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The Air Force could handle the vast majority of space-related operations.

They currently do. It's called the Air Force Space Command :

https://www.afspc.af.mil/

This is what Trump is trying to seperate into its own branch, based on advice from DoD officials. This is not "Trump creating the Space Force", this is EXPERTS asking him to do so based on logistics issues created by having the Air Force trying to manage Space Command.

The experts are trying to slow down, stall, and minimize this until it either goes away or it just ends up as a bigger budget for the AF. Have you ever actually listened to high level DoD officials talk about these plans? Try C-SPAN sometime. I strongly doubt you have heard the Secretary of the AF talk about it for one thing. Everybody is trying to keep their jobs, but their thoughts on this are obvious.

Do you know how much shit the DoD stirred up letting every branch shop for its own uniforms? And you really think leaders are asking for a new service...

The Air Force could handle the vast majority of space-related operations.

They currently do. It's called the Air Force Space Command :

https://www.afspc.af.mil/

This is what Trump is trying to seperate into its own branch, based on advice from DoD officials. This is not "Trump creating the Space Force", this is EXPERTS asking him to do so based on logistics issues created by having the Air Force trying to manage Space Command.

Actually, the USAF has the Community College of The Air Force, where that training does count (we just called it "Tech School"), depending on your AFSC ("MOS" in Army-speak) and what degree you were shooting for. OJT and CBTs (as well as PME/NCO training) also count as credits (again, depending on AFSC and degree). On top of all that, CLEP testing is (well, was) mega-cheap there.

1) This is a scale model. You cannot just do a simple comparison. 2) The track was only 1.2 km including the portion needed for deceleration. How many Kilometers does it take for a Maglev to reach top speed? You would have to go back to point #1 to calculate the comparison.

Only a scale model you say? OK, how about this unmanned scale model? (Mach 8.5 or 6,416 mph) http://www.af.mil/News/Article...

The national security of the United States relies on a healthy airline industry.

No, it doesn't. That's absurd. The military flies its own shit.

etc.

Yes, yes, it does. The Civil Reserve Air Fleet ( http://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fac... ) provides a huge air logistical capacity for U.S. forces in an emergency, and most of those 'ex-military" pilots for the carriers are also military reserve officers. for that matter, 10 U.S. Code 688 "Under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense, a member described in subsection (b) may be ordered to active duty by the Secretary of the military department concerned at any time."

The CRAF's 553 aircraft available at 24 to 48 hours notice more than double the more specialized 430 aircraft of the Air Mobility Command ( not to mention global maintenance and other support functions ) - already with military aircrews. This is in addition to run of the mill contract capacity that take a little longer to spool up.

... and this is key - that can operate without reservation into and inside of combat zones. No checking with insurance companies, airline management, etc.

It simply doesn't matter what 'X' number of tanks or artillery or infantry you have, what matters is the capability to concentrate forces and then shift them again if needed. The commercial air transport capacity this country is a very large force multiplier.

a well-regulated militia would have denied this stone-bonker a gun.

One did.

Honest question, why doesn't the BBC doesn't qualify as "state run media" ?

Because "run" also refers to editorial control?

PBS is funded by forced, if indirect, taxes. Does PBS qualify as "state run media"? The answer is no. Because despite DJT's and TM's opinions concerning the news, politicians have almost no control over what those institutions publish - baying "state secrets" doesn't get one very far.

a 20 mile tether doesn't sound practical

It's not just impractical; it's downright dangerous, even with much shorter lengths. If tether breaks at the ground end, interesting things can happen.

No conspiracy here. The conspiracy folks can go over to here and figure out why the base is now fighting its third fire in a week.

Like I said in another section of this thread, the cost-over-runny bits of development are already almost. A squadron of F-35s has just been declared combat ready. done. Thus, to the extent this particular new weapons system has included b$Billion surprises, those have already been sprung. That means all those over-runs the English Majors in the media freak out about are already priced into $85 million, and that $85 Mil price-tag is in the budgets for the next fifty years or so.

