NASA recently announced that Mars could contain salty waters. With this, officials of different national security organizations anticipated that it will lead to commercialization and the militarization of space.
Commercialization is the process of introducing a new product or method into commerce- opening it to the public; while militarization is the process by which a society organizes itself for military conflicts and violence.
James Clay Moltz, an associate Pastor of the Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California warned for how many years that there is a potential Asian space race that would evolve between China, India, South Korea, Japan and other countries.
After China destroyed its old satellite in 2007, using an anti-satellite weapon on Earth -space race transformation becomes possible. This act has even shocked the international community.
Respectively, Dr, Jai Galliot, UNSW research fellow, stated that the discovery on Mars may not immediately or directly follow militarization of space, but it has undeniably reinvigorated the commercialization of space.
As a proof, a number of companies now are already having moved to explore the commercial opportunities of space. Among of them is Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, which they aim to take the passengers into near soace and Space X.
Galliott added, that NASA has failed in many ways in the 1990s. But now the discovery of Mars was feeding the reinvigoration of space industry commercialization. He even stated that even his own company, Planetary Resources has also aimed to mine asteroids for rare minerals that is potentially used for engineering and medical applications.
With the height of space tourism, there is undeniably an effect to all nations in general. Junk space caused by more launch space rockets will definitely add to the increasing numbers of junk piled around the earth. This would affect the world's navigation systems, financial, internet, aviation and television services.
Other than that, it also fueling up and increased the competition between countries in regards to their supremacy.
With the possible conflicts in the future, the scientific community has already planned for missions to continue their exploration and gathering of information on how much water there is and if there's life on Mars will be their main focus.
