Could you please resist this kind of chest poking (“you”) here?
Edit: Thanks. There's a point here but it's obscured by generic inflammation. Less of that and more substance will help these conversations be more informative.
The agreement with Iran and the Paris Accord were not submitted to Congress, and so did not have the weight of treaties. TTIP negotiations have been suspended and it has not been ratified. Like the president, Secretary Clinton publically opposed it during the presidential campaign. Trump has expressed an interest in renegotiating NAFTA but it's still in place.
Well, we don't care about your (deliberate?) ignorance. The difference matters to us.
In the case of Paris, the agreement was signed by someone who did not have the authority to bind the US to the agreement. If you felt that we are breaking our agreement, well, I can understand your disappointment, but the problem was your understanding of the situation, not the US's "not respecting agreements". (When someone "makes a commitment" for your country, who does not have that authority, do you want to be bound by it?)
Would you feel the same if it were President Trump who signed an accord, say, to subsidize greater greenhouse gas emmisions, and President Warren withdrew from it?
Most countries would not be signatories of such an accord, so there would be little to withdraw from.
Paris was a hard-fought compromise, involving concessions from all involved. A difficult negotiation, achieved with great effort and time investment, and shattered to pieces in two minutes.
- TTIP : did not sign the treaty, out of negotiation
- NAFTA : still in treaty, all three parties want changes and negotiating
- Paris accord : not a treaty
Having said that. US is the sole super power and it gets to make the rules. Given the domestic politics and economic realities the mid-west and specifically the steel belt, now the rust belt gets to decide the Presidency in the near-future. Populism is the new norm, no matter what the Coastal Elites feel or think!
Considering the US has the worlds largest economy,the worlds largest military and funds most major global organizations, its safe to say they can change any international treaty they want.
Indeed. And by leading with that example, the US will find itself tasting its own medicine when (not if) power ratios change.
Same thing happened with cold war: once the US abused russia's weakness to increse its area of influence, all hope of moving to a fairer international order vanished. Russia remembers that.
The US has been relatively mild in abusing its power, compared to other historical powers, but is guilty of a very big crime: the undermining of the nascent international order.
It will come in due time, but it has been unnecessarily delayed.
No. The Outer Space Treaty forbids WMDs in orbit, but conventional weapons are fine. If the US decided to annex the Moon or put nukes into orbit, that'd be a violation.
(Incidentally, Soyuz capsules already carry firearms into space, in case of bears/wolves/etc. at the landing site.)
No. This would move parts of the military that already do space stuff (primarily Air Force) into their own branch. The OST doesn't ban all military things in space (GPS constellation for example, is totally legal). The OST does ban nuclear weapons and 'boots on the ground' when it comes to certain extraterrestrial environs. But again, despite the name this isn't a Space Marine type organization that is being proposed. Just a reorg of existing capabilities.
Given its size and operating specs I'd say it's a space drone designed for superiority in the orbital range. It enables the Air Force to attack and defend at very high altitudes against otherwise unreachable targets and threats. Or, at least now, since it doesn't appear to carry or need any weapons systems, it can tow satellites out of orbit (for security reasons, American or foreign) or run very specific rescue missions.
My guess is that this is a power play - create a new sub-agency of the DoD, move some projects from existing agencies (railguns and DEWs from the Navy perhaps), classify everything, and throw together some patriotically-themed video brochures for Congressional committees.
It's a distraction from the fact that Michael Cohen might cooperate with Mueller, Paul Manafort is currently in prison, and it just became public that Roger Stone had another meeting with the Russians.
Does the President's authority as Commander in Chief extend to creating a new branch of the armed forces? The US Air Force was created by an act of Congress (the National Security Act of 1947), not by a Presidential order.
Sort-of, the National Security Act of 1947 created the Department of the Air Force[0]. I've seen previous articles stating that the "Space Force" would become a sixth branch, but it would fall under the purview of the Department of the Air Force. This is similar to the Navy / Marine Corps arrangement wherein the USMC is an independent branch, but under Department of the Navy.
This directive moves the existing space responsibilities of the USAF (GPS, etc) into its own department so it does not obscure the department's budget and compete with other USAF priorities. You could just as easily interpret the reorg as a clarification of military budgeting and slimming down of the Air Force's appetite.
