Trump : ''We're going to have a Space Force.''

[caervek]

A force on the level of the Air Force, Navy, or Army.

A cheaper option would just be to buy space force uniforms for everyone at NASA and have them wear them whenever Donald visits

[Skroe]

A cheaper option would just be to buy space force uniforms for everyone at NASA and have them wear them whenever Donald visits

I mean you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Since the core of the idea is elevating Air Force Space Command (a sub-component of the USAF) to it's own force equal to the others, and then moving a few navy army and independent agency programs to the "US Space Force".... since it would be well over 90% AFSC with a new name and new uniforms and new top-level command structure, we are largely talking about changing the letter head onfficial correspondences, and the budgeting column in the Defense Budget that nobody reads.

This is infantile.

[Voidwielder]

As for the BFR... I think I was misunderstood. BFR or something very much like it is essential for large scale building of space-base infrastructure, particularly when it comes to off-world manufacturing that will be essential to keeping any off-planet installation self sustaining. It's just that most tasks in space will require something significantly smaller than the BFR, closer to Falcon 9 or smaller. This was the point behind my C-5 Galaxy versus C-130 analogy.

It'll take the BFR to build a Mars colony or Moon base. A lot of BFRs. But what role does the BFR play in sustaining telecommunications on Earth, which will see a higher launch rate than Mars missions for decades to come? Basically none. It's too big. That would be like using a 18 wheeler to deliver a 5 pound Amazon box.

If you don't mind expanding - and by all means, rant away - do you think that SpaceX will come to dominate everything but Moon-Mars delivery market? Where do the Euros with Ariane and Roscomsos fit in all this?
And isn't it kinda bad that one player might become the key to LEO/GTO?!

[GennGreymane]

cuts taxes
increases military spending
increases borrowing

totally gonna make a space force with a catapult and a dog.

[Felya]

cuts taxes
increases military spending
increases borrowing

totally gonna make a space force with a catapult and a dog.

Every time I see this thread, I just hear this:

[Dontrike]

cuts taxes
increases military spending
increases borrowing

totally gonna make a space force with a catapult and a dog.

I doubt Trump could find the people that could build a catapult, or even find a dog.

[Skroe]

If you don't mind expanding - and by all means, rant away - do you think that SpaceX will come to dominate everything but Moon-Mars delivery market? Where do the Euros with Ariane and Roscomsos fit in all this?
And isn't it kinda bad that one player might become the key to LEO/GTO?!

I can expand later, but briefly...

SpaceX and Blue Origin will. And probably eventually the Moon-Mars delivery market too. Any company that had landing technology, a high degree of reusability and a highly efficient engine, will be competitive. Unfortunately right now that means SpaceX and Blue Origin exclusively, and the former is the only one actually flying.

Where does Europe fit in? It basically doesn't. Europe has a decent plan with the Ariane 6. The Ariane 6 is going to replace the Ariane 5 at half the cost, but half the cost of an Ariane 5 is still a lot. And in it's most common configuration it's launch capacity will be somewhat less than the Ariane 5 (going with what I said before). The Ariane 6 is not going to be resuable at first. They want to make the first stage reusable at some point (Adeline), but if that arrives, it'll be around 2030, which will put them what... 15 years behind what SpaceX achieved, and doing it worse?

Ariane 6 is a still going to cost over 50% more than a Falcon 9, at worse performance-per-kg. And SpaceX could slash the cost of Falcon 9 launches in the face of a more competitive sales environment at almost any time, and still be hugely profitable, whine Arianespace couldn't.

Ariane 6 will fly and continue to fly though because it, like the NASA SLS being built by Boeing/Lockheed/ATK, is largely a jobs program. European taxpayer dollars will subsidize its existence.

Russia/Roscomsos has no future in space really. It's yet another year, and we've been served yet another new Russian imaginary concept rocket.
https://interestingengineering.com/r...-tests-by-2022
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018...lcon-9-rocket/

It's easy to lose track of all these independent Russian schemes. And that comes after their two launches of their Angara rocket, which would have been a great rocket around the year 2000. Angara is too expensive in the world of SpaceX (it's basically a Russian Atlas V), and future flights are up in the air.

Russia will do what Russia always does, which is announce grand schemes which go less than nowhere, release CG art once a year, and pretend they're still a player in the game, when in truth, they're done. Russia has and is continuing to massively slash their space funding due to the ongoing Russian public finances crisis. Whereas NASA and commercial space funding has been increasing for years, Roscomsos funding has been drying up, aspects of Russian industry heavily sanctions, and worst of all for it, it's customer base drying up thanks to SpaceX and Chinese competition.

