The road to Mars, Trump's way of defeating the Russians through satellites

Donald Trump has announced that the United States will plant its flag on Mars and that Elon Musk's support could be key to realizing this initiative.

The trip to Mars could also serve as a model for remaking US missile defenses.

In 2019, during a meeting with soldiers at the Marine Corps base in San Diego, Trump said, "Leave Russia and its missiles, we're going to Mars."

This statement was met with mockery and ironic comments, but the 78-year-old formed the US Space Force as a separate branch of the military.

Read too Trump tasks Elon Musk and SpaceX with "getting stranded NASA astronauts back into space after the Biden administration left them there for so long"

Meanwhile, in 2019, the company SpaceX, still not very well known at the time, launched the first human crew and then formed Starlink, a major achievement in the field of global telecommunications and satellite internet.

These events, which will prove to be momentous, occurred six years ago. Today, SpaceX has more than 7000 satellites launched into orbit and a leader who is very close to President Donald Trump, who has reaffirmed his desire to plant the American flag on Mars.

The company SpaceX could have a key role in this American dream for Mars, which has both military and civilian aspects.

NASA out, SpaceX in

The concept of the military industry in the US has long been focused exclusively on material profits, which are very expensive for the US and other countries.

Every military company in the US, as a rule, exaggerates its technology, which especially in the aviation sector is very expensive.

How expensive the American space program is in the 21st century is also shown by the fact that NASA buys most of its rocket engines from Russian companies.

Simply put, Russian engines offer the required propulsion and thrust at a much lower price compared to American companies.

Entering the world stage is the company SpaceX and its extravagant owner Elon Musk, who took the opportunity to enter the world of space technology through a small path.

Read too SpaceX launches 21 satellites into low Earth orbit

Today, SpaceX is a company that has dominated the development of the space program in order to be financially viable, to be free from the lengthy procurement procedures that have crippled the military industry, and ultimately to be at the service of fulfilling Donald Trump's every wish without discussion or study of economic efficiency.

These changes are already being felt by NASA, which since its creation in 1959 has been the leader of the development of the country's space technology.

In recent budget rationalization memos, Trump stripped NASA of $1.2 billion from projects deemed unfeasible. NASA also requested a $2025 billion budget increase for 27, but that amount was reduced to $25 billion.

Under these conditions, with Elon Musk at the head of the Office of Government Efficiency, NASA's power and importance may pass to private companies in the future.

The quest for Mars and the space race

Proclaiming an era of defensive conservatism and isolationism, Donald Trump often singles out Ronald Reagan as an example of his method of working and planning. In a recent speech, Trump advocated renewing the missile defense system and creating an American counterpart to the Israeli system.Iron Dome".

These statements could mean several things, the first of which is the recognition by the Russians that, just as in October 1957, with the launch of the first satellite Sputnik-1, they made a major leap in missile technology and that it is time for a new ceasefire agreement, given that all previous agreements have been withdrawn.

What could Trump, along with Musk, try to do to push Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate disarmament and buy time to prepare Global Missile Defense against the threats of hypersonic missiles and their means?

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He could try what Ronald Reagan did and achieved in 1983 with the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars.” Reagan announced a program where Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles would be destroyed by laser-armed satellites before the missiles entered mid-flight.

The consequences of this act are that it is still unknown today how many billions were spent on the SDI program, but the Soviets, with Mikhail Gorbachev at the helm, “lost the game” and entered an unimaginable spiral of defense spending. In this race, the Soviets drowned and then exploded, while the SDI program was never realized.

In efforts to counter Russia's technological advances in missile technology, Trump is seeking space in Greenland for new early warning radars, increasing the number of early warning satellites, and asking Europe to invest more money.

This plan also includes sanctions on oil, the destruction of refineries in Ukraine, and the loss of the gas market in Europe, all with the aim of weakening Russia's economic capabilities that would enable the financing of new technologies of Soviet origin.

But unlike Reagan, today's US and Donald Trump also have China as a factor in their backyard, requiring a new course of action, as an additional and alarming circumstance that complicates the situation. /Telegraph/