The possible future American "space force"

[DDE]

8 hours ago, Xd the great said:

How are we even gonna be able to launch anything we need? The sls is still years away.

The recent certification of the Falcon Heavy for military launches might help.

On ‎6‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 11:20 AM, kerbiloid said:

The sole problem of Space Forces would be to find another Space Forces to oppose.

The fun thing is that the way the Pentagon seems to think today, they have license to counter potential, future threats. Which is satisfyingly vague.

17 hours ago, vger said:

Hopefully not. That sounds strikingly similar to a "protection service" which means a really lame new way to tax vehicles for services provided by the Space Force (whether you actually want it or not).

Hang on, I have a "taxation is theft" meme for that. 

Now, before the thread is nuked... well, what's wrong with patenting the wheel and shaking down every bike manufacturer on the planet? Global enforcement of US national (and, lately, EU supranational) law is an unfortunate but common trend.

[vger]

13 hours ago, Cassel said:

So space will be treated the same as land and sea on Earth. You occupy a orbit and consider it as part of your state, and everyone who uses it pays the customs tax

Or a redefinition of "air space." Dunno... raise the ceiling by a few miles? Also though sooner or later all that would need to be done is for someone to claim a polar orbit, thereby making it impossible to orbit the planet without intersecting the claimed one.

10 hours ago, DDE said:

The fun thing is that the way the Pentagon seems to think today, they have license to counter potential, future threats. Which is satisfyingly vague.

Now, before the thread is nuked... well, what's wrong with patenting the wheel and shaking down every bike manufacturer on the planet? Global enforcement of US national (and, lately, EU supranational) law is an unfortunate but common trend.

In this case the Pentagon definition is fun though, because it also includes extraterrestrial attacks

And... eh... patenting the wheel? Well considering the wheel and axle is one of the 6 simple machines, there's plenty wrong with it, because it would impact practically every complex machine ever invented by humans. I've always said that if the patent system had existed at the time humans first began developing technology, our only refined light source today would still be candles.

Edited June 24, 2018 by vger

[Mark Kerbin]

There’s a reason space operates on maritime law....

We all need it and no one really has standing to claim it. 

[Cassel]

It is not new idea

 

[Mark Kerbin]

No idea isn’t new. Point is that was scrapped during the Cold War due to the pointlessness off the whole endeavor 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Mark Kerbin said:

No idea isn’t new. Point is that was scrapped during the Cold War due to the pointlessness off the whole endeavor 

No but it has been lots of reorganizations over the years. 
main issue with an space force is that various organisations has different priority. See the army / air force conflict. Army want close air support / air force want to dogfight.
it get worse, NSO, CIA want top secret strategic information, the army want real time tactical data, this does not have to be restricted as its outdated in an few hours. 
Here air force is in line with army but but with their priority, active radars, effect of bombing raids and so on.
With one organization who do you prioritize and this will change depending on situation like active wars.  

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

A picture about 14+1 competing standards organizations would be here.

 

[Mark Kerbin]

Idk why this is making me want to mention this. 

Anyone else know about when the US wanted to nuke various planets and moons just to show they could?

Ah the Cold War. Such... well terror and fear...  but also dark comedy looking back on it.

[MedwedianPresident]

The United States of America already have a "space force". The existence of vessels like the TR-3B or the Solar Warden Program is an open secret by now. The only thing that prevents full, official disclosure are the propulsion systems. It would make the oil corporations angry.

TR-3B patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060145019A1/en

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

6 hours ago, MedwedianPresident said:

The United States of America already have a "space force". The existence of vessels like the TR-3B or the Solar Warden Program is an open secret by now. The only thing that prevents full, official disclosure are the propulsion systems. It would make the oil corporations angry.

TR-3B patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060145019A1/en

Do you have any idea of where can I find a layman's explanation or educated guess of how the TR-3B works that isn't a conspiracy theory or completely non-technical?

[vger]

On 7/27/2018 at 2:17 PM, MedwedianPresident said:

TR-3B patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060145019A1/en

This has to be a joke. One of the most famous UFO sighting designs from the 80's & 90's? And yet the semi top-secret X-37B is only using conventional motors? Sorry... if we had that technology there would be far more reasons to release it and revolutionize our infrastructure "Where we're going, we don't need roads" rather than just keep it as a plaything for a handful of Illuminati wannabes. We would be out mining asteroids and the moon; clinching the market on rare earth metals and bringing back the "glory days" of the mid-century U.S. economy.

Edited August 1, 2018 by vger

[magnemoe]

45 minutes ago, vger said:

This has to be a joke. One of the most famous UFO sighting designs from the 80's & 90's? And yet the semi top-secret X-37B is only using conventional motors? Sorry... if we had that technology there would be far more reasons to release it and revolutionize our infrastructure "Where we're going, we don't need roads" rather than just keep it as a plaything for a handful of Illuminati wannabes. We would be out mining asteroids and the moon; clinching the market on rare earth metals and bringing back the "glory days" of the mid-century U.S. economy.

More fun in that secret military stuff don't get patented for obvious reasons you classify instead. 
An patent has to describe how something work, giving the other side an nice blueprint for their own secret projects.
This includes mundane stuff like M1 armor. 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

Space Force = Space Mass * Space Acceleration

 

[Diche Bach]

Isn't this "Space Force" declaration really just explicating and "officializing" a long historic series of military in space ventures which have existed since the 1940s?

