military is the only way?
How big is it?
If space is vast, the military branch now responsible for it was purposely designed to be relatively small by Pentagon standards, due to concerns in both parties about creating another out-of-control military bureaucracy.
It now has 16,000 personnel,known as guardians, making it by far the smallest military branch. By comparison, the size of the Marine Corps is roughly 180,000 men and women under arms.
And while it is a separate branch, the Space Force falls under the Air Force Department, which handles about 75 percent of its support functions, such as logistics, personnel management, and business and IT systems. Again the best analogy would be the Marine Corps, which is also a separate service but is part of the Navy Department.
The Space Force’s first annual budget, for the fiscal year that began in October, was $15.5 billion. That’s roughly 0.02 percent of the annual Pentagon budget.