Which in turn means that the only way to reduce the order would be to get Congress to reduce defense spending. And specifically, that they'd prefer reducing defense spending by cutting weapons procurement, rather then cutting flight time (Av Gas ain't cheap).

That shit ain't happening.

This would have never happened in 4 years. Popular Science published a similar article about the American efforts almost 22 years ago and today there is nothing outside classified or X-plane projects. And this is a nation that has had working hypersonic spaceplanes since 1963.

http://www.eglin.af.mil/news/s...

“Shut up and color!” This endearing term has been long used by Air Force leaders and supervisors to help motivate their Airmen to put the mission first and get their tasks completed. This statement reminds them to focus on the bigger picture, and how they fit into the Air Force as a whole. It is not intended to offend, but rather to encourage Airmen to reevaluate themselves as leaders and followers. - See more at: http://airforcelive.dodlive.mi...

More info here: http://www.lajes.af.mil/news/s...

The troublesome bird was SVN-23, one of the oldest GPS birds, launched in 1990!
It was the last of the Block IIA birds, and had an expected 8 year lifetime, which it beat by quite a few years!
It featured a combination of cesium and rubidium clocks -- two of each. Now decommissioned -- http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/?Do...
Read more of this bird's interesting history -- http://www.schriever.af.mil/ne...

Hmmm, Senior Levels? GENERAL MARK A. WELSH III Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force is a former A-10 pilot. He knows CAS very well and will quickly point out that the USAF flys over 20,000 CAS sorties per year.

Yes, our troop need both hi and lo CAS protection. The A-10/Tucano along with the F-35 is a great combination, but Congress won't fully allocate the money for both. So the choice is hard, but has to be made. The A-10 fleet isn't going anywhere at the current moment it will be flying until 2020. And the reserve hogs will remain in backup status.

Of course, there are many military installations within individual states that could be co-opted during a secession or breakup of the Union,

just as happened in member States of the former Soviet Union.

When you work a desk job that is very mentally demanding, when you come home you are usally just too damn exhausted to go out and exercise.

A home gym is somewhat viable, but that generally requires a place to put it... not everyone has the floor space to spare for something like that without sacricing more fundamental things like a bed, or else a kitchen table.

I work a desk job. A few months ago, I started working out. My goal is to be able to pass the Air Force Fitness Test; I work as a civilian employee of the Air Force. I am now able to do 500 push ups and sit ups a day; someday soon I want to be able to do 1000. I am still way too slow on the running of 1.5 miles; currently I can do 1.5 miles in ~18:30. I have already lost about 20 pounds on my exercise regimen and I'm pretty sure I will be able to lose at least 10 more. If I can lose another 10 pounds beyond that, it would put me at the borderline normal/overweight BMI. The only equipment I need for this exercise regimen is a pair of running shoes; seriously, that is the extent of my "exercise equipment". The other part of this fitness plan is that I have had to cut down on the sweets; Pepsi was a particular weakness of mine but other moderate changes needed to be made as well. So, stop with the BS about needing floor space for exercise equipment. All you really need is about an hour a day and the will to get up and move.

I recently toured the Minuteman ICBM facilities at Warren Air Force Base. The Launch Control Center still uses 8 inch floppy disks. The tour guide, who was a 20-something member of the 90th Missile Wing, didn't know the size of the floppy. He only knew that "they're not made anymore."

Sorry, what debacle with the F-22? Near as anyone can tell, it's the best air superiority fighter ever built and will be for the next 15 - 20+ years. Do they cost a lot? Yes. But don't compare the cost of opposing military aircraft to the cost of the F-22. Compare the cost of opposing military aircraft to the cost of the AIM-120 AMRAAM fitted to the F-22 because the first indication the opposing pilots are going to have that F-22s are in the area is a missile warning.

The Iranians experienced this already when they decided to send up planes to harass some US drone aircraft. The US sent an F-22 up and after the F-22 pilot got bored waiting for the Iranians to notice he was there, he radioed them to get out of his airspace.

