Donald Trump Reveals Space Force Logo, And Social Media Has Lots Of 'Star Trek' Jokes
President Donald Trump announced a new branch of the military last month when he signed an act creating the Space Force. On Friday, he unveiled via Twitter the official logo for this sixth branch of the military, and Twitter quickly noted that it looks a whole lot like the "Star Trek" Starfleet Command logo.
"I hope@CBS and @ParamountPicssues the US Governement for copyright. This is an insult to #StarTrek and everything Gene@roddenberry's vision stands for. Peace, inclusion, working to better ourselves and humanity? Not this government. #SpaceForce FAIL," one person said.
"Lets just copy the Star Trek logo and no one will notice. Because we're all stupid right? RIGHT??" another wrote.
"Much ado has been made of the new #SpaceForce logo being a copy of the #StarTrek insignia. They have mutually inspired each other over the years. The NASA astronaut pin is believed to be the original inspiration. The #SpaceForce logo is a homage to the intertwining of the two," someone else pointed out.
PopCulture.com has more details on the logo creation process:
Worth noting that this new logo doesn't bear any real resemblance to the few that were proposed on Twitter in the summer of 2018 — not long after Space Force was first announced. Richard Banne, the man who designed NASA's 1975 logo, told TMZ that the half-dozen proposals were "sophomoric," as well as "impulsive, ill-advised, superficial and second-rate," and that a "random student from the Los Angeles Art Center" could have done better.
Military.com has more details on how the Space Force came to be, and explains that it's not actually a sixth military branch, but instead falls under the Air Force.
Space Force was signed into law Dec. 20, 2019 as part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. SpaceForce.mil went live shortly thereafter.
On June 18, 2018, President Donald Trump directed the Pentagon to begin planning for a Space Force: a 6th independent military service branch to undertake missions and operations in the rapidly evolving space domain. The U.S. Space Force would be the first new military service in more than 70 years, following the establishment of the U.S. Air Force in 1947.
It continued:
The Department of Defense forwarded a Space Force proposal to Congress, on March 1, 2019, calling for a service that would fall under the Air Force in the same way the Marine Corps falls under the Department of the Navy. The proposal also included the designation of a new position: undersecretary of the Air Force for space, a civilian position that would answer to the secretary of the Air Force and oversee U.S. Space Force. Officials estimated the creation of a new service would cost $2 billion over five years, and require 15,000 personnel.
On Aug. 29, 2019, the Pentagon activated U.S. Space Command, a new U.S. combatant command led by Air Force Gen. John "Jay" Raymond, intended to serve as a precursor to U.S. Space Force. The Pentagon had a U.S. Space Command from 1985 to 2002, but it had a far more limited scope and was not a geographic combatant command.
