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Congress

Space Force / Space Corps Costs

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 1, 2019
Filed under
Space Force / Space Corps Costs

CBO Report: H.R. 2500, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (Space Force Excerpt)
“Most of the personnel and assets for the Space Corps would be transferred to the new service from existing forces. CBO estimates that DoD has 22,900 military and civilian personnel who perform space-related activities. Many of those could be transferred to the new service and thus would not affect net costs. In addition, CBO estimates that the Space Corps would require between 4,100 and 6,800 additional personnel for new management and support positions. Those additional positions would increase costs. In total, CBO estimates the annual recurring costs and onetime costs of the new Space Corps would increase by about $3.6 billion over the 2020-2024 period. Annual Costs. In a previous study, CBO estimated that the additional management and overhead positions required for this new military service would increase annual costs by between $0.8 billion and $1.3 billion (in 2020 dollars).”
Congress Shrinks Space Force, earlier post

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11 responses to “Space Force / Space Corps Costs”

  1. Daniel Woodard says:
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    What about all the fancy uniforms with the “Star Trek” logos? They ain’t free. And the communicators? And we would need a “space force” song.

    • Homer Hickam says:
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      “Sweet Home Alabama” has a certain cachet.

      • fcrary says:
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        Unfortunately for Huntsville, they just announced the new space command (or whatever they’re calling it) will be split between Schriever Air Force Base (outside Colorado Springs) and Vandenberg Air Force Base.

        • Homer Hickam says:
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          Ah, poor Space Force (or whatever they may call it). Huntsville didn’t really need it but we were willing to squeeze them in.

        • David Fowler says:
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          No surprise, since the vast majority of military space assets are based there.

    • David Fowler says:
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      The Army is now rolling out it’s second completely new set of dress uniforms in only eleven years. All the services had their own flavor of camouflage battledress uniforms until about two years ago. New Space Force uniforms are hardly a major worry.

  2. Tom Billings says:
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    We cannot know the longer-term costs for Space Corps/Force until we know the reaction of the already existing PLASSF and Russian Space Troops to the initial proliferation and “responsive launch” strategies proposed for the new US Service. These opponents were stood up with the explicit purpose of negating US MilSpace advantages. Believing they will continue as if they will face no more than 60-70 some operational US MilSpace assets is foolish. Saying we know what they will do is almost equally foolish.

    • David Fowler says:
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      It’s an area so rife for potential mission expansion, it’s impossible to extrapolate costs at all beyond the first five years. The explosion in commercial space will, in many ways, drive milspace expansion.

      • tutiger87 says:
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        And more money for the military industrial complex…

        • Tom Billings says:
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          With the pre-industrial means we have for allocating resources for military defense, no one should be surprised at a Military Industrial Congressional Complex*. Whether a new Service can avoid the low productivity of the past remains to be decided, and whether improvement can spread to other Services will most likely be a Constitutional question.

          *Military Industrial Congressional Complex was the first draft phrase Eisenhower used, before MIC. “Congressional” was taken out because it was too direct a reference to the former Senate Majority Leader occupying the platform as a new Vice President, when Eisenhower was speaking.