I'm John Batchel, David Livingston, Dr. Space of the Space Show is here as my co-host,

colleague, and co-pilot,

because we're headed into the future, which is going to look like Starship Troopers. Robert Heinlein's very famous 1959 science fiction novel was later turned into an ironic Hollywood movie, but I remember reading it as

an 11-year-old or 12-year-old. Very exciting. And what they did was recruit teenagers to take

into space as starship troopers and drop from the spaceship in orbit around a bug planet down to the ground and immediately go into combat against these giant bugs, which I always pictured as giant ants.

I don't know what they were supposed to look like.

And that was exciting as a novel, something of a send-up of the rah-rah of war fighting, but in any event, that was then.

Now we turn to the space forces and the starship troopers and the tychoats of the future.

David and I welcome Rick Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center,

who first introduced me to the fact that we're building already military units, not just for Earth, but for the Earth-Moon system, and soon enough for the Earth-Moon Mars system.

Rick, a very good evening to you. Thank you. I read you from the military space report of

breaking defense, a publication that I receive routinely out of Washington. Just random headlines.

SpaceX wins 4.16 billion Space Force contract to detect airborne moving targets. One headline.

There's next, spacecom exploring tech for future offensive cis-luner ops, according to the chief

scientist. And one more. Epic Fury, that was the original bombing campaign launched by the U.S. and Israel against Iran,

Epic Fury highlighted Space Forces needs for distributed ops and early warning sites.

Rick, if I arrived from Mars and read these headlines, I would presume Starship Troopers is already in the field.

Have the Chinese got a Starship Troopers? Good evening to you, Rick.

Good evening, John. Good evening, David. The Chinese have a completely dual use and, yes,

indeed, militarized space program.

All Chinese astronauts, tycoauts, belong to the astronaut brigade of the People's Liberation Army.

Sometimes it's called astronaut corps because brigade sounds like they're ready to start shooting and not take names.

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