When there's a nebulous and expensive operation (USAF space operations employs nearly 2x the people that NASA does) it's better for it to exist independently with its own responsibilities than to grow under the cover of an even larger traditional entity.
Why not split off the Air Force Global Strike Command (long range nuclear bomber and ICBMs), or the Army Corps of Engineers, or the Navy's submarine operations?
The answer is that what defines "a nebulous and expensive operation" is incredibly vague and if we start splitting all large military operations into their own branches we'd just end up with even more administrative overhead and the designation of separate services would lose distinction.
The big difference here is that Space Force sounds cool.
ICBMS, the Corps of Engineers, and submarines have well-defined roles in the American military. Spacecraft, as of yet, do not. If you want surveillance, we have the NRO.
We already have the Air Force Space Command, which is the mission that The Space Force is going to take over. I'd say what they'll be doing is about a well defined as any other forces role.
We don't know what a major war in orbit will look like, but we don't know what a major war against modern naval powers would look like either.
The great-grandparent was providing a justification for splitting space operations off of AFSC, as its mission is "vague and nebulous" and manages to eat up money and personnel in an opaque manner.
You countered that other areas of the military could also be "vague and nebulous" and could be split off as well.
I put forth that the other areas you mentioned have well-defined purposes, but spacecraft do not.
First: now you have mentioned that we already have the AFSC. Doesn't this seem a bit circular to you?
Second, AFSC already operates satellites, including the GPS constellation. If the Space Command inherits ownership of those satellites it will indeed be "operating spacecraft" without any real or described grandiosity.
>now you have mentioned that we already have the AFSC. Doesn't this seem a bit circular to you?
I said it's hard to define what nebulous and expensive means. I don't think AFSC's mission isn't anymore nebulous and expensive than a whole host of other commands.
>operating spacecraft
Operating spacecraft is indeed a grandiose term for maintaining satellites.
You've gone from claiming that operating spacecraft doesn't fit what the Space Force would do (in your grandparent comment, before you edited it) to claiming that it's not relevant because they're only operating one spacecraft. I'm fairly certain you're not arguing in good faith, especially given the heavy editing of the grandparent comment after I replied to you.
I edited that before I saw that you responded. I said that operating military spacecraft is a grandiose description of what their mission is. It makes it sound like they have a fleet of spaceships fighting other enemy spaceships.
I never said it doesn't fit what they would do. I said it's not what they would do.
I also never said operating one spacecraft wasn't relevant.
I said that operating spacecraft is a grandiose and downright pretentious way to describe the mission of an agency with one remote controlled, scaled down space shuttle, testbed laboratory and some GPS satellites. And it is.
The sentence that immediately precedes that quote is important: “I strongly urge Congress to reconsider the proposal of a separate service Space Corps,”
Mattis was talking about a separate service space corps, not about a space corps that falls under a preexisting service.
That is exactly what the current action does. It would operate under the Department of the Air Force (the way the Marines do with the Department of the Navy), but it would still be a separate service.
The bill that Mattis was opposing during that comment would have also housed The Space Force as a separate service under the Department of the Air Force exactly the same as the current action--he was speaking out against that.
If a "space base" were built in orbit, it would create some level of demand for McDonald's and other aggressive retail operations to supply. This could be the next step in civilian/retail expansion into orbit.
The Air Force requested a top-line budget of $120.4 billion
Air Force spends a lot of money on "space".
The budget supports the goal of maintaining assured access to space and viability in contested and increasingly congested environments by continuing the block buys of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency System satellite vehicles 5 and 6 and Space Based Infrared System 5 and 6; and funding five Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle launch services, three of which are competitive launch opportunities.
Setting aside the constant drama surrounding Trump, to me this seems to have a significant positive potential.
See reference [1] below to see how many people are currently in space. I would definitely not call that a "force". A more permanent presence in space for more people would necessitate a lot more scientific research that will likely have non-military benefits (like GPS research did in the past). There is so much for us to learn which is good for humanity and inspiring for young people.
