President Trump makes news at Space Council meeting by going off script

Enlarge / US President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with US Vice President Mike Pence during a National Space Council meeting in the East Room of the White House on Monday. (credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

For its third meeting, the National Space Council chose the White House as its venue. This allowed President Trump to stop by the meeting to sign a policy document on space-traffic management and also share a few thoughts. This event was supposed to focus on the relatively sedate topic of space debris, but the freewheeling president had other ideas.

Among his remarks, Trump declared that he was pressing ahead with the creation of a Space Force to become the sixth branch of the US military. Additionally, he mused about the high cost of rockets built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin and suggested they should not work together "because the pricing only goes up."

Space Force

Addressing the space council, with its titular head Vice President Mike Pence standing at his side, Trump said he was directing the Department of Defense and Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as a distinct entity outside of the Air Force.