Pentagon ‘space corps’ plan leaves earth science in the dust

SCIENTISTS AND THE military have often tussled over who calls the shots in space. The first astronauts were military test pilots. NASA made the space shuttle extra big to accommodate the spy satellites Pentagon planners wanted to launch. And it took 15 years for the Defense Department to release topographical maps gleaned during a classified shuttle mission so scientists could use them.
Now, two budget fights in Washington reveal how this uneasy relationship is tilting, once again, toward the needs of the military.
Last week, a House Armed Services subcommittee approved legislation calling for the creation of a “Space Corps” within the Air Force. This branch within a branch would operate independently of NASA, the nation’s civilian space agency. The idea is to prevent the Air Force from diverting space funding to other areas—say, Afghanistan or new fighter jets—and consolidate talent and expertise within in one office, Rep. John Rogers, R-Ala., who chairs the subcommittee on strategic services, said during the hearing. No one included a price tag on the proposal, but it would lead to a reorganization of salaries and budgets.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld proposed the idea of a Space Corps in 2001. The Rumsfeld Commission suggested making it a branch of the military just like the Army or Air Force. But the report came just a few months before 9/11, and the Air Force shelved the proposal.
Today, China and Russia wield significant power in space, where they can bring down Earth-launched missiles. China went so far as to shoot down one of its own satellites to test its capabilities in a space war, an exercise detailed in a 2015 report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “It used to be that space was a sanctuary,” says Victoria Samson, Washington director of the Secure World Foundation, a non-profit space policy think tank. “Once you got your asset (i.e. satellite) into orbit, you could do what you wanted to do. Now there’s a real concern that the backbone of our national security capabilities could be interfered with at a critical point.”
The plan, pushed by Rogers but opposed by Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, lands on Capitol Hill at a time when military space technology consumes an ever-larger chunk of Pentagon spending. “Defending space assets is critical,” says Jeffrey Hoffman, a former shuttle astronaut who now leads the Man Vehicle Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “When many people talk about militarization of space, they think of offensive weapons. I think the critical issue is being able to defend our communication and navigation assets.”
That requires money. Air Force leaders have requested a 20 percent increase for space systems: $7.7 billion in the 2018 federal budget the Trump administration sent to Congress in May. The request includes $4.3 billion for research and development and $3.4 billion for procurement. (Just what the Pentagon allocates for space in its classified "black budget" remains anyone's guess.) Meanwhile, Trump's budget sets aside $19.1 billion for NASA, a budget that funds more than 17,000 employees and grants to 10,000 academic scientists.
The idea of creating a new military space command even as the White House takes an axe to peaceful Earth-observing systems devoted to science. The Trump administration wants to cancel five NASA earth science missions and slash NOAA’s budget for studying the Earth, weather, and oceans—including ground and space-bound sensors.
Samson and other policy watchers say cuts to NASA’s and NOAA’s satellite monitoring programs are driven by the Trump administration’s hostility toward (and denial of) climate change. In fact, NOAA’s climate and weather programs observing satellites are also vital to keeping the United States safe, according to Anthony Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a non-profit consortium of 100 universities focused on research and training in the climate and environmental sciences.
“These [Earth-observing satellite] assets that we have are central to protection to life, property and economic development and national security,” says Busalacchi. At the same time, he sees a future in which bright lines between military, commercial, and scientific missions into space blur. Already, the Pentagon’s National Geospatial Intelligence Agency buys Earth images from DigitalGlobe and other commercial satellite firms, and NASA hires SpaceX to make resupply missions and (purportedly) launch spy satellites for the National Reconnaisance Office.

Given the political realities of science funding these days, Busalacchi thinks some creativity is in order. He argues for networks of smaller, cheaper satellites and other private sector solutions to replace the big, expensive government satellites that provide easy targets for Congressional budget cutters. “The present path we are on is not sustainable,” he says. “We can't continue to put up these Battlestar Galacticas on a fixed budget.”
There also might be a way for the military and scientists to actually cooperate. "There’s no reason why the two different communities can’t figure out a way to work with each other,” says Samson. “There is a benefit to having people who understand how space works. It would be helpful to have people in the military who know that space is different than the ground. That might not be a bad thing.”
For now, the Space Corps proposal is just that. Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee are scheduled to mark up their version of a defense bill June 28. The full House will vote on Rogers’ plan when it returns from its recess after July 4.