Just sittin' here awaiting the outrage from the resident libertarians and some long rants about wasteful government spending.
Or not. Whichever.
We ruined this planet, we should stay on earth and clean it up not go pissing off aliens.
Part Battlestar Galactica, part Star Trek/Wars, part Space Patrol
.....& all lunacy as Uncle Sam & friends look to rule the cosmic void, all for $738B
We walked on the moon late 60s-early 70s, that should’ve given us enough knowledge about the great beyond - we have billion dollar drones hovering in space for months at a time w/people aboard, observing & collecting interplanetary data - it’s not like we’re missing out on anything
I for one am opposed to the $738B Space Force
[Edited on 12/13/2019 by Stephen]
Really? That's alot of dough. Link?
$738 B is the total Defense spending budget that was just approved. $2 B newly earmarked for Space Farce. The D.O.D. says 95% of what Space Farce will be responsible is already allocated in existing budgets. Which might mean it will end up being around $40 B per year.
It is still a lot of money. It is still wasting at least $2 B to "create" something that already 95% exists. Seems dumb to me, but Reagan had the "Star Wars" program to waste gobs of money. Why not let Trump waste more on "Space Force"?
Seems like $2 B would go a long way toward helping homeless veterans on Earth.
We ruined this planet, we should stay on earth and clean it up not go pissing off alens
We certainly wouldn't want to piss you off.
Not at all surprising as there's a reason many people refer to this gargantuan apparatus as the "Military/Industrial/Congressional/Security Complex."
Anyone who's paid any attention in their lifetime knows this "Space Force" is just the latest excuse to piss money down a drain to basically prime the pump of capitalism and make certain connected people continue to eat at the trough of the "National Defense."
Meanwhile we can't pay for universal health care, or rebuild our electrical grid or transition to a green economy, or fight climate change or shore up social security, etc. etc.....Dwight D. Eisenhower was no fool....And the complex marches on.
Really? That's alot of dough. Link?
Links are all fake.
I never thought I’d see the day where Republicans are championing taking money from the military for a vanity wall, and billions for a space force. I think the previous poster had it right by calling it a space farce.
Did you check the link adhill58 posted?
It just launched today - the Space Force - not since the AWAC aircraft of the 1980s, never mind the Space Patrol of the 1940-50s**,have we had such a thing 😮
But holy makarel - it’s Space Stuff here so I may not understand - looks to me like an “oops, wrong planet” situation:o
But at any rate, headline says “Boeing capsule launches to wrong orbit, skips space station”
Know it’s two separate things, yet they could be connected too - Gina what’s up
[Edited on 12/21/2019 by Stephen]
Space Force is not designed or intended to put combat troops into outer space; article said
Also, “the dominance of space is now Space Force’s mission” Sec. of Defense said
Here we go again
From the people who brought you Vietnam...Space Force
**Oh, Space Patrol was a TV show from that era 😉
It is a total joke. Someone gong this guy already, please! What's next the Dream Police?
He's probably going to have Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, George Jetson and his boy Elroy head the program
Daughter Judy and Jane his wife will work along Ivanka and Melania to create new tinfoil hat designs
No worries, Cmdr. Corry & Cadet Happy are on the job 😮 😛 - operating under orders from program head Ray Bradbury
That’s how details of the Space Force, also the recent story about the space capsule misfire, read to me - like sci-fi
Also meant to add, RIP Baba Ram Dass, an early explorer
& Merry Christmas/happy holidays to all of you
[Edited on 12/24/2019 by Stephen]
For the last few hundred years, capacity and capability for trade on our oceans has played a key role a nation's economic success. Since WWII, international trade has been kept relatively safe and prosperous because of the US Navy. If anyone thinks the needs and desires of the human race are going to magically slow down and stay contained to the planet when there's rich minerals to be had on other planets, moons, and asteroids they're not looking very far down the road. Just like the oceans over the past 400 years, we will expand into the solar system for the next economic leap. And just as with the Navy, if a key central role of gov't is the protection of people and property, then laying a foundation for an equivalent in space makes perfect sense. Someone is going to do this. Would you rather it be the Chinese? While I expect that the majority of economic development will come from private enterprise, some form of law and order - and someone to enforce that - will been needed.
