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

[Skroe]

Entitlement programs are too expensive and a burden. We could start there and allocate those funds towards defense.

The ghoul in your avatar has directly ruled out so much as taking a little bit off the top of Entitlements so long as he is President, so try again.

And even in that case, entitlement reform will hit millennial, not boomers. The problem has a 10 year horizon, not a 35 year one. In other words, entitlement reform would have made sense if it had been done around 2000, rather than the Bush Tax Cuts. Now, it's too late.

So, what are your other ideas to raising revenue to pay for being a superpower?

[JohnBrown1917]

Being a superpower is expensive.

I suppose that means you also gotta waste on it useless things lol

[Hobb]

Guess Trump is taking the whole "illegal alien" thing to a new level.

[kail]

Where do I sign up?

[PACOX]

His deflections are growing weaker each go around. People barely batted an eye at this one. Don't even care enough to roll them.

[Cyberowl]

Jokes on him, the Nazis on the dark side of the moon are way ahead of him.

[Voidwielder]

the future of space is private, not public. Government will buy a ticket. But SpaceX has made NASA obsolete when it comes to launching payloads.

Surely you mean ULA?
Why do you feel like relying on SpaceX is a good thing? FH was supposed to launch almost 3 years ago. They are overoptimistic about BFR, never mind the follow ups?

[GennGreymane]

If this isnt the space force its wrong

[Edge-]

https://us.cnn.com/2018/06/18/politi...rce/index.html

"We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force: separate but equal, it is going to be something so important," he said.

OH COME THE FUCK ON.

[Cyberowl]

https://us.cnn.com/2018/06/18/politi...rce/index.html



OH COME THE FUCK ON.

He probably picked up a new word from his alt-reich staffers.

[Vapo]

What happens when SpaceX doesnt sell them tickets to space to invade stuff?

[Edge-]

What happens when SpaceX doesnt sell them tickets to space to invade stuff?

Nationalize the company, obviously.

[Skroe]

Surely you mean ULA?

No. I mean NASA. ULA too but that s a different story. I expect ULA to get out of the primary launch provider business before 2025. I think they'll wrap up launching the Atlas V's they have scheduled, and then the Delta IVs. But I doubt Vulcan will ever fly, or be cost effective enough to be a competitor to anything SpaceX has or Blue Origin will have. ULA has completely blown it.

With NASA... I mean... think of it from this perspective. It's already ridiculous, but it is going to get to be even more ridiculous... if every time we want to send a payload to Mars orbit, or the surface of Mars, or to the outer solar system, a public or private entity needs to go through NASA, which is the arrangement now. Is the government involved in Intel's scientific research into computing? Or pharmaceutical's research (beyond the regulatory role of the FDA)? Not at all.

If we're truly going to colonize Mars or even expand out into the solar system in general, it will be done chiefly with private dollars, in pursuance of an economic argument. This means that a company seeking to commercially exploit space will need to coordinate with a launch provider - SpaceX in this case, and do what they want, albeit with the far more general oversight of some FAA-style regulator, rather than the severe management of an agency like NASA.

This is exactly what goes on already with respect to telecommunications and civilian earth-observing satellites. When SpaceX get a contract from Instelstat to launch a satellite, NASA plays no role. Eventually that will have to be expanded to include travel to destinations to any location in the Solar System, including the surface of planets and moons. NASA as we know it ceases to have a case to exist then.

Because think of it like this. In 2018 when a university has a space science research idea - like landing a rover on Mars, what do they do? They compete for a program contract for NASA, which goes up at regular intervals (Discovery program, New Frontier programs, etc) and are funded as part of the annual NASA budget. A better model is what happens in private industry with Intel or a Pharmaceutical. I think the success of private-science compared to public sector science speaks to that.

Why do you feel like relying on SpaceX is a good thing? FH was supposed to launch almost 3 years ago. They are overoptimistic about BFR, never mind the follow ups?

The Falcon Heavy launched already, but in truth, it may only launch a few times. It really isn't needed. Not like it was. The FH was envisioned at a time when the Falcon 9 was a 10 ton to LEO booster, and its successor was beyond 2030. FH filled a distinct capability gap. But since it was envisioned, the Falcon 9 has grown to be a 23 ton to LEO booster. And although Musk right now says that the Block 5 is the final version.... don't believe it. The BFR is too big for the overwhelming majority of payloads, and the economic case for a Falcon 9 sized booster is so enduring that a Falcon 9 upgrade with BFR tech at some point is a sure bet.

