are provided free. 

Another product of a current catalog is a new space surveillance network tasking order.  Tasking orders tell each sensor – radar and telescope – what RSOs to look for over a future period – usually the next day – to maintain the orbit.  The tasker takes into account whether a sensor is available, it’s recent performance, and its workload in relation to other sensors in the network.  The programming involved is quite intricate and the process currently takes a few hours but it results in an optimized tasking that doesn’t overload any given sensor, uses the sensors’ unique capabilities in the optimum manner, and as a result gets the needed number of observations to continue to update an RSO’s orbit.

It takes around 200 people to run the JSpOC, performing duties some of which I haven’t mentioned here.  But for our purposes, the JSpOC is the US’s source for SSA.  Military services use it, intelligence agencies use it, NASA and NOAA use it, and a wide variety of commercial satellite flyers use it.  While there are other centers that do parts of the JSpOC job, there is only one JSpOC.  Its products are accepted around the world.  The computer code, which backs this up, is world-class and some parts are considered the “gold standard” for their application.  Billions of dollars worth of satellites depend on its data.  Even it’s competitors use it’s data as the basis for their products – which is fine since no one wants sloppy work leading to a near miss or even a hit on orbit.

This article closes my short series on SSA.  I know that I’ve glossed over the material here, I know that I’ve missed some, and I can only hope that my readers forgive me and give me the chance to fix things.  More to follow . . .

More Radars and Optical Sensors

In my last post, I talked about one class of space surveillance sensors – radars.  Radars are active sensors and come with one huge advantage and a similarly huge disadvantage.  The advantage is that radars are not limited by the weather at their location.  They can be affected by solar weather, but that is less likely.  So you can use a radar to track any resident space object – RSO – at any time of your choosing.  This is both operationally and tactically important.  The disadvantage is equally huge.  Radars can only see what they can illuminate.  Since the operating principle is transmitting radio waves and receiving their reflections, a radar can only see as far as it can transmit.  For most of the radars in the US’s Space Surveillance Network (SSN), that means that most radars are quite limited.  Most radars, especially the dual mission missile warning and space surveillance sites, can only see a few hundred miles into space.   There are a few in the SSN that can do much better than that and one or two coming on line in the next five years that will be able to reach several thousand miles out.  But there is a huge price in power:  the inverse square law demands that the energy transmitted drop off as one over the square of the distance away from the emitter.  Even with tight beam control – which most radars do have – this law ends up dictating how much power is needed to see certain size (as measured by reflectivity) objects at a given distance.  You can see the same effect with a flashlight.  Shine it directly in your eyes and you’re blinded.  Do it again at 100 paces and it’s actually dim. 

There’s another way to detect and track objects in space, one that has been used for centuries – telescopes.  And if you can use a telescope to look at the Big Bang 14.3 billion light years away, then you can sure look for satellites barely 22,500 miles above our heads.  And that’s exactly what we do.  For RSOs that are too far from the Earth’s surface to be illuminated by a radar, we look for them, literally.  Over the years, the sophistication of space surveillance telescopes – optical sensors in Air Force parlance – has grown to the point where we can build one telescope that will track most of the RSOs that are invisible to radar in one go – a view so comprehensive that it will overwhelm the current space surveillance processing capability that the Air Force has (more on that in another post). 

Optical tracking has its own challenges.  An obvious one is that weather, the Moon, and the Sun can ruin a good night’s tracking.  Weather:  can’t see anything thanks to the clouds. Moon:  lunar glare can blot out the faint tracks of satellites.  Sun:  same but to a much greater degree – and solar glare can damage delicate optics and associated CCDs.  But with all that accounted for, optical tracking is the best way we have to maintain awareness of the geo belt (geosynchronous orbit, roughly 22,500 mi/36,200 km altitude).

A really big challenge for optical trackers is how to determine an RSO’s position.  Angles are (relatively) easy – you are collecting a streak across the field of view so you can compute the observational angle at the start and finish of the streak.  Altitude is a lot trickier.  Basically it starts with geometry and immediately gets a lot more interesting.  In effect, you have this situation:

You know angles 1, 2, and 3.  You know arc length C (more or less – it’s an arc, not a straight line, so getting the actual length of the arc requires some computation and some guess-work).  You have no idea how long sides A and B are – the range of the RSO.  (And, by the way, they might not be the same; that is, the satellite’s orbit is probably eccentric and so your view is a little skewed.)  This kind of observation is known as “angles-only” and they are difficult to work with. 

These problems aren’t unique to space surveillance – astronomers have had to deal with them for centuries.  So there a number of ways to calculate the information you need – altitude, in this case.  Selection of the math can be based on the information you have, the computers you are using to compute it, the quality of the observations from the telescope . . . . it gets complicated. 

There are also a number of ways to capture the data.  Centuries ago, astronomers wrote down or drew what they saw.  They complied tables of measurements that were then analyzed manually.  This, by the way, is how Kepler gained his famous insight about elliptical orbits – he pored over tables of data collected by many astronomers and found that the orbits weren’t perfect circles after all – they were best described as ellipses.  Details can be found in any orbital mechanics text.

Much later, data was collected with photographic plates and then on film.  The resulting pictures had to be manually analyzed and caused many cases of permanent eye-strain.  The next big step was electronic collection of the data.  In the early days of the US space program, Baker-Nunn cameras were used to gather data by stimulation of their photomultiplier tubes.  The next – and current – step was to replace the tubes with charge-coupled devices – CCDs, the same data collection device in your digital camera or cell phone.  Once this step was taken, the data could actually be transferred directly to the computer doing the math.  The last few decades have seen improvements in both the density of the CCDs and the kinds of algorithms used to extract orbital information from the raw data.

The current generation of space surveillance telescopes are called GEODSS – Ground-Based Electro-Optical Space Surveillance.   They have gone through several upgrades but are now being replaced by the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) – a picture of which is in the figure above.

So now we’ve covered the major space surveillance sensors.  Next post, we’ll talk about what to do with all those radar and optical observations.  We’ll explore the space surveillance processing center – the JSpOC.

Space Surveillance - An Overview

Space Surveillance.

The last post was about space situational awareness, SSA.  We saw that a key piece of this is space surveillance.  This post, we’re going to explore space surveillance in more detail.  To begin, we’ll go back to JP 3-14, Space Operations.  JP 3-14 defines space surveillance as:

Space surveillance is the systematic and continuous observation and information collection on all man-made objects orbiting the Earth. 

It goes on further to discuss the uses of space surveillance:

Surveillance contributes to orbital safety, indications and warning of space events, initial indications of where threats may be located, and assessment. Space events include satellite maneuvers, anticipated and unanticipated launches, reentries, and mission impacting space weather. Surveillance data, for example, is used to produce the satellite catalog — the fused product that provides the location of on-orbit satellites as well as man-made space debris. Information from the satellite catalog is used by predictive orbital analysis tools to anticipate satellite threats and mission opportunities for friendly, adversary, and third party-assets.

Recently, General William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, said that space surveillance is the single most important aspect of space operations, that it underlies all other space activities.  If you consider that you must know the position of every trackable object in the sky to ensure that you don’t bump into it (shades of Iridium and Cosmos 2251), that you avoid it when launching or moving your satellite, and that you can find and hold an enemy’s satellites at risk, you begin to understand where his statement comes from.  Every operation, every event in space depends in some way in knowing where you are and where everything else is.

We’re going to begin our exploration of space surveillance with sensors, those radars and telescopes that find and track satellites and debris.  Right now, we won’t discuss other ways to do this – using the satellite’s own telemetry, for example.  We’ll stick to the common tools and methods.  And we’ll start with radar.

Radar stands for radio detecting and Ranging.  It has a long history reaching back to World War II.  Invented by British scientists and engineers, it was originally used to find and track German bombers enroute to Britain.  (As an aside, one of my favorite science fiction writers, Arthur C. Clarke, was a member of the team that invented and perfected wartime radar.  He also invented the concept of geosynchronous communications satellites.)  Radar was soon adapted to tracking ballistic missiles being tested and deployed.  From this grew the original space tracking capability.  MIT Lincoln Laboratories performed the very first radar space track in 1957 when the Millstone radar tracked Sputnik 1.  Tracking since that time has become standardized – although still as much a science as an art – and the resulting products, such as the ubiquitous NORAD two-line element sets (elsets) are used worldwide.

Radar is a complex technology and I won’t attempt to summarize it here.  Suffice it to say that it depends fundamentally on transmitting a radio signal to a target at some frequency, receiving same and comparing the time difference of arrival (TDOA).  There’s a lot more to it, of course – for example, the Millstone radar use a frequency of 445 MHz.  That’s 445 million radar pulses per second that are transmitted and received.  Different radars operate at different frequencies, from 10 MHz to 300 GHz.  Depending on the frequency, you can actually image an object and determine its motion (stable, tumbling, etc). 

