Who’s the “rocket man” now, Donald Trump?

Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos jokingly threatened to blast him off into space, but it’s Trump who may get the last laugh. At a meeting of the National Space Council today, Trump said he will direct the Pentagon and Department of Defense to create a sixth branch of the U.S. military—a so-called Space Force—which will focus on dominating the great beyond.

President Trump is asking for a military branch in outer space: ‘‘We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal.’’ https://t.co/2N0sBtu2f7 #SpaceForce pic.twitter.com/qOSfqMx0gd

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 18, 2018

“Our destiny beyond the Earth is not only a matter of national identity but a matter of national security,” Trump said, according to CNBC.

It sounds wild, but it’s not exactly a new idea. Last year, a sub-panel of the House Armed Services Committee proposed legislation that would create a “Space Corps” within the U.S. Air Force, a move that would presumably help the military ward off threats from space, Defense News reported. Going further back in time, Donald Rumsfeld led a military-reform commission in 2000 that made a similar suggestion, the Atlantic reported. And of course, Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program from the early 1980s is the stuff of Cold War-era legends.

Ironically, Trump’s own secretary of defense, James Mattis, has opposed the creation of a new space-focused military branch. You can read more about that here while you search “How to become a space cadet” on Google.