"He flew under their aircraft to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said ‘you really ought to go home.'" http://www.military.com/daily-...

"I can't see the [expletive deleted] thing," said RAAF Squadron Leader Stephen Chappell, exchange F-15 pilot in the 65th Aggressor Squadron. "It won't let me put a weapons system on it, even when I can see it visually through the canopy. [Flying against the F-22] annoys the hell out of me." http://www.acc.af.mil/news/sto...

Here are the typical combat ranges for the various fighters: F15C: 1,967 km, F-35A: 1,135 km, F-22: 760 km, F-18: 740 km, F-16: 550 km.

The range is off for the F-16. Lockheed Martin give it a combat radius of 800 nautical miles. The US Air Force says, "In an air-to-surface role, the F-16 can fly more than 500 miles (860 kilometers), deliver its weapons with superior accuracy, defend itself against enemy aircraft, and return to its starting point."

You would also know that the F-35 has more than twice the range of the F-16

That doesn't seem to be the case. Lockheed Martin and the US Air Force say the F-16 has a range of 1,740 nautical miles whereas the F-35A has a range of 1,200 nautical miles. Even if the F-35A's range improves in the future, it seems unlikely it will ever have twice the range of the F-16. Maybe if the F-35 gets a new engine in the mid-2020s its range will improve.

You would also know that the F-35 has more than twice the range of the F-16

That doesn't seem to be the case. Lockheed Martin and the US Air Force say the F-16 has a range of 1,740 nautical miles whereas the F-35A has a range of 1,200 nautical miles. Even if the F-35A's range improves in the future, it seems unlikely it will ever have twice the range of the F-16. Maybe if the F-35 gets a new engine in the mid-2020s its range will improve.

If you read the article and find yourself thinking, "I wish I could see that in person," then you need to visit the National Museum of the USAF, which has CCT-1: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.m...

You don't happen to work for the Public Affairs office at Patrick AFB, do you?

http://www.24af.af.mil/

Time to clean the Augean Stables.

Yes, this. At some point in the past, women were better represented in the math and sciences. Decades ago, more women were doing technical stuff
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

And then at some point engineering and technology became a "bro" field and pushed a lot of women out, perhaps because of insecurity with their male dominancy hierarchy or whatever, or increased competition from not so many men going off to die in wars, or whatever.

Women are very useful to have in organizations, though. It's not just an equality thing. There are tangible benefits. Teams with women have better communication.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/aw...
Product teams with women on them can develop better products that appeal to women and serve a wider customer base.

These kinds of things explain why a lot of large successful businesses are working hard to put more girls through STEM education to bring things back up from the 10 - 20% gender ratio where they are now. There aren't that many things you can do to effectively double your customer base. But appealing to women is a pretty big one. So yes, women are more highly sought-after than men in the tech industry. It's nothing to be concerned or ashamed of, it's just a real problem that exists and people are trying to address the issue.

Everyone else can stay and whine in silent desperation on your little male-dominated lonely island if you want. Evolution and the free market will take good care of you! :D

Different parts of government are frequently working at cross-purposes. The military is certainly involved in media ventures with the private sector - there's no secret to a lot of it, you can view a proudly displayed list of recently supported productions at http://www.airforcehollywood.a... - and that's just the air force. If your movie or series makes the US look good, and especially the US military, you can contact them and they'll help with production costs - even lend you some genuine military hardware. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the intelligence agencies too have an 'entertainment liaison' - either openly, or a secret one that studios need to sign an NDA to talk with.

