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+--- Thread: What can sci-fi teach us about Donald Trump's Space Force? (star-ranger games) (/thread-6192.html)
What can sci-fi teach us about Donald Trump's Space Force? (star-ranger games) - C C - Sep 28, 2018
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/space-force-donald-trump-sci-fi
EXCERPT: Donald Trump’s Space Force, whatever it ends up becoming, brushes right up against the limits of science fiction, where images of interplanetary fleets are common. With a proposed budget of $8 billion over five years – relatively paltry, given the costs involved with space exploration, especially at military scale – it's more likely that whatever materialises in the real world will be more of a domestic defence shield than a star convoy.
Still, pop culture provides endless examples of how such an organisation might work. So if Trump were to take his policy cues from sci-fi, what might Space Force end up looking like?
[...]
Across a large swathe of science fiction, the recurring theme of any space force is that they only tend to exist when the cultures of Earth – and sometimes those further afield – come together. There's almost a shared recognition that there's no real point for single nations to have space navies, for the simple reason that there's no one to fight. Even where individual countries do form one, the tendency is to have them braced against alien threats, rather than ones from Earth.
MORE: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/space-force-donald-trump-sci-fi
RE: What can sci-fi teach us about Donald Trump's Space Force? (star-ranger games) - Magical Realist - Sep 28, 2018
Quote:There's almost a shared recognition that there's no real point for single nations to have space navies, for the simple reason that there's no one to fight. Even where individual countries do form one, the tendency is to have them braced against alien threats, rather than ones from Earth.
![[Image: 20180823_starship-troopers.jpg]](http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/advocacy/20180823_starship-troopers.jpg)
RE: What can sci-fi teach us about Donald Trump's Space Force? (star-ranger games) - Yazata - Sep 28, 2018
(Sep 28, 2018 04:18 PM)C C Wrote: Donald Trump’s Space Force, whatever it ends up becoming, brushes right up against the limits of science fiction, where images of interplanetary fleets are common. With a proposed budget of $8 billion over five years – relatively paltry, given the costs involved with space exploration, especially at military scale – it's more likely that whatever materialises in the real world will be more of a domestic defence shield than a star convoy.
I think that the main motivation initially is to defend US satellites against foreign (Chinese or Russian) asats. Another biggie will be ballistic missile defense. As nuclear weapons proliferate into more hostile hands (Pakistan, the Iranian mullahs and the Norks) stopping incoming missiles moves higher up the agenda. Then there's the countless spy satellites, GPS satellites and communications satellites upon which a modern military depends.
Part of the problem is that many different agencies are currently in this space, with their own bureaucracies and rivalries. The Air Force obviously, but also the Army and Navy. Alongside a bunch of civilian agencies like the National Reconnaissance Office (spy satellites) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the NSA's radio-intercept "ferret" satellites. So it makes some sense to reduce all the duplications and the battling among them by bringing it all under one roof, so to speak.
Quote:Across a large swathe of science fiction, the recurring theme of any space force is that they only tend to exist when the cultures of Earth – and sometimes those further afield – come together.
Not always. There's a whole genre of stories in which something mysterious is discovered out by Jupiter or someplace, and the Earth's nations race to get there first and acquire whatever alien technology might be out there.
That scenario has way too small a probability to justify spending much money planning for it, but it might indeed make some sense to build a national deep space capability that would enable us to travel anywhere in the solar system if the need arises. The day is coming, in a few decades (when and if the BFR materializes) when there will be research outposts and mining camps on various solar system bodies, and they might need protection. (Probably not against aliens though.)
Quote:There's almost a shared recognition that there's no real point for single nations to have space navies, for the simple reason that there's no one to fight. Even where individual countries do form one, the tendency is to have them braced against alien threats, rather than ones from Earth.
That would be true, if the intention was to create a fleet of space battleships.