The key component of this argument is this: the nanosat revolution is real. The current generation of space based chips and power sources are such an improvement on their predecessor, and the ones in the pipeline are even better, that case for making enormous satellites for most things is vanishingly small. Even things like earth observations and deep space telescopes might be done better by deploying constellations of small, cheap, serially produced satellites rather than monolthic, enormous, super expensive ones. This means that the launch market at the lower end will see much more activity than the higher end. What's the point of something like the FH then?

Concurrent with this though is the BFR program. A rocket that scale is good for one thing and one thing only: building space based infrastructure. The facilities, factories needed to start, eventually, space based manufacturing and a space based economy. But that only needs to be done once. And after that the economic case for something like a BFR depreciates. A real world example is that the Air Force sometimes really needs to fly its enormous C-5 Galaxies to drop off a lot of payload. But it utilizes its much larger fleet of the far smaller C-130s far more often, and for far more purposes. Or with the ISS. It took the Shuttle to build it, and only the Shuttle or something that size could build something like the ISS, but it's been easily sustained and augmented with far smaller launch platforms.

Most importantly though is that SpaceX's technology is so much better than the competitions, that not buying from them is basically shooting our own foot of. ULA screwed itself. It chose to fail. Flying SpaceX means more money, right now, on programs, and less on launching.

Will BFR be on time? No. But will it fly? Absolutely. There is no reason to think it won't. SpaceX has already accomplished the most challenging parts of that program by virtue of standing up the Falcon 9 to begin with. What they need is time, and to be blunt, the competition isn't exactly sprinting. The SLS is too expensive, and too late. Russia is on yet another super rocket scheme that'll never get built. China doesn't know how to build big rockets, period, and the Arianne 6 is small.

This means SpaceX simply needs to juggle two things: build the BFA, and keep launching Falcon 9s to underwrite it. That's a lot easier a task than ULA asking for consistent government money every year to build a new rocket.

And that is why the future of space is private, not public, and NASA will play little role in it.

- - - Updated - - -

Nationalize the company, obviously.

I know you're just being funny, but there is a specific reason why it wouldn't work.

SpaceX owns the IP to their technology, not a contractor on behalf of the US Government.

While the US could still go after SpaceX under ITAR if it sold to a rogue regime, there is nothing that would, in theory, stop Elon Musk from moving the entirety of SpaceX to Mexico. It would be no different than Intel moving a plant from California to Mexico. Intel can't sell its CPU's to Iran or North Korea, but the US government doesn't get a veto on how they otherwise conduct operations.

And the Yucatan Peninsula would be every bit as good as Florida to launch from, funny enough.

[TexasRules]

Children in cages...can't afford to treat them better....Build a Space Force!

Our priorities are so fucked.

Americans are in cages?

[BrerBear]

https://us.cnn.com/2018/06/18/politi...rce/index.html
OH COME THE FUCK ON.

While it seems like a another dumb slip-up, we know that Trump likes to repeat the things he's recently heard...

[Deleted]

Americans are in cages?

Probably referring to illegal immigrant families being split up. Children in one cage, parents in another.

[Kathandira]

Americans are in cages?

Yes. The children in cages are American.

[Nihilanth]

https://us.cnn.com/2018/06/18/politi...rce/index.html



OH COME THE FUCK ON.

Is he a closet democrat now? Because the separate but equal doctrine was establish by the Democratic Party.

[Edge-]

Is he a closet democrat now? Because the separate but equal doctrine was establish by the Democratic Party.

*sigh*

Are we still pretending that the Southern Strategy isn't a thing? This schtick is so old and worn out that I don't think the patchwork quilt will hold it together for much longer.

[Skroe]

Is he a closet democrat now? Because the separate but equal doctrine was establish by the Democratic Party.

A Democratic Party, most of whom's members became Republican as a result of the Southern Strategy and Political Re-Alignment post Civil-Rights.

Remember when Massachusetts was a bulwark of the Republican party? WHen it was the intellectual core of it?

Of course you don't. They became Democrats and the Southern racists became Republicans.

Its almost as if.... oh my god.... things changed over time!