Musk endorses Trump’s Space Force proposal
In a long hour long interview (which you can listen to at the link), Elon Musk endorsed President Trump’s proposal to create a Space Force.
Elon Musk sees a new branch of the U.S. Armed Forces as “obvious” as Americans travel far off the planet. “It’s basically defense in space. And then I think also it could be pretty helpful for maybe expanding our civilization,” Musk told Kara Swisher on a new episode of Recode Decode. “I do think it will become obvious over time that a Space Force is a sensible thing to do.”
Donald Trump pitched the new military operation this year, and hopes to have it running by 2020, bringing the military into conversation with space leaders like NASA and Musk’s SpaceX. It would sit alongside branches like the Army and the Air Force.
Musk described the agency as similar to the Air Force, something he said was criticized as unnecessary when air wars were managed by the Army but which is now a specialized division. “And people today may not realize back then it was wildly penned as a ridiculous thing to create the Air Force, but now everyone’s like, ‘Obviously you should have an Air Force,’” Musk said. “And I think it’s gonna become obvious that we should have a Space Force, too.”
I don’t have time now to listen to the hour-plus-long interview, but it appears Musk talked about other things of interest, making worth one’s time.
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In a long hour long interview (which you can listen to at the link), Elon Musk endorsed President Trump’s proposal to create a Space Force.
Elon Musk sees a new branch of the U.S. Armed Forces as “obvious” as Americans travel far off the planet. “It’s basically defense in space. And then I think also it could be pretty helpful for maybe expanding our civilization,” Musk told Kara Swisher on a new episode of Recode Decode. “I do think it will become obvious over time that a Space Force is a sensible thing to do.”
Donald Trump pitched the new military operation this year, and hopes to have it running by 2020, bringing the military into conversation with space leaders like NASA and Musk’s SpaceX. It would sit alongside branches like the Army and the Air Force.
Musk described the agency as similar to the Air Force, something he said was criticized as unnecessary when air wars were managed by the Army but which is now a specialized division. “And people today may not realize back then it was wildly penned as a ridiculous thing to create the Air Force, but now everyone’s like, ‘Obviously you should have an Air Force,’” Musk said. “And I think it’s gonna become obvious that we should have a Space Force, too.”
I don’t have time now to listen to the hour-plus-long interview, but it appears Musk talked about other things of interest, making worth one’s time.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
They posted a transcript that is much faster to read than listen…
https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053424/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-boring-company-self-driving-cars-saudi-twitter-kara-swisher-decode-podcast
Well my nephew will be graduating high school in a couple of years so will he be able to stand guard at the International Space Station after eight weeks in Paris Island?
BAWAWAWA
This is just about funneling more money into Musk’s pocket in exchange for hype and c.g movies?
Do we actually have any evidence other than his say-so that his low budget entertainment company actually sent anything into space? Because people never lie for money, right?
This is a shallow interview, part of today’s chit-chat journalism. The full transcript is better than the “edited” version present by the interviewer. She didn’t like what Musk said about journalists knocking off the lying and doing their jobs.
Jim Roberts blurted:
“This is just about funneling more money into Musk’s pocket in exchange for hype and c.g movies?”
“Do we actually have any evidence other than his say-so that his low budget entertainment company actually sent anything into space? Because people never lie for money, right?”
So, many deliveries to the ISS, needed for its functioning, have *not* been accomplished using Falcon 9 rockets???? Those launches that displayed the plumes of Falcon 9 first and second stages to all of the LA basin in sunset launches over the Pacific as they put satellites into polar orbits never happened????
Do you believe that 8 million people in the LA Basin can be bribed successfully, when many are still poorly off afterward????
Have you been skipping your meds????
Tom, You have to understand, there is no ISS, it’s all CGI and Hollywood sound stage….
Let me add two comments
1) Nothing you say will ever convince him that you are right and he is wrong
2) He’s a troll and wants to upset people and disrupt the site (the fact we’re talking about him shows he’s succeeding). The best thing to do is “Don’t Feed the Troll” – if he’s ignored and doesn’t get a rise out of people, he’ll stop getting his rush and leave
Tom–
-just from anecdotal experience , it’s generally the medication thing’. (
Jim– I was hoping you’d tell us about the Dome!
“Men are making speeches … all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.”
