WASHINGTON -- Will space become a future battleground? Science-fiction writers have long treated space warfare as matter-of-fact prose, replete with Death Stars, photon torpedoes and speedy Klingon battle cruisers. But, for now, lower your shields. Put your laser light sabers aside. While you're at it, readjust your phasers and set them on a less stunning reality.

Space: Above and Beyond -- A glimpse of the future protectors of Earth? Or just bad TV?

Chief scientist for the AFSC Gene McCall provides expert advice and guidance on maintaining and improving today's U.S. space assets. He also has a keen eye focused on the future.

SPACE.com: As the military utilizes more and more commercial satellites to supplement its needs, is there a need to protect those assets?

McCALL: The military space forces have a couple of responsibilities. One is to provide for military capability, but the other is to protect our civil access to space and use of space as well. It's kind of like our Navy protecting the sea routes. That is essentially why navies were created a few hundred years ago. I think we are in the same situation now. So there are a lot of discussions about should we put attack-detection systems on board civilian satellites, or even on board military spacecraft. I think this is likely to become a stronger issue, especially if someone actually attacks a satellite. We tend to respond to a crisis very rapidly, but sometimes we don't plan for them very well.

SPACE.com: Is guarding commercial satellites part of the future?

McCALL: I think so. Information and communications are very tightly coupled. Commercial space is the bedrock of our military capability today. While we have military capabilities, it's commercial space that really provides the linkages that we use if we have to fight a war.

Starship Troopers: Armed Forces 90210

SPACE.com: Is there enough military and commercial space preparedness today in the event of attack?

McCALL: I think there's enough military planning, but frankly the commercial world isn't interested because it increases their cost. While some feel there's not a threat today, you have to look at what people are doing around the world. It's a dangerous place out there. There are those who are trying to gain some sort of ascendancy over their neighbors, and particularly over places like the United States. So we better think about what's going to be happening in 10 or 20 years, not what's going to be happening in 30 days.

SPACE.com: Should there be a separate U.S. Space Force, some kind of offshoot of the Air Force?

McCALL: That's something we discuss fairly often. I guess I don't think it is going to happen anytime soon. That is going to be a 10 or 20 year process of conversion. It may happen. Certainly there's a lot of support in Congress, and even within the Department of Defense, for having a separate U.S. Space Force. But I feel that the Air Force is doing a pretty good job of supplying services for the Navy, Army and even the civil community. I feel there's nothing to be gained by creating a separate force at the moment.

SPACE.com: There has been talk of the Air Force taking a lead role in protecting the globe against an incoming asteroid. What's your view?

SPACE.com: Then why not put that role under the Space Command?

McCALL: There's a lot of things we have to do first, like modernizing the global-positioning system (GPS) satellites. We also have some communications missions we have to satisfy first, as well as new observation warning systems -- the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) high and low -- to be built and deployed. In the end, we may want to devote some resources to planetary defense. But I think it's going to be a long time before we find someone who is going to promote that at higher-priority levels.

SPACE.com: Your thoughts on privately-financed satellites able to take high-resolution imagery of Earth?

McCALL: I've been impressed by the capabilities being transferred into the commercial imaging world. There is a worry about military forces being imaged by a commercial satellite. If that happens, you need to do three things. One is that you want to buy all the imagery you can buy, because it's a lot cheaper than doing it yourself. Secondly, you want to have some kind of diplomatic process in place if you really need to stop it. The third thing is that if diplomacy doesn't work, you want to kill it. Right now, we just don't have the capability for killing it, but we are going to have to do that. That's going to come.

SPACE.com: Any Air Force space system needs for huge amounts of power, say from solar-power satellites, and beaming that power from point-to-point?

McCALL: I think we'll get there eventually. Something in the megawatt class is possible. Then you can distribute that power via microwaves, transmitting it in very tight beams, then convert it back with high efficiency. One idea is to have constellations of satellites that collaborate on a job. You sort of feed them the central power and central information sources. You can only get kilowatts of power out of solar cells. You're not going to do a whole lot better than that. Satellites of today are being built with 50-foot- (15-meter-) long solar arrays. We're coming to the end of that, I think.

SPACE.com: In your estimation, what is the most revolutionary development in the coming years?

McCALL: If we're going to continue the improvements in processor speed, then nanotechnology has to come. Eventually, you will reach size limits on computer chips, no matter what the material is. There are some significant problems associated with nanotechnologies. When you are only dealing with one electron, the noise is equal to the signal. So we're going to have to figure out how to live with those kind of noise levels. We'll need to learn how to generate signals from very few particles.

SPACE.com: Any other space capability that is likely to show up in the future?

McCALL: We now have some modernization programs going for GPS. But they really are not adequate. They are the best we can do for the moment with our current satellites and technologies. In another 10 years, we're going to know that GPS is not really adequate. We're going to need a new system. So one of the future jobs for space is fielding a global-navigation satellite system. We shouldn't forget that navigation also includes timing. In the information world, timing is going to become more and more important. We may see the day where the timing is more important than the position.

Right now, we can do a nanosecond. We probably need to do better than that -- down to, perhaps, a tenth of that. We want to get position resolution, maybe, down to a foot.

We also need to develop systems that can't be jammed. I think we know how to do that. But it's going to be a few billion dollars and probably another decade. That's kind of our time frame.

Eventually, we're all going to run out of time. But you know you've got to be an optimist to work in this business.