President-Elect Barack Obama may seek to save money and advance America’s space presence by promoting closer cooperation between the US military space programme and NASA, according to reports.

Bloomberg News, in an exclusive report, claims that “Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and NASA… according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team”. However the news service also quotes Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro as saying that “The NASA review team is just asking questions; no decisions have been made”.

The problems America faces in space for the coming decade come in two main areas. Firstly, US manned spaceflight is planned to cease with the retirement of the space shuttle fleet next year – though NASA has been required by law to keep open the option of a shuttle extension until President Obama arrives in office.

Under the space agency’s current plans, no US astronaut could travel to space in an American ship until the new generation of Ares/Orion rockets and modules are ready, which can’t realistically happen any sooner than 2015. Barring a substantial, credit-crunch-flouting budget increase, NASA says that any extension of the shuttle fleet would push back Ares/Orion pretty much year for year – hence the agency is bitterly opposed to any such extension.

The problem with a gap in US manned spaceflight capability is primarily one of image and diplomatic leverage – for at least the first few years after Shuttle retirement, NASA could only get its astronauts to and from the substantially US-funded and operated International Space Station (ISS) aboard Russian Soyuz rockets. While a lack of personnel on the station might not have any very significant real-world impact on America, it would be a huge blow to US prestige. Even a delicately implied threat of such a withdrawal of cooperation by Russia could be hugely troublesome.

Meanwhile, the US military and intelligence community has been seriously rattled by China’s successful 2007 satellite-buster test. America’s spooks and armed forces are heavily reliant on satellites for global communications, navigation and surveillance. In particular, much of America’s ability to spot ballistic missile launches around the globe comes from spy satellites.

A Cold-War era moratorium on active space combat has held fairly well until now from the US point of view: the only major push which could really be viewed as a budding orbital strike force is America’s own missile-defence programme. America insists, of course, that it is nothing of the sort – it is merely an unfortunate side-effect that interceptors able to knock down intercontinental ballistic missiles are by their nature also able to hit satellites in low orbit.

Nonetheless, there are many in the Pentagon and the spy services who see China’s test as the opening of a new era of struggle for space dominance: and who don’t regard China as the only threat, either. With India now able to send a probe to the Moon, and even Iran claiming that it will be able to put payloads into orbit shortly, there will soon be a lot of new players on the orbital game board.