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VP Pence Lays Out Trump's Vision For Establishing a US Space Force (nbcnews.com)
Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday laid out details for President Donald Trump's proposed new branch of the U.S. military responsible for protecting national security in outer space. From a report: In a speech at the Pentagon, Pence said the new Space Force would be established by 2020. "As President Trump has said, in his words, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space -- we must have American dominance in space. And so we will," Pence said. "Space is, in his words, a war-fighting domain just like land and air and sea." He added, "History proves that peace only comes through strength, and in the realm of outer space, the United States Space Force will be that strength in the years ahead." The Space Force would ultimately become the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces and would be equal to the other five, Pence said. The Department of Defense has prepared a report laying out the phases of creating the new branch, which will ultimately have to be reviewed and approved by Congress.
Elon is gonna become the biggest defense contractor on earth
We should have military dominance of the deep sea as well. I mean almost NO one can go there. We need to establish a base on the moon and a colony on mars for 'security'. After all, all that nothing is a real threat.
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Know what will happen because of this? Every other nation on the planet that has a space program will now be compelled to do the same. Likely won't be long before there are nuclear warheads in orbit from one country or another. So much for peaceful space exploration. More fucking Dominionist shit from Pence and the Trump administration. I hope Congress votes it down.
Why not use the USAF instead of creating another parallel bureaucracy? Better yet, why not merge all of the branches (cut out the Coast Guard and put it back under DoT control) and share as much bureaucracy as possible?
It's not like we don't have domestic issues (crumbling roads, health care, education, etc) to spend money on. Cut taxes, cut the debt, or start spending money on things that benefit people other than military contractors.
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Likely won't be long before there are nuclear warheads in orbit from one country or another. So much for peaceful space exploration.
First, nuke in orbit aren't necessary when you can deal damage by the sheer kinetic energy when de-orbiting things. There's a reason why controlled deorbit aim for the Nemo point.
(Also nukes in orbit would be violating several international treaties, but I wouldn't be surprised if some rulers decided to wipe their asses with those)
Now, the most important part : You might have not noticed, but despite several decade of space conquest, there hasn't been much actual *fighting* going on in space. Most of the weapons sent into space where for the specific use of survival among the wild-life if the return capsule gets lost in the middle of nowhere (some of these lost cosmonauts where complaining of hearing wolves and bears dangerously close to the capsule during night-time, while waiting to make contact with the retrival team).
The thing which space has been used a LOT for is for intelligence and spying.
The first thing that is going to happen if other countries try to militarize their space program is high resolution camera pointing at all the place that the US won't allow to be photographed with their own satellites plus ability to jam any communication satellite that adversaries might be relying on.
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Will there be redshirts? Oh my god I hope there are Redshirts.
Offended? Find a safe space and cry yourself to sleep.
Is Mexico going to pay for this too?
We'll have big beautiful rockets! And the Martians will pay for them.! And they will be flown by the most elite astronauts, but the true elites are all of you right here who voted for me! And...cough...sputter
Sorry, can't keep that up.
We got people who can't afford to go to the doctor, but these jackoffs want to play outer space.
Deficits exploding, but they're acting like we got money to burn. Wages going down for working people, and these geniuses think they're going to put jackbooted space troopers on Mars. Probably have a big Trump parade up there, too.
I mean, Pence is a guy who thinks the Earth is 6,000 years old and there's no evolution, but he's spearheading a Space Force that's going to be paid for with money borrowed from China, with whom we just started a trade war. Oh, we are so fucked.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Indeed.
[July 1 2018] Trump's border wall not worth government shutdown, say lawmakers
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The US doesn't even have the rockets to launch anything like a nuke. Russia has man rated rockets to launch them.
Never in history has anyone taken a manned rocket to detonate a nuclear warhead. I can't say that it was never on the drawing board, but it seems like a bonehead idea.
The US's ICBMs fly up to around 1100 km before reentering to strike their targets. That's just above the maximum altitude of the old Shuttle Orbiter, and well beyond the typical operational altitude for most Shuttle missions (320 km).
Can Russia fly higher? probably. But is that a requirement for nukes in space? clearly not. In fact the highest test explosion was at 540 km, and yet about half of the known tests were under 100 km.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Germany was quite peaceful in 1939, thanks to its strong military and authoritarian government.
Yet Germany lost the subsequent war.
The biggest "winner" of both world wars was the country that had done the least to prepare for them: The United States of America.
After WW2, America switched to much higher military spending, and higher levels of preparation. Results: Korea - tie, Vietnam - lost, Afghanistan - lost, Iraq - lost.
The problem with high military spending, is that it makes it easy to initiate stupid wars.
Trump is more than a bit of a clown, but Pence scares me. He actually believes the crap he spouts. If the media was doing it's job his radical religious beliefs would have been front and center during the campaign. If he had his way we'd go back the the 50s with mandatory prayer in schools (yes, that was a thing until a SCOTUS decision shut it down).
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It only happens if the US issues formal notice that it is withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty. The Outer Space Treaty forbids weapons of mass destruction anywhere above the Earth, to include installations on other celestial bodies. Warmongers like to try to claim this only forbids nuclear bombs, and therefore allows kinetic bombardment. This is some bullshit of the highest order. A megaton explosion is mass destruction regardless of how it was initiated.
As you note, the OST only outlaws WMDs in space, but low size kinetic or energy weapons - i.e. satellite destroyers - are not banned. And yes, taking out an enemy's GPS satellites would be a terrible idea due to the Kessler Syndrome it would lead to, but it's not explicitly or implicitly against the treaty.
Similarly, you could put armed guards on your station or moon base without violating the OST.