When President Trump announced on June 18 his desire to found and fund a coequal branch of the military (on par with the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard) dedicated solely to outer space (a so-called United States Space Force) he was met with ridicule by some, celebration by others.
Personally, I was delighted at the news.
Many who have opposed President Trump's announcement have fretted over the supposed militarization of space that such a Space Force would bring into being. After all, Trump did say that "we must have American dominance in space." Yet, what some such individuals have failed to take into account is that the United States and many other nations have already "militarized" space to a certain extent.
After all, there already exists within the United States Air Force an Air Force Space Command that handles all military operations in space. These mostly consist of military satellites and global positioning systems (GPS) used for a myriad of purposes including communications, weather tracking, navigation, and anti-ballistics measures. Especially at the height of the Cold War, this use of space to support on-planet military actions was common, and not just for the United States, but for virtually all spacefaring nations as well.
While the rhetoric of "dominance" might scare some, the exact same thing was pined for in the first Space Race that was initiated with the launch of the Russian Sputnik 1 in 1957.
If some of the experts are right, this may be the beginning of an all-new race to space.
And perhaps a race in every political implication of the word. It is no secret that the Chinese and Russian national governments have been becoming ever more adversarial toward the rest of the world and the United States in particular. We have often been surprised by both countries in combative arenas that depart from the traditional dust and dirt of the battlefield, such as currency markets and cyberspace.
Leaving space exploration up to Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin would be a grave mistake.
And so, in such a world I think it is only fair to ask: Why not space?
After all, Trump isn't so far off the mark with this formulation of a separate military force for outer space. The United States Air Force arose in 1947 after being a division of the Army for 40 years prior. Why couldn't the Air Force Space Command be spun off in the same way?
And while some have been critical of the plan, plenty others are exclamatory. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium and one of science's most prominent spokespeople, was very warm to the idea in an interview he did with CNN: "As a nation, we have assets in space of incalculable value. A military protects a nation's assets. So why not a space military branch?"
What was also encouraging about Trump's declaration was his insistence on partnering with the private commercial space industry, a sector being spearheaded by such maverick billionaires as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. This, in particular, is critical, as the most recent promising advances in space technology, such as reusable rocketry, has come from the private sector. Partnering with such titans of industry could help fuel a cool one-trillion-dollar contribution to the economy, according to Morgan Stanley.
And that's not just a trillion dollars in jargon-guarded scientific paraphernalia. That's usable and beneficial economic return on investment. After all, NASA and the JPL have already come up with such readily applicable technologies as smartphone cameras, scratch-resistant lenses, and CAT scans, all as a result of direct investment in space.
With such big-picture possibilities as human habitation and extraplanetary mining within the realm of possibility, why hesitate? Specialize. Go for it.
All of this in stark contrast to President Obama's attitudes towards space. While he was never openly hostile toward the idea of space exploration or expansion, he was responsible for a widespread downturn in NASA's activity in those areas, primarily to the deference of such private space entrepreneurs as Musk and Bezos. Between nixing proposals for return manned missions to the moon or new manned missions to asteroids and Mars' moons and ultimately ending the space shuttle program, the Obama administration often found the price tag that accompanied space exploration too much to bear, especially in need of revenue for domestic programs such as the Recovery Act.
While the discussion on entitlements is one worth having, sacrificing the potential of space, at any cost, is a poor investment in our future. After all, American astronauts still have no independent form of locomotion to outer space. Their only possible way up is with the Russian Soyuz capsules.
Exactly. Those same Russians.
Ultimately, while Trump is prone to saying all manner of wacky and provocative things, the idea of a United States Space Force is one that bears seeing through. While the upfront costs may be large, the subsequent benefits should be that much larger. And as to the question of militarization? Trump is hardly proposing we place nukes on the moon. Rather, he is putting forward a plan to passionately advocate for and achieve placement of America amongst the stars.
And like Eisenhower or Kennedy or Johnson before him, Trump's advocacy for America's place in space is perhaps one of the most forward-thinking (and perhaps one of the brightest) policy points that he has yet put forth.
