Posted on 09/08/2018 2:12:09 PM PDT by Kaslin
Starting? When did it stop? The real question is: who’s paying for it now?
Space has just come to the forefront because we now recognize how critical Space has become to our life. Civil space technology is now WAY ahead of our military. Strangely this is more a race between US Venture Capitalists and the Russians, Chinese, North Korea and Iran. The military is along for the ride. The Space Race has become one where our commercial companies are now developing and providing capabilities at a price that our military can only dream of and foreign country militaries just read about in shock and wonder if it’s all made up as a press relations stunt, right until they have to block it from the internet of their citizens, like Google maps.
Space X and Blue Origin with their reusable rockets have shown us stunning capabilities to retrieve their boosters. Google maps with its extraordinary zoom and search capability did not exist, even in the classified world, the year before it came out to the public in 2005. Neither Russia nor China has even bothered to build this capability, as Google is already there. Baidu maps, from the Chinese search engine, is beyond crappy.
Funded by venture capitalists, Hawkeye360 will have satellites soon with the capability to locate electronic signals by cubesat. They will be able to provide us daily updates of all radio transmitting objects. Capella, with its distributed miniature space based synthetic aperture radar cubesats by the dozens, will provide us radar tracking of objects globally and continuously. Planet’s Dove satellite, an orbital imagery bird is delivering the same cubesat capability to provide surface imagery for less than current commercial imagery companies.
They are all using cubesats. A cubesat is a small satellite about the size of a backpack. They are launched by the dozens to orbit to collect small bits of data. This data, think radar, imagery or radio signals, is then “stitched” together on the ground using software – a specialty of the Silicon Valley and US venture investors
When you stitch this data together, you now know the global location of all vehicles: ground vehicles, ships, airplanes and missiles on the ground or in flight. This information is updated depending on the need of the user. This could be used to track delivery vehicles, aircraft for the FAA, maritime shipments, cell phone usage, pipeline monitoring, city planning or more. The civil uses of these capabilities are endless. This location information is critical to the military but is used much more by the civil users.
There is an additional effect. This capability puts all governments on notice that what they do, globally, is available to the public. Hiding and lying is going to get even more difficult.
This technology is all paid for by investors – NOT the US government.
There were civilian Ford trucks before they had military Ford trucks. The thing that tells us we're ready for a Space Force is that our commercial space systems are out in front of our military. Our military will now never catch up with the civil space side. The civil space companies will always be trying to develop better systems to increase their profits. Without profit motive, the US military will never move that fast.
President Trump saw this. This was his brilliance in recognizing it was time for a Space Force. Not stuck in the confines of “this is what we did last year”, he has told the military to develop a new way to buy things. They need to only look around. All the parts are there. No billions required to develop new technologies. Use a small share of the commercially available Space to drop our costs and increase our capability.
As the US drives the research and technology, our adversaries will follow. How do we keep them at bay and keep costs from escalating?
China and Russia have never been able to keep up with Silicon Valley. With the Trump initiatives to reduce Chinese access to technology through forced turnover or cyberwarfare, they will begin to drop back and will eventually fall off the radar screen, like Russia has over the last 3 decades.
The way we stay ahead is that we develop a Space Force that can respond to our technology in a military way because we're already using the technology throughout our civil lives. We, the people of the United States, were the first to really figure out Space. Much like the automobile, we figured out how to use them effectively, and inexpensively, way before any other countries. We can take our "First" status in civil space capability and leverage that experience into our military and integrate things so tightly that the effectiveness is simply amazing, as amazing as our special operations forces in Syria crushing ISIS.
How do we stay ahead of the Russians, Chinese, Iranians and North Koreans?
We take the commanding lead we have from our civil space, stay out of their way for profits, and we keep America First.
I certainly hope so.
Everywhere we’ve learned to fight, we’ve learned to live.
As a species we need more than one place to live.
Hope so.
Is Musk involved?
Will he see if pot can be grown in space?
Much ado about nothing.
for openers we better do something to protect our satellites. Take out them out and we are SCREWED.
I would think that Musk can be leading the charge. He has corporate capabilities that only two or three have.
My question is does he conciously object to the military use of his capabilities. Will he accept military contracts?
I have no reason to believe he will not
Larry Bond wrote a novel about the need to get a weaponized aircraft in space in a very short time frame. The characters were granted authority to do what needed to be done and to be able to bypass all the time wasting bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo in favor of the critical mission.
After reading I wrote the author and suggested the book be re-written as a business manual. He told me he’d never thought of it that way.
Side note, my kid works in the space industry and I think he’s secretly hoping to get drafted into Space Force.
We militarized space when the x-1 program broke the sound barrier. It used military panes, piloted by military pilots, taking off from military bases. All this was before NASA was formed which was dependent on military contractors and military pilots.
Musk is in violation of security protocols (smoking pot) and will have his clearances revoked. He will be out of the loop, if he even survives in SpaceX ... he could even drag SpaceX down with him ... he’s an idiot of the first magnitude.
Same as the trade war. Same as Christians would tell you about Spiritual Warfare: Beginning to defend yourself and (hopefully) regain ground lost is not “starting” anything.
We. Shall. Not. Be. Gaslighted. we are FINALLY beginning to ‘put up our dukes’ after being plundered, insulted, begged, buggered and taken for a multi-trillion dollar ride by internationalists who hate everything the Constitutin stands for, protects or enshrines.
NASA is a military organization. Read their charter.
“for openers we better do something to protect our satellites.”
The ones my company worked on in the ‘80’s were designed to put the maximum amount of stuff in the smallest space with zero attempt beyond a self-darkening lens to protect the satellite. They need to be made like stealth aircraft with angled panels and zero protuberances and no solar cells. There are nuclear batteries but the ecology* nuts went crazy when they were scheduled for launch so I think NASA gave them up. They also need to be able to move in orbit so they can lose themselves in the clutter. All of these things, angled panels and moving ability, cut down on what they can carry and how capable they are. That’s why it isn’t done now because before about 10 years ago it wasn’t easy to disable them. Now, it’s a snap. So, we need lots more of slightly less capable nuclear powered satellites.
* Because they could crash.
Be that as it may, Elon Musk is not building direct ascent ASAT missiles. He and other entrepreneurs are not putting giant lasers on jumbo jets.
China and Russia are quite serious about preparing to conduct combat operations to degrade or destroy our space-enabled capabilities if things "get real." They are also trying to emulate our capabilities. We need to be equally serious.
We are not starting a military space race.
We are finally NOTICING that the Russians and Chinese have been busy engaging in a military space race, and hopefully will get STARTED while we still have time.
...Are we Starting a Military Space Race?...
OK with me as long as it doesn’t involve Buenas Aires and Bugs.
Pay for it. Hilarious.
“Start”?
We are merely joining something already in process by our enemies.
Somebody needs to protect all those civilian satellites out there. They donot have built in self defense capabilities.
Does your kid realize that Space Force will involve sitting in an office building and looking at data on computer screens in 12 hour shifts?
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