President Donald Trump said Tuesday he wants to create a U.S. “Space Force” during a speech before service members at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego. "My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land air and sea. We may even have a Space Force," Trump said. "We're doing a tremendous amount of work in space, and I said, maybe we need a new force. We'll call it the Space Force." https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-proposes-us-space-force-to-guard-the-galaxy
Doesn't make sense unless you outfit them with ray guns. Butl, being the brilliant mind that Mr. Potato Head is,, I'm sure that either he or one of is brilliant cabinet secretaries will think of that.
After Reagan pointed out the obvious, I expected Clinton and Bush and Obama to pick up the ball and run with it. They did nothing, and we have fallen behind both China and Russia in space weapon technology. It's a race for universal dominance that gives no Certificate for Participation.
In 1987 when I was working at Boeing, we took out first a satellite and then a missile with an anti-missile missile (two missiles of the same type).
I tried to join the Air Force and then the Navy, after that I tried to get into the reserves. But I didn't have 's pull of Dan Quayle and wound up getting drafted into the Army. My dad then gave me the option of going to Canada rather than Vietnam. I told him no, if I didn't go then someone else would have to take my place and that we couldn't all pick and choose which wars we wanted to fight in. He seemed relieved to hear me say that. We've all served in the Army on both sides of my family except my brother who became a Marine.
So what happens if some country starts destroying our satellites? How do you defend against it? I'll answer the first question: disaster. Our smart weapons, etc., depend on GPS which depends on satellites. We'd be blind, and our traditional forces would be crippled. The formula for kinetic energy is E = 1/2 M * V ^ 2. It is what makes a meteor strike so scary - velocity of 25,000 miles/hour gets SQUARED in that formula, so even a smallish M (mass) can cause severe damage. So make a satellite that simply drops weights from space at enough velocity and the damage caused would be huge. I'm sure there are plenty of governments with guys who think like this.
The Air Force already has the U.S. Air Force Space Command that employs about 36,000 people across more than 130 sites around the world. Militarizing NASA and combining it the U.S. Air Force Space Command would hurt NASA and their mission and create additional bureaucracy. Something that you are firmly against.
Who said I'm for it? I just asked a couple of questions and made observations. The idea of a space force isn't absurd at all. It's fair to debate it.
What point did you have exactly? That our GPS system is vulnerable? Yes it is but we have and are taking steps to minimize that problem. Or did you want credit for your Mass Drivers idea? Sorry, that has been a staple of science fiction for almost 100 years.
