How Exactly Do You Establish a Space Force?

At about 8 a.m. on Monday, reporters called into a press conference with White House officials to discuss the day’s main event: a meeting of the National Space Council at noon. The conference was convened to discuss a spate of new proposals by the administration for, among other things, improving management of satellite traffic and cleaning up debris in Earth’s orbit. Not exactly thrilling stuff.

And so reporters went into the meeting ready to hear what had been outlined for them, without expectations for anything more exciting.

Then the president took the lectern.

“When it comes to defending America, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space,”