The US operates a space surveillance network (SSN) consisting of radars and telescopes.  The figure below shows the sites.  One correction (since this is an older image):  replace SBV with Space-based Surveillance Sensor (SBSS).  The optical sites, which I’ll discuss in the next post, are Maui (MSSS), MOSS, Diego Garcia, and Socorro.  The rest are radar sites, primarily for low-Earth orbit (LEO).   The only dedicated deep space radar is the Globus II radar in Norway.

An interesting fact is the majority of the radars used for space track are also missile warning radars.  That is, in fact, their primary mission.  It also explains why they are all in the northern hemisphere – we have virtually no space track capability south of the equator. 

All these radars have undergone upgrades and replacements over the decades.  The last new radar is Eglin and it is over 20 years old.  All the sites have been modified several times, both the radar itself and the computing systems behind it that interpret and transmit the data.

Currently, space surveillance data goes several places:  the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) at Vandenberg AFB in California, the Lincoln Laboratory Space Surveillance Analysis Center (LSSAC) just outside Boston, and the Dahlgren Naval Station’s Alternate Space Control Center (ASCC) in Maryland.  Each location processes the observations coming from the radar sites and develops a space catalog and, in some cases, performs more detailed analysis including some radar imaging at the LSSAC.  The penultimate destination for all this information is the JSpOC where the master Space Catalog is maintained.  We’ll discuss the JSpOC in a later post.

So there’s the beginning of space surveillance.  We’ll look at the optical sites next.

SSA 101 - What is SSA?

Let’s talk about SSA.  That’s Space Situational Awareness.  It’s a military term meaning full knowledge of what is going on in the space domain.  Joint Chiefs of Staff Publication 3-14, Space Operations, often referred to as JP 3-14, is the Department of Defense’s fundamental statement of how the US will use space to support US warfighting commands[1].  Since SSA is primarily a military mission, we’ll go there for the official definition:

SSA is fundamental to conducting space operations. It is a key component for space control because it is the enabler, or foundation, for accomplishing all other space control tasks. SSA involves characterizing, as completely as necessary, the space capabilities operating within the terrestrial environment and the space domain. It includes components of ISR[2]; environmental monitoring, analysis, and reporting; and warning functions. SSA leverages space surveillance, collection, and processing of space intelligence data; synthesis of the status of US and cooperative satellite systems; collection of US, allied, and coalition space readiness; and analysis of the space domain.  It also incorporates the use of intelligence sources to provide insight into adversary use of space capabilities and their threats to our space capabilities while in turn contributing to the JFC’s[3] ability to understand enemy intent.[4]

Before we talk about how all this information is collected, processed, and used, let’s talk a bit about the definition.  Perhaps the most important sentence in the definition is the first one: SSA is fundamental to conducting space operations.  This is a powerful statement.  While one can launch rockets, put satellites into orbit, and use them for ground operations, it’s very difficult if you don’t know where your satellite is and what’s happening to it.  And to do that, you need to surveil space, that is, track all the satellites and debris you can.  You need to know the current and future natural space environment and how it affects your space systems.  You need reconnaissance of satellites to understand what’s happening to them.  And you need to collect health and status information on your satellites.  This information begins to provide comprehensive SSA that is of value to the Joint Force Component Commander of Space (JFCC SPACE) who is the JFC for the entire space domain[5].

Per JP 3-14, SSA supports the following key military objectives:

·      Ensure space operations and spaceflight safety. SSA provides the infrastructure that ensures that US space operators understand the conditions that could adversely impact successful space operations and spaceflight safety (i.e., collision avoidance).

·      Implement international treaties and agreements. SSA is a means by which compliance, via attribution, can be verified and by which violations can be detected.

·      Protect space capabilities. The ability of the US to monitor all space activity enables protection of space capabilities, helps deter others from initiating attacks against space and terrestrial capabilities, and assures allies of continuing US support during times of peace, crisis, and conflict.

·      Protect military operations and national interests. SSA supports and enhances military operations.

Given those uses, let’s pick apart the definition of SSA.  It’s components are often defined as Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Space Environment, and Blue Force Status (ISRE&BF). 

·       

·      Intelligence is provided by the National intelligence community.  As noted above, it is the ability to understand objects and actions in space.  Due to its sensitive nature, we won’t discuss this in any detail.

