As I wrote when I took over as editor of Cif last month, I am committed to trying to create an inviting and inspiring debating space on the site.
So a lot of my efforts, and those of the rest of the Cif team, will go into creating an inviting and inspiring debating space – one that, albeit sometimes on the wrong side of robust, nevertheless feels essential to the Guardian's comment section.
Judging from the recent debates, space paranoids share one trait with other members of the conspirator-American community: they profess a great deal of knowledge about an arcane subject (say, the science of visual perspective), while revealing ignorance of high-school science.
The key to understanding the renewed debate about space policy lies in the simple statement that outer space has already been militarized, but not yet weaponized.
The debate on space security is centred on limiting national military activities in space.
The debate on space safety is focused on international co-operation to preserve the space environment, preventing unfair commercial competition because of substandard safety practices and ensuring acceptable risk.Around 200 spacecraft have been abandoned in orbit.
Until now, the debate about space has focused largely on the question of who is up there.
But only 10 years ago, it was the source of a national debate on space policy, and it almost cost us the Hubble telescope.
The debate over space, he said, is about "whether or not the bold, visionary, exciting, job-creating future that secures our national security" is "the right path for a strong, prosperous America".
Among other things, Kant returns here to the debate concerning space and time between the Leibnizians and the Newtonians he mentioned at the outset of the Transcendental Aesthetic.
In their celebrated debate over space and time, Leibniz taunted the substantivalist Newton's representative, Clarke, by asking how the world would change if East and West were switched.
