Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson surprised the ladies on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday by admitting that, in concept, President Donald Trump’s push to create a Space Force isn’t such a bad idea.
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Joy Behar introduced the topic with a laugh, asking whether Tyson thought a sixth branch of the military, namely, the Space Force, would be at all effective. Whoopi Goldberg buried her face in her hands, shaking her head.
But Tyson shocked them all by saying, “I want to make it clear: just because that suggestion came out of Trump’s mouth doesn’t mean it’s a bad suggestion, OK? So just because of that … If you want to analyze all information in its own context.”
The ladies scoffed, prompting Tyson to ask, “Did you complain when the Air Force separated from the U.S. Army?”
“I wasn’t alive,” Goldberg cut in. (The Air Force became an independent branch of the U.S. military in 1947.)
Tyson explained, “The U.S. Army Air Force — and people said, command and control in air is different from command and control on the ground, and the soldiers have to be different and know how to fly. The engineers have to be different — have to know aerodynamics — and they peeled it off, and nobody said, ‘Why are we doing it?’ No, it was a natural progression in the theaters of operations of war.”
“So, you like this?” Behar asked.
Tyson replied, “I don’t object to it.” And then he added a few of his own ideas for consideration.
“If you’re going to do it,” he said, “throw in asteroid defense while you’re at it because that could render us all extinct. And how about clean up all that space debris that could interfere with commerce. Space assets are huge.”
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