 The somewhat strange concept of establishing a space force in the United States has been in the news for months now So let's talk about it. All right, let's start right away with the question of what exactly is space force? Well space force is President Trump's proposed sixth the branch of the military for those of you who don't live in the United States There are currently five military branches the US Army the US Air Force the US Navy the US Coast Guard and the US Marines Now, why do we need this sixth branch? Why do we need a separate space force? Because any of you who know a lot about space history or even just have a tangential knowledge of space history Know that military and space aren't exactly strange bedfellows In fact the link between military and space goes back right to the beginning of the space age So let's dial it back and actually look at this history to understand where the military's relationship with space began And where it has evolved to now In 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik We had the same five military branches in the United States and three of them were developing missiles That could potentially be used to launch payload into space But two of them were really close to readiness The US Navy was developing small sounding rockets for atmospheric research and the Army Notably had the German engineering team led by Werner von Braun working under the Army Ballistic Missile Association Both of these military branches presented themselves to President Eisenhower in the wake of Sputnik's launch Offering to launch a small satellite to match and then eventually surpass the Soviet achievement President Eisenhower decided to go with the Navy's Vanguard rocket because it was made by Americans And it was also one that was not built with military implications in mind. It was purely a research vehicle That and you know the Army Redstone rocket was built by former Nazis, which did have some PR implications So we have two military branches offering to launch the first US satellites as we know The Navy's Vanguard was responsible for the infamous Flopnik launch on December 6th of 1957 And it was von Braun's team at the ABMA the Army team that eventually launched Explorer 1 into space the first US satellite On February 1st 1958 or January 31st depending on what time zone you were in So even though the early space age was dominated by the Navy and the Army It was the US Air Force that argued it should have all control over space activities And it sort of made sense the Air Force was the one developing the space planes that would eventually become orbital vehicles or at least that was the plan in 1957 1958 the Air Force had the X-15 under development. It had been doing Captive flights and glide flights. It wasn't yet doing powered flights But it was a vehicle that had the capability of going into space not orbital space But flying above the Kármán line the Air Force was also developing a dinosaur at the time the skip-glide vehicle That could be launched into space now The Air Force was doing both of these programs in conjunction with the NACA the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics The NACA in a nutshell was the organization that did all the Aerodynamic work for all of the major aviation players including the military basically The NACA had access to the best mines the best wind tunnels all of the things you need to really start to develop a beautiful Streamline plane that can do things like fly Mach 7 which the X-15 was designed to do and Mach 20 Which was the dinosaurs design limit President Eisenhower was thus faced with all of these military branches vying to be the controlling entity in space But he didn't want it to be militarized because we can't forget that the space age started out of the Cold War and for all Of you kids out there who don't study the Cold War in school The Cold War was a war of ideologies between the Soviet Union on one side and the United States on the other It was a Cold War because it didn't erupt into an actual hot war of launching missiles across the ocean to kill each other Although it did generate Conflicts being lead the Korean War and the Vietnam War So Eisenhower unwilling to let this completely unknown entity of outer space Which had a handful of things orbiting around the earth in it become a new Battleground in the Cold War Decided that it should be run that all the space program in the United States should be run by a Neutral entity and so he created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA and while NASA has always been a civilian agency That doesn't mean that the military hasn't had a hand in space The redstone that launched the early Mercury missions was built by the Army the ABMA The Atlas that launched the orbital Mercury missions came from the Air Force as did the Titan 2 that launched the Gemini missions That Titan 2 missile is a version of the one that was in missile silos ready to be launched in the event the Cold War turned hot Arguably the Saturn family of rockets the one that gave us the Saturn 5 that took us to the moon Started with the Army from Brown and his team were developing that series of rockets before the ABMA was transferred to NASA in 1960 and there's more military participation in space than that in 1963 NASA and the Air Force decided to cancel the dinosaur program because well It was kind of an aptly named dinosaur and replace