That is my take on it.

[vger]

50 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

More fun in that secret military stuff don't get patented for obvious reasons you classify instead. 
An patent has to describe how something work, giving the other side an nice blueprint for their own secret projects.
This includes mundane stuff like M1 armor. 

A lot of this tech would have a lot more uses than just weaponry though. And if someone has been hotrodding around with these things for decades, with enough plausible deniability that it still can't be proven to exist, then we could just as easily shovel resources into cementing our position at key strategic locations in space without anybody being the wiser. And if the information was declassified with a fleet already prepared to go, it would still give us more than enough of a headstart to capitalize on it before any other nations could replicate and get a project off the ground. It's also worth considering what such advanced gear would do for humanity in general though. Why bother keeping technology buried in top secret for military purposes, if the very existence of such technology could bring about a post-scarcity society and bring an end to a need for war in the first place?

Edited August 1, 2018 by vger

[Bill Phil]

45 minutes ago, vger said:

Why bother keeping technology buried in top secret for military purposes, if the very existence of such technology could bring about a post-scarcity society and bring an end to a need for war in the first place?

Exactly. 

War can be quite lucrative. No war, less money to be made... sadly there's a lot of money to be made in war.

Anyone know about Solar Warden? It's a conspiracy theory about a secret space fleet to protect Earth or something. Good sci-fi (Stargate actually is one example, if only later in the series), but probably not the case.

The Space Force will probably just be a consolidation of the military's space endeavors.

[vger]

1 minute ago, Bill Phil said:

Exactly. 

War can be quite lucrative. No war, less money to be made... sadly there's a lot of money to be made in war.

Post-scarcity makes money irrelevant.

[Bill Phil]

4 minutes ago, vger said:

Post-scarcity makes money irrelevant.

Some argue we are already in a post scarcity society.

Some people may not want us to be post scarcity.

[magnemoe]

18 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Some argue we are already in a post scarcity society.

Some people may not want us to be post scarcity.

Depend on your setting, some from the bronze age would say we was there 100 years ago. 
Others want their personal starship and not one of the old slow ones who only does 1LY / hour and don't have an replicator in the minibar. 

And some people want to be an elite, simple enough, an post scarcity society might threaten this. 
Ignoring that we would obviously still have celebrities and politicians, the super rich would be less important but they seems to want it.  

[Cheif Operations Director]

It's happening bu but I think it's going to be the Space Command with more funding 

[wumpus]

6 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Some argue we are already in a post scarcity society.

Some people may not want us to be post scarcity.

While we certainly aren't in a post scarcity society, we are certainly in a state where legally mandated artificial scarcity takes up much more of the economy than anything actually scarce.  Compare current goods with exact knockoffs and you will quickly see the shear scale of the artificial scarcity.

On the other hand, the only other attempted way to create all that IP involves central command driven socialism, which isn't always known to be better (perhaps un-command driven works in the EU).  I'm convinced some sort of decentralized evolutionary-driven system would work better, but really don't have any answers.

[crazyewok]

On 6/20/2018 at 2:29 PM, ProtoJeb21 said:

Yes, back in the 60s or 70s (I can’t remember exactly) there was a treaty signed by most nations - including the US - that banned the use of space for military purposes. This is why I hate the idea of a Space Force. It’s not only breaking a treaty that our country signed, but it is trying to turn space into a military ground* dominated by just America and not an open region of exploration. Dividing it up into areas controlled by specific nations just seems wrong.

*that was a terrible word to use because, well, there’s no actual ground in space except for planets and moons

Actually there are some situations  where technology gets sat on. Not for any nefarious  reasons either but safety.

When it comes to energy and propulsion the more powerful  it is the more dangerous it is. For example A lot of the project Orion stuff is still deeply classified  due to the potential of it being used to make miniaturized  nukes using little nuclear material plus the directed energy research  that lead on from that.

 

The world is a dangerous place and there are more than a few people, organisation's  and country's that could do a lot of damage even with what seems like harmless technology.

 

Even in my own field  of microbilogy  there are things that are kept discreet and only worked on under intense  government  scrutiny due to potential  danger of misuse.

 

 

If something like anti matter, warp drives or any other "miracle" ever was created I would expect it to be kept under the tightest  scrutiny.

 

[sevenperforce]

On 7/27/2018 at 9:03 PM, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

Do you have any idea of where can I find a layman's explanation or educated guess of how the TR-3B works that isn't a conspiracy theory or completely non-technical?

"A spacecraft having a triangular hull with vertical electrostatic line charges on each corner that produce a horizontal electric field parallel to the sides of the hull. This field, interacting with a plane wave emitted by antennas on the side of the hull, generates a force per volume combining both lift and propulsion."

In other words, it is pulling itself up by its own boot straps....which is to say, it's not moving at all. Reactionless thruster. No combination of magnetic fields produces a reactionless force.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

29 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

"A spacecraft having a triangular hull with vertical electrostatic line charges on each corner that produce a horizontal electric field parallel to the sides of the hull. This field, interacting with a plane wave emitted by antennas on the side of the hull, generates a force per volume combining both lift and propulsion."

In other words, it is pulling itself up by its own boot straps....which is to say, it's not moving at all. Reactionless thruster. No combination of magnetic fields produces a reactionless force.

That's what I thought, thanks for confirming it.