Russia needs money it doesn't have to build a new rocket, to retire the Proton and Soyuz2 it shouldn't be lfying anymore. But it is loathe to free up funds by doing-as-NASA-did and retiring it's current rockets to free up money, and laying off its work force. Russia would never be able to reassemble it. It was hard enough for NASA to do so for the SLS. All those wielders and electricians went on to other jobs.

Russia will likely continue flying Soyuz capsules and large payloads on Protons, much as it has since the 1960s. They know how to build them. They can churn them out. THey can "show the flag". Just don't expect them to do anything new, beside likely visits to China's space station.

WHen you cut through it, SpaceX was a textbook play in how to disrupt an industry, and now it's by far the number one launch provider on earth, and getting incredibly close to its goal of one launch every two weeks. A flight rate that fast is hugely profitable for it, and is one that only technology that nobody else has besides Blue Origin, that enables it.

[ABEEnr2]

I can expand later, but briefly...

SpaceX and Blue Origin will. And probably eventually the Moon-Mars delivery market too. Any company that had landing technology, a high degree of reusability and a highly efficient engine, will be competitive. Unfortunately right now that means SpaceX and Blue Origin exclusively, and the former is the only one actually flying.

Where does Europe fit in? It basically doesn't. Europe has a decent plan with the Ariane 6. The Ariane 6 is going to replace the Ariane 5 at half the cost, but half the cost of an Ariane 5 is still a lot. And in it's most common configuration it's launch capacity will be somewhat less than the Ariane 5 (going with what I said before). The Ariane 6 is not going to be resuable at first. They want to make the first stage reusable at some point (Adeline), but if that arrives, it'll be around 2030, which will put them what... 15 years behind what SpaceX achieved, and doing it worse?

Ariane 6 is a still going to cost over 50% more than a Falcon 9, at worse performance-per-kg. And SpaceX could slash the cost of Falcon 9 launches in the face of a more competitive sales environment at almost any time, and still be hugely profitable, whine Arianespace couldn't.

Ariane 6 will fly and continue to fly though because it, like the NASA SLS being built by Boeing/Lockheed/ATK, is largely a jobs program. European taxpayer dollars will subsidize its existence.

Russia/Roscomsos has no future in space really. It's yet another year, and we've been served yet another new Russian imaginary concept rocket.
https://interestingengineering.com/r...-tests-by-2022
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018...lcon-9-rocket/

It's easy to lose track of all these independent Russian schemes. And that comes after their two launches of their Angara rocket, which would have been a great rocket around the year 2000. Angara is too expensive in the world of SpaceX (it's basically a Russian Atlas V), and future flights are up in the air.

Russia will do what Russia always does, which is announce grand schemes which go less than nowhere, release CG art once a year, and pretend they're still a player in the game, when in truth, they're done. Russia has and is continuing to massively slash their space funding due to the ongoing Russian public finances crisis. Whereas NASA and commercial space funding has been increasing for years, Roscomsos funding has been drying up, aspects of Russian industry heavily sanctions, and worst of all for it, it's customer base drying up thanks to SpaceX and Chinese competition.

Russia needs money it doesn't have to build a new rocket, to retire the Proton and Soyuz2 it shouldn't be lfying anymore. But it is loathe to free up funds by doing-as-NASA-did and retiring it's current rockets to free up money, and laying off its work force. Russia would never be able to reassemble it. It was hard enough for NASA to do so for the SLS. All those wielders and electricians went on to other jobs.

Russia will likely continue flying Soyuz capsules and large payloads on Protons, much as it has since the 1960s. They know how to build them. They can churn them out. THey can "show the flag". Just don't expect them to do anything new, beside likely visits to China's space station.

WHen you cut through it, SpaceX was a textbook play in how to disrupt an industry, and now it's by far the number one launch provider on earth, and getting incredibly close to its goal of one launch every two weeks. A flight rate that fast is hugely profitable for it, and is one that only technology that nobody else has besides Blue Origin, that enables it.

and soon spacex will release BFR and if they do and they succeed in launching it then its gg

[Hobb]

[zorkuus]

First there was watergate, then stupid watergate.
There was russian space force, now there's stupid space farce.

[Voidwielder]

likely visits to China's space station.

They appear to be making strides in their Air Force and Navy, what about their rocketry?

Where the heck do you learn all this?

[Skroe]

They appear to be making strides in their Air Force and Navy, what about their rocketry?

China has rocket ambitions. They're going nowhere fast. They semi-recently launched their new heavy booster, the Long March 5, that is about as powerful as Delta IV Heavy (and a bit more than Falcon 9), but it is far more expensive than a Falcon 9, or a Falcon Heavy which has twice the capability.