it with a militarized version of the Gemini spacecraft called the manned orbiting laboratory Going forward into the shuttle era one of the reasons the shuttle was as big as it was was because the Department of Defense Offered to help fund the program if it had the capability to launch DOD satellites There's no real reason that the payload bay had to be that big and speaking of big payload bays The Hubble Space Telescope was made of a disused DOD satellite, which is why it fits so perfectly in that massive payload bay Okay, so up until the mid 1970s. We've got relatively minimal military applications in space We've got the military providing some of the early launch vehicles And we've got the military trying to turn some of the NASA spacecraft into militarized programs Just should say this right now The MOL program had one unmanned launch and then it was canceled all of that is relatively innocuous But there is one less innocuous Interlap of military and space and that was Star Wars in 1983 and no I am not talking about the theatrical release of Return of the Jedi I am talking about President Reagan's strategic defense initiative the story with Reagan and SDI starts in 1979 before he was president He was visiting NORAD and during that visit asked somebody there What would happen in the event of a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union? He was told there was nothing to do There's nothing to do. You can't intercept the missile You can only track it and hope by some miracle that you can evacuate the target location in time But basically fatalities were inevitable. Well Reagan didn't really like this answer So he directed one of his advisors Martin Anderson to find a way to do something Well, the only way to do something is to intercept it in space now every ICBM Intercontinental ballistic missile is slightly different. It depends on where it's launched from where it's going what kind of engine it has There's tons of variables But because they're traveling such a large distance and going at significant speeds they will generally go into space now space starts at About 50 60 miles depending on who you ask above the earth But ICBMs can travel as high as 300 miles or even further That is further out than the ISS the International Space Station orbits at about 200 miles above the planet so in 1981 Reagan becomes president and his advisors continue working on this whole space-based missile intercepting system and in 1983 he announces SDI to the world through a televised broadcast and because it involves Breaking up a missile in space. It was dubbed Star Wars by the media And even though the name is kind of used to mock the idea It is kind of fitting because the technology sounds like something right out of Star Wars The system was basically a series of earth and space based laser battle stations named Excalibur that would aim laser beams at a Soviet missile to move its trajectory so that it wouldn't hit the United States Ideally you could move it right off a trajectory where it wouldn't impact the earth So no one would have to really deal with the nuclear strike So well SDI might have sounded like a good idea during the Cold War era It never got off the ground quite literally even though the technology was proved to be conceptually sound President Clinton who took office in 1993 found the program to be ideologically unsound and cancelled it Historians are still debating the legacy of SDI, which is where it becomes pretty interesting So there's an opinion out there that even if the Soviet Union wasn't fearful of SDI It didn't want to spend the extra money developing the counter program So it didn't force it into bankruptcy, which means that didn't really have an impact on the Cold War But there is another argument that supports SDI Saying that it brought a new era where in policy wasn't for mutually assured destruction Which kind of kept the Cold War at bay for a long time that then it became a policy For protection of the American people There's also an opinion out there that Reagan had to move forward with it to maintain strategic advantage over the Soviet Union So whether SDI looked like it was building up the arsenal of the United States or it brought about a détente Either way it seems historians agree that it had some Relatively significant impact on ending the Cold War. I personally don't have an opinion on this I have not done nearly enough research into SDI to say definitively what I think but it is super interesting And it also Kind of brings up an interesting point to discuss with the idea of space force Which is where this whole rant started Since we're discussing space force SDI becomes an interesting case study as an example of a military space program proposal that never did anything physically But still had a significant impact in international relations So we can only take this as a case study, right? We're in a different time in the 1980s We were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union and America was hell-bent on destroying the spread of communism throughout the world Now our relationship with Russia is different to say the least Things are also very different technologically space technology has developed significantly since the 1980s in 2007 China used a missile to destroy an old satellite in orbit Which proves that it's possible to use a missile to destroy significant satellites in the event of war so