Trump Can't Stop Fiddling With The Rockets In His Pocket
The Space Force is like a multi-billion dollar turd that won't flush.
Earlier this week we got to see an internal memo from October written by the head of Trump's National Space Council asking the Department of Defense for "analysis and recommendations" on how the Space Force should be set up. Apparently the logistics of cutting and pasting assets from all five branches of the military has proved way more complicated than the administration thought, and they're worried it might be just another failure on Trump's expanding list of boondoggles. But the rational warhawks in the Pentagon (DEEP STATE!!1!) don't seem to be on board with Trump's intergalactic MAGA agenda, and they keep fighting back with rules, and bureaucracy, and bullshit.
After the administration admitted it needed an adult, the DOD reportedly gave the White House a list of options to consider that range from "Lost In Space" to "Starship Troopers," per Defense One ...
An Air Force-owned space corps that includes only Air Force assets.
An Air Force-owned space corps that also takes space-related troops and assets from the Army and Navy.
An independent service that takes from the Air Force, Army, and Navy.
An independent service that takes from the three services plus parts of the intelligence community.
The Trump administration seems to be going with with option four. Politico reports a draft directive from Nov. 19 by the White House will order the formation of "Department of the Space Force" that would be in charge of all things out of this world. Aside from creating space rangers and ray guns, the Space Force would be in charge of keeping America safe from Russia, China, the Klingon Empire, and Gort. According to the draft, the Space Force will take resources from all branches of the military, including the National Guard and Reserves, and the national intelligence and cybersecurity communities. It won't, however, use any of the hippy nerds at NOAA, NASA, or the National Reconnaissance Office. In the tradition of our genocidal forefathers, the Space Force is all about manifesting destiny across the cosmos, not exploring it.
There's been a lot of #Resistance in the military since Mike Pence revived the long dead National Space Council and began pushing to militarize space. It's an open-secret that the Pentagon is using malicious compliance to kill the Space Force, regardless of whether or not the threats are science fiction. Initial proposals by the Air Force were said to be grossly inflated at $12 billion, but the Trump administration is famously bad at basic math . They can't argue with guesstimates that, as one former military space official said, charge for "every single cat and dog" in order to make the idea less palatable.
There's been bipartisan support in Congress against Trump's "separate but equal" pet project for months. Republicans lost their biggest booster for militarizing space with the loss of Rep. John Culberson in the midterms, and House Democrats are already saying the program will never get off the ground. With Democrats controlling the power of the purse, it's a safe bet that we won't be putting any "boots on Mars" anytime soon.
[ Politico / Defense One ]
We're not saying it was aliens, but MONEY US.
Hospitals will not be affected!
I wonder if anyone knows the answer to this question I'm always wondering about. Normally I'd ask-- I actually have forgotten his name now that he's been accused of ...ha ha it was a joke anyway--- how could we have cooperated with Russia on the Space Station and depend completely on their rockets, when we know they always lie about the failures in their space programs? We don't hear about them except later or through spying and they do things so cheaply and don't do maintenance (apparently) in the normal way. Esp. in the early days I would have thought it was a completely off the wall idea.