US Space Force

[iiradned]

Seeing a lot of memes regarding Trump's proposed Space Force.

Thinking about it, in the Stargate verse we're more than halfway there.

We have ships, fighter craft, ground troops, and offworld bases.

So we need to just spinoff those personnel and assets currently assigned to the SGC and Homeworld and make that the Space Force.

And I propose that the first commanding officer (most probably title Chief of Space Operations or CSO) be none other than Samantha Carter. She's led missions offworld (both peaceful and combat), dealt with alien societies, commanded an offworld base, and captained a starship.

It seems her entire career has been to leading up to commanding such a force. After all to paraphrase Jack O'Neill, she is a planetary treasure.

[Annoyed]

I don't think it's legal. The US signed a multi-nation treaty banning the military use of space back in the 60's, so "by the book", I don't think we can establish a space force IRL

https://www.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm

I'm not a lawyer, and nor do I play one on TV, but, but lawyers seem to be able to twist back into white at will, so who knows if it will still stick.

[iiradned]

I'm talking in the world of Stargate, should a US president decide to take the step of creating a new service it would be a relatively easy step.

The SGC is basically a component command of Homeworld Command which is a unified combatant command, with units from different military departments all working in the same area of responsibility (offworld operations).

[Annoyed]

I'm talking in the world of Stargate, should a US president decide to take the step of creating a new service it would be a relatively easy step.

The SGC is basically a component command of Homeworld Command which is a unified combatant command, with units from different military departments all working in the same area of responsibility (offworld operations).

So, in the Stargate universe, the lawyers have already done the twisting.

[Xaeden]

That's problematic while the program is secret.

One, you'd have to be able to demonstrate believable results. That means money would have to be spent on technology that is built without the use of alien tech to get people into space, performing costly operations that have no practical benefit, and money would be spent training a bunch of people to just do that and not actually serve any useful function.

Two, it's harder to make money disappear into a fledgling branch. They would be wasting money on technology, operations, and personnel while hiding the Stargate Program, which is problematic because that's money that could be used to help the Stargate Program, but it's also problematic because the Stargate Program would have a much bigger budget. That means there would be a huge discrepancy between the funds authorized to this branch and the funds actually accounted for.

A 304 costs billions of dollars, the SGC and various offworld bases cost billions more. With the air force, that can get lost. They already pour tons of money into classified projects, experimental technology, and they can easily say the construction of new whatevers costs more than they actually did. Compare that with this new branch: Due to their fledgling nature there would only be a small number of in-construction things, so you can't spread out the inflation of costs like you could throughout the whole air force. And if it's said that the vast majority of their money is spent on secret projects while all the public sees are some trained personnel smiling in videos and a few odd rocket missions that do nothing of any real substance, the outrage would be massive, prompting the branch to be shut down fast.

If the issue is whether they should create a separate branch to deal with offworld threats after the Stargate Program becomes public knowledge, rather than saddling any existing branch with focusing on both universal and global threats, I would say yes. But part of what I think would make that necessary is that the public nature of the program would potentially allow the government to properly fund it, spurring the growth of their ship production, the personnel involved, and the offworld holdings that would get setup and then need to be protected.

[AleksisMi]

the real life application of a space force would be more a democratic move i think then anything, traditionally governments lease raw minerals to corporations for the publics good, if corporations move into space first and grab up the minerals it could create a innevitable... to quote goerge lucas: "TRADE FEDERATION" based "Seperatist Movement" leading to a huge space war where they land their robotic mining hordes back on earth and create a ultra unstopable international industry cartel that no government or military or other corporation could stand against, so i think this is more a mandate to make sure minerals are gathered by government forces, then leased/sold off to planetary corporations and governments in a fair system that benefits everyone and fattens no government or corporation unseasonably, and before you say trump would abuse it, he has a history of not fattening up his corporations, only running them more or less at a slight profit but not even comparable to what some of the most corrupt corporations and banks pay their stock holders... so he may be a bit more honost in action if not in appearence, just a faint interpretation, my version of ackems razor, where despite appearances and claims, its what happens in actuality that determines what people want rather then what they claim they are trying to do and failing at

[Gatefan1976]

You don't need to land on Earth for that AleksisMi, I dunno I you have ever read any William Gibson (or any other books in the Cyberpunk Genre but in that the "elites" live on the moon or space stations and threaten Earth with mass drivers. If you want to see the results of that, see the Babylon 5 episode when Londo does it to Narn Prime. (The long, twilight struggle)

[AleksisMi]

i have not read the books but i saw most of babylon five and i think i remember lando did totally betray the narn a once or twice and he seemed to regret it