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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.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

19 comments

  • Jim Roberts

    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.

  • Tom Billings

    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????

  • Col Beausabre

    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

  • wayne

    Tom–
    -just from anecdotal experience , it’s generally the medication thing’. (

    Jim– I was hoping you’d tell us about the Dome!

  • wayne

    “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

  • wayne

    Tom Corbett
    -first day at the Space Academy excerpt-
    https://youtu.be/WsmIB5KH0O8
    2:30

  • Richard M

    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.

  • wodun

    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.

  • Michael Dean Miller

    .

    Don’t we really already have a Space Force in this unit : ?

    https://www.afspc.af.mil

    .

  • wayne

    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.”

  • Tom Billings

    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.

  • wayne

    “The Politics of Starship Troopers”
    Sargon (Carl)
    https://youtu.be/kVpYvV0O7uI?t=218
    1:21″30

  • Steve

    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.

  • Max

    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

  • wayne

    Max-
    I’d have to say, “deep state,” yes. Alien’s, no

    Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers
    https://youtu.be/2o4fdX8gUMY
    2:17

  • Max

    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…

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