Here's what we know about the "space academy" Trump just announced

The academy idea remains in its formative stages but is likely to include curricula that cover human and non-human spaceflight operations, ground control operations, space vehicle design, orbital debris mitigation, and related disciplines. The goal is to create a new generation of technical leaders who can support ongoing exploration efforts, both in commercial spaceflight and in ensuring that the US government maintains a global lead in doing hard things in space.

This would be an entirely new academy, perhaps similar in design to the US Merchant Marine Academy, which is based in Kings Point, New York. Students would apply after high school for admission and be taught by leaders in both the civil and commercial spaces. Students would earn a four-year degree. No location has been chosen for the academy, but it may be near existing NASA facilities or workforce expertise. “I’m going to be choosing a location very shortly,” Trump said Friday.

Blurring lines between military and civil space?

A former deputy administrator of NASA, Lori Garver, said the idea of creating a space academy could be helpful for the US space program and its future workforce, but she cautioned that not enough is yet known about the details.

Her biggest concern is that creating an academy modeled after the military service academies would conflate what NASA does—the peaceful, civil exploration of space—with military activities undertaken by the US Space Force.

“NASA’s charter and legal foundation calls for a civilian agency separate from the military,” Garver said. “Structuring a feeder college along the lines of a military academy strikes me as ill-conceived.”

Garver served under President Obama at NASA about a decade ago. Since then, she has been involved in the creation of several fellowship programs to funnel more women and minorities into aerospace engineering. She said NASA has not historically had difficulty attracting young talent into the space program, even if there is not as much upside in pay as there can be in the private sector. Traditionally, NASA has had close ties to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, and other institutions that have long fed talent into the space agency.

Trump did not seek to dispel concerns along these lines during his remarks.

“So you think of West Point, and you think of Annapolis, and you think of the Air Force Academy, and you think of the Coast Guard Academy,” Trump said after announcing the Space Academy. “They’re all great, but we’re going to have now the Space Force.”