Are we sure these are what the White House says they are?

Robots to actually fix satellites?

The branch of the U.S. military that created the internet has launched into orbit a pair of prototype robots designed to repair and service satellites in space.

The Orbital Express system was launched on an Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:10 p.m. ET Thursday.

The Orbital Express is being developed by the research arm of the U.S. military, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), along with the country's space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to extend the capabilities and lives of spy satellites.

NASA hopes to one day use the technology to maintain weather and commercial satellites, and eventually use it for routine supply, mining and exploration missions to the moon and beyond.

Currently, only satellites designed to be repaired by astronauts, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, can be fixed if they malfunction. Most satellites are sealed packages that are rendered useless once they develop a problem.

If you have the ability to fix stuff...you have the ability to take things apart.

Update:

Aside from the satellites, which have become key to the Pentagon's battle plans, most of the other technology is in the research and development stage or awaiting deployment decisions from the White House that are complicated by political complexities.

The George W Bush administration - especially the Defense Department and particularly the US Air Force (USAF) - is anxious to launch a full-scale militarization of space, regardless of its enormous expense and the fact that it will inspire worldwide condemnation, generate a dangerous arms race in outer space, and undoubtedly enhance prospects for major wars in this century.

The rightists and neo-conservatives are not unaware of these potential consequences but they are confident the US will prevail because of its overwhelming power. In effect, "It's worth the price."
But that mindset is not shared so far by most Americans outside the hard right, particularly in the absence of any other country that could come near to threatening the United States for global primacy. In addition, virtually every other nation in the world, including Washington's close allies in Canada and the European Union, opposes the weaponization of space, as is evident from repeated votes at the United Nations.

What can we do when we wake up to Star Wars

And Darth Cheney is our captain?

A Center for Defense Information Analysis: (Cool site via Steve Bates)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Pentagon's fiscal year 2008 (FY 08) budget request funds slightly more than $1 billion in programs that could provide anti-satellite and space-based weapons capabilities, according to a new analysis by the Center for Defense Information (CDI).

In the absence of a clear national strategy to secure the future use of space, the development and testing of such technologies and the deployment of dual-use capabilities without rules of the road for their operations will threaten other nations and drive U.S. policy toward space weaponization.

According to CDI Director Theresa Hitchens, one of the report's authors, “Congress must become more aware of these efforts, and ensure that such programs do not go forward without in-depth scrutiny of their purposes and possible long-term impacts on U.S. space security.”

Because I wouldn't doubt the neocons would love to own space, too. And of course we have to stay ahead of the Chinese....

Look! A real president!

From India. Remember back a few years when we had a real president, too?

The buzz around the stately but run-down auditorium of Sapru House was that President APJ Abdul Kalam, a rocket scientist, would speak about the Indo-US nuclear deal. Instead, on Wednesday, the President talked of the need to keep the peace in outer space where India has a lot of satellites.

"Above all we have to keep peace in space," Kalam told former Indian diplomats, as he laid out his vision of how to make diplomacy relevant to the requirements of the country.

"Diplomacy is a dynamic process. In future we may also move towards getting material from Moon and creation of habitat in Mars. Our diplomacy should see that war is not extended to space."

China recently launched an anti-satellite missile, which has worried the global and Indian security establishment, prompting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to recently say, "we are not in favour of weaponisation of outer space."

(Update: fixed grammar.)