Tag: Space Force

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Junk Force

space junk, NASA, Space Force, TESLA, space exploration

A Space​.com news story indicates a big problem and a new role for government — or industry.

“The Infra-​Red Calibration Balloon (S73‑7) satellite started its journey into the great unknown after launching on April 10, 1974 through the United States Air Force’s Space Test Program,” writes Meredith Garofalo. “While in orbit, the original plan was for S73‑7 to inflate and take on the role as a calibration target for remote sensing equipment. After this failed to be achieved during deployment, the satellite faded away into the abyss and joined the graveyard of unwanted space junk until it was rediscovered in April.”

It’s a complicated story; the satellite never really worked properly. Which raises the space junk problem.

The biggest polluter is governments. Space agencies. And the corporations contracting to put up satellites. And the military that puts stuff up we know nothing about.

“[A]s more and more satellites head into space,” explains Garofalo, “the task will become even greater to know what exactly is out there and what threats that could pose.”

When Trump boasted of creating the Space Force in 2019, a lot of people scoffed. I didn’t.*Somebody’s got to do the dirty work, and it does look like Space Force personnel see an important role to be filled, that of garbage men in orbital space. Since the more than 20,000 objects in orbit — and their associated random debris — were put there by governments, maybe governments should clean it up. 

The future of space industry could be hampered, should the problem continue to grow — though, in the end, it may be industry that will take over the task. After all, space litter’s more dangerous than most terrestrial “externalities.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Also, in no small part, because ceding outer space to China and Russia seems like a bad idea. 

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies

Up, Up and Away?

Space Force

The new U.S. Space Force wants “flexibility.” It has requested from Congress the ability to purchase and use satellites and other developing technology with agility.

That is, it wants permission to follow an “alternative acquisition system” — as explained in a “23-​page report to Congress from the U.S. Air Force, the current parent of the Space Force,” according to Ed Adamczyk for United Press International. Adamczyk says that “Congress mandated a retooling of the Space Force acquisition system when it created the new branch of the military in December.”

What the new Space Force yearns for certainly looks like off-​budget funding of technological assets. 

The official wording speaks of a reduction in “space portfolio constraints via incremental funding,” which Adamczyk explains as an “expanded ability to pay for space systems without regular oversight or constant requests for congressional approval.” 

That, he writes, “is a constant in the report.”

The point? To “rapidly leverage industry innovation to outpace space threats.” 

While it is popular in ‘paranoid’ circles to warn of ‘one world government’ threats to form a ‘new world order,’ this is transparently a push to effect a breakaway above-​world government that sure would change the balance of world power.

Scurrying further down a long and winding rabbit hole, it might also be a way to legitimize currently unconstitutional military-​industrial complex programs, perhaps part of the black budget Pentagon/​HUD double-​digit unaccounted-​for spending and income. 

Space Force is ambitious. Good. But it craves scant constraint from Congress.

Not to mention the citizens of these earthbound United States. 

Not good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
international affairs national politics & policies too much government

The New Arms Race

Space Force, war, foreign policy,

We who grew up in the time of the Apollo missions are more than aware of the arms-​race angle to the Soviet and American forays into Earth orbit and beyond. 

Now, we must recognize that the space race is no longer mere ornamentation over earthly military competition.

“The United States and China are rapidly building space warfare capabilities,” writes Bill Gertz in the Washington Examiner, “as part of a race to dominate the zone outside Earth’s atmosphere.”

Of course, much of this remains ground support. WHNT News 19 in Alabama quotes the Commander of the U.S. Space and Missile Defense Command at Redstone Arsenal — a Lieutenant General who “will soon become Deputy Commander of the U.S. Space Command in Colorado” — explaining that current space resources must be ever-​ready in support of “the war fighter, the soldier on the ground.”

But the “satellites in space” he refers to, the ones with “very unique capabilities,” are not just about ground support. For when Donald Trump proposed a new Space Force military division last year, he wasn’t blowing smoke.

Billions of future dollars, maybe, but not smoke. 

In the works?

  • “AI for space war to stop anti-​satellite weapons”;
  • Capabilities to treat “Space [a]s a warfighting domain similar to air, land and sea”;
  • Space planes, such as the in-​dev X‑37B;

and much more.

The Chinese are looking for “space superiority,” says American intelligence, and of course “you know what this means,” as Bugs Bunny liked to say.

War?

At least war profits.

Even France is talking about militarizing space.

Brave new world? Or more of the same, just higher up?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Space Force, war, foreign policy,

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts