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Paris or Bust
The more I think about it the more the scenario of organizing an international orbital fleet looks appealing. With such an organization we would both have a unified self-defence force and a direct channel of cooperation between major militaries of the world.
Of course its capabilities would be extremely limited compared to the far more advanced competition (that already has the technology to get here from wherever they might be coming from). But we don't need as much capability to begin with - we just need to show that we have the whole planet under control (or at least its land surface). And that control is exercised without bias toward one region or another.
And, certainly, it will take time to build such an organization. It will most likely have to start small (in terms of staff count and budget), with the main building project being the space elevator (to deliver materials and goods to orbit). It probably will take several decades (perhaps half a century) to build this organization up to a capable fighting force. At first it won't be much more than a coordination center between the two primary powers that have the (nuclear) potential to secure the world. The ground control would (perhaps always) be exercised by national forces but overtime the control of orbital space would be shifted to this "Orbfleet".
Such an organization would have to be headquartered in a country that is neutral to all major powers on the planet. And this place will have to be a major polit-economical and cultural center so that it doesn't fall under the influence of any of these major powers. Of course, I can't think of a better place for Orbfleet headquarters than Paris, France.
First of all, as a result of the outcome of World War II, France is a permanent member of the security council. United Kingdom is the only other member of the council that isn't a major power and it's under heavy influence of the USA. France has its own nuclear arsenal and "remains the only NATO member outside the Nuclear Planning Group and unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, will not commit its nuclear-armed submarines to the alliance". It has a sizable military and its own military-industrial complex.
France also has strategically significant islands in the Pacific, Indian and North Atlantic oceans. It provides military coverage for most of Western Africa and hosts the European space port in South America.
The other critical factor that makes France the prime candidate is its cultural heritage. Culture is the key component to our long term survival. Not only do we have to remember our evolutionary heritage (vs other myths of more recent beginnings) but we also must show cultural refinement and most importantly beauty. I truly believe that the saying "beauty will save the world" is correct.
French culture is renowned throughout the world and is considered very appealing. It's capital Paris is the most beautiful city on the planet and hosts Louvre, the biggest art museum we have. Everybody dreams of visiting Paris at least once in their lifetimes.
In terms of political culture, France maintains its pan-European ambitions (that go as far as building a greater European community, including Russia) with a strong will. As the burning of the Notre-Dame roof (and subsequent raising of funds to rebuild it) has shown it has unity of the masses with the elites when it comes to the most important questions. Yet at the same time its proletariat is the most conscious in the world and has successfully defended the retirement age and is doing so again as I'm writing this post.
And, very symbolically, the Eiffel tower (which was the tallest structure on the planet for 41 years after a long period of dominance of the Egyptian Pyramids) looks like a ground anchor of a space elevator.
All in all, I can't think of a better place to headquarter the communication center of the future orbital self-defence force than Paris, France.
Update 7/28
Of course the main concern one would probably bring up when thinking of a scenario of a unified security cap would be fascism. Well fascism is an ideology of total warfare in order to ensure long term survival and prosperity. And given the assumptions made in this series there will always be someone bigger than us with more productive capacity and overwhelming force. Warring to take away somebody else's territory simply won't realistically be an option for us since there we would then risk losing (at least a part of) our own Motherland as a corrective measure. And I am a firm believer that our galaxy is full of valiant people that are in the service of younger races - some even willing to blow away into the darkness to change the course of things, if we don't get enough driven galactic citizens to prevent the impending catastrophe:
Fascism is a form of total organization of a society to achieve a greater (albeit a horrible) goal (of course I'm not even touching Nazism which went to the ultimate extreme to unify a society thus ensuring the failure of its original goal) . Fascism without a goal of total warfare is not. No ideology is required if what you are trying to do is increase productive capacity, defend your right to have a long term outlook from roughly (in cosmic terms at least) equal forces and prevent corrupt interests from selling your Motherland for profit. And the service before self ideology won't impact life much once the older generations are healthy enough to serve (which given the demographic trends might finally come very soon).
Really, I'm simply stating that without a core structure we won't be able to build our future:
But enough demagogy - I just agreed with my wife to go read some books and will come back to this topic in 50 years or so ...
Closing thoughts 8/10
While general institualization of social protest in Europe may be great in general, the political nature of the protest of the masses common to France would serve as perhaps the biggest psychological deterrent to Fascist trends within the budding Orbfleet organization, if it were to be headquartered in Paris.
France is not without its issues of course but in the present conditions it appears to be the most logical place to host the headquarters. Perhaps in the eons to come the role of a coordination center is best filled by several centers, strategically positioned in multiple locations around the globe. Perhaps starting with 3 in the upper North of the planet (which can be organized into a cohesive unit faster than the entirety of the planet) as early as the second half of this century and eventually making it to perhaps 7 redundant centers around the globe. But, for the time being, what better place can be proposed to get started?
Update 8/30 Irrespective of the assumptions made in this series, our society continues advancing technologically. To support this advancement we need ever increasing amounts of rare minerals and scarce metals. Soon enough we'll be running out of the places where we can mine them and soon enough we'll start looking at the nearby asteroids for needed resources. Metallic asteroids are relatively rare but there is a huge field to choose from. Once the needed resources become scarce enough it will be a matter of cost. And once the space elevator technology is implemented the "the slingshot to space" (likely orders of magnitude cheaper and safer than rockets) combined with nuclear fusion will make the endeavor of space resource extraction economically sound. Not long after that there will be a need for "Pax Terra" to ensure resource flow.
Even more importantly, once there are enough parties in orbital space the threat of orbit-to-ground kinetic attack will become a major concern (especially with trajectories of ever-growing earth bound asteroids). With de-globalization in effect it is highly unlikely that any one regional power center will be able to provide orbital security for the entire planet. Unless we think ahead and start acting now, certainly 50 (and I would argue 25) years from now we will need to catch up our security infrastructure to our industrial infrastructure. Acting now will ensure our safety in the coming asteroid age and provide security for many more additional functionalities besides resource extraction.
The first group of Space Elevators (positioned in close proximity due to favorable physics of the Galapagos) will be the "Lifeline to Space". It's security by anything less than a planetary organization will likely put it at risk of in-orbit severance, which is easy to do and cover up. Tackling the construction and security of Space Elevators as a "single-voiced" Planet is the logical solution.
What gives me joy is the fact that in the process of setting up unified control of orbital space we'll also limit general in-orbit hostilities. I hope that such scale of cooperation in space will lead to less armed conflict here on Earth and hopefully will eliminate large-scale combat altogether - Update 9/4 will Update 2/17/2024 end lethal and maiming War.
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