Political Challenges of Space Strategy

There is a growing call in the United States for the development of a single national space strategy, or at a minimum, “coordinated national strategies” with a stronger coordinating and aligning mechanism at the national level. Supporters for the development of such a strategy argue that there is a need for additional national guidance to articulate in further detail the implementation of – as well as align resources with – the broad policy statements in the overarching National Space Policy and the supporting sectoral national space policies, e.g., the policies for Commercial Remote Sensing; Positioning, Navigation and Timing; and Space Transportation. ¹ These calls from various quarters represent a wide spectrum of views concerning the exact definition of the contents and ultimate purpose of such a strategy. Furthermore, it appears that national space strategy proponents have not thoroughly assessed the political challenges and obstacles that would have to be addressed and overcome during the course of the formulation, much less implementation.