The excitement around space might make it easier to get additional funding approved. According to this [2] the Army, Navy, and Air Force budgets for 2016 weren't too far off from each other. It will be interesting to see at what level the funding will fall for this "separate but equal" department.
According to this [3] the President has announced job one is to declutter space to avoid collisions and spacecraft breakups, which all spacefaring countries will benefit from.
As much as I admire Elon Musk, it would be nice to have a government presence in space for rescue missions, etc. For anyone that has played too many hours of Civilization IV, you might enjoy Baba Yetu performed by the United States Navy Band [4]. The rescue force I would envision would be like the small clip at 2m00s to 2m20s in that youtube video, except in space.
Lots of people talk about things like 'basic income' to protect us when machines watch what we do and then take over our jobs. I would prefer to push that day out a little bit by instead allocating money to us doing totally brand new things, like this in space, that excites me and makes me want to spring out of bed in the morning!
This is a symptom of an underlying mental illness in our modern world in which every inch of earth, every exploitable human (especially the women), and every pure and beautiful thing, now extended to the rest of the universe, are to be treated as subjects of domination and conquest, to be exploited, despoiled, bombed, conquered, raped and enslaved. It's absolutely and unreservedly vile, disgusting, and fucking tragic.
What you described is basic human nature. It has been with us since the dawn of our species and will be with us until we blink out of existence. The best we can do is try to incentivize the appreciation and preservation of beauty and equality. Because the minute it is in our own best interest to do otherwise, we will revert to our baser instincts.
And the "basic human nature" argument is absolutely false, although it's a popular narrative, and I would suggest that you go and do some research on anthropology and perhaps visit some countries that are not the United States and see how they do things there. Believe it or not the conquest/domination mindset is relatively new, and it's neither inevitable nor is it natural. You don't act like that towards your friends and neighbors, do you? Just steal anything that isn't nailed down? Most people don't. You've been sold a bill of goods, by a small set of sociopathic individuals who want to justify their criminal behavior.
Most "groups" of people have behaved horrendously toward other "groups" of people, animals, natural resources, etc. I'm not sure how you can possibly look at any type of human history and think otherwise, the evidence is just too overwhelming. And, this may not just be human nature but the natural progression of higher order mental processing and group dynamics as evidenced by tribes of primates assembling war parties and killing and eating their rival primate tribes.
And which countries outside of the US would you suggest I look for this peaceful utopia? Somewhere in Asia, Africa, or South America? I'm not sure Australia is the best example. And please don't suggest socialist Europe, who have committed some of the worst atrocities known to man in the very recent past.
It is extremely naive to think that the majority of society's aggressive tendancies can be blamed on a handful of ruthless leaders or sociopaths. If that were the case, this would be a simple problem to solve. The much tougher truth is that we each have a piece of this inside of us.
We've become so used to a complete lack of anything remotely resembling morality from our leaders that we've started to believe that good behavior is literally impossible. Utopian. It is not. To ask for a higher standard than abject failure is not utopian. It's no more than I would ask of any 6th grader. Sociopathic behavior is learned and it can be unlearned.
waxing poetic much. It’s separating space operations of the USAF into it’s own branch. Trump isn’t trying to “rape and enslave” the moon. I think you might be projecting.
The outer space treaty of 1967, which the United States signed, states that "the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all humankind;
outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;
outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;
States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner;
the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes;
Astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of humankind;
States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental activities;
States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects"
Looks like we're throwing all that out the window in favor of a new arms race. Only now we're spreading the fun to other planets too. This is a prelude to making claims on extraterrestrial bodies and then fighting wars over them; don't be naive.
Not sure what part of that prohibits the space force. I don't think I'm being naive, I think you are being ignorant. You're a fool if you think we're going to be fighting wars on other planets within 100 years. Also, if we have any plans of extracting resources from space there is no future where there aren't claims made on extraterrestrial bodies. Thinking that space bodies shouldn't be able to be owned is antiquated thinking.
So you went from saying I'm crazy for thinking we're going to militarize space, to saying that there's really no option but to militarize space, all in a single paragraph.
No I went from your insane raving about the raping and enslaving of space rocks, to saying that space commercialization is an eventuality and it's part of the government's job to protect property rights.