A few articles I came across in the past week or two speak to progress along the path of using space to a greater degree in the future...
Recently Retired USAF General Makes Eyebrow Raising Claims About Advanced Space Technology
Recently retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast gave a lecture last month that seems to further signal that the next major battlefield will be outer space. While military leadership rattling the space sabers is nothing new, Kwast’s lecture included comments that heavily hint at the possibility that the United States military and its industry partners may have already developed next-generation technologies that have the potential to drastically change the aerospace field, and human civilization, forever. Is this mere posturing or could we actually be on the verge of making science fiction a reality?
Who Is Steven Kwast?
According to his official USAF biography, Lt. Gen. Kwast graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with a degree in astronautical engineering, and also holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Kwast previously served as Commander of the 47th Operations Group at Laughlin Air Force Base and the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson AFB. Kwast boasts more than 3,300 flight hours in the F-15E, T-6, T-37, and T-38 and over 650 combat hours.Lt. Gen. Kwast most recently served as Commander of the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) at Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA), but retired in August. According to some reports, Kwast was prematurely relieved of his duties at JBSA and blacklisted for promotion after speaking out on space-related issues despite a service-wide gag order. Kwast declined to comment on the reports and retired on September 1, 2019.
Despite the controversy surrounding his removal from his post at AETC, some defense analysts and Lt. Gen. Kwast’s own supporters within the Armed Forces were suggesting prior to his retirement that he should be appointed as Commander of the Pentagon's budding Space Force. Kwast has published several op-eds in recent years pushing for the U.S. military to take on a greater role in space in order to ensure American economic dominance and what he sees as the continued proliferation of American values.
Gaining The High Ground In Space
Kwast delivered a lecture at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C. on November 20, 2019, titled “The Urgent Need for a U.S. Space Force.” Kwast’s wide-ranging speech described the power of new technologies to revolutionize humankind, referencing the competitive advantage the discovery of fire offered to early humans and the strategic value that nuclear weapons offered 20th-century superpowers. When it comes to current revolutionary technologies, Kwast says the “the power of space will change world power forever” and that it’s up to the United States military to leverage that power:"As a historian, reflecting on the fact that throughout the history of mankind… technology has always changed world power. But the story of rejecting the new and holding and clinging to the paradigms of the past is why no civilization has ever lasted forever, and values are trumped by other values when another civilization figures out a way of finding a competitive advantage. The nature of power, you either have it and your values rule or you do not have it and you must submit. We see that play out again and again in history and it’s playing out now."
As has been common as of late, Lt. Gen Kwast cites rapidly growing Chinese military and technological advances as the reason why the United States must invest heavily in new space-based technologies. “We can say today we are dominant in space but the trend lines are what you have to look at and they will pass us in the next few years if we do not do something. They will win this race and then they will put roadblocks up to space,” Kwast argues, “because once you get the high ground, that strategic high ground, it’s curtains for anybody trying to get to that high ground behind them.”
Kwast claims China is already building a “Navy in space” complete with the space-based equivalents of "battleships and destroyers" which are “able to maneuver and kill and communicate with dominance, and we [the United States] are not.” Kwast’s speech centers on the thesis that the United States needs a Space Force in order to counter Chinese advances and win the competition over the economy of the future and, as an extension, who sets the values of the future:
"Space is the Navy for the 21st century economy, a networked economy that will dominate any linear terrestrial economy in the four engines of growth and dominance that change world power: transportation, information, energy, and manufacturing. [...] Whoever gets to the new market sets the values for that market. And we could either have the market with the values of our Constitution [...] or we could have the values we see manifest in China."
