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Space Force: Out Of This World?

The NASA/German Research Centre for Geosciences GRACE Follow-On spacecraft launches onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, on Tuesday, May 22, 2018, from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images
The NASA/German Research Centre for Geosciences GRACE Follow-On spacecraft launches onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, on Tuesday, May 22, 2018, from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

We’re hugely dependent on the satellites that orbit space. Wired reports:

By 2007, ships at sea and warplanes in the air had grown reliant on instant satellite communications with ground stations thousands of miles away. Government forecasters relied on weather satellites; intelligence analysts relied on high-­resolution imagery to anticipate and track adversaries the world over. GPS had become perhaps the single most indispensable global system ever designed by humans—the infrastructure upon which the rest of the world’s infrastructure is based. (Fourteen of the 16 infrastructure sectors designated as critical by the Department of Homeland Security, like energy and financial services, rely on GPS for their operation.)

Who is protecting that infrastructure?

Well, that will be part of Space Force’s mission, at least to start. It will be the newest military branch since the Air Force was founded after World War II.

How much will Space Force cost? And is there a way to prevent a war?

Produced by Amanda Williams. Text by Gabrielle Healy.

GUESTS

Jacqueline Klimas, National security reporter at POLITICO. @jacqklimas

For more, visit https://the1a.org.

© 2018 WAMU 88.5 – American University Radio.

Copyright 2018 WAMU 88.5

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