Space: to President Obama, it's an opportunity for nations to join gloved hands and perform a glorious multinational spacewalk, all for the good of science. But he's not ready to rule it out as a potential battlefield, either.

In the just-released National Space Policy for the United States of America (PDF), Obama laid out a vision of a harmonious celestial order based around international cooperation for the advancement mutual interests – scientific research chief among them. Space is treated as a heavenly commons, and access to it is, accordingly, not for any nation to deny to any other. "As established in international law, there shall be no national claims of sovereignty over outer space or any celestial bodies," the strategy reads. So think of it as a document that lays out some intentions for how the U.S. – and other nations – ought to behave and not behave in space. No intergalactic empires!

Sound bland? It should. It represents a long tradition of U.S. presidential attitudes toward the celestial commons stretching back at least to the Carter era, as the Union of Concerned Scientists helpfully notes. Well, with one big exception: George W. Bush.

Bush's space strategy from 2006 was less about what all nations ought to do in space than what other nations better not stop the U.S. from doing in space. "The United States rejects any claims to sovereignty by any nation over outer space or celestial bodies, or any portion thereof, and rejects any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in and acquire data from space," it read. And it was also less concerned with scientific research than it was with the national-security implications for the U.S. of access to space.

So that's out. But don't get too excited, hippie. The new strategy is less Federation of Planets and more Jedi. It doesn't explicitly reject the militarization of space, as many left-of-center policy analysts had hoped it might. Instead, it views military aspects of space in a defensive context. (And remember, there's a classified annex to this paper.) "The United States will employ a variety of measures to help assure the use of space for all responsible parties, and, consistent with the inherent right of self-defense, deter others from interference and attack, defend our space systems and contribute to the defense of allied spacesystems, and," it reads, "if deterrence fails, defeat efforts to attack them."

Still, that's good enough for long-time space policy analyst Theresa Hitchens, who likes the new strategy's return to the less-aggressive approach of 20th Century administrations. "While the new Obama space policy does not directly support a treaty banning weapons in space as many in the international community have hoped, it does – in a 180 degree turn from the Bush administration policy – re-commit the United States to the open consideration of space arms control in language similar to the Reagan, Bush 1 and Clinton space policies. This is a positive move."

And the plan satisfies Defense Secretary Robert Gates, too, who praised it as presenting "the right space policies and priorities for our nation, and is also a pledge that the United States will maintain the leadership and capabilities in space imperative for our national security." So it's like the conception of the Jedi from the Prequels.

Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP

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