By Konstantin Kakaes
Satellites are more essential to everyday life than many realize. They enable billions of people to determine their position on Earth and use apps such as Google Maps to get around. Air travel, especially across oceans, depends on broadband-communications satellites that provide data and voice connectivity. Accurate weather predictions rely on meteorological satellites equipped with sophisticated cameras.
As David Ariosto relates in "Open Space," these satellites are vulnerable to errant space debris. More than 10 million salt-grain-size pieces are currently in orbit. Because they travel at 17,500 miles an hour, Mr. Ariosto writes, they can "puncture a space suit or damage a satellite." (Larger pieces of debris are more dangerous but less common.) It has become a serious concern as commercial space travel expands. "Even without additional launches," he writes, "the chain reactions of continuously colliding objects in orbit bring the possibility of creating even more circling debris."
Mr. Ariosto, a journalist and space-industry analyst, contends that "today's fragile and uneven space efforts could spark something transformative." If China succeeds in overtaking American leadership in space, he argues, "it could also signal a shelf life for the kinds of democratic ideals upon which much of Western society is based." Mr. Ariosto isn't only interested in space as a domain of great-power competition. He also considers how the quest to explore the unknown shapes the human spirit. "Space," he writes, "remains an open canvas of possibilities: not merely a source of wonder and strategic importance, but also a reflection of who we are, and perhaps what we may become."
In space, technical and geopolitical questions can become tangled. Driven primarily by Elon Musk's SpaceX, the number of satellites launched into space has grown exponentially in the past decade. The proliferation of satellites, like those that comprise SpaceX's Starlink constellation, has given Mr. Musk geopolitical power with little historical precedent. By deciding, for instance, whether Russian or Ukrainian forces can use Starlink to guide explosive drones to their targets, Mr. Musk, a private citizen, can single-handedly alter the outcomes of wars.
Mr. Ariosto convincingly argues that we are still in the early days of the revolution that Mr. Musk set in motion by developing the ability to reuse rockets. But "Open Space" is a flawed guide to this vital territory. The book's 47 staccato chapters jump from one subject to another without much of a discernible pattern. Before Mr. Ariosto is able to sufficiently explore some important topic, he switches to a completely different subject. Several of the chapters, about particle accelerators and fusion reactors, take readers on cursory tours of facilities that have at best a tangential connection to space.
The author makes the odd stylistic choice of referring to the engineers, businessmen and politicians he writes about by their first name. Mr. Ariosto's cheerful quotes from Rob, Steve, Chris, Andy, Pete, Miguel and Sonny would grate less if he maintained more critical distance from his subjects.
"Sonny" is the nickname of Harold White, an engineer and physicist who has worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mr. White claims it may be possible to create a "warp drive" that would propel spacecraft faster than the speed of light by distorting spacetime using a field of negative energy.
Mr. Ariosto admits that Mr. White has doubters: "The idea was steeped in controversy." This understates the reality: Experts have concluded that Mr. White's exotic propulsion doesn't work. Theoretical physicists have pointed out fatal flaws in Mr. White's reasoning and researchers at the Dresden University of Technology failed to replicate some of his results. The author writes that he has no way of knowing if Mr. White's claims are true. But as a journalist, Mr. Ariosto would have served readers better by interviewing more experts and weighing their claims rather than washing his hands of technical matters.
Mr. Ariosto's credulous description of warp drives isn't the only misstep in the book. He also writes about a 1983 space-shuttle mission "meant to deliver the first Spacelab laboratory module." But the shuttle wasn't delivering the module anywhere -- it resided for the entirety of its existence in space within the shuttle's cargo bay, effectively a part of the shuttle.
The book's lack of discipline is unfortunate because Mr. Ariosto's enthusiasm for space is evident. He recounts the mixed success of the spacecraft Odysseus, manufactured by Intuitive Machines. Since the final Apollo mission in 1972, America had not succeeded in landing anything on the moon. Odysseus landed on the lunar surface in February 2024 after a last-minute software update saved the mission. Mr. Ariosto also conducts informative interviews with Yao Song, a Chinese space entrepreneur, and Xue Suijian, a former high-ranking space official in the Chinese government, that provide glimpses into the opaque world of Chinese rocketry.
The book's central thesis that "whoever dominates space will also be poised to oversee our lives here on Earth" is correct but not self-evident. It needs defending. "Open Space" is a step in the right direction but a smaller one than it could have been.
--Mr. Kakaes is a writer in Washington, D.C.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 20, 2026 11:26 ET (15:26 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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