We are going to have a space capable military, but that doesn't mean we are 'militarizing space'. We aren't putting nukes in geostationary orbit above China or building rail-guns on the moon.
In what possible universe is not wanting to put weapons in space enough to make me an insane raving lunatic? Take a step back man! The future is not written yet. We have a choice. We always have a choice. We can stop the militarization of space now, right now, before it even gets started. Do you honestly think that our current national governments can be trusted with the kind of power you get by having weapons in space? Are you familiar at all with the 20th century?
We already have weapons in space! You are misusing the term militarization of space. An ICBM can travel across the world and blow up a city on the other side of the planet. Whatever line you are afraid of crossing, we've already crossed it.
And we absolutely need to get rid of them right away. We don't need "American dominance in space". We need denuclearization now, and no further escalation.
In a sane world, all the worlds standing armies would be disbanded completely, leaving only local police forces, coast guards and the like. I don't see that happening during our lifetimes but that's the goal we need to keep in mind.
Not so. You have to understand how your enemy thinks. And trump thinks just like Francisco Pizarro, or napoleon, or Julius Caesar, or Putin. He sees the world in terms of power, domination, control. It's right there in every phrase he speaks. I think the big disconnect is that people don't really notice it because they've never considered that that's not the only way to see the world.
By the way, slowly nudging a large asteroid towards collision with your least favorite country is much cheaper than building hundreds of icbms. That would be possible with non-exotic technology and it's an order of magnitude more destructive than nuclear weapons.
There’s nothing in Trumps exec. order about a space force[1]. It’s not clear if Trump was speaking extemporaneously about something they aren’t ready to pull the trigger on or what.
"I'm gonna build the biggest Dyson Wall to keep those loser space aliens out! Believe me, space aliens are bad hombres; they poop out of their mouths and eat our cars at 3am. Those smelly green runts ate my golf cart in the middle of my game! Most come from total sh&thole planets, unbelievable! #MakeEarthGreatAgain!
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadI remember this (or something similar) being proposed a few times over the last couple of decades.
"Let's just put some lasers up there"
Lasers, and a lot of other things as well.
Edit: removed chest poking.
Edit: Thanks. There's a point here but it's obscured by generic inflammation. Less of that and more substance will help these conversations be more informative.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
These all check:
- iran
- TTIP
- NAFTA
- Paris accord
And more
In the case of Paris, the agreement was signed by someone who did not have the authority to bind the US to the agreement. If you felt that we are breaking our agreement, well, I can understand your disappointment, but the problem was your understanding of the situation, not the US's "not respecting agreements". (When someone "makes a commitment" for your country, who does not have that authority, do you want to be bound by it?)
Paris was a hard-fought compromise, involving concessions from all involved. A difficult negotiation, achieved with great effort and time investment, and shattered to pieces in two minutes.
- TTIP : did not sign the treaty, out of negotiation
- NAFTA : still in treaty, all three parties want changes and negotiating
- Paris accord : not a treaty
Having said that. US is the sole super power and it gets to make the rules. Given the domestic politics and economic realities the mid-west and specifically the steel belt, now the rust belt gets to decide the Presidency in the near-future. Populism is the new norm, no matter what the Coastal Elites feel or think!
Same thing happened with cold war: once the US abused russia's weakness to increse its area of influence, all hope of moving to a fairer international order vanished. Russia remembers that.
The US has been relatively mild in abusing its power, compared to other historical powers, but is guilty of a very big crime: the undermining of the nascent international order.
It will come in due time, but it has been unnecessarily delayed.
(Incidentally, Soyuz capsules already carry firearms into space, in case of bears/wolves/etc. at the landing site.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_3#On-board_gun
I have always been curious what boeing X37 does?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force#Histor...
"I believe it is premature to add additional organization and administrative tail to the department at a time I am trying to reduce overhead."
When there's a nebulous and expensive operation (USAF space operations employs nearly 2x the people that NASA does) it's better for it to exist independently with its own responsibilities than to grow under the cover of an even larger traditional entity.
The answer is that what defines "a nebulous and expensive operation" is incredibly vague and if we start splitting all large military operations into their own branches we'd just end up with even more administrative overhead and the designation of separate services would lose distinction.
