As an integral and important part of national security, space security is a new strategic territory for national security in the new era that expands from traditional areas to emerging areas. It is a “new high ground” that must be seized to safeguard national interests. The militarization of space is profoundly reshaping the shape of war, driving fundamental changes in war styles and military structures. Driven by the concept of space control, systematic capabilities such as missile defense, precision strikes, hypersonic penetration and space control are constantly weakening the effectiveness of traditional national defense deterrence, forming a new type of strategic deterrence that is more flexible and practical. Therefore, competition in the space field has become a new strategic high ground for safeguarding national security and improving national military deterrence capabilities.
Since the 21st century, the world’s major space powers have launched national space strategies, vigorously promoted the construction of major projects such as national space security architecture, space Internet, space transportation, and space situational awareness, and competed for the high ground of space security. Among them, the United States reestablished the “National Space Council”, established the Commercial Space Administration and the Space Development Agency, and successively released a series of reports and regulations such as the “National Space Strategy”, “Defense Space Strategy”, “Challenges Facing Space Security”, and “Outline of the Space Defense Strategy”, striving to occupy the commanding heights of space development. Russia, the European Union, Japan, etc. have respectively launched the “Federal Space Plan”, “European Space Strategy”, “Universe Basic Law”, etc. to compete for space dominance and build space security capabilities. In addition, in recent local wars led by the United States, the value of space reconnaissance, surveillance, communication, navigation, meteorological and other satellites has become increasingly prominent in seizing battlefield information advantages and improving the combat effectiveness of weapons and equipment. It not only achieves one-way transparent information advantages, but also greatly improves the precision strike and collaborative combat capabilities of weapon platforms, thus establishing the victory of information-based wars. At the same time, the United States is pursuing a strategy of “integrating the military with civilians” in the space field, aiming to deeply integrate the innovative vitality of commercial aerospace with national security missions to consolidate its space advantages, and incorporate increasingly powerful commercial aerospace capabilities into its national security system through direct procurement of commercial services and transfer of government technology. In July and October 2021, the Starlink satellites launched by the U.S. commercial aerospace company Space Exploration Technologies Corporation approached the Chinese space station twice, causing the Chinese space station to implement preventive collision avoidance control twice. During this period, the astronaut crews of my country’s Shenzhou 12 and Shenzhou 13 were performing missions in the space station. These two incidents posed a serious potential threat to the life safety of the astronauts in my country’s space station.
Facing the complicated space competition situation, our country’s national space security and space economy are facing severe challenges. On April 15, 2014, General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed the overall national security concept for the first time at the first plenary session of the Central National Security Commission, clearly adhering to the principle of people’s security, political security as the foundation, economic security as the basis, military, cultural, and social security as the guarantee, and the promotion of international security as the basis. We will maintain national security in all fields, build a national security system, and follow the path of national security with Chinese characteristics. As an important force in space competition, commercial aerospace can make full use of commercialized innovative methods and operating models to accelerate the development of space exploration technology and quickly occupy superior resources. It is not only an important strategic measure to support national strategic security and implement the spirit of the “Overall National Security Concept”, but also an urgent strategic need for my country to continue to enhance its ability to access space in order to cope with changes in future space situations. If the development of commercial aerospace is not accelerated as soon as possible, my country will become even more weak and strategically passive in the global aerospace industry competition. U.S. company Space-X relies on its low-cost advantage, flexible launch orbit strategy, production capacity advantage and commercial launch management model to undertake a variety of orbital launch services with one Falcon 9 rocket. It has significantly reduced rocket launch costs by developing rocket recovery and reuse technology. As SpaceX’s Starship is put into use in the future, the price of its launch services will likely be reduced by orders of magnitude. With the sudden rise of SpaceX, commercial aerospace has become an important guardian of national space security in the new era. The current society is undergoing major changes unseen in a century, and the level of commercial aerospace development will be an important engine for the future development of national space security. Only by promoting the rapid development of commercial aerospace can we occupy the commanding heights in the new round of space competition and inject core impetus into the construction of a space power.