that no one expected: http://www.homestead.afrc.af.m...
"For the individuals laying eyes on the base for the first time since the storm, reconciling what they were seeing seemed impossible.
"Those things that have been a part of your life for so long, I guess you take for granted that they're always going to be there," said Mr. Tom Miller, currently with the 482nd Maintenance Squadron and during Hurricane Andrew was the electrical shop chief with the 482nd Maintenance Squadron as an Air Reserve Technician. Mr. Miller was living in Cutler Bay at the time of the hurricane and weathered the storm in St. Petersburg. He's been a member of the base since 1968.
"The most vivid memories I have are when I first went back to where I lived and when I first went back to the base because that was where I lived and worked," he said. "Those are the things that you get some strength from, and then to come back and see that area was completely devastated, that really hits you. The devastation seemed insurmountable." ...
For those who've seen both the before and after of the storm, 20 years means different things to different people. "Sometimes it feels like it was 200 years ago and then other times it feels like it was last week," said Miller. "When I came back on base after the storm, a place where I had worked for 20 years, I just thought, 'what's the answer for this?'; 'where do we even start?' We learned a big lesson: these things can change people's lives overnight. The base has come back, and I'm glad it did.""

For another example, one week my mother was living in a nice house and was a smiling teenager. The next week, her home town looked like this due to WWII fighting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Or, as Howard Zinn said:
http://www.thenation.com/artic...
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. ..."

See also my other comment to a different story here on different sorts of existential societal risks and possible solutions: http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

Humans these days have been so blessed with so much including a relatively mild climate the past few centuries compared to the past. It is only because of that blessing that our thoughts can focus on internal conflicts of human vs. human instead of the greater eternal conflict of human vs. a capricious environment. We need to invest more in dealing with such environmental existential risks.

It is just foolish, even laughable, that the USA can, say, spend US$1 trillion a year or more on the US military including incurred future costs related to human political conflicts (many of which the USA helped create) while our infrastructure falls apart and we don't invest in, say, protecting our power grid from solar flares, or that we don't scale our medical systems to deal with possible pandemics, or we don't move to indoor or even underground agriculture faster to get it

SpaceX just recently signed a lease agreement with the Air Force to construct a landing pad for just that purpose. If you have a chance to read through the whole proposal, it's quite interesting. They are using an old launch complex that hasn't been used in 30+ years.

http://spacenews.com/spacex-le...

Link to PDF providing some detail used for the proposal: http://www.patrick.af.mil/shar...

Here's the PDF for the environmental assessment:
http://www.patrick.af.mil/shar...

SpaceX just recently signed a lease agreement with the Air Force to construct a landing pad for just that purpose. If you have a chance to read through the whole proposal, it's quite interesting. They are using an old launch complex that hasn't been used in 30+ years.

http://spacenews.com/spacex-le...

Link to PDF providing some detail used for the proposal: http://www.patrick.af.mil/shar...

Here's the PDF for the environmental assessment:
http://www.patrick.af.mil/shar...

SpaceX just recently signed a lease agreement with the Air Force to construct a landing pad for just that purpose. If you have a chance to read through the whole proposal, it's quite interesting. They are using an old launch complex that hasn't been used in 30+ years.

http://spacenews.com/spacex-le...

Link to PDF providing some detail used for the proposal: http://www.patrick.af.mil/shar...

Environmental assessment for their landing sites at LC13 at the Cape:
http://www.patrick.af.mil/shar...

Return to launch site has been their goal all along. It's only in the last few months that they started talking about the seagoing landing platform approach, and then only for those situations where there wasn't enough propellant left to return, which were previously expected to require more expensive launches that expended cores instead of recovering them (the Falcon Heavy center core and geosynchronous launches, mainly).

Wrong timing for it, though. While our nation is under attack by Isis and Syria, this increase would be better spent on improving our dwindling military capabilities..

Dwindling? CITATION NEEDED.

CITATION PROVIDED

Budget cuts to slash U.S. Army to smallest since before World War Two
A New Army Drawdown: This Time Is Far Worse
General: With cuts, Marine Corps will 'cut into bone'
AIR FORCE PREPARES TO SEPARATE 25,000 IN SERVICE'S LARGEST DRAWDOWN

"Over the next five years, about 550 aircraft and about 25,000 Airmen will be gone from the Air Force.

Mind the elephant, sir, it has been known to bite people in the ass.

"The Birthplace of Aviation", as it used to say on our license plates.

Dayton is the hometown of the Wright Brothers. It's also home to the National Museum of the US Air Force and Wright-Patterson AFB. Lots of aviation history there.

Dayton is the hometown of the Wright Brothers. It's also home to the National Museum of the US Air Force and Wright-Patterson AFB. Lots of aviation history there.

Start with a screwed up promotion system that punishes risk taking and rewards backstabbing, mix in a cult of perfection that leads to a single wrong answer on a multiple choice test being career terminating, and the perception of senior government officials continually insulting the military, and wonder why people are disgruntled.

First a correction.
The law I quoted above was changed in 1999, and the obligatory service is now 2 years, not 3-4.

Second... You are quoting a Wikipedia article(s) which fails to source its claim of "in practice - it's all volunteers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Which is a claim, arising from some BS "is blue REALLY blue" philosophizing in a footnote in National Air and Space Intelligence Center's handbook on China's Airforce.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/aw...

Which goes on and on, describing the whole compulsory registration process, the numbers and stats of 400.000 conscripts EACH YEAR, how many come from urban and rural (mostly rural) areas, how the law states that there is a 2 year sentence for NOT REGISTERING - and then they decide to bullshit about it all MAYBE-SORTA-KINDA being voluntary recruitment cause almost no one goes to jail for not registering.
Riiiiiight.

That's like saying that you don't need a driver's license cause almost no one goes to jail on account of driving without a license.
The same report, few pages earlier, mentions the prior practice of "volunteering" for 16 years (quotation marks included) after serving the obligatory 3 or 4 years, prior to 1999 reforms.
And the same section asking "Hey? Is this REALLY conscription? Or perhaps happy-fun-volunteer recruiting for fun and profit?" goes on and on about the issues and actions taken to ACTUALLY recruit college graduates.

Because there are almost no college graduates in the army. Because that is one of the exceptions for NOT serving - being in school.
Urban kids represent only about 33% of conscripts. Cause they have more means to avoid service until "aging out". To bend the law.
Starving oneself into exemption if needed - like that Taiwanese kid.

China IS reforming its military and its recruiting policies, but they will probably never completely eliminate the conscription.
Too many young single males and too much rural population with too much free time on their hands and nothing to do.
And while for most people being conscripted into military service is the closest they'll get to serving a prison sentence for something they didn't do - some actually benefit from military discipline and routine.
And that population sample tends to intersect with the sample of young, poor and (in China) rural boys with little access to higher education.

Nope, Sheppard AFB pulls water from the Wichita Falls system, though it is trying to cut usage. They truck in water for non-potable uses such as pools. http://www.sheppard.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123412872

You're making my case. WIPO is irrelevant to US Law without the DMCA. If the Treaty was ratified, but the statute (DMCA) had stalled in the House WIPO wouldn't matter.

No you've got that entirely backwards. The standard procedure is to sign and adopt treaties first, and then congress writes laws to implement them. If anything, that makes my case. The Obama justified his action here because the laws that ACTA requires are already on the books in his view, so therefore he says he can skip congress and the senate. THAT was his argument, NOT the one you claimed above. And also there is no precedent for that, rather it's kind of a rule that he just made up.

However he is pulling a very fast one here: Because the Obama administration says the ACTA treaty is binding, we will be required to adopt laws to conform with it should it be determined that they are needed, and we're forbidden from repealing any laws that it requires.

Let's suppose though that ACTA is what you claim it is, and the above is wrong. If that were the case then it would fall under an executive agreement. If it is an executive agreement, then Obama actually broke the law because he didn't notify congress. This is because entire thing was hidden until he signed it himself. Namely this law:

http://cwx.prenhall.com/bookbi...

Even if this was a sole-executive agreement, it STILL requires the approval of congress. This is both written in the laws in addition to case law (see the last sentence of page 5 of this: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/aw...)

