As a lifelong space advocate it is easy to slip into the mode of asking what the new administration will do for space. But the right question is what space can do to address the administration's agenda and America's needs, and why U.S. President Barack Obama must act. What President Obama will find is a United States critically dependent on space, but with an infrastructure that is fragile and unprotected, next-generation systems systemically late and overrun, and a work force and industry base in decline. Military space can be characterized by a dead, adrift missile warning satellite-the last of its series from the 1970s - in a constellation still waiting for the follow-on system after massive cost and schedule overruns; and a space surveillance system unable to keep up with space situational awareness, as demonstrated by the recent loss of an Iridium commercial satellite to collision with a spent Russian satellite, and the need for international space station (ISS) astronauts to duck into their Soyuz escape vehicle.
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