Would it be useful to have a military branch that deals exclusively with space Beyond the existing military branches that deal with pieces of the space puzzle It's actually events like that 2007 Chinese destruction of a satellite with a missile that has had people in Washington Discussing the potential use and benefit of a military branch dealing exclusively with space for a number of years now And really the idea behind Space Force isn't that far from SDI The primary goal of Space Force would be to protect American space-based assets and attack enemy assets in the event of war Think about it. We rely on GPS as does the military if you take away all of the military support systems That are communications GPS anything like that. It could seriously hamper an attack I mean, this is a pretty poor analogy But imagine D-Day happening and everyone has their positions Geolocated and is getting all of the the updated information as the attack goes on through satellite-based Communications and suddenly that network is wiped out that could be a seriously bad day for military and for a country Another goal of Space Force would be to track space junk Which is something that the US Air Force already does because there is a lot of it And it can seriously impede military action again pieces of old space junk hitting satellites could be very Problematic needing to launch new satellites and having a debris cloud of junk could be a problem Cleaning up that space junk could be an excellent peacetime task for a body like the US Air Force or Space Force So that when it comes down to a time of war all the satellite paths are clean There's even talked down the line very far down the line of Space Force acting sort of like a coast guard For travelers going to the moon or tourism in space if someone is stranded Space Force could be there to do a rescue A lot of the pushback of Space Force is coming from the Air Force Which is not entirely surprising the Air Force does a lot of activities in space and stands to lose a lot If that is all passed off to a new military branch But the Navy and Army are also working in space and stand to lose a lot as well So would it be really problematic to establish a new military branch? Not really I mean it's happened before the US Air Force was part of the army until 1947 and it was restructured It would be messy and probably really expensive and complicated, but it's doable So that's not really the stopping point. I think the main sticking point for me whether or not it's something the country needs I don't know. I am not in closed-door meetings with the military and political higher-ups powers that be in Washington The thing that stands out to me is that this would go against Decades of treaties that have been signed and ratified over the years that say that space is not to be militarized Now there have been a number of these treaties But the most the most notable of which is the Outer Space Treaty that was signed in 1967 And it was designed to set up a legacy of non-armament in space ensuring that space remains a domain for peaceful exploration Personally, I'm a fan of the idea of no military in space now. I know the Air Force will be tracking things We all know the X-37B does its weird mystery stuff in orbit for a year and comes back and it's all classified So no one knows what's going on But I love the idea of space exploration being something that's done for Humanity and for science and yes, I'm aware that makes me super idealistic But when we talk about missions to Mars and Venus because let's stop ignoring Venus I love Venus. I would love to see it as kind of the ISS approach of a multinational mission that takes space as something that can be an an example of the best that humanity can do and has to offer as opposed to Potentially the worst that we have to say which is war and destruction and killing each other It's unlikely that my you know peaceful everyone holding hands happy vision of space exploration is the future But to me personally the idea of space going forward space exploration going forward free of weapons Does seem like a step in the right direction I have to give a special thanks to audible for making this video possible Which means I have something awesome for you guys who love space love books But maybe don't have a ton of time to read and instead prefer to listen to books on your commute To get your first audiobook free and start your 30-day free trial go to audible comm slash vintage space Or if you're in the US you can text vintage space to 500 500 If you're keen to learn a little bit more about the early space stuff I talked about in this video my own book breaking the chains of gravity is Available in addition to an amazing array of titles from space and science to fiction and everything in between So go to audible comm slash vintage space or in the US text vintage space to 500 500 To start your 30-day free trial and get your first audiobook entirely free There are a lot of opinions on space force with military in space about whether or not this is a good idea Of course, I want to hear them Let me know all of your thoughts and comments down in the comment section below this video If you guys want more vintage space be sure to subscribe for bi-weekly videos and for content every single day Be sure to follow me on Twitter Instagram and also on Facebook Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you next time