China is much where NASA was with its rockets until Challenger.

To give you the short version, from the dawn of the space age, through Challenger, NASA rockets were largely derived, or dual-use developed, with ICBM technology. Even pure civilian-space rockets like Saturn V had substantial legacy ICBM technology incorporated into them, or were made with dual use purposes. These rockets, some of the most famous in history and launched ALL NASA missions until the Shuttle launched, were tremendously expensive, and also somewhat unreliable, just like the ICBMs of the time.
l
When the Shuttle started flying it became clear quite early the once or twice a week launch rate wasn't going to be a thing, so in order to subsidize its costs, Reagan ordered the retirement of all legacy launchers and said that all US government space missions would be flown on the shuttle. In the early 1980s, that effectively meant all US space launches, as the commercial launch market was not a thing. After Challenger, it was realized that perhaps sending 7 people into space just to place a sattelite to orbit was both unsafe and not cost / risk effective. So some of the legacy launchers were reactivated while the Air Force (and later NASA) embarked on the EELV program, that resulted in the late 1990s with the Delta IV and Atlas V, both of which were the first two medium / heavy lift made in the US that had no significant legacy ICBM technology integrated to them (there were certainly aspects still, mostly in terms of "legacy" of design, but far less than before).

To relate this to China, China is at the post-challenger inflection point. Up to this point, all of their space vehicles where heavily derived from their ICBM arsenal, just like the US pre-challenger. Long March 5 represents a shift away from that, towards rockets designed from the ground up with space in mind. As we go forward in years, China will naturally accumulate more rockets like this, and retire more legacy platforms.

All of China's rockets are significantly cheaper than Russian and Non-SpaceX US rockets, but far more expensive than SpaceX. This is causing China to eat Russia's market share from the customers SpaceX won't / isn't allowed to launch for.

Where the heck do you learn all this?

Space is my primary interest outside of my career, and I've been participating in space / rocket discussions at NASASpaceFlight and NASAWatch since the late 1990s. Until Trump, I participated more often there, then here, especially about five years ago.

I'm seriously considering applying to SpaceX later this year or next. My family is on the East coast and I don't want to be that far away though. It's a tough choice.

[Deleted]

I guess the Boeing X-37 will be part of the new space branche, which is speculated to have all sorts of military applications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

[BronzeCondor]

I'm assuming China is intent on developing a "space force" in the not-to-distant future, would make sense for why the US would choose to push forward with it and not wait until it was absolutely necessary.

[Dontrike]

I'm assuming China is intent on developing a "space force" in the not-to-distant future, would make sense for why the US would choose to push forward with it and not wait until it was absolutely necessary.

Must be why they asked Trump to save ZTE and give him all that money. ZTE must be a major part of their space force. /s

[Nihilanth]

Very cool indeed Neil!

[ParanoiD84]

Is the God Emperor gonna lead the Crusade against the heretics, the mutants and the xenos? perhaps only the illegals

[Poopymonster]

Is the God Emperor gonna lead the Crusade against the heretics, the mutants and the xenos? perhaps only the illegals

Tell him there are illegal Mexicans on Mars with oil and beach front property. We'll be there by Christmas.

[Dontrike]

[video=youtube;4NEcxhPh7js]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NEcxhPh7js[/vdeo]

Very cool indeed Neil!

Eventually it's a decent idea, but that probably won't be for 30-50 years, if not most likely far longer away.

[Thekri]

Very cool indeed Neil!

I haven't seen anybody that doesn't believe that a space force will not some day become necessary, and yes, the Army/Air Force split is obviously the precedent, but we are an extremely long way away from that occurring. The Air Force was only created after two world wars had been fought utilizing Air Combat. Air Combat was a theater of operations that was distinct from ground combat, and it no longer made sense to subordinate it to commanders that had no first hand experience of it (Although the Marines still do exactly that, with considerable success). On the other hand, there has been to date exactly no instances of armed space combat, nor do we have the technology or resources to put sufficient personnel or resources into orbit to make space combat viable. While some space "combat" is viable now, it will be exclusively conducted by unmanned satellites deorbiting or neutralizing opposing satellites. You could make a much stronger case for a Cyber Force then a Space Force in 2018. Making a Space Force now is akin to making the Air Force in 1865, when all we had was a few observation balloons.


On a side note, while I don't have any problems with Dr. Tyson's comments either in this video or really in general, I really don't understand why he is famous. He has had no notable scientific accomplishments although he is a capable administrator. He is entirely a media scientist, essentially a scientific advocate, who is for some reason often billed as some sort of towering genius. As far as I can tell he is just a likeable and competent Administrator and PR person.