Donald Trump Said America Is Going to Mars. Here ’s Why That Won’t Happen Any Time Soon

History has no record of the first drafts of the speeches President Kennedy delivered in 1961 and 1962, when he set America on a path to space. Still, it’s a safe bet they didn’t include the lines: “Space is a warfighting domain. We may have a Space Force. Develop another one. Space Force.” He also probably didn’t consider saying, “You see what’s happening? You see the rockets going up left and right… Very soon we are going to the moon.” And he almost surely didn’t think about saying, “You wouldn’t have been going to the moon if my opponent won, that I can tell you. ” President Kennedy, however, wasn’t President Trump, and the current President said precisely those things in a speech at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, Calif., on March 13 — only instead of the moon, he promised Mars. Still, let’s unpack Trump’s various ideas, starting with the Space Force. There are a lot of things wrong with this proposal, not the least being that it may violate international agreements. More than half a century ago, the U.S. and the Soviet Union became principal signatories on what is formally known as “The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies.” That mouthful name has been colloquially shortened to The Outer Space Treaty, but whatever it’s called, one of its...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Clinton Mars NASA space space force space policy trump Source Type: news