Donald Trump’s inaugural address has two of the most important points for me in his inaugural address, both related to the rocket and space industry and which no one has heard of before.
- “American astronauts will plant our flag on Mars.”
- “I will direct our military to begin construction of a powerful missile defense shield, Iron Dome. It will be built entirely in the United States.”
Elon Musk’s childhood dream of Mars has propelled the visionary to the pinnacle of global space exploration. He has long since earned a place in the history books next to Wernher von Braun and Korolev. It seems that he is also using his involvement in politics to realize his dream. An astronaut mission to Mars is a task so grandiose and expensive that it can only take off with presidential support. There is no doubt where Mars came from in Trump’s speech. However, Trump and Musk may not live to conquer Mars. Good thing they had time to at least start the project.
But the missile defense system is a much more responsible and controversial step. For starters, we should all be clear about what Trump announced? The Iron Dome that actually exists in Israel shoots down tactical missiles. And those are mostly homemade Arab rockets, with no sophisticated trajectories or ABM defenses.
Why does the U.S. need such a defense? No Iron Dome analogs on the border perimeter will protect – all terrorist attacks and mass murders of people over the past decades in the U.S. have come from within. There’s no way to know where to put tactical missile defense against such a scourge.
It turns out that Trump is referring to U.S. missile defense against modern intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The very missile defense of the country banned by the “Treaty on Limitation of Missile Defense Systems.” It was signed by the US and the USSR in 1972. Bush Jr. withdrew from it unilaterally in 2002.
The main reason for the ABM Treaty was the extremely high cost of such systems. The USSR and even the world’s richest USA could be left without pants if the country was fully protected from the enemy’s ICBMs. ABM technologies have changed a lot since then, but they have not become cheaper – opponents are constantly creating missiles to overcome the newest systems. As an example, we can point to the Avangard planning block created in Russia (the US and China are also testing such missiles).
