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Pence announces first steps in establishing 'Space Force'

JacksinPA

JacksinPA

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http://thehill.com/policy/defense/401093-pence-announces-first-steps-in-establishing-space-force

Vice President Pence on Thursday outlined plans to establish President Trump's proposed “Space Force,” a new military branch slated to be established by 2020.

“Now the time has come to write the next great chapter in the history of our armed forces. To prepare for the next battlefield, where America’s best and bravest will be called to deter and defeat a new generation of threats to our people, to our nation," Pence told an audience at the Pentagon alongside Defense Secretary James Mattis.

“The time has come to establish the United States Space Force.”
======================================
It's not entirely clear what this new branch will be doing beyond satellite launches, offensive anti-satellite weaponry & defensive anti-missile systems. But this line sounds ominous:
'The new combatant command would focus on space as a warfighting domain.' I hope they recall that we signed the 1967 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty which prohibits deploying weapons in space. In any event, this is going to be a huge giveaway to the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us to be careful of.
 
oh great; let's militarize space now ..........

we will need to build a wall around the planet & the aliens will pay for it?
 
Contractors must love the hell out of Trump. Not only will he continue to pour astronomical amounts of money into the military, but he will go as far as establishing a whole new branch for them to milk money from.
 
Sure, waste our money! It might be worth it if Trump went up in a spaceship, that went far far away.
 
cuban smokes said:
oh great; let's militarize space now ..........

we will need to build a wall around the planet & the aliens will pay for it?
Click to expand...

Sort of like a Dyson sphere: A Dyson sphere might be, say, the size of Earth's orbit around the sun; we orbit at a distance of 93 million miles (about 150 million km). The website SentientDevelopments describes the Dyson sphere this way: It would consist of a shell of solar collectors (or habitats) around the star.Mar 28, 2017. Also called a ring world, like continuing to expand the ISS until it completely enclosed Earth. You would need to build in complex optical systems to focus sunlight onto the proper areas of the planet below. It would be able to collect incredible amounts of solar energy that could be transmitted to Earth receiving stations via microwave beams. IOW, free energy. No more pollution. Coal a museum piece.
 
****ing POS, no health care, but lets spend money on a ridiculous Space Force,

What a joke this admin is
 
I have my doubts this will come to fruition in any meaningful way.
 
JacksinPA said:
Sort of like a Dyson sphere: A Dyson sphere might be, say, the size of Earth's orbit around the sun; we orbit at a distance of 93 million miles (about 150 million km). The website SentientDevelopments describes the Dyson sphere this way: It would consist of a shell of solar collectors (or habitats) around the star.Mar 28, 2017. Also called a ring world, like continuing to expand the ISS until it completely enclosed Earth. You would need to build in complex optical systems to focus sunlight onto the proper areas of the planet below. It would be able to collect incredible amounts of solar energy that could be transmitted to Earth receiving stations via microwave beams. IOW, free energy. No more pollution. Coal a museum piece.
Click to expand...

build a GIANT mirror array in space with the ability to concentrate the MASSIVE amounts of energy into a weaponized beam, with pin point accuracy

it would be like a giant space 'sun beam' that could incinerate entire cities to a crisp in mere seconds

who needs nukes?
 
cuban smokes said:
build a GIANT mirror array in space with the ability to concentrate the MASSIVE amounts of energy into a weaponized beam, with pin point accuracy

it would be like a giant space 'sun beam' that could incinerate entire cities to a crisp in mere seconds

who needs nukes?
Click to expand...

Non-polluting nuclear energy on any scale desired! I'm sure DARPA has a file on this idea already.
 
Should have listened to the Gipper. We'd have lasers in space by now.
 
JacksinPA said:
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/401093-pence-announces-first-steps-in-establishing-space-force

Vice President Pence on Thursday outlined plans to establish President Trump's proposed “Space Force,” a new military branch slated to be established by 2020.

“Now the time has come to write the next great chapter in the history of our armed forces. To prepare for the next battlefield, where America’s best and bravest will be called to deter and defeat a new generation of threats to our people, to our nation," Pence told an audience at the Pentagon alongside Defense Secretary James Mattis.

“The time has come to establish the United States Space Force.”
======================================
It's not entirely clear what this new branch will be doing beyond satellite launches, offensive anti-satellite weaponry & defensive anti-missile systems. But this line sounds ominous:
'The new combatant command would focus on space as a warfighting domain.' I hope they recall that we signed the 1967 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty which prohibits deploying weapons in space. In any event, this is going to be a huge giveaway to the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned us to be careful of.
Click to expand...

I'm not clear on what the purpose is either. There is a clear need to track satellites and other objects, try to ensure our communications system is resistant, and develop defensive satellite technology -- but I don't know why that can't be done by the Air Force (which already has a division for that). There certainly isn't any need for 'space marines' at this point -- and we con't have any spacecraft that could carry them anyway.

As a side note -- we continue to maintain a sizable stable of astronauts (50-60 was the last count). I question whether that's still necessary, given, again, we have no spacecraft, and the ones in development won't have the capacity or the tempo of the space shuttle program. Seems like we could reduce the number a bit.
 
JacksinPA said:
Sort of like a Dyson sphere: A Dyson sphere might be, say, the size of Earth's orbit around the sun; we orbit at a distance of 93 million miles (about 150 million km). The website SentientDevelopments describes the Dyson sphere this way: It would consist of a shell of solar collectors (or habitats) around the star.Mar 28, 2017. Also called a ring world, like continuing to expand the ISS until it completely enclosed Earth. You would need to build in complex optical systems to focus sunlight onto the proper areas of the planet below. It would be able to collect incredible amounts of solar energy that could be transmitted to Earth receiving stations via microwave beams. IOW, free energy. No more pollution. Coal a museum piece.
Click to expand...