That is why Obama didn't make the argument you are saying he made.

When Kennedy made his famous "We choose to go to the moon" speech, the USA had exactly 1 successful manned spaceflight

Still one more than Space X. That and the power to print money without breaking the law.

The only thing keeping SpaceX from sending people up into space on the Dragon is the lack of approval by the U.S. government, specifically the FAA-AST. I believe Elon Musk when he points out that putting seats in the Dragon and launching it with a crew on the next CRS flight (which will be in a couple of weeks) would already be safer than it was for the astronauts traveling on the Space Shuttle.

There is a launch escape system that SpaceX has currently in development, and is going to perform a test of that system later on this year. It is going to happen soon enough that it is reasonable to check regularly with the Patrick AFB website or upcoming NASA flights for more details.

(differences in size and flight range are not inconsiderable between commercial drones and hobbyist vehicles).

Really? I'll grant you the difference between hobbyist UAVs and drones like this, but what about this, this, and this?

One (of many) reasons that the US military sucks up so much money is that our pilots train continuously.

Off topic, but the USAF flight training budget for FY2014 represents just over 1/2 of 1 percent of the total USAF budget. In terms of money suckers, flight training is way way down the list.

Total budget = $144,425B (page 4 here)

Flight training budget = $792M (page 1 here)

One (of many) reasons that the US military sucks up so much money is that our pilots train continuously.

Off topic, but the USAF flight training budget for FY2014 represents just over 1/2 of 1 percent of the total USAF budget. In terms of money suckers, flight training is way way down the list.

Total budget = $144,425B (page 4 here)

Flight training budget = $792M (page 1 here)

Funny you should say that. Intel has, for some time now, been researching ways to stop return-oriented programming, or ROP, exploits, with assistance from the Defense and Homeland Security departments.

Reminds me of an old Eisenhower idea:

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1878

Tor was not created by the Air Force. Initial work was funded by the Office of Naval Research via the Naval Research Laboratory. See: http://www.onion-router.net/History.html. You can also see a list of funders here: https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en.

Air Force, Navy... point is, it was developed by the military. And it is used by the Air Force... I just noted that the first military link in the google search came up with this... and as the Air Force is the one spearheading the 'cyberwarfare' initiative in our military, it made sense that the Air Force would be the maintainer of military assets within the Tor network...

Technology advancements in five major areas are necessary for an integrated weather-modification capability: (1) advanced nonlinear modeling techniques, (2) computational capability, (3) information gathering and transmission, (4) a global sensor array, and (5) weather intervention techniques. Some intervention tools exist today and others may be developed and refined in the future.

I would suggest that significant advancements have been made in all of those areas.

I am not a meteorologist, but it seems like the ability to significantly alter any particular weather event could come from the ability to selectively heat a specified area of the atmosphere. That seems right in line with the claims in the patent.

The US DoD shares your opinion. https://www.my.af.mil/afp/netstorage/login_page_files/afportal_faqs.html Looks like a self-signed cert not issued by any commercial vendor in the default browser lists.

How are drones supposed to fight forest fires? With missiles? They sure can't carry enough retardant aloft to even put out a sizable bonfire.

Sure they can. There's no reason a drone couldn't carry as much as any manned aircraft.
The RQ-4 is designed for high altitude and long endurance, rather than heavy payload, but even so it can carry 3000 lbs, which is comparable to existing light firefighting aircraft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_firefighting

Its surveillance capabilities have already been used to assist firefighters:
http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123073731

Oh Wait, that's the inefficiency that is pushed upstream to the coal fired generation plant.

That is a problem we know how to fix. We cannot synthetically create gasoline and we cannot use it without polluting. Even if some areas are forced to increase coal burning to meet demand, we know how to upgrade this over time.

We can't synthetically create Gasoline?
Wow, some one should have told the Germans during WWII. Those silly Nazis invested heavily in making synthetic gasoline.
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1981/jul-aug/becker.htm