Floating a space idea

TDALLAS MORNING NEWS he current president governs a little, shall we say, differently. So we weren’t quite sure how to take his initial floating of the idea of creating a sixth branch of the military to handle out-of-thisworld threats.

But since Donald Trump has continued to talk (or tweet) about creating a Space Force, we thought it was worth weighing in with a few thoughts of our own.

For starters, we’re strong supporters of our military. Those who don our nation’s uniform deserve our respect and support as they seek to preserve the safety and security of our country. And with that in mind, we wonder what value there would be in creating a new branch of the U.S. military.

But then the Air Force already has an organization to support military use of satellites, rockets and cyberwarfare operations and track space junk, and many of the military’s top brass say the nation doesn’t need a separate new force. In other words, we already have a constellation of agencies and a military branch focused on the key problems.

At bottom, our objection is with creating a bloated organization with an ill-defined purpose that will expend billions of dollars to justify its existence. That won’t make us safer, and unlike the moonshot in the 1960s, it’s unlikely to inspire the nation.

But if there is a real point in all of this talk about a space force, it is that there are security risks high above the earth. For example, Russia and China have restructured their aerospace and military forces to pose a threat to communications satellites. So even as we doubt the seriousness of the very idea of a space force, we can wish the president was doing more to encourage Americans to think seriously about the challenges of space.