I forget....

Did Dyson bother trying to work out how much material it would take to build such an incredibly huge structure, or did he just sort of speculate that a civ could grab it from asteroid belts and the like? Or did he perhaps leave it to "because future tech"?

If we're talking a radius of 186 million miles, the surface area would be mind-boggling, let alone the volume, let alone the mass. I'd hazard a guess that all the metal material in the solar system off-Earth wouldn't suffice, and regardless of whether it did, we'd completely **** up our own orbit if we mined anywhere near the required mass from nearby planets and/or the asteroid belt. We're flying around a very delicate set of balanced gravity wells, after all.
 
Mr Person said:
I forget....

Did Dyson bother trying to work out how much material it would take to build such an incredibly huge structure, or did he just sort of speculate that a civ could grab it from asteroid belts and the like? Or did he perhaps leave it to "because future tech"?

If we're talking a radius of 186 million miles, the surface area would be mind-boggling, let alone the volume, let alone the mass. I'd hazard a guess that all the metal material in the solar system off-Earth wouldn't suffice, and regardless of whether it did, we'd completely **** up our own orbit if we mined anywhere near the required mass from nearby planets and/or the asteroid belt. We're flying around a very delicate set of balanced gravity wells, after all.
Click to expand...

Who cares what the cost is, as cubansmokes said, we'll make the aliens pay for it. :mrgreen:

Then again, even if you could build it (a massive and costly undertaking of unimaginable proportions) a Dyson sphere would be very costly to defend, simply because any spacecraft can be turned into a WMD depending on how fast it goes.
 
JacksinPA said:
Non-polluting nuclear energy on any scale desired! I'm sure DARPA has a file on this idea already.
Click to expand...

TAE Industries is designing and building a hydrogen boron fusion reactor, which would be Aneutronic fusion. There is also some advances in laser technology to have two laser pulse ignition for hydrogen-boron fusion that does not produce radiation.
 
PoS said:
Who cares what the cost is, as cubansmokes said, we'll make the aliens pay for it. :mrgreen:

Then again, even if you could build it (a massive and costly undertaking of unimaginable proportions) a Dyson sphere would be very costly to defend, simply because any spacecraft can be turned into a WMD depending on how fast it goes.
Click to expand...

True, but the size of the thing would make damage irrelevant to overall output, unless of course we are also (and probably we should assume we are) assuming the existence of super-weapons just about immeasurably beyond our imagination as is the ability to build one of these spheres...
 
RAMOSS said:
TAE Industries is designing and building a hydrogen boron fusion reactor, which would be Aneutronic fusion. There is also some advances in laser technology to have two laser pulse ignition for hydrogen-boron fusion that does not produce radiation.
Click to expand...

Bah, who needs all that fusion thingy when you can launch into space with the "put-put", the old Orion nuclear pulse drive! :mrgreen:

Mr Person said:
True, but the size of the thing would make damage irrelevant to overall output, unless of course we are also (and probably we should assume we are) assuming the existence of super-weapons just about immeasurably beyond our imagination as is the ability to build one of these spheres...
Click to expand...
I think someone famous said that if you have the tech to build a Dyson sphere, you can pretty much control time and space.
 
PoS said:
I think someone famous said that if you have the tech to build a Dyson sphere, you can pretty much control time and space.
Click to expand...

Well, at that point, you might as well say bugger the sphere and instead narrowly trap a star in a loop surrounding its moment of collapse into a black hole and siphon the energy off from that on each pass...
 
PoS said:
Bah, who needs all that fusion thingy when you can launch into space with the "put-put", the old Orion nuclear pulse drive! :mrgreen:


I think someone famous said that if you have the tech to build a Dyson sphere, you can pretty much control time and space.
Click to expand...

Actually the two laser pulse hydrogen boron fusion reaction would be perfect for that
 
Skeptic Bob said:
I have my doubts this will come to fruition in any meaningful way.
Click to expand...

I'm with you.

I don't see how this is going to work out, nor how to pay for all that, remembering that spaceflight systems are at least 10x to 100x over aircraft flight systems.

And the dam country is $21T in debt. GDP growth is only going to cover so much, and this seems beyond that by miles (mega bucks?)

Further, I'm not sure there's a need for it.
Yes, sure, China is likely going the military space route, heck they've already tested a satellite intercept and kill system (polluting LEO with yet more unneeded debris), but if you can take out the launch sites, the opposition won't get the gear in orbit, would they?

Besides, I think a ground based laser system would work well against satellites, and probably be cheaper in the end.
 
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If these "Illegal" Space Aliens aren't white or Christian...They aren't getting in
 
dcsports said:
I'm not clear on what the purpose is either. There is a clear need to track satellites and other objects, try to ensure our communications system is resistant, and develop defensive satellite technology -- but I don't know why that can't be done by the Air Force (which already has a division for that). There certainly isn't any need for 'space marines' at this point -- and we con't have any spacecraft that could carry them anyway.

As a side note -- we continue to maintain a sizable stable of astronauts (50-60 was the last count). I question whether that's still necessary, given, again, we have no spacecraft, and the ones in development won't have the capacity or the tempo of the space shuttle program. Seems like we could reduce the number a bit.
Click to expand...

Elon Musk at SpaceX is working on that.
 
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