·      Surveillance is space surveillance, which is the ability to maintain custody of resident space objects (RSOs) – satellites and debris – in orbit.  This is done by tracking radars and telescopes scattered throughout the US and around the globe.

·      Reconnaissance is the ability to view individual satellites to understand their external characteristics.  For example, if one obtained an image of Satellite A on one pass which showed all its pieces attached and in the right orientation and then obtained an image of the same satellite on another pass which showed a solar panel missing, it would be clear that something was definitely amiss.

·      Space Environment awareness is the knowledge of the natural environment and its affect on space systems.  Today, the focus is on the electromagnetic environment, since it has the most impact on space systems.  Solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and the subsequent changes in the Earth’s electromagnetic field can seriously affect a satellite’s functioning. 

·      Blue Force Status is the knowledge of the health and status of US space systems.  This is usually defined as operational capability (OPSCAP) and systems capability (SYSCAP).  The most basic level of awareness is whether the systems is fully, partially, or not mission capable – whether a system is green, yellow, or red.  OPSCAP and SYSCAP are usually reported by the unit or organization which controls and/or flies the asset.  Space systems are satellites, ground facilities such as radars, telescopes, launch pads or satellite control stations, and the radio links between them.

The discussion so far has addressed the military aspect of SSA and rightly so.  SSA as discussed above is a critical part of the Joint forces’ ability to fight – it’s the US’s asymmetrical advantage in today’s competitive world.  However, SSA is also crucial to civil and commercial space operations and for the same reasons.  The key issue here is safety of flight.  The obvious example is manned space flight such as the ISS and its Soyuz taxis.  However, there are also billions of dollars of civil, scientific, and commercial satellites on orbit and their owner/operators all need similar information about their satellites and the environment in which they’re operating.  A key issue is collision avoidance.  The 2007 Chinese antisatellite test and the 2009 Iridium-Cosmos collision publicly highlighted the need to know exactly where RSOs are and where they are going.  Communications satellite operators are particularly worried about this.  Their satellites are in geosynchronous orbit[6], the satellites and their transportation to their orbital slot costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and the revenue stream the owner/operators anticipate runs well above that – billions over the satellite’s life span.  They are very interested in where their satellite is and what RSOs nearby could threaten it.  Telstar 401 is a good example of a threatening RSO.  Launched in 1993, it was destroyed by a magnetic storm in 1997.  It is now uncontrollable.  It’s orbit swings back and forth between two highly populated orbital slots.  Clearly, the owner/operators of other active comsats near Telstar 401 want to know what the chances of collision with Telstar 401 are.  Information like this is so important in today’s congested space environment that US Strategic Command, the owner of military space forces, routinely provides orbital positional data and information on potential collisions to commercial and foreign government entities that request it.  But more on that in another post.

This post has given a good initial insight into what SSA is, why it’s important, and some idea of how it’s used.  Future posts will look at some components and uses of SSA in more detail – coming soon in this space!

TK Roberts

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[1] Joint Publication 3-14, Space Operations, January 6, 2009; Chapter 2, para 15.  Available from the website of the Federation of American Scientists

[2] ISR is Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, the ability to use information from the National intelligence community to understand objects and actions in space.

[3] The JFC is the Joint Force Commander, the US military commander of a large area of operations.  The US Central Command, including Afghanistan, has a JFC responsible for all military operations in his area.

[5] Today JFCC SPACE is Lt Gen Susan Helms.  She is also Commander, 14^th Air Force, part of Air Force Space Command.

[6] Broadly speaking, one in which the satellite’s orbital velocity is exactly the same as the Earth’s rotational velocity.  The result is that the satellite appears to hover over a particular spot on Earth – a 22,500 mile high radio and TV tower.

First Post: The Cost of Doing Business

This blog will be my "Space Blog".  I plan to ruminate on the philosophy of space exploration and travel and to elucidate some of the less well-known aspects of space operations.  My posts will probably start out sporadic but I expect I'll eventually fall into a predictable rhythm that you-all will appreciate.  In the meantime, my first offering.  This was written in 2004 (it actually says so) and speaks of systems such as Falcon V and SpaceShip One as current or future prospects.  However, the tenor, the philosophy, and, ultimately, the conclusion are as relevant now as they were then.  Enjoy!

