Two sides of the same coin

Moon Hong-kyu

The author is a principal researcher at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. 

History is full of unexpected truths. German chemist Fritz Haber opened the way to extracting nitrogen from the air to make fertilizer. The resulting surge in wheat production helped put bread and pasta on even poor families’ tables. Yet ammonia produced through the same technology was also used to make explosives that killed countless people. Technology has two faces.

Today, the Golden Dome has become a contentious issue in debates over the U.S. defense budget and the future of missile defense. It is envisioned as a next-generation defense system wrapping the United States in multiple layers to intercept ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles. Unexpectedly, however, the technological roots of this vast military project are deeply intertwined with astronomy and the tools scientists developed to study the heavens.

The technologies used to collect and track faint starlight and cancel out atmospheric distortion are closely related to those needed to detect and intercept missiles from the ground and space. That duality emerged clearly in the Ronald Reagan administration’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), nicknamed “Star Wars,” an ambitious plan to destroy Soviet nuclear missiles from space.

Over the decade from its conception to its termination, large numbers of scientists, including astronomers, took part. Pete Worden, whom I know, was among those working on the project. Ultrasensitive sensors and optical equipment developed rapidly during that period and remain in dual use for both research and defense.

Observational technologies advanced dramatically through the painstaking efforts of many astronomers, leaving a lasting scientific legacy. At the same time, others organized petitions, arguing that science had been reduced to an instrument of war. The controversy touched a sensitive fault line between scientific ethics and politics.

Hans Bethe, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for explaining how stars produce energy, became a leading critic of SDI. The program eventually ended as the Cold War drew to a close and technological limitations became apparent. Yet the sensor and control technologies developed through it went on to support giant telescopes and may now be reincarnated in Golden Dome.

The Pentagon’s projected cost for Golden Dome is four times Korea’s annual defense budget. An estimate by the Congressional Budget Office puts the potential cost at more than two years of the Korean government’s total annual budget.

Forty years after Bethe raised his objections, it is now our turn to confront the same question about science, security and responsibility, as military ambitions once again reach space.