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Comment by colinplamondon | Hacker News Reader

I'm blown away by this administration on spaceflight, in the best way possible. Space Force is a huge step forward for building capabilities in space, on the military side. On the civilian side, Bridenstine is shaping up to be the greatest Administrator in NASA history.

Under his watch we're getting multiple, re-usable, private launch architectures and human spaceflight capabilities.

Plus, significant infrastructure in lunar orbit, forcing the ISS budget out of LEO.

All under complete American control.

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Space Force is just shuffling the deck chairs and creating new management slots.

Space Force has far more visibility, and an institutional need to collect more budget, spend more on personnel, and build their fiefdom.

As they do that, they'll consume more and more private services, and help spur more and more industry in space. For me, that's a huge, huge win.

> building capabilities in space, on the military side

That's a total failure. Absolute, complete, across-the-board failure of the human race.

Just a few decades ago the militarization of space was universally acknowledged as inappropriate and this was codified in international law.

> Just a few decades ago the militarization of space was universally acknowledged as inappropriate and this was codified in international law.

That's a hell of an interpretation...

I'd instead say that the world powers recognized that nukes in space would be destabilizing, and banned that specific thing. Space has been militarized since the 60s.

Just to back this up, the Soviets mounted at least one cannon to a space station (Salyut 3 in 1974), and tried to launch an orbital anti-satellite weapons platform (Polyus in 1987).

There are satellites for watching and communicating, but no weapons.

Of course, actually there are weapons on some of the satellites but everyone pretends that there aren't to maintain stability. Publicly putting weapons in space is destabilizing, stupid to the point of evil.

Since the 50s.

I love your idealism, but you're living on a planet full of humans. I don't _like_ this very much, but it's obvious that other superpowers (China) aren't going to be hemmed in by idealism, so we need to make sure that we are in a position to (at the very least) defend ourselves in space.

Heck, even in the most idealistic portrayal of the future (Star Trek TNG) there's plenty of war in space.

Star Trek is teleplay (I'm a huge Trekker: I have a replica of a tricorder signed by Shatner himself, in front of me, at SVCC (Thanks Woz!). He smiled at me and said, "Nice to see ya'." I still have the silver sharpie marker he used. Touched by his own hand. One day I'll meet a kid wearing a Starfleet uniform and Vulcan ears and bequeath 'em that pen, but the tricorder is getting buried with me when I die. Hardcore ST4LIFE.)

Now then, you can't hold up Star Trek as something to help decide policy in actual space.

If anything "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is the sci-fi to look to. I don't want to give a spoiler though, but, uh, whoever gets to the Moon first effectively rules the Earth.

That accounts for local space around the Earth, now Alan Dean Foster was the first sci-fi author to point out that war is impossible in space due to fundamental physics. I don't have the time to go into it now but it's not hard to work out once you clear away the mental/emotional dross.

In sum, "war" in "space" is a mental concept not grounded in physical reality. People have been watching too much fiction and are all screwed up in the head in re: the realities of space and physics.

If we wind up with "war" in "space" it will be a kind of theater that the powerful use to cow the naive.

Moon is a Harsh Mistress is definitely what I look to too, also. Even if the US is becoming more authoritarian over time, it's far from the worst Great Power. We do deeply, deeply shitty, immoral things constantly.

Compared to the Soviets, Mao, German Reich #2 / #3, Napoleonic France... the world could do worse for the First nation to take the moon.

I don't talk about it much because it seems ungentlemanly, but FWIW I'm an American exceptionalist too. I agree with you that, if someone has to be top dog, it should be us rather than the commies, etc.

But I strongly suspect that we won't be able to colonize space without fixing our personal problems.

...Bad example. The point of TNG was to demonstrate how humans overcame conflict and are exploring space to find new species and help solving conflicts.

Whoever controls the gravity well controls the world - I'd sure as hell rather that be my team, and not the other team.

There are no effective international institutions. The human race hasn't figured out any way to unify on a global level. There are no world police - just scattered teams with nukes at each others' throats.

If history is any indication, being on the losing team means being on the wrong side of obliteration and conquest. Being on the winning team matters - a lot.

This is the prisoner's dilemma, without any benefit to cooperation. The US has the wealth and the industrial base to spread throughout the solar system faster and more aggressively than anyone else.

Whoever militarizes space first controls every other nation's access to space, and has the ability to deny access to opposing nations.

I'm thankful the US is doing it before China.

> Space Force is a huge step forward for building capabilities in space, on the military side.

Probably in violation of international treaties, but who cares about those.

> Under his watch we're getting multiple, re-usable, private launch architectures and human spaceflight capabilities.

The commercial crew program was begun in 2010 under the Obama administration. Probably the only reason it still exists is nobody has mentioned that to Trump. Giving credit for a 10-year-old program to Bridenstine, who's been at NASA for two years, is utter nonsense.

I don't mean to take anything at all away from Obama pushing COGS, as opposed to the old Constellation strategy. That was an incredible, bold move.

Besides SLS, though, it didn't move meaningful industry outside of LEO. It was an important step, but didn't fundamentally move us past the post-Apollo Space Shuttle funk. The Asteroid program was potentially interesting for getting mining going, but small in scale, with long timelines.

Artemis is the first time NASA has run on aggressive, tight timelines since Apollo. They're shooting for achievable, inspiring objectives -- quickly. And this time, we'll have THREE architectures that can get any American or American ally to the surface of the moon for a price.

Gateway guarantees long-term government spend in Lunar orbit, just like the ISS guaranteed long-term government spend in Earth orbit. Artemis aligns government spend towards the industrialization and militarization of space, on terms beneficial to the US.

Noo, Trumps big on Space. Dont try to baffle Trump supporters with facts. It does not work.

Trump, big on Space, fact.

And Space is really important this year, because whats going on on earth is fscked up beyond all recognition.

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