The big difference here is that Space Force sounds cool.
We don't know what a major war in orbit will look like, but we don't know what a major war against modern naval powers would look like either.
You countered that other areas of the military could also be "vague and nebulous" and could be split off as well.
I put forth that the other areas you mentioned have well-defined purposes, but spacecraft do not.
First: now you have mentioned that we already have the AFSC. Doesn't this seem a bit circular to you?
Second, AFSC already operates satellites, including the GPS constellation. If the Space Command inherits ownership of those satellites it will indeed be "operating spacecraft" without any real or described grandiosity.
I said it's hard to define what nebulous and expensive means. I don't think AFSC's mission isn't anymore nebulous and expensive than a whole host of other commands.
>operating spacecraft
Operating spacecraft is indeed a grandiose term for maintaining satellites.
I never said it doesn't fit what they would do. I said it's not what they would do. I also never said operating one spacecraft wasn't relevant.
I said that operating spacecraft is a grandiose and downright pretentious way to describe the mission of an agency with one remote controlled, scaled down space shuttle, testbed laboratory and some GPS satellites. And it is.
Mattis was talking about a separate service space corps, not about a space corps that falls under a preexisting service.
Source: http://thehill.com/policy/defense/341650-mattis-opposes-spac...
That is exactly what the current action does. It would operate under the Department of the Air Force (the way the Marines do with the Department of the Navy), but it would still be a separate service.
The bill that Mattis was opposing during that comment would have also housed The Space Force as a separate service under the Department of the Air Force exactly the same as the current action--he was speaking out against that.
Air Force spends a lot of money on "space".
The budget supports the goal of maintaining assured access to space and viability in contested and increasingly congested environments by continuing the block buys of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency System satellite vehicles 5 and 6 and Space Based Infrared System 5 and 6; and funding five Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle launch services, three of which are competitive launch opportunities.
http://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/652961/af-pre...
See reference [1] below to see how many people are currently in space. I would definitely not call that a "force". A more permanent presence in space for more people would necessitate a lot more scientific research that will likely have non-military benefits (like GPS research did in the past). There is so much for us to learn which is good for humanity and inspiring for young people.
The excitement around space might make it easier to get additional funding approved. According to this [2] the Army, Navy, and Air Force budgets for 2016 weren't too far off from each other. It will be interesting to see at what level the funding will fall for this "separate but equal" department.
According to this [3] the President has announced job one is to declutter space to avoid collisions and spacecraft breakups, which all spacefaring countries will benefit from.
As much as I admire Elon Musk, it would be nice to have a government presence in space for rescue missions, etc. For anyone that has played too many hours of Civilization IV, you might enjoy Baba Yetu performed by the United States Navy Band [4]. The rescue force I would envision would be like the small clip at 2m00s to 2m20s in that youtube video, except in space.
Lots of people talk about things like 'basic income' to protect us when machines watch what we do and then take over our jobs. I would prefer to push that day out a little bit by instead allocating money to us doing totally brand new things, like this in space, that excites me and makes me want to spring out of bed in the morning!
[1] https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
[3] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/trump-space-force-1.471101...
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKWQQQjAEBU
And which countries outside of the US would you suggest I look for this peaceful utopia? Somewhere in Asia, Africa, or South America? I'm not sure Australia is the best example. And please don't suggest socialist Europe, who have committed some of the worst atrocities known to man in the very recent past.
It is extremely naive to think that the majority of society's aggressive tendancies can be blamed on a handful of ruthless leaders or sociopaths. If that were the case, this would be a simple problem to solve. The much tougher truth is that we each have a piece of this inside of us.
Looks like we're throwing all that out the window in favor of a new arms race. Only now we're spreading the fun to other planets too. This is a prelude to making claims on extraterrestrial bodies and then fighting wars over them; don't be naive.
We are going to have a space capable military, but that doesn't mean we are 'militarizing space'. We aren't putting nukes in geostationary orbit above China or building rail-guns on the moon.
1. https://twitter.com/AaronMehta/status/1008786783436451840
Divorce your politics from reality:
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/america-needs-a-u-s-space-c...