Interest grows in military space troops.

• Author: Beidel, Eric
• Position: TECHWIRE

In the future, help may be just a suborbital hop away.

The military has been looking into using space travel to rapidly insert troops or drones into battle for the better part of a decade, but the private sector may lead the way. Advances in commercial space tourism have created a renewed interest in the science of taking a small number of troops, launching them up into space and then back down onto another part of the world to deal with a crisis.

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"It's the coup that's about to happen. It's the hostages you now suddenly know where they are," said Taber MacCallum, CEO of Paragon Space Development Corp., an Arizona-based company that makes gear and equipment for humans to wear in space.

Paragon was one of many companies that last year took part in an industry workshop on the topic and responded to the Defense Department's request for information on the matter. An official Pentagon report based...