There is no place in the big field of presidential elections.
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have not talked much about the final border during the 2020 race, which culminates today (November 3) with Election Day. (That moniker is a little misleading, however, as more than 90 million people will vote early and multiple states will count votes for the next few days.)
But many of us are deeply concerned about the United States’ space policy and how it will take shape over the next four years. Here is a brief rundown of where the two main candidates stand.
Related: Presidential vision for space: From IK to Trump
Donald Trump
Trump has been quite active in the space-policy sector. For example, he revived the National Space Council, which had been inactive since the early 1990s. Vice President Mike Pence is chairman of the council, which works to streamline the country’s off-earth plans and priorities.
Trump has also signed five different space policy directives. The first of these, which amended and updated the directive issued by President Barack Obama in 2010, firmly established the U.S. on the lunar and beyond crew course.
NASA is working to achieve these goals through its crew Artemis program of lunar exploration, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on and around the moon by 2028. The first crude Artemis landing is currently targeted for 2024, the ambitious timeline Pence announced in 2019. .
Two of the President’s other space policy directives seek to streamline regulation of the commercial space industry and protocols for space traffic control. The other aims to strengthen cyber security for the space system, and the other aims to strengthen the U.S. Department of Defense. Pointed to create space force.
Related: U.S. The astronauts cast their votes early from the space station
The Space Force, officially established in December 2019, is the nation’s first new military branch since the Air Force was formed in 1947. The Space Force is part of the Air Force, as is the Marine Corps. Navy.
The Space Force has been officially in operation for less than a year, so it’s not clear if the U.S. How much it will change the way it does business in space, especially given that many of its duties were once performed by the Air Force. But the existence of the Space Force signals a growing commitment to space as a more competitive domain and to the more vigorous defense of the United States’ long-held .f-Earth dominance over the past few years. Priorities have been increasingly articulated by military officers.
Trump also signed an executive order earlier this year stating that space mining is the backbone of international space law, in line with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The order supports a stance already taken by Congress, which passed a law in 2015 that explicitly allowed American citizens and companies to use planets and lunar resources such as lunar water ice that can sustain lunar outposts.
The president has consistently called for an increase in NASA’s budget during his tenure. Most of the rising funding has been provided for the Crude Moon Push; Earth science, on the other hand, is specifically targeted for cutting.
So, if Trump’s second word sounds like the first, we probably; We can expect constant stress on the commercialization of space, including the use of off-earth resources; Ongoing pressure to more securely protect American space assets and space dominance; And a special priority of NASA’s crew research programs, especially the expedition to return astronauts to the moon quickly.
‘Anyway necessary’: Vice President Pence urges NASA to go to the moon
JB biden
The discussion of Biden’s space policy is certainly more speculative, but we can make some educated guesses.
For example, some experts have predicted that if Biden wins the election, the U.S. Space policy will not change dramatically. Such predictions often cite the official Democratic Party platform, which promises more widespread continued support for NASA and space exploration.
“We support NASA’s work to get Americans back to the moon and to Mars, taking the next step in exploring our solar system,” the platform wrote. (Whether the same urgency – to get shoes on the moon by 2024, for example – will apply, is another question.)
But the next line highlights important differences with current White House priorities: “Democrats support strengthening NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth-observation mission to better understand how climate change affects our home planet.” . “
That means: Biden has said that if he wins the White House, fighting climate change will be a priority for his administration. It will be a departure from the current administration; President Trump has expressed skepticism about the reality and dangers of climate change in the human-climate.
Towards similarities, President Biden could also be very conducive to commercial spaceflight efforts. Finally, Biden served as vice president during the administration of President Barack Obama, whose federal budget requests directed NASA to hand over low-Earth orbiting crew operations in private astronaut taxis, such as the SpaceX crew dragon capsule. NASA’s commercial crew program was up and running in 2010, and in 2014 SpaceX and Boeing signed a crew-carrying agreement.
It is too early to speculate about other important matters, such as whether President Biden will keep the current NASA administrator, Jim Brydenstein, or make his own decision. We just have to wait and see what happens in the store on election day and beyond.
The story originally appeared on Space.com.
