Gary Michael Church
In my view Paul Spudis has the correct solution; he has on several occasions written about a “Space Navy” as a separate agency. Having been in on the birth of the Department of Homeland Security I know this is not impossible. The DHS was brought into existence and I was made a part of it in a jiffy. The question is how to justify such a Human Space Flight-Beyond Earth Orbit organization? There are three reasons;
1. The nuclear deterrent is deteriorating and all three main players in the game, America/Russia/China have it in their best interest to not have weapons on hair trigger alert minutes away from their targets. I described moving the weapons into deep space in “Seven Steps to Space Travel” on this blog.
2. Planetary protection- Chicxulub/Tunguska/Chelyabinsk events are a good enough reason by themselves and all three nuclear nuclear powers can task their spaceships to intercept impact threats.
3. Survival colonies. Since it will take lunar resources to build a fleet of nuclear propelled and armed spaceships it only makes sense to have lunar colonies with women and sperm banks (Amazon women on the Moon) in case a global pandemic wipes out the human race. It sounds crazy but….yes, I am talking about all of them being young women. It only makes sense.
And of course these spaceships can do some exploring. If you have such Amazon-crewed space battleships out there the astro-cosmo-taiko-femnauts might as well go somewhere and Mars is actually a poor destination if you have the capability to take some mini-subs to the ocean moons of the gas giants.
Ice on the Moon 