George Takei Just Posted This On Twitter about Space Force
- Thread starter Tarek71
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I'm not aware of a rule restricting political discussion to TNZ or Misc., is that new? If so shouldn't the entire topic be moved because I don't think there's a non-political side to this.
You’re aware of it because I posted it.
Each forum has its own description and its own parameters. And while it’s understandable that sometimes conversations naturally evolve, we have always endeavored to keep each forum true to its description .
If this thread needs closing, I will do so. Until then, I’m giving the posters here the benefit of the doubt.
And with that, this portion of the discussion is, truly, over.
Because of the presence of the person who is now POTUS occupying the White House having set up a new and useless agency to represent space when there's already an agency that does the same thing.
Yes. But thats a mild one. This tweet from Chase Masterson of DS9 is typical:
Where's Quark when we need him?
They should have just renamed the USAF to United States Aerospace Force and be done with it. No need for a new branch.
Yup. Truth is in the history, not in the Twitter.
The Starfleet logo might have indeed taken inspiration from old USAAF insignia and NASA's insignia along with carrying on a tradition of US military seals. However, configuring all of those elements in the way that the Space Force insignia did is clearly an intentional riff on Starfleet.
There probably were people saying the same thing when the Air Force split away from the Army. Although is sounds like Space Command and the Air Force will have a somewhat similar relationship to that of the Navy and the Marine Corp. Separate branch, but still connected at the top.
In my head-canon, Trump creating the Space Force is what leads (eventually) to Starfleet.
It would fit with the theme of humanity improving itself in the wake of untold horror.
Not really. The primary objections were to possible reductions of Navy and Marine air, not to splitting the USAF off from the Army. That was pretty much understood to be only a matter of time after WW2. The USAAF had just fought almost four years of war basically on its own terms and had its own leadership, personnel and materiel systems, organizational structure and culture that were distinct from the Army, and accounted for almost one-third of the Army's total peak wartime personnel. Plus we had been fighting alongside the decades-old Royal Air Force, so the idea of an independent air arm was not new and the pros and cons were well understood.
Also the unified command system was in its infancy; there was not much precedent for command over similar joint functions except for the wartime theater commands. Whereas today it has been thoroughly refined and tuned and we can coordinate very well the strategic/nuclear (USSTRATCOM), special operations (USSOCOM), transportation (USTRANSCOM) and cyber (USCYBERCOM) of all the services. And indeed as we did with the old 1985-2002 Space Command. I'm still not sure what the Space Force and its 17,000 personnel can do that couldn't be accomplished by a joint Space Command with its own four-star combatant commander.
Congress created it.
The problem with US Space Command (or any of the other unified commands) is that they don't have any organic assets. They are at the mercy of the budgetary and/or organizational whims of the individual services. Putting the DOD space assets into one basket makes it easier to manage and employ those assets and sidesteps all the inter-service rivalries.
I'm not convinced it makes that big a difference, if 90% (a guess, exact percentage welcome) of the new force was USAF anyway and procurement remains at the Department of the Air Force level. And if inter-service rivalry is adversely affecting employment and missions, that would seem to argue for fewer branches, not more.
Maybe someone somewhere, but let's be clear, this new service is about using satellites and related tracking/sensor systems to gain advantage over enemies or potential enemies, and protecting those same networks. And will be for the foreseeable future. The space exploration and scientific research mission is still NASA.
Just think..kids now can say "I want to be in Space Force when i grow up!"..sigh.
If I were about 40 years younger, I'd be looking for them to opening a recruiting office so I could go sign up.
Well, American kids anyway...
Or Japanese kids, apparently: https://www.defensenews.com/space/2020/01/21/japan-reveals-plan-for-space-defense-unit/
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