In the beginning were the V-2s. Before rockets rose upon pillars of fire and smoke to assail the stars, they were weapons. Hitler's scientists envisioned V-2s and their descendants arcing across the Atlantic to rain destruction on New York and Washington D.C. and bring the United States to its knees. After the war, the U.S. military raced to spirit away as many Third Reich missile scientists as they could, even sheltering them from prosecution during the Nuremberg trials.

German aeronautical engineers combined with American physicists in places like White Sands, New Mexico, to usher in the darkest days of the Cold War. The days of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and Dr. Strangelove had arrived.

Now, in the 21st century, after the widely proclaimed ending of the cold war, the fledgling President of the United States urges us to embark upon the militarization of space. New antiballistic satellites with particle beam weapons are proposed, although essential technologies do not exist. Historic agreements and practices of long standing are to be dismissed. The entreaties of allies are to be ignored. The past fiascoes of "Star Wars" and SDI are deemed irrelevant.

The colonization of the nearby solar system, let alone other star systems, may be centuries away; for now, the most productive activities in near space are the development of space stations and lunar bases, and the dispatching of sophisticated probes into the galaxy. We have so much to learn about the universe, and about ourselves. To spread the destruction of human conflicts beyond our planet would be a grave mistake.

Let space be the place where our great journey begins, not where it ends.

--Richard Garrard