
Congress Wants a New U.S. Military Branch, a ‘Space Corps’ - ourmandave
http://fortune.com/2017/07/09/military-space-corps/
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pjc50
[https://www.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm](https://www.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm) :
existing treaties against the further militarisation of space.

Once the US militarises space, Russia, China and arguably India will feel they
have to as well. We cannot, after all, allow a missile gap.

~~~
PeterisP
The published news doesn't involve starting to do anything new in space or
breaking these treaties.

Space is relevant to military use even without putting weapons _in_ space as
we've agreed not to do.

This is just organizing these things in a separate branch of the military, in
the same way that Russians/USSR have always done - the existence of Russian
Space Forces is within the bounds of these treaties, and the same would be for
USA.

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jonahrd
“If I had more money,” Wilson said, “I would put it into lethality, not
bureaucracy.”

What a terrifying quotation

~~~
godzillabrennus
What a terrifying job.

~~~
andrewflnr
Specifically, his job is to be terrifying. His job is to be lethal, so this
quote translates to "I want to do well at my job". You can argue that it's a
job that shouldn't exist but, while this may not be what GP intended, it's
unreasonable to ask that he do it badly (unless he's sabotaging it, which he
still wouldn't state publicly).

~~~
phyller
I'm sure you have no ill intent, but Heather Wilson, the Secretary of the Air
Force who made that statement, is female. It's interesting that it is so
natural to assume that someone whose job it is to be "lethal" would be a male,
but in this day and age, especially in the air force, that's not the case. Not
really relevant, but I have some connections to the Air Force and people seem
generally happy that she is the Secretary of the Air Force (the civilian
leadership of the Air Force) because she was an Air Force officer, academy
grad, seems smart, and she has political experience.

~~~
andrewflnr
Oh, woops. I sort of skimmed past the first names, but I should have known to
check. It's interesting that you say "especially in the air force", because I
had sort of gotten that impression, but wasn't sure if it was real.

------
ivanbakel
It's not an appealing thought to imagine that we'd start consistent space
travel without first dealing with the problems of war on our own planet. This
kind of policy is putting our worst collective foot forward.

~~~
adventured
> without first dealing with the problems of war on our own planet

Problems of food & water security. Problems of air pollution. Problems of
equality. Problems of disease. Problems of enough toys at Christmas. You could
always insert a new problem on Earth - of strictly subjective seriousness - to
use to prevent that leap. Conceptually it's the: eventually you have to
launch, problem. There will never be a shortage of serious problems to solve
on this planet.

~~~
geofft
> _Conceptually it 's the: eventually you have to launch, problem._

Why do you have to launch?

If we _can 't_ solve our serious problems on Earth, what do we expect to gain
by going into space?

~~~
friedman23
Do you honestly believe we will achieve post scarcity society without leaving
Earth?

~~~
vacri
How is having a small dependent colony of tunnel-dwellers on Mars going to
give us a post-scarcity society?

~~~
friedman23
Mars has nothing to do with it. We simply do not have enough resources on this
planet to provide everyone with everything they desire without destroying the
planet in the process..

~~~
geofft
And do we have the resources on two planets to provide everyone with
everything they desire? Or ten, or a hundred?

If you know what the bound is on the resources needed to satisfy people's
desires, and that's a finite number of planets greater than one, sure. But if
you don't have a bound, it's going to be far more effective to adjust people's
desires. (And if you do have a bound, and it's slightly greater than one, it
may _still_ be more efficient to adjust people's desires to get it to less
than one than to expend the engineering work needed to build a multi-planet
civilization.)

~~~
friedman23
>And do we have the resources on two planets to provide everyone with
everything they desire? Or ten, or a hundred?

Yes we do because human growth is not exponential and there are limitless
resources in space.

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Caveman_Coder
It will primarily be used to funnel tax dollars to a few mega corps (Raytheon,
Boeing, General Dynamics, ect...) that will lobby the hell out of Congress.
Its not about anything else really, just a bunch of corps looking for their
next government contract.

------
Zorlag
Wasn't space warfare outlawed by an international agreement?

~~~
krastanov
The "Space Corps" idea is more about reorganizing who takes care of GPS and
other space assets, not about putting weapons in space. It seems the main
argument against it is that the bureaucratic reshuffling does not serve much
of a practical purpose.

------
brennankreiman
Though imagine if we spend what we did on the F-35 on space
missions/exploration.

~~~
jlennon99
Imagine if we stopped sending money to Israel for weapons and instead spent it
on space missions.

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ozzmotik
you know, I'm probably wrong about this, but I was pretty sure that was what
the SMDC ([https://smdc.army.mil](https://smdc.army.mil)) was for.

------
ridgeguy
Guess they need a customer for the SLS (Senate Launch System).

------
nickhalfasleep
Tomorrow's headline: Oil discovered on Mars!

~~~
craigvn
We would have people on Mars by the end of the year if that were the case!

------
LarryPage
When you can't spend money fast enough

------
vacri
Good to see the 'fiscal conservative' party is really serious about being
fiscally conservative.

------
MichaelBurge
It makes sense: The Chinese could easily cause nationwide trouble by shooting
down US satellites used for GPS and internet.

Unfortunately, the military is run so inefficiently I tend to say "no" to any
idea that gives them more money.

Wikipedia says there's 1.3 million active personnel. They could probably cut
that to 100k and move the rest into reserve, and free up a lot of money for
the space wars.

~~~
EpicEng
We have > 300k members deployed outside the US alone, so I don't think we
could trim down to < 10% of what we have today. You're talking about more than
a trimming; this would represent a major shift in US foreign policy (ignoring
the fact that such a proposal wouldn't get a single vote and whoever proposed
it would likely lose their next election.)

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hungerstrike
We might already have one.

Hacker Gary McKinnon 'claims that while going through U.S. Navy files he also
stumbled upon files detailing “fleet-to-fleet” cargo transfer records of “off-
world” space stations manned by “non-terrestrial officers” of the U.S.
military. He also accessed a file listing 30 “non-terrestrial officers” and
their ranks.' \- [http://www.inquisitr.com/2619406/hacker-gary-mckinnon-may-
ha...](http://www.inquisitr.com/2619406/hacker-gary-mckinnon-may-have-found-
evidence-nasa-edits-out-alien-ufos-from-space-images-video/)

~~~
hungerstrike
Jeez, I didn't say I believed the guy. Tough crowd here.

