Vice President Pence chaired the second meeting of the National Space Council last week at the Kennedy Space Center. During the meeting the Hon. Kirstjen Nielson, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, asked a panel what could be done to incentivize protection of critical national space assets like GPS. Video Here
Ms Bhavya Lal from the Science and Technology Policy Institute recommended greater involvement with and reliance upon the commercial sector. She also mentioned that the government should be able to accept “80% solutions” that are good enough. “We don’t always need a Ferrari, we can sometimes use a Ford Focus.” Video Here
Dean Cheng from the Heritage Foundation made a convincing case for thinking beyond space and about systems like eLoran to protect space assets:
“Ma’am, I would say that one of the things to keep in mind is that space is part of a larger information ecosystem. The Chinese view space very holistically. When they talk about space and space dominance, they are talking about not only satellites, but ground stations and the data links that tie them all together, as well as the information that passes over it. When we think about resilience, then, we need to be thinking beyond just space. We need to be thinking about redundancies, whether its things like eLoran or other alternatives, that may not be orbital…” Video Here
View the entire two hour meeting here.
