My man!

Point is, we had nearly 50 years of aviation being used as part of the military for combat missions, before aviators finally insisted on having their own service. The establishment of an Air force wasn't "forward thinking." It just separated out a segment of the military that was already executing military operations virtually on its own anyway.

The astronaut program is basically in no way similar to that. The mission of a "Space Force" service is not the mission the astronauts working under NASA conduct.

There's not really a good comparison to be made between AF and SF in terms of this discussion point.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Soooo.... you're not going to jump ship from the Navy and change to this new branch of the military?

Probably not, if for no other reason than there is no new branch of the military. The President can’t really just declare a new military service.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

"No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

Quote:

On the same day he touted the "Space Force" to veterans, President Donald Trump's plan to create a sixth military branch hit a roadblock in Congress.
A House-Senate conference committee working on the $716 billion defense budget for fiscal 2019, which begins Oct. 1, left out money to start building the Space Force.

https://www.military.com/...nse-budget-bill.html

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Suffer Well.

Well, shit. So, you're saying all that time and money I spent on developing a taste for Tang has been wasted?

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
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Space Command. It's going to be a combatant command, not a separate branch of the military. Combatant Commands are either geographic or functional and these are the current 10. Space is added today.


This is the order released today:




I'm not surprised this what happened, likely Trump doesn't understand the difference between a Combatant Command and a service branch so Mattis was able to get this done the proper way.

So much hype, so predictably disappointing in delivery.

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Suffer Well.

I don't know much about this stuff. Was this good policy or bad?

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

This is the right way to do it, in my humble opinion. There is no need to create a new branch of the military called the Space Force, at least not now.

Who are we fighting in Space?

edit: Here is a good summary of why this is a good path.

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Suffer Well.

The Space Force will be nothing more than a huge pork barrel project. I'm 100% behind A space program. But the MIC and the politicians in their pocket will bleed the Space Force dry. Especially when they can hide all their pork behind the veil of national security.

You know who's in? Steve Carell and Netflix, that's who.

They are going all out to make a show about the poor saps who have to take this garbled 'vision' and turn it into reality. Still unclear if this is a documentary or comedy.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

A lot of you nasty tormentors made fun of Trump's Space Force fantasy (a few true believers excepted).

Turns out you were right, of course.

"Bowing to bipartisan concerns in Congress, President Trump retreated Tuesday from his plan to create an independent “space force” in the Pentagon, proposing instead to consolidate the military’s space operations and personnel in the Air Force."

https://www.latimes.com/...-20190219-story.html

So, back to pretty much what already exists, basically. Still, nobody got hurt. Not a great deal of money wasted. By Trump standards, this is a stunning success! Congratulations Commander Trump.

Son of bitch! That bastard just destroyed all my Starship Trooper fantasies!!

Now if they can only get rid of the SLS jobs program. Oh who am I kidding, there is too much pork to take that away. Who cares if other companies can already build launchers at a fraction of the cost?

The SLS is a NASA project, not a military project. Near as I can tell, no DoD funds have been allocated to SLS, although my search was rather perfunctory. Also, the SLS is designed to get very large loads into LEO and also to allow deep space missions, while all of the commercial launchers get relatively modest loads into LEO only.

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___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

It's a NASA project, but most of the contractors are traditional defense oriented. The Falcon Heavy has a payload only slightly smaller than the SLS. The Falcon Heavy cost $500 million to develop, the SLS already cost $25 billion and counting and is still under development. The SLS will also cost a lot more per launch, since Falcon Heavy is mostly reusable.

It's a complete joke how much the SLS is spending compared to SpaceX and Blue Origin. Really, the SLS isn't much more than the space shuttle without the shuttle, but it's costing insane amounts of money. It's really a last generation rocket that is costing tens of billions to develop.

And the SLS might not even launch before SpaceX and Blue Origin launch their next generation rockets. And those rockets will completely blow SLS out of the water not only in launch cost but in payload capability. And to top it off, they will cost a fraction of what SLS will to develop.

The SLS is the epitome of government waste.