The U.S. Space Academy Is More of a Workforce Bet Than an Astronaut School
TL;DR: The proposed U.S. Space Academy is not an operating school yet. It is a 120-day attempt to decide whether the United States needs a dedicated pipeline for the engineers, operators, civil servants, military personnel and commercial leaders who would run a far busier space economy. The strongest case for the academy is not astronaut training. It is the coordination problem created when civil, defence and commercial space systems begin sharing infrastructure, people and risk at much greater scale.
The United States has announced a Space Academy, but nobody can apply to it. There is no campus, budget, course catalogue or opening date. President Donald Trump's executive order creates a commission that has 120 days to design the institution and report back.
That distinction is easy to lose in the headline. The more interesting story is the workforce problem behind the announcement.
The federal government is planning for more launches,...
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