NASA: One Step Closer to DoD

By signing the new National Space Policy, President Bush moves one step closer to placing NASA within the Department of Defense. Conceived as a weapons system in the Cold War, NASA has in many ways floundered since achieving it's major objectives of securing the high ground and contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union. But NASA has always maintained a patina of civil, scientific and peaceful goals even if defense concerns were always just beneath the surface. But by rejecting, as the Washington Post put it, "future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space " and asserting "a right to deny access to space to anyone 'hostile to U.S. interests'" the Bush administration sets the stage for further militarization of NASA. When the National Space Policy flatly states that "Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power", can the conversion of NASA to a new "Space Force" be far behind?