Trump said this week he will establish a sixth branch of the military named the “Space Force,” pending budgetary approval from the U.S. Congress. The idea could require the U.S. to withdraw from the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction but not conventional arms in space.
Russia has pledged severe repercussions if President Donald Trump’s order to set up a new, space-oriented military branch violates a treaty banning nuclear weapons in the cosmos.
Viktor Bondarev, head of the Committee on Defense and Security of Russia's upper parliamentary house, told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency he hoped “there’s still remnants of common sense in the American political elite” that would compel the U.S. to remain in the pact.
Sounds like something that could be fixed with a crackdown on corruption then. Creating/spinning off a whole new branch because another branch is taking up too much pork is retarded.
Jason Gray
4D chess
Jose James
This makes even more sweet. Go Space Force, go Trump.
Wyatt Green
I guess this is why they were so desperate to influence the election in favour of Bernie sanders. He would have spent all the US defense and NASA budget on free panera bread for tweenagers.
Daniel Reyes
lel I know this is probably missing words and low-effort but it's retarded-sounding enough to be a falseflag
Owen Ward
Have you been mistaken for a man user?
Grayson Wood
as if anyone who remembers Gary McKinnon has any illusions about whether this is PR or not.
Has of course nothing to do with a certain leaders associates investing in satellite coverage…yep, let's keep talking about Space Force. pew, pew, pew.
Sebastian Morgan
Whats so wrong with having good satellite coverage?
Oliver Morgan
Nothing. There's also nothing wrong with stockpiling weapons. What you do with them on the other hand…
Chase Gomez
As a Britcigarette myself I think its nice that the US lets us plebs use their GPS satellites. Not that they can really stop me. But still I appreciate it.
Josiah Sanders
This should be Trump's way of publicising the space force the U.S. government already has. Flying triangles, cigar-shaped vehicles, reverse-engineered craft, if he makes this stuff public it will be the greatest day ever.
I love how this writer of this article sees "separate but equal" used and spoke about racism in the 2nd half of the whole article relating to the Space Force.
Gavin Davis
Why? aliens coming or corporate interest? We already have Air Force for air defense.
Juan Cook
oh thank god… you mean i can finally steal a ship and escape this shit world?
I dont want a ww3 in space. I want boots on the fucking ground.
Isaiah Morales
And your too stupid and retarded to search the internet to see if it's for real.
Reality and you being estranged that is.
William Cook
Nobody has yet militarized space. Nobody owns it. Sure, there are treaties now that no country can claim anything in space, and when we signed them we weren't ready. That's why they existed, we (USA) wanted to focus on an Earth war to stay current or ahead of Russia in the game that mattered - for Earth.
But now that we only beat up shit countries, it's time to take the monopoly. If we just expend the effort now to get a SMALL military force into orbit – we have won. Sure, expanding people into space may be 100 or 200 years out…. maybe 50, who is to say? But either way, if we already have a small force out there, we (the USA) get to be the only ones in history that ever will. Anyone else tries to shoot up a rival military space station we shoot it down before it gets into place. That's what having a small army in orbit gives us now: the future monopoly.
Sure some commies will think it's bad "Why just the USA get to do it?" but think about it further… No other countries colonizing space, no super expensive space wars, which are devastating to expansion in space. At least not until we settle Mars enough that they are completely self-sufficient and we try to raise the tax on their tea…. And by then, Humanity has already won.
I welcome the Space Force.
Lincoln Williams
It's not like the treaty about sharing non-earth resources was going to hold up after space travel became convenient.
Privatization of resources in space was inevitable while powerful corporations control entire economics and nations.
The way I'm sure it will work is everything will become owned by the military, USA govt. We will contract work and scientists, whatever, just like we do today with government contracting. Raytheon designs the missile, but the government owns it and can fire it.
It's unlikely that it's ever going to be financially viable to mine asteroids and ship the contents back to Earth. It would cost several times the worth of a solid gold asteroid to get it back to Earth.
An economy and thus private businesses only become a viable thing once Mars or a large space station becomes populated, can produce and also sell goods within its own system. So a space->space economy or a space->mars economy.
It will take a bit, for example, to get a base setup on mars enough that a full team can live there to begin mining and refining materials to construct additional parts of the base.
None of this is "close," but this is the start of something which will be seen as a glorious and necessary step several centuries down the line.
Aiden Morgan
I meant mars -> mars, not space -> mars
Owen Foster
So really the point is until a non-profit entity (like the USA govt) spends a HUGE initial investment to setup infrastructure and start an economy, private space ownership isn't useful. A company can own things, but unless there's a local economy to exchange goods the shipping cost is prohibitive.
Aiden Roberts
Sending a rocket to outer space to collect rocks and bring them back to earth is incredibly cheap actually. The hard part is landing the rocket without losing/deteriorating the goods. There's an asteroid with ~40 trillion dollars worth of platinum floating out in space. If you brought a rocket ship out to space and brought back a freezer-sized chunk of said platinum/slowly sold it into the world markets, you would have paid for the space flight about 50 times over.
If you're interested, a bit old but was an economical assessment. Also you have to consider that the market flood that would happen if a 15 ton platinum asteroid became available. The price would tank with that kind of availability.
Another thing to consider is getting it back. Unlike a space shuttle which can float, a big rock can't, even inside a space shuttle. And if you hit land could be drastic problems worldwide.
Also there is immense risk and it's a slow investment, but the reality is because of physics we can't just bring a huge platnium back to Earth… we can safely bring what can fit in a shuttle, sure, but theres no ROI that way.
You may disagree, but I just don't think it will be practical any time soon.
Robert Wright
alien disclosure when
Adrian Jenkins
I want to live a endless life of sex and danger I want to be a space force ranger!