Space Academy Opens With No School, Campus, Curriculum, Or Authority
The executive order announced a federal academy. Its operative achievement is a commission with 120 days to propose what establishing one would require.
HOUSTON—President Trump created the United States Space Academy on Friday by signing an order that creates a commission to write a report about how the United States might create a Space Academy.
The announcement placed the proposed school alongside West Point and the Air Force Academy, institutions that already possess students, faculty, campuses, curricula, accreditation, budgets, and laws authorizing them. The Space Academy begins with a name and the atmospheric advantage of having none of those earthly encumbrances.
NASA’s administrator will chair the commission, supported by two White House vice chairs, the NASA deputy administrator, the secretary of war, the Air Force secretary, the budget director, and other officials. Within 120 days, they must recommend a governance structure, degree programs, service requirements, applicant rules, a permanent location, legislative actions, and an implementation plan. This is the order’s complete list of details that still need to become details.
Trump said the school would train service members, engineers, civil operators, scientists, entrepreneurs, and astronauts for missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The order says implementation follows presidential approval, any necessary legislation, applicable law, and available fiscal resources, four familiar layers of gravity omitted from the launch ceremony.
For now, enrollment consists of federal officials studying the feasibility of enrollment. The first graduating class will be a report.
Sources: The White House: Establishing the United States Space AcademyNASA: President Trump signs executive order to create U.S. Space AcademyAP: Artemis II astronauts receive the nation's highest space honor