As we’ve reported previously, there have been hints of radical new technologies under development by the military and, just as in Kwast’s speech, Chinese advances have been cited as the reason why these technologies are needed. China has been rapidly expanding its presence in space in recent years, placing a lander on the far side of the moon in late 2018 in what some say was a push to scout natural resources with which to develop a permanent lunar manufacturing center. China has also been developing “mothership” aircraft from which to rapidly and unpredictably launch spaceplanes and other payloads into space. The country has also launched several eyebrow-raising satellites in recent years which some analysts claim could be used in anti-satellite warfare. Beyond all this, they have been investing heavily in a traditional space program that includes many facets of manned and unmanned space technologies that rivals, and in some ways, exceeds our own.
Setting the Stage for 21st Century Warfare
Kwast argues that the scientists, engineers, historians, and strategists of today have been pushing the U.S. Congress to more heavily and more rapidly fund the Space Force and associated technologies, but there is still some pushback and confusion as to why these are presently needed. Kwast ultimately makes the case that the United States must be able to bring kinetic power, non-kinetic power, and informational power to the battlefield cheaper and faster than its adversaries in order to ensure strategic advantage in space.Around the 12:00 mark in the speech, Kwast makes the somewhat bizarre claim that the U.S. currently possesses revolutionary technologies that could render current aerospace capabilities obsolete:
"The technology is on the engineering benches today. But most Americans and most members of Congress have not had time to really look deeply at what is going on here. But I’ve had the benefit of 33 years of studying and becoming friends with these scientists. This technology can be built today with technology that is not developmental to deliver any human being from any place on planet Earth to any other place in less than an hour."
Kwast’s comment is only one of several curious comments made by military leadership lately and they do seem to claim that we could be on the precipice of a great leap in transportation technology. We also don't know exactly where he is coming from on all this as it is not necessarily the direct wheelhouse of someone who was running the Air Force's training portfolio, although it does have overlaps. Whether or not the revolutionary aerospace technologies Kwast mentions have actually been developed is one thing, but Kwast’s lecture, his recent op-eds, and his supporters make it clear that there are many within the U.S. military and analyst community who have felt that there is a great need to boost investment in American space technologies and the U.S. military’s presence in space. That vision is certainly taking root across the Defense Department.
Is all this setting the stage for a new space race that will benefit mankind by furthering scientific and technological development, or is it ushering in the conditions for the first great space war? Only time will tell, but according to Kwast, the technologies needed to win that war may be more science fact than fiction.
No Bigger Secret: Why the New Mach 5 SR-72 Spy Plane Could Be Everything
The successor to Lockheed Martin’s SR-71 Blackbird, the Mach 3 long-range recon aircraft that once tore across the skies like a Cold-War era arrowhead before its retirement in 1999, may be inching closer toward reality.
According to Aviation Week, a handful of visitors to the SAE International Aerotech Congress and Exhibition at Fort Worth, Texas, this week reported catching glimpses of a “demonstrator vehicle” believed to be linked to the proposed replacement: the SR-72.
Though the SR-72’s development is (understandably) a tightly-kept secret, Aviation Week reports that: In the early hours of July, an “unmanned subscale aircraft” was seen flying into the Air Force’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, where Lockheed Martin’s legendary Skunk Works division is headquartered.
With an “optionally piloted” flight research vehicle test slated for 2018 by Lockheed back in June, and a test flight anticipated to occur by 2020, the presence of the demonstrator at Palmdale seems to indicate that the SR-72’s progress is in line with Lockheed Martin’s timeline.
“Although I can’t go into specifics, let us just say the Skunk Works team in Palmdale, California, is doubling down on our commitment to speed,” Orlando Carvalho, the executive vice president of aeronautics at Lockheed Martin, said at the exhibition, which ran from Sept. 26 to 28. “Simply put, I believe the United States is on the verge of a hypersonics revolution.”
