Editor’s Note: It is a rare and welcome thing to have contributions from the Socotra Writer’s Panel. I have a marvelous rumination from he redoubtable Marlow which is waiting for a September release. Today we have Point Loma’s take on SPACECOM and the future- one that appears to be marching ahead of us at every turn. There is plenty to talk about in terms of the social impact of the COVID virus, or what people think is reasonable adaptation to the virus. I am trying to keep track of it all, but Point Loma touches on things that are not changing, but have already changed. We are going to be different, but we don’t understand what is rushing toward us. Oh well, that has not stopped our follies before, and as we have often said, what could go wrong?
-Vic

Star Wars

Rep Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas – First President of the United Federation of Planets?

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of all of the COVID-19 doom and gloom, and the vapid dogmatic posturing of the Marxist-Leninist-Socialist (oops, I meant Democratic) and Republican conventions – neither of which I watched. I’d rather keep my mind in the stars, since it is a lot safer up there although I long for real phasors that work on Planet Earth just in case the libertarian hate-and abolish/defund-the-cops movement comes to my neighborhood to make their point to us quivering balls of white privilege and micro-aggressions.

Just to keep things lively, Rep Dan Crenshaw managed to get included into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) a proviso that requires the Space Force to adopt Navy ranks vs. what is currently in the Air Force. As you well know, the Air Force adopted Army ranks (and signature bus driver blue-dyed uniforms) drawing from its legacy of being the air arm of the ground forces primarily before and during WWII, of which my father was a part, and then there was the big separation in 1947, and the Key West agreement in 1948 which still checkers today’s inter-service politics to a certain degree. I mean, we Navy guys tried to ditch those pesky Marines at Guadalcanal in 1942, and yet, here they are…
Besides, I like a guy with an eye patch. There’s a great story about a guy wearing one who lured this hot woman into bed and after consummation of the act of coitus, curiosity got the better of her. Thinking that her partner was asleep, she inched up on him and lifted the eye patch to see what was underneath and was rewarded with a wink. I’d like to think that Dan is that kind of guy – he’s winking at us in his own style.

Anyone with half a brain could spot the fun that was going to come from all of this asinine sandbox politics – grown men and women in uniform holding senior ranks acting like the spoiled brats that we have raised, playing their stress and time out cards. Spacemen and women, cadets, it’s all going to become true. Right now, if the Senate agrees with the House version of the NDAA, Navy ranks within the Space Force is going to become law – and Starfleet will become real.

And of course, there is nothing like the original Starfleet Captain to come out of the woodwork to foot stomp it – it may be fun for him and great entertainment for the rest of us wags on the sidelines, but people in the know realize that he carries a lot of weight in this debate.

We may not have starships yet, but we also didn’t have instantaneous Dick Tracy global communications 20 years ago, either. Going to space may prove to be too hard on the normal human body, but maybe not on robots and future cyborg derivatives thereof (see the movie Blade Runner and its sequel for details). And if you are really curious, you should be reading about Elon Musk’s brain chip and Computer-Brain Interface (CBI), as well as what is going on at DARPA with Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) which is today $88.5M of your tax dollars invested in developing human-computer neural interfaces. I’ll bet you didn’t realize that you voted to fund that research – I didn’t until I started to read about it…

In the meantime, we do have our current planetary solar environs in which to experiment; and people are learning to spell cis-lunar space in a hurry to stake out that non treaty- confined high ground for all sorts of the normal nefarious purposes that snoopy, power hungry governments can conjure up as justification for large expenditures of national treasuries. Yep, we are going to have space fighters flying Moon and Planetary CAP and overwatch missions – mark my words. And the performance requirements will tax both Newton’s and Einstein’s physics. I still love one of my favorite naval War Colllege dead guy quotes about Newton and complexity since it will apply to the fight for dominance in space:
“We must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect war may have on them. To assess these things in all their ramifications and diversity is plainly a colossal task. Rapid and correct appraisal of them clearly calls for the intuition of a genius; to master all this complex mass by sheer methodical examination is obviously impossible. Bonaparte was quite right when he said that Newton himself would quail before the algebraic problems it could pose.”[1]

At any rate, it is coming as fast as the next election which Vic has done such a great job of covering and his painting of the real political picture and all of the delicious deviations and succulent variants from believed ground truth from his hideaway at Refuge Farm. I just thought I would throw this into the fray as it will be interesting to see how the future imposes itself upon us. I hope it gets better than it is right now.
I remain your faithful servant.

[1] Carl von Clausewitz, who else?

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