Tag Archives: national Space Council

White House to press forward with Trump’s Space Command

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House advisers on Tuesday are set to recommend that U.S. President Donald Trump’s planned U.S. Space Command develop ways for the military to operate in outer space, according to two administration officials briefed on the plans.

The National Space Council, a White House advisory panel, will also recommend a review of existing treaty issues, and will unveil proposed legislation for Congress to create and fund a separate space agency to oversee commercial activities, the officials said.

The council’s recommendations are set to be made at a meeting later on Tuesday at the National Defense University in Washington, where Vice President Mike Pence is also scheduled to speak.

The Trump administration in August announced an ambitious plan to usher in a new “Space Force” as the sixth branch of the military by 2020. Such a change, which the Defense Department has estimated would cost $13 billon in the first five years, must first be approved by Congress.

Critics, including some Democratic lawmakers, have said its creation is an unnecessary and expensive bureaucratic endeavor that would simply shift work already being done well by other services like the Air Force.

The proposed bill would create the Bureau of Space Commerce under the U.S. Department of Commerce to liaise with industry representatives and organizations, according to a copy provided to Reuters. It also calls for $10 million a year for five years starting in 2020 to fund the commerce arm.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Trump orders creation of U.S. force to dominate space

FILE PHOTO: The Apollo 11 Lunar Module ascent stage, with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. aboard, is photographed from the Command and Service Modules in lunar orbit in this July 1969 file photo. Courtesy NASA/Handout via REUTERS

By Makini Brice and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said he was ordering the establishment of a sixth branch of the military to clear the way for American dominance of space.

“It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space,” Trump said before a meeting of his National Space Council.

“We are going to have the Air Force and we’re going to have the ‘Space Force.’ Separate but equal. It is going to be something. So important,” he said later.

The United States, however, is a member of the Outer Space Treaty, which bars the stationing of weapons of mass destruction in space and only allows for the use of the moon and other celestial bodies for peaceful purposes.

Trump also signed a directive on the management of traffic and debris in space.

The announcements were his administration’s latest moves to scale up U.S. space exploration. The United States wants to send robotic explorers to the moon as soon as next year as a preparatory step towards sending astronauts back there for the first time since 1972, a NASA official said on Monday.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is planning a series of lunar missions beginning next year aimed at developing the capacity for a return to the moon, said Cheryl Warner, a spokeswoman for NASA’s Human Exploration Directorate.

NASA will work with private companies, which have not yet been chosen, on the missions, Warner said in a phone interview.

In December, Trump signed a directive that he said would enable astronauts to return to the moon and eventually lead a mission to Mars. He ordered the government last month to review regulations on commercial space flights.

Americans first landed on the moon in 1969, reaching a goal set by former President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and capping a decade-long space race between Washington and Moscow.

Since then, U.S. efforts to explore beyond the Earth’s orbit have largely focused on remote spacecraft that do not have human crew members, though American presidents have repeatedly raised the idea of sending human explorers back to the moon or further.

President George W. Bush in 2004 said humans would return to the moon by 2020. His successor, President Barack Obama, said in 2016 the United States would send humans to Mars by the 2030s.

(Reporting by Makini Brice and Steve Holland; Editing by Scott Malone and Paul Simao)