{"id":78692,"date":"2022-03-13T12:02:20","date_gmt":"2022-03-13T18:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=78692"},"modified":"2022-03-13T12:02:20","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T18:02:20","slug":"78692","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=78692","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Quip O’ The Day
\n“Hope we spend more time on propulsion than on pronouns.”<\/em><\/p>\n

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Moon battle: New Space Force plans raise fears over militarizing the lunar surface.<\/a><\/p>\n

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The battle is on for the moon.<\/div>\n
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The U.S. military is investing in new technologies to build large structures on the lunar surface. It\u2019s designing a spy satellite to orbit the moon. And it just announced plans for a surveillance network \u2014 what it calls a \u201chighway patrol\u201d \u2014 for the vast domain between Earth\u2019s orbit and the moon, known as cislunar space. Top military strategists and documents, meanwhile, now consistently refer to this region as a new realm of operations.<\/div>\n
The funding is also starting to flow. The\u00a0government spending bill\u00a0passed by Congress this week added $61 million for the military to pursue projects in cislunar space.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThat\u2019s basically the first significant chunk of money that we\u2019re putting towards this,\u201d said Space Force Col. Eric Felt, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory\u2019s Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.<\/div>\n
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He likened it to \u201cputting the toe into the water, but we think this is an important potential future tech area.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cFrom the Space Force\u2019s perspective,\u201d he added, \u201cthey don\u2019t know how big of a deal this is going to be in the future, but it could be a big deal.\u201d<\/div>\n
The Pentagon maintains these new pursuits, all launched since the creation of the Space Force three years ago, are primarily designed to help secure a growing private space economy and safeguard civilian astronauts. In all, the newest branch believes nation-states and commercial companies will fly nearly 100 missions \u2014 both crewed and uncrewed \u2014 to the moon between now and 2030.<\/div>\n
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But space policy and security experts also fear that the armed forces could outstrip NASA in space exploration and thrust what has largely been a peaceful competition into a military contest.<\/div>\n
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Aaron Boley, co-director of Outer Space Institute at the University of British Columbia, says the Pentagon already plays an outsized role in Earth orbit, where satellites are used to support military operations and global security.<\/div>\n
\u201cBut once we move to the moon, this should really be driven by civilian organizations to ensure that peaceful purposes are maintained,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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