The Cost of Doing Business

I've read a few essays about how mankind is done sending people into space - how it's too expensive, too dangerous, too hard, too expensive . . .  The people who write these essays are usually very well versed in the literature, have a good understanding of the science and technology involved, and have the best of intentions.  They are also wrong.  The only point they are right about is the timing.  It is highly doubtful that there will be freestanding space, lunar, or martian colonies in the next fifty years.  That means that I certainly won't see the Lunar Republic or the L5 Commune proclaimed.  And why should I expect to?  I certainly would like to see those things happen but my desires, wants, and prejudices have no bearing on what will actually happen. 

The issues have to do, ultimately, with cost.  Today in 2004, it is very expensive to place a pound of anything in Earth orbit - highly crafted electronics or water, it doesn't matter.  The cost still hovers around $10,000 per pound.  Recent developments such as Scaled Composite's SpaceShip One or Falcon's Falcon I and V do provide a glimmer of hope, but the expected decrease in cost is fractional, not an order of magnitude or more.  No doubt by the 2050s, ordinary rich people - multi-millionaires - will be able to take flights to orbiting "hotels" perhaps once or twice in their lives.  Truly rich people - multi-billionaires - might be able to do so several times.  And magnates of truly large corporations might do it even more frequently to check on investments, wow a client, etc etc.  All of these are important but rich people don't build habitats.  Rich people don't mine for water or air.  Rich people don't expose themselves to regular doses of hard radiation.  Rich people don't open space.  What rich people do is drive costs down simply by traveling, by demanding normal living conditions that don't kill them in a few years.  Rich people make space affordable by demanding the best - and then seeing to it that it gets there.

The people who will open space are miners, engineers, farmers, well, you get the idea.  Ordinary people that can't travel first class - indeed can't travel to space at all unless there's steerage in which to do it.  And Robert Heinlein's spaceships to orbit won't show up for another hundred years or so.  Engineering plays a large part in the equation but the deciding factor is, as always, cost.  If it costs too much to get to orbit, no one goes, at least in any quantity.  At $10,000 per pound for my (gulp) 200 pounds, that means I'd have to pay $2,000,000 to go up.  Staying there is another matter, as is coming down.  None of it is free, gravity notwithstanding.  Bill Gates may have that kind of money - I don't and never will.  Even at $100 per pound, I still need to spring for $20,000 - not exactly peanuts.   And no engineer in her right mind would dare to predict when we could reach that performance level - if ever. 

And this is the argument the well-intentioned, apologetic naysayers use.  Since we can't do it now, they argue, we can't do it at all.  All us dreamers should just pack up our dreams and go work for the poor or the environment.  The naysayers, however, miss the entire point.  And that is that we've already been here before.  In every age, there has always been a civilization-changing challenge that was too hard, too expensive, too dangerous.  And now those challenges have been met and historians can say that crossing the Atlantic was inevitable for Europeans, that Romans had to build those exquisite roads (some still in use!), that the Chinese had to invent printing, etc etc.  It was inevitable.  And we will do the same.  And historians on Ganymede will be able to write that "it was inevitable."

What isn't inevitable is that the US, Russia, or Europe will be the nations to open space.  It is entirely possible that we will be as the Portuguese, the Chinese, the Dutch - able to start the process or exploit a specific niche but unable to fully benefit from the broader uses of the new medium.  It is entirely possible that Brazil or Kenya or some entirely new nation or other organizational entity.  After all, the French appeared to have a strong hold on the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries but were pushed out by the British who actually populated it with Europeans in the 18th. 

And so this is what I predict:  The current "masters of space" will gradually lose their dominance - not without much wailing and gnashing of teeth, to be sure - and some other, unrecognized group or state will find ways to drive down that cost, make the innovations needed to open space to the farmers, welders, engineers - the people who open any frontier and found any new civilization.  And I think this process will play out throughout the 21st century.  By 2200, the torch will have passed and by 2300 the true opening of the Solar System will be under way.  It will be a bright, glorious future that those people face with untold opportunities.  And, someday, those selfsame folk, now owning the resources of an entire planetary system, will go to the stars.

None of this means that we shouldn't continue to pursue US - or Russian or European or Chinese - dominance in near-Earth space.  Only governments can afford to make the initial investments, build the initial infrastructure, make the first discoveries that will enable those that follow to reach further than we can.  Just as Newton said, those who follow will have to say, "If can see further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants."  Always remember - we are those giants.  It is ours to open the door.  We alone can say that we began it.  We are the first.  Whatever follows, that can never be taken away.

OK folks - I'm a blogger now - an apprentice blogger but a blogger still.  Doubtless I'll put fascinating stuff up here - later.  For now, this is my first post.  Enjoy it!