And the Air Force needs to get out of the space business. The ability to fly airplanes, acquire airplanes, and support national policy through air power has no congruency with the need to operate unmanned satellites, acquire spacecraft, and support national policy through space power. You wouldn't put the Air Force in charge of operating attack submarines, and space operations are just as unrelated to the Air Force's traditional mission.
I worked with a lot of fine Air Force engineers in my forty years in the space business; none of them were promoted past Lieutenant Colonel. They didn't have wings, and thus were at a disadvantage against the promotion boards.
We need an independent Space Command.
Ron Wanttaja
You and I both know they would put up a fight on that, and in the end if you get a separate Space Command it'll just be an excuse to spend more for less. Funding a whole new wing of the Pentagon alone would be the biggest debt-driven boondoggle since the creation of DHS.
The only way I could support a separate Space Command is if the ENTIRE startup and new operating budget were guaranteed to be taken from the traditional USAF budget.
And we both know the USAF brass would never let that happen.
Not to mention the problems of unraveling the mess already in place of much of what US Space Command does being involved with non-military budgets and or grey or black budgets for NRO.
Try finding out how much we spend on "space" even today ad you'll never figure it out in your lifetime from published numbers. How you roll that onto a new standalone Space Command budget without being able to even create a correct balance sheet, is something that would take a fleet of accountants and managers just to figure out that part, and they have to be paid out of that chunk they're figuring out if you want it to wash, and become MORE efficient.
No conflict of interest there... (sarcasm in case that's not clear) and I think you'd just pay more for the same end result... because those folks would just play games with the numbers to keep themselves busy for at least ten years. If not twenty.
Just thinking about the difference between your "sounds great on paper" and how it would actually be implemented makes me think it would bankrupt any private entity, and in the case of government just raise our debt by tens of billions of dollars just to do the accounting and startup.
Shiny new buildings with pretty Space Command signs, a fleet of managers, attorneys, and accountants, five-stars losing their minds and demanding no budget of theirs will go down to pay for it. Master Caution, Master Warning, and a slew of Idiot lights just illuminated on my panel as soon as you said "new government agency".
The politicians would salivate too. "A new big building full of indebted workers who'll vote for big government growth for my district..."
