Trump directs establishment of U.S. force to dominate space
reuters.com
reuters.com
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force#Histor...
"I believe it is premature to add additional organization and administrative tail to the department at a time I am trying to reduce overhead."
When there's a nebulous and expensive operation (USAF space operations employs nearly 2x the people that NASA does) it's better for it to exist independently with its own responsibilities than to grow under the cover of an even larger traditional entity.
The answer is that what defines "a nebulous and expensive operation" is incredibly vague and if we start splitting all large military operations into their own branches we'd just end up with even more administrative overhead and the designation of separate services would lose distinction.
The big difference here is that Space Force sounds cool.
We don't know what a major war in orbit will look like, but we don't know what a major war against modern naval powers would look like either.
You countered that other areas of the military could also be "vague and nebulous" and could be split off as well.
I put forth that the other areas you mentioned have well-defined purposes, but spacecraft do not.
First: now you have mentioned that we already have the AFSC. Doesn't this seem a bit circular to you?
Second, AFSC already operates satellites, including the GPS constellation. If the Space Command inherits ownership of those satellites it will indeed be "operating spacecraft" without any real or described grandiosity.
I said it's hard to define what nebulous and expensive means. I don't think AFSC's mission isn't anymore nebulous and expensive than a whole host of other commands.
>operating spacecraft
Operating spacecraft is indeed a grandiose term for maintaining satellites.
I never said it doesn't fit what they would do. I said it's not what they would do. I also never said operating one spacecraft wasn't relevant.
I said that operating spacecraft is a grandiose and downright pretentious way to describe the mission of an agency with one remote controlled, scaled down space shuttle, testbed laboratory and some GPS satellites. And it is.
Mattis was talking about a separate service space corps, not about a space corps that falls under a preexisting service.
Source: http://thehill.com/policy/defense/341650-mattis-opposes-spac...
That is exactly what the current action does. It would operate under the Department of the Air Force (the way the Marines do with the Department of the Navy), but it would still be a separate service.
The bill that Mattis was opposing during that comment would have also housed The Space Force as a separate service under the Department of the Air Force exactly the same as the current action--he was speaking out against that.
I remember this (or something similar) being proposed a few times over the last couple of decades.
"Let's just put some lasers up there"
Lasers, and a lot of other things as well.
Air Force spends a lot of money on "space".
The budget supports the goal of maintaining assured access to space and viability in contested and increasingly congested environments by continuing the block buys of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency System satellite vehicles 5 and 6 and Space Based Infrared System 5 and 6; and funding five Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle launch services, three of which are competitive launch opportunities.
http://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/652961/af-pre...
(Incidentally, Soyuz capsules already carry firearms into space, in case of bears/wolves/etc. at the landing site.)
I have always been curious what boeing X37 does?
1. https://twitter.com/AaronMehta/status/1008786783436451840
Divorce your politics from reality:
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/america-needs-a-u-s-space-c...
See reference [1] below to see how many people are currently in space. I would definitely not call that a "force". A more permanent presence in space for more people would necessitate a lot more scientific research that will likely have non-military benefits (like GPS research did in the past). There is so much for us to learn which is good for humanity and inspiring for young people.
The excitement around space might make it easier to get additional funding approved. According to this [2] the Army, Navy, and Air Force budgets for 2016 weren't too far off from each other. It will be interesting to see at what level the funding will fall for this "separate but equal" department.
According to this [3] the President has announced job one is to declutter space to avoid collisions and spacecraft breakups, which all spacefaring countries will benefit from.
As much as I admire Elon Musk, it would be nice to have a government presence in space for rescue missions, etc. For anyone that has played too many hours of Civilization IV, you might enjoy Baba Yetu performed by the United States Navy Band [4]. The rescue force I would envision would be like the small clip at 2m00s to 2m20s in that youtube video, except in space.
Lots of people talk about things like 'basic income' to protect us when machines watch what we do and then take over our jobs. I would prefer to push that day out a little bit by instead allocating money to us doing totally brand new things, like this in space, that excites me and makes me want to spring out of bed in the morning!
[1] https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
[3] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/trump-space-force-1.471101...