Congressmen Propose a New Military Branch: The 'US Space Corps' (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Gizmodo: This week, the House Armed Services Committee voted 60 to 1 in favor of the creation of a new military branch to be called the United States Space Corps... The United States Space Corps would be the first new branch of the military since 1947, when the Air Force was formed. The current proposal would classify the USSC under the Air Force in a way that mirrors the Marines classification under the Navy. The Space Corps' chief of staff would be ranked as equal to the Air Force chief of staff and would report to the Secretary of the Air Force...

According to CNN, the Air Force's secretary and chief of staff are opposed to the plan. One reason is that we already have the Air Force Space Command and the military believes that the creation of the Space Corps would just cause more complications. Secretary Heather Wilson told reporters that "this will make it more complex, add more boxes to the organizational chart, and cost more money."
The bill charges the division of the military with providing "combat-ready space forces," though CNN adds "There are still plenty more congressional hoops for the Space Corps to jump through before it would become official. But, hey, at least the name sounds cool." And Gizmodo's reporter thoughtfully weighs the pro's and cons before concluding, "Yeah, this is probably stupid."

Comments

Re:Of course we should do this. It's obvious

[fermion]

More seriously, the army and Air Force are unconstitutional , so we should not compound our violation of this foundational document.

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

In particular I think we congress funds project for more than two years, and people often sign contracts that require them to work for more than two years, which means that the US is promising to pay them for more than two years. I would think our current congress, which is so concerned about the sanctity of the rule of law and the constitution, would be working to fix this constitutional violation, not exacerbate it.

To be sure we have no cost effective means of places soldiers in even low earth orbit, and have no reason to so do. To be sure the military is simply a means to waste the nations treasury without oversight. To be sure we already have a department that does put people and equipment into orbit, and we should continue to make space a civilian venture.

There is no reason for the US to be first country to militarize space. We depend on low earth orbit for many things. LEO is extremely difficult to defend. As soon as we signal that we are producing a military force for space and LEO, then every one of our satellites becomes a military target. The US can be crippled not by a nuclear bomb, but simple missiles that destroy our very visible and predictable satellites.

The stupidity of this congress is beyond belief.