Lockheed Martin has remained tight-lipped on the SR-72 program since announcing the Blackbird successor in 2013, but the aerospace giant wants to up the ante in terms of speed. And that’s saying something: the Blackbird as it's known is not only faster than any other jet-propelled aircraft — it can literally outrun missiles.
“Speed matters, especially when it comes to national security,” as Carvalho put it.
If the recent sightings in Palmdale are tied to the Blackbird’s replacement, then the aircraft really is fast — and not just on the flight line. While still under development at Skunk Works, the proposed reconnaissance plane is expected to hit Mach 6 thanks to advanced new hypersonic tech.
“Hypersonics is like stealth. It is a disruptive technology and will enable various platforms to operate at two to three times the speed of the Blackbird,” Carvalho told Aviation Week. “Operational survivability and lethality is the ultimate deterrent. Security classification guidance will only allow us to say the speed is greater than Mach 5.”
The proposed hypersonic aircraft could fill a space left by the SR-71, which was retired in 1999 due to the proliferation of spy satellites, enemy air defenses, and ultimately, its exorbitant costs — roughly $200,000 per hour of operation, reports the National Interest. Unlike its predecessor, the SR-72 is being designed with strike capability in mind — which means it’s not just a super speedy spy plane: It can reach out and touchobliterate a target, then zip back the way it came.
Carvalho’s comments, while not explicitly linked to the SR-72, mirrored sentiments expressed by Rob Weiss, executive vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs organization, during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics forum in Denver, Colorado in June.
“We’ve been saying hypersonics is two years away for the last 20 years,” said Weiss. “But all I can say is the technology is mature and we, along with DARPA and the services, are working hard to get that capability into the hands of our warfighters as soon as possible.”
Heck, looks like Tom Cruise is flying one at the end of the most recent Top Gun trailer...
The Navy has airplanes. Maybe the Navy could have starships too.
To be flown by starship troopers 😛 - wait, Sec. of Defense says no combat troops in the void, as quoted above 😮
Seriously, how militarily necessary is the domination of outer space - both the idea & price tag aren’t worth having a Space Force IMHO
Best happy holidays to all
He wants to conquer Uranus.
Both sides LOVE to feed the machine.
BULLSEYE
He's probably going to have Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, George Jetson and his boy Elroy head the program
Daughter Judy and Jane his wife will work along Ivanka and Melania to create new tinfoil hat designs
Are they big money donors to the Trump campaign? That's the only way somebody is going to get that job. Big money donors are the "best people" that Trump likes to hire, before he fires them.
From Russia With Love
12-27-19
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50927648
President Vladimir Putin has said the nuclear-capable missiles can travel more than 20 times the speed of sound and put Russia ahead of other nations. They have a "glide system" that affords great manoeuvrability and could make them impossible to defend against. Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed the "Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle entered service at 10:00 Moscow time on 27 December", calling it a "landmark event".
Mounted on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Avangard can carry a nuclear weapon of up to two megatons. Russia's defence ministry has released video of the Avangard system, but weapons experts have expressed scepticism about its effectiveness.
7-24-18 They have been getting ready for deployment for awhile now apparently and did't want anyone letting the cat out of the bag.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44936732
Maybe the Russkies got their brand new avant-garde Avangard glide missiles, but we got our own brand new Space Force - no contest 😉
[Edited on 12/28/2019 by Stephen]
Cool! Now Russia can commit global suicide 10 times faster ! What an achievement.
Don't forget about our North Korean friends, and the bromance.
Trump thinks Kim Jung Un is shopping for a nice vase to give him. Does Kim might have another kind of holly jolly in mind?
AND Iran, Russia and China are doing military drills in the Sea of Oman.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/12/28/614776/Iran-Russia-China-naval-drills
[Ezekiel Chapter 38, when the big war comes down it will be Russia, China, Iran vs. the U.S. - but not yet, first we need the war with Israel vs the Muslim world that lasts for 7 years; during which time at the 3 1/2 year mark he anti-Christ will be the one to get a peace treaty signed; he will then claim he is Jesus and go to the new Temple that is being built right now in Jerusalem - people will be fooled and worship him. The real Jesus will be considered a terrorist and near the end point before Judgement Day 80,000 troops will be after him from 10 countries. Prophecies from 1,500 years ago all coming to pass slowly but surely].
