Coyote is really pushing this concept. Now he’s got an op-ed at Aviation Week.
7 thoughts on “Space Corps”
If not done under the radar, any president that supports an independent space guard (no matter how much sense it makes) will be labeled a loon. Coyote’s idea of a division within the airforce is probably a good step we already have some progress in.
Ken, and Coyote are correct that detachment from direct control of “pilots” may be good. However, a further detachment from DoD by a Space Guard may be needed, by making a separate Space Corps *and* a separate Space Guard. The first being military only, and the second being paramilitary/civilian in nature would be good.
Why? There are many things government could do in spaceflight that would allow safer exploitation of Space than the things a military organization would properly get involved with. Traffic control and Rescue are among them. Clear separation of military and civilian functions should be maintained whenever possible.
For instance, I am not fully comfortable with the Navy’s resources being used to prevent drug smuggling. Smuggling control is a Coast Guard function that Congress has not been willing to adequately fund the Coast Guard to do, and so they encourage the CG to “borrow” resources from the Navy, increasing wear and tear on ships at a time when the Navy is sorely pressed for maintenance for its proper missions.
We could all too easily see this pattern duplicated early on by a Space Corps, that operates without a Space Guard to do the things a civilian group should be doing. Having a Space Guard separate from DoD will allow leaving the military to get on with doing what is needed for supporting the rest of the military team on Earth.
I’ll make nearly the same comment here that I made at Aviation Week. What Coyote Smith is proposing has nothing to do with war fighting – there’s no killing people or breaking things. The functions he’s talking about are covered better by a Space Guard akin to the Coast Guard.
Ed, there’s no killing people or breaking things, …*yet*. The biggest reason for a Space Corps is that people anticipate that will start happening the next time there’s a war, or even a not-quite-war, in the Western Pacific, between the US and China. There are other candidates developing in the wings, as you know. The sharpest weapon of war is always information. Anyone who wants to make the US blind, deaf, and dumb once war starts will be trying to do that in Space, where we get and transmit most of our information about war fighting.
Homo Sapiens is going into Space in a big way in the next 30 years. Homo Sapiens is a species of large, obstreperously violent primates. That means there is a a high probability that at some point conflicts here will spread there, even beyond just shooting at US spysats and comsats in LEO. When they do, a Space Corps will be needed instantly.
IMHO, the first targets beyond LEO will be GEO birds like SBIRS. After that will come attacks on the space manufacturing facilities, probably as high as EML-1, that can quickly replace stuff already destroyed. As that proceeds, the conflict will become general toward space assets held by each side.
At such a time we do *not* need to be improvising a force to be fighting in Space. It needs to be up and running in the first minutes of any conflict. This is especially true as Directed Energy Weapons begin to come online by 2020. Otherwise, we could easily find ourselves fighting in 2025 with the observation and communications bandwidth of 1955.
Getting a Space Guard’s civilian/paramilitary functions done competently is a very good reason to have them. Not stretching the resources of a Space Corps, that should be focused on warfighting, to cover non-warfighting activities a Space Guard should be doing, is simply yet another good reason for a Space Guard.
You have to remember that aviation started out with artillery spotter planes. Then later someone thought they could bring a pistol or a rifle with them to hit the enemy’s spotters and then it escalated with dedicated fighter planes and bombers. Pretty much the same could happen in space.
Yeah, it’s the “escalation” part that is the problem. The 1967 Outer Space treaty was supposed to prevent exactly that. A Space Guard is in the spirit of that treaty, but a Space Corps will just naturally lead to an escalation.
Not sure if that’s bad or not.
We have a choice of being prepared or unprepared. Either will have consequences.
If not done under the radar, any president that supports an independent space guard (no matter how much sense it makes) will be labeled a loon. Coyote’s idea of a division within the airforce is probably a good step we already have some progress in.
Ken, and Coyote are correct that detachment from direct control of “pilots” may be good. However, a further detachment from DoD by a Space Guard may be needed, by making a separate Space Corps *and* a separate Space Guard. The first being military only, and the second being paramilitary/civilian in nature would be good.
Why? There are many things government could do in spaceflight that would allow safer exploitation of Space than the things a military organization would properly get involved with. Traffic control and Rescue are among them. Clear separation of military and civilian functions should be maintained whenever possible.
For instance, I am not fully comfortable with the Navy’s resources being used to prevent drug smuggling. Smuggling control is a Coast Guard function that Congress has not been willing to adequately fund the Coast Guard to do, and so they encourage the CG to “borrow” resources from the Navy, increasing wear and tear on ships at a time when the Navy is sorely pressed for maintenance for its proper missions.
We could all too easily see this pattern duplicated early on by a Space Corps, that operates without a Space Guard to do the things a civilian group should be doing. Having a Space Guard separate from DoD will allow leaving the military to get on with doing what is needed for supporting the rest of the military team on Earth.
I’ll make nearly the same comment here that I made at Aviation Week. What Coyote Smith is proposing has nothing to do with war fighting – there’s no killing people or breaking things. The functions he’s talking about are covered better by a Space Guard akin to the Coast Guard.
Ed, there’s no killing people or breaking things, …*yet*. The biggest reason for a Space Corps is that people anticipate that will start happening the next time there’s a war, or even a not-quite-war, in the Western Pacific, between the US and China. There are other candidates developing in the wings, as you know. The sharpest weapon of war is always information. Anyone who wants to make the US blind, deaf, and dumb once war starts will be trying to do that in Space, where we get and transmit most of our information about war fighting.
Homo Sapiens is going into Space in a big way in the next 30 years. Homo Sapiens is a species of large, obstreperously violent primates. That means there is a a high probability that at some point conflicts here will spread there, even beyond just shooting at US spysats and comsats in LEO. When they do, a Space Corps will be needed instantly.
IMHO, the first targets beyond LEO will be GEO birds like SBIRS. After that will come attacks on the space manufacturing facilities, probably as high as EML-1, that can quickly replace stuff already destroyed. As that proceeds, the conflict will become general toward space assets held by each side.
At such a time we do *not* need to be improvising a force to be fighting in Space. It needs to be up and running in the first minutes of any conflict. This is especially true as Directed Energy Weapons begin to come online by 2020. Otherwise, we could easily find ourselves fighting in 2025 with the observation and communications bandwidth of 1955.
Getting a Space Guard’s civilian/paramilitary functions done competently is a very good reason to have them. Not stretching the resources of a Space Corps, that should be focused on warfighting, to cover non-warfighting activities a Space Guard should be doing, is simply yet another good reason for a Space Guard.
You have to remember that aviation started out with artillery spotter planes. Then later someone thought they could bring a pistol or a rifle with them to hit the enemy’s spotters and then it escalated with dedicated fighter planes and bombers. Pretty much the same could happen in space.
Yeah, it’s the “escalation” part that is the problem. The 1967 Outer Space treaty was supposed to prevent exactly that. A Space Guard is in the spirit of that treaty, but a Space Corps will just naturally lead to an escalation.
Not sure if that’s bad or not.
We have a choice of being prepared or unprepared. Either will have consequences.