In the 24th and a Half Century!!!
Of course, hardcore nerds like me would be totally on-board if this hadn't come from President We-Don't-Need-No-Stinking-Glasses, but I'll admit that it is difficult to take this poser seriously.
Also... "Space Force?" Come on. Star Fleet. Just call it "Star Fleet." I have a series planned on Babylon 5 as a way to understand modern politics, but nobody would get the "Earth Fleet/Earth Force" reference. Star Fleet? Who wouldn't go for that? Star Fleet. It's a no-brainer. I suppose "Trump and the Kodan Armada" would be a little on-the-nose, wouldn't it?
Anyway, I have some serious points to make, although the daffiness of Xur's branding efforts makes it difficult to focus on what matters.
What matters is this. There are several possibilities for the future of SPACE!!! It's, like, a frontier, or something. (No, I'm never getting this out of my system. Space is awesome.)
1. We (the U.S.) continue blasting crud, some of which will have people in it, into orbit, and... BEYOND!!! Other countries will as well. Problems ensue. Too much crud zooming around at high speeds, creating hazards, disputes over orbital paths, something like that. There are real hazards with crud zooming around at high speeds in orbit (orbit necessitates high speed, so that's redundant). Who's going to manage that? If there are any policies about debris, who's going to enforce them? This isn't a joke. It matters, if you want your phones to keep working. There's a reasonably high likelihood that you are reading this on a phone right now. What about the non-tiny stuff zooming around. The stuff we actually intend to be there. Satellites, SPACE stations, shuttles and such. There's lots of space, right? OK, what happens when there is a dispute over paths. Some are more valuable than others. Did you know that? Consider what happens if/when we get to a point of more travel between Earth and the moon. You look at the moon and see a straight line, but that ain't how it works. Two large celestial bodies, each with their own gravitational fields. You go from orbiting one to orbiting the other. How do you do that efficiently? This matters. Every time you change velocity (delta-v), you expend fuel. You take all of your fuel with you, so this matters a lot. Don't expend more than you have to. There is a point, called the Lagrange point, where two celestial bodies' gravitational fields are balanced. That is where it is easiest to go from orbiting one to orbiting the other, where you expend the least fuel in your delta-v. (You have no idea how much I am enjoying writing this!) So, you plan your trajectory to change orbits by hitting the Lagrange point, expend fuel at the Lagrange point for your delta-v, and that way, you go from orbiting one celestial body to the other with the least expenditure of fuel. The Lagrange point matters.
Gee, I wonder if that might lead to any conflict, if you had a bunch of different countries who want to shift orbits. This is me, just typing over my morning coffee, without even getting into conflict over resources. Whether that is anything mined on the moon, Mars, or elsewhere, or... fuck, I don't know. My point is that you could have nastiness over something as simple as two countries who want to hit the Lagrange point around the same time. Before reading this, did you even know what a Lagrange point was? If we keep blasting stuff 'n people into space, the probability of something dangerous involving another country rises asymptotically towards 1. A strong case could be made for a separate branch of the military to deal with this. Long term, it's not actually a stupid idea to plan for this, just because the person pushing for it now stares directly at solar eclipses. [Facepalm] And speaking of "facepalms," that's a better place for your eyes during a solar eclipse than directly pointed at the sun, you fucking moron! (HT: Rex Tillerson).
2. We don't keep blasting crud into space because the U.S. becomes a declining power. Hey, remember when we stopped our own operations to launch actual humans into space? And we started buying tickets from the Russians? That, itself, didn't mean that we were on the decline, but if you haven't caught the drift of my opinions these days, this country has some serious problems. We have had a good run of it, but there are so many ways things go downhill from here that this might be a moot point. In this scenario, it's a good idea for other countries, in terms of long-term planning, but we'd have no need of a SPACE FORCE!!! By the 24th and a Half Century, when it would really matter, we'd be out of the game.
3. None of this really matters. Climate change? Yeah, we're not doing anything about that. Hey, what's happening with antibiotic-resistant bacteria these days? Oh, should I not ask that? That's just two biggies. Have you ever been to New Orleans? There are some very pretty cemeteries there. Do you know how to whistle? I never could manage that, myself. Oh well. Here, lemme try...
In Scenarios 2 and 3, this doesn't matter for us, and even in Scenario 1, the only value of a SPACE FORCE!!! is long-term. Would it make sense to plan? Yes. You plan for contingencies. Is that why Shadesless McGee is pushing his misbranded Star Fleet? Well... He just thinks a) something may be there in the future, and b) he wants his name associated with it. He puts his name on things that other people build. It's what he does. Does it make sense to spend anything now? That's another question. That depends on how long it would take to get anything off the ground, so to speak, how much of an advantage that creates, how many scientific breakthroughs you get in the process, and blah, blah, blah.
Come on. You knew I just wrote this post to blather about space and make references anyway. Coming soon... more serious stuff about Babylon 5. Really, you should binge-watch that thing. TV pretty much sucks, but that show explains a lot.