[Edited on 12/28/2019 by gina]
Ezekiel Chapter 38, when the big war comes down it will be Russia, China, Iran vs. the U.S. - but not yet, first we need the war with Israel vs the Muslim world that lasts for 7 years; during which time at the 3 1/2 year mark he anti-Christ will be the one to get a peace treaty signed; he will then claim he is Jesus and go to the new Temple that is being built right now in Jerusalem - people will be fooled and worship him. The real Jesus will be considered a terrorist and near the end point before Judgement Day 80,000 troops will be after him from 10 countries. Prophecies from 1,500 years ago all coming to pass slowly but surely
Not one word of this in Ezekiel 38, or the entire canon of Judaeo-Christian scriptures.
Speculation is fine, entertain scenarios all you want - but it is falsehood to claim they are from scripture, because they aren't, they are interpretations, anyone's guess, NOT TRUTH.
[Edited on 12/28/2019 by BrerRabbit]
. . . the resident libertarians
I have read up on Libertarians, thanks to introduction by folks here who claim to be such - came to the conclusion that I am the closest to an actual Libertarian as you are gonna find here - these folks would soil their drawers if the faintest whisper of the Libertarian ideal became reality.
Needless to say, now that Johnson is out, the current crop of Libertarians looks bleak. Certainly won't get my vote - but I am all in favor of any throwaway dilution votes cast Libertarian by closet Redhats, less votes for the Idiot King.
"Libertarian" as postured here on WP seems to be a way of being a hardcore rightwinger, while dodging personal responsibility for the more glaring and egregious failings of that position, e.g. the medieval public evisceration of women's rights and health, jackboot border policy, both examples in polar opposition to Libertarianism - they cower in political foxholes, declaring commttment to nothing, leaving the rank and file Redhat to take the brunt of leftwing fire.
[Edited on 12/31/2019 by BrerRabbit]
Watched a lot of Wanted; Dead or Alive, Maverick, Rawhide, and Have Gun Will Travel this week since I couldn't move around very much.
Tie in to this thread: Many Have Gun Will Travel episodes were written by, wait for it, hold on, ok, I'll tell you
Gene Roddenberry!
I didn't believe it either.
Saw Spok as an Indian, Kirk as a cowboy, and Doby Gillis as an Army officer. Vincent Price as a wild west stage actor, and Jed Clampett as a snake oil salesman. Also Dennis the Menace as a farm kid.
Almost forgot, Sophia Loren as a young Indian maiden.
Yep that’s an instant roll call for all the shows I grew up watching - too cool to have seen those actors in those different roles!!
The Rifleman is the one I liked the best, have those reruns - but yes, those ones, Wagon Train, Rawhide, The Rebel, Bat Masterson - leading to later colorized ones, Laramie, Hondo, The Big Valley, Cimarron etc
HNY back to you, hope you’re able to move around better & feeling well soon
[Edited on 1/1/2020 by Stephen]
Yep that’s an instant roll call for all the shows I grew up watching - too cool to have seen those actors in those different roles!!
The Rifleman is the one I liked the best, have those reruns - but yes, those ones, Wagon Train, Rawhide, The Rebel, Bat Masterson - leading to later colorized ones, Laramie, Hondo, The Big Valley, Cimarron etcHNY back to you, hope you’re able to move around better & feeling well soon
[Edited on 1/1/2020 by Stephen]
I'm feeling a lot better. I get several channels that show our age relevant tv.
High Chaparral, Branded, Cimmaron Strip, My Favorite Martian, The Gail Storm Show, The Honeymooners, many, many more.
