The Politics of Space: A Survey

Space exploration as a human endeavour is, of course, as much prey to political influences and demands as any other activity. Indeed, the race to the Moon in the 1960s was very much born out of the Cold War and the wounded pride of an American president when the Russians were the first to put a man in orbit. Space exploration is also a highly expensive and demanding endeavour, in both financial/resource and technical/scientific terms. As far as space applications relating to earthbound services are concerned – communication satellites, GPS, resource discovery and the rest – there is still a...