Does the President's authority as Commander in Chief extend to creating a new branch of the armed forces? The US Air Force was created by an act of Congress (the National Security Act of 1947), not by a Presidential order.
Here is a recent quote from by the Secretary Defense on the topic.<p>"I believe it is premature to add additional organization and administrative tail to the department at a time I am trying to reduce overhead."
The USAF didn't manage to kill the idea this time, eh?<p>I remember this (or something similar) being proposed a few times over the last couple of decades.
<i>The Air Force requested a top-line budget of $120.4 billion</i><p>Air Force spends a lot of money on "space".<p><i>The budget supports the goal of maintaining assured access to space and viability in contested and increasingly congested environments by continuing the block buys of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency System satellite vehicles 5 and 6 and Space Based Infrared System 5 and 6; and funding five Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle launch services, three of which are competitive launch opportunities.</i><p><a href="http://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/652961/af-presents-fiscal-year-2017-budget/" rel="nofollow">http://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/652961/af-pre...</a>
More detail here (but not much more):
<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/president-trump-directs-pentagon-defense-department-to-immediately-being-the-process-of-establishing-space-force-as-sixth-military-branch.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/president-trump-directs-pent...</a>
"I'm gonna build the biggest Dyson Wall to keep those loser space aliens out! Believe me, space aliens are bad hombres; they poop out of their mouths and eat our cars at 3am. Those smelly green runts ate my golf cart in the <i>middle</i> of my game! Most come from total sh&thole planets, unbelievable! #MakeEarthGreatAgain!
There’s nothing in Trumps exec. order about a space force[1]. It’s not clear if Trump was speaking extemporaneously about something they aren’t ready to pull the trigger on or what.<p>1. <a href="https://twitter.com/AaronMehta/status/1008786783436451840" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/AaronMehta/status/1008786783436451840</a>
Good. The Air force consistently drops the ball on space. Its needed a separate branch for a long time. Who cares if its Trump pushing it.<p>Divorce your politics from reality:<p><a href="https://medium.com/war-is-boring/america-needs-a-u-s-space-corps-ab79bebe93eb" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/war-is-boring/america-needs-a-u-s-space-c...</a>
Setting aside the constant drama surrounding Trump, to me this seems to have a significant positive potential.<p>See reference [1] below to see how many people are currently in space. I would definitely not call that a "force". A more permanent presence in space for more people would necessitate a lot more scientific research that will likely have non-military benefits (like GPS research did in the past). There is so much for us to learn which is good for humanity and inspiring for young people.<p>The excitement around space might make it easier to get additional funding approved. According to this [2] the Army, Navy, and Air Force budgets for 2016 weren't too far off from each other. It will be interesting to see at what level the funding will fall for this "separate but equal" department.<p>According to this [3] the President has announced job one is to declutter space to avoid collisions and spacecraft breakups, which all spacefaring countries will benefit from.<p>As much as I admire Elon Musk, it would be nice to have a government presence in space for rescue missions, etc. For anyone that has played too many hours of Civilization IV, you might enjoy Baba Yetu performed by the United States Navy Band [4]. The rescue force I would envision would be like the small clip at 2m00s to 2m20s in that youtube video, except in space.<p>Lots of people talk about things like 'basic income' to protect us when machines watch what we do and then take over our jobs. I would prefer to push that day out a little bit by instead allocating money to us doing totally brand new things, like this in space, that excites me and makes me want to spring out of bed in the morning!<p>[1] <a href="https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Total_budget_by_department" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/trump-space-force-1.4711012" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/trump-space-force-1.471101...</a><p>[4] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKWQQQjAEBU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKWQQQjAEBU</a>
My guess is that this is a power play - create a new sub-agency of the DoD, move some projects from existing agencies (railguns and DEWs from the Navy perhaps), classify everything, and throw together some patriotically-themed video brochures for Congressional committees.