Henry David Thoreau,
4 May 1852
Tom Corbett
-first day at the Space Academy excerpt-
https://youtu.be/WsmIB5KH0O8
2:30
Most of the interesting parts were really about Tesla, the Boring Company, and Kara’s attempts to draw Musk out on political topics. Not really anything new on SpaceX; but of interest for SpaceX followers looking for another peek into how Musk’s brain is working right now.
The media are the new priests, eclecticism is banned and will lead to doing penance or excommunication. Hopefully, Musk will learn from his experience with the media and apply it to other people they like to go after but I am not so sure he will.
.
Don’t we really already have a Space Force in this unit : ?
https://www.afspc.af.mil
.
Michael Dean Miller-
Thanks for that. I had been under the impression, for quite some time, the Air Force was already “in charge” of Space as far as military activity, but apparently not…
pivoting for students of Culture:
Compare & contrast the “mission statement” for Tom Corbett (1950) [link above,] {“Protect the liberties of the Planets, Defend the Freedom of Space, etc..”} with this from Star Trek: (around the :43 mark, Kirk talks of “enforcing Space-Law, meeting alien’s,” etc.)
Star Trek Original
2nd Pilot un-aired intro scene
https://youtu.be/GFtc2Ypwzl0
4:18
Not at all clear on what “vision” trump has regarding ‘Space Force’ 2018.
Isaac Asimov, not known for his right-wing sympathies, nontheless had a crisp answer to leftist ideas like the Prime Directive, written years before Star Trek came along: it was called “The Gentle Vultures,” and is well worth reading still. Another interesting take on it is “The Trial of Terra” by Jack Williamson, part of the Quarantine Series. The ultimate defense of anticolonialism was the first movie version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” where we get to hand our fate over to “a race of incorruptible policemen, whose authority cannot be revoked.” It was with good reason the original story title was dropped: “Farewell to the Master.”
Miceal asked:
“Don’t we really already have a Space Force in this unit : ?
https://www.afspc.af.mil”
No.
A “Space Force” is a separate Service that has its own management of its own budget, through its own Space Staff and its own place in the DoD councils. The USAF Space Command has, in last 15 years seen portions of its appropriated budget being “re-programmed” at the request of the USAF Air Staff, which does planning for the AF as a whole. Its focus of attention is air warfare. Not too surprisingly, since they have been struggling to keep more than 50% of their Fighter Squadrons combat ready, they see the small subordinate unit that you described as a lower priority.
The result has been that even as the PLA’s new “Strategic Support Force” has been tasked with space warfare and cyber warfare, and has been testing ASAT systems since 2007, the military space systems under the USAF have not changed much at all. “The Space Troops” of the Russian Aerospace Force have spent the last 12 months demonstarting their capability to use one of the sats to “stalk” the satellites of other nations in LEO, with no reply from the funding side of the Air Staff.
This is why a separate “Space Force” is inevitably needed, as Musk said. It is because the agency costs of military hierarchy inside the Air Force are simply too large to give MilSpace activities their needed funding and project approval priorities. For the Air Staff, Space Command’s budget has become a dipping well, to cover over the lacks in other appropriated funding. Until this is changed, the threat environment to the “force multiplier” abilities of US MilSpace will grow without response.
“The Politics of Starship Troopers”
Sargon (Carl)
https://youtu.be/kVpYvV0O7uI?t=218
1:21″30
Swisher is a terrible interviewer. Arrogant, interrupting, self important, annoying in so many ways. In 200 years no one will remember who she was but Musk will be studied in school. She should keep that in mind.
I accidentally came across Colonel Cusco’s kid talking about what his father was doing for the military. As part of the disclosure project, this stuff is usually considered conspiracy theory… Just like the deep state… The interesting part is that at the end of the interview he claims that the purpose of the cold war was to advance the alien technology to use in our own “earth protection force”…
https://youtu.be/QYhRu2_nJ6c
Max-
I’d have to say, “deep state,” yes. Alien’s, no
Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers
https://youtu.be/2o4fdX8gUMY
2:17
Thanks Wayne I love sci-fi… Good entertainment no matter what the media.
The problem I have is when fiction turns out to be a reality. The modern Andromeda strain;
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/darpa-insect-allies-crop-editing
Wouldn’t it be just perfect if the enemy turned out to be us? A weapon they’re telling us that is meant to save us. I’m sure they have the best of intentions.
If the weapon gets away from them, who will be blamed? Russians? Chinese? I see nothing good will come out of this. The sooner we have a back up plan off of this planet, the better…