WASHINGTON — While publicly singing the praises of the recent Trump administration policy designed to build up US capacity for transportation “to, from and within space,” government and industry sources privately are asking one big question: How will these ambitious plans be funded?
Specifically for the Space Force, the White House’s push for the Pentagon to “pursue” commercial space mobility and logistics services also puts more fuel on the fire of the long-running debate between the service and US Space Command (SPACECOM) about near-term funding needs to develop such capabilities.
“Show me the money,” quipped Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Aerospace Security Project, echoing seven other expert, industry, and government sources who spoke to Breaking Defense. (For our younger readers, Swope was quoting Tom Cruise’s 1996 film Jerry McGuire.)
President Donald Trump on Aug. 20 issued a sweeping new White House National Space Transportation Policy, with a top-line goal of enabling more than 1,000 US space launches per year by 2030.
As the new policy is embodied in a National Security Presidential Memorandum (unlike its 2013 predecessor [PDF]), the Defense Department is given a central role in implementing the policy goals in tandem with other agencies, including NASA, and the Departments of Transportation and Commerce, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
