Cold War – But No War – in Space

Abstract

Space war has been a fixture of astroculture since the blossoming of science fiction in the late nineteenth century. Yet in the more than seventy years since the Second World War, no hostile military action between two powers has ever taken place outside the atmosphere. During the Cold War, outer space was militarized but not weaponized, because military satellite systems stabilized, rather than destabilized, world order. They provided global transparency and fostered dependence on space infrastructure. As a result, the gulf between space fiction and space reality has only widened since 1945. Space war makes for good entertainment, but so far, at least, it has made very little military or political sense.