Stefanie Hane

100,000 American troops in Europe = a free ride for Europeans? Let's check the facts. 🔹 American military bases are not free Germany, Italy, Spain, and Romania pay for the infrastructure, land, utilities, and civilian personnel of US bases. Germany alone contributes over $1 billion annually to support the American military presence on its soil. 🔹 Europe is the largest customer of the American defense industry F-35s, Patriot missiles, HIMARS, Apaches — all purchased by Europeans with real money. Every security alarm in Europe translates into contracts for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing. 🔹 American bases in Europe don't only protect Europe Ramstein in Germany coordinates operations across Africa and the Middle East. Sigonella in Italy covers the Mediterranean and North Africa. Romania secures the eastern flank and the Black Sea. These are global American strategic assets — not neighborhood security for Europeans. 🔹 Command is American, not European NATO is always led by an American Supreme Commander (SACEUR). Europe contributes troops, bases, and money — but America holds the controls. Those who control the structure are not the ones getting a free ride. 🔹 The nuclear umbrella is not altruism American nuclear deterrence in Europe keeps the dollar as the world's reserve currency, keeps European markets open to US corporations, and legitimizes American hegemony against Russia and China. But what would actually happen if America withdrew its troops from Europe? 🔹 For America — immediate strategic losses Without bases in Europe, American response time to any crisis in Europe, Africa, or the Middle East grows from hours to days. Ramstein, Sigonella, and Incirlik cannot be replaced by aircraft carriers. Infrastructure built over decades disappears overnight. 🔹 The American defense industry loses its biggest customer A Europe without the US umbrella will build its own defense industry — and fast. Airbus Military, KNDS, Leonardo, and Rheinmetall will take the contracts that Lockheed and Raytheon currently win. Billions of dollars shift from America to Europe. 🔹 The dollar weakens Dollar hegemony is partly sustained by American global military credibility. A withdrawal from Europe signals to the world that America no longer guarantees the postwar order. Alternatives — the euro, the yuan — become more attractive as global reserve options. 🔹 Russia wins without firing a single shot Not necessarily through immediate invasion — but through political influence, energy pressure, and the gradual destabilization of countries on the eastern frontier. The Baltic states, Poland, and Romania enter a security grey zone that no one can guarantee quickly. 🔹 China watches and draws conclusions about Taiwan A precedent of withdrawal from Europe sends a direct signal to Beijing: American commitments are negotiable. The cost of deterrence in the Pacific rises exponentially. Withdrawal is not isolationism. It is strategic abdication. America would not be leaving Europe because it no longer has interests there. It would be leaving while ignoring that those very interests are what make it a superpower. The "free ride" narrative doesn't describe Europe. It describes exactly what America has in Europe.

Christina Koch was a firefighter at the South Pole at -111°F before she ever applied to be an astronaut. That was maybe the fourth most interesting line on her resume. She grew up in North Carolina, got three degrees from NC State, and her first real job was building deep-space instruments at NASA. Then she left for Antarctica. Spent three and a half years bouncing between the Arctic and Antarctic as a research scientist, including a full winter at the South Pole base. That means going months without sunlight or fresh food, with a crew of about 50 people and no way out until flights resume. While she was down there, she also joined the glacier search-and-rescue team. After coming back, she went to Johns Hopkins and built instruments for two NASA missions (one of them is still orbiting Jupiter right now). She figured out how to start a tiny vacuum pump that NASA designed for a future Mars rover. Johns Hopkins nominated it for their Invention of the Year in 2009. Then she went back to the field. More time in Antarctica and a stretch up in Greenland. A government research station in northern Alaska, near the top of the world. Then she ran another one in American Samoa, near the equator. In 2013, NASA selected her from 6,300 applicants. Eight people got in. Her first space mission was supposed to be a normal rotation on the International Space Station, but NASA extended it. She ended up staying 328 straight days and orbiting Earth 5,248 times, covering about 139 million miles (roughly 291 round trips to the Moon). Up there, she ran over 210 experiments, including tests of cancer drugs in zero gravity and 3D printers that can build structures close to human tissue. Six spacewalks, 42 hours floating outside the station. She learned Russian for the training. She flies supersonic jets. Right now, Koch is on Artemis II, heading for a flyby behind the far side of the Moon. The crew launched on April 1 and is on track to travel about 252,000 miles from Earth, which would break the all-time human distance record of 248,655 miles set by Apollo 13 in 1970. That record has stood for 56 years, and it was set during a disaster that nearly killed the crew. Fred Haise, one of the Apollo 13 astronauts, is 92 now. He told Koch: "I heard you're going to break our record." Nobody had left Earth's neighborhood since December 1972. Koch and her three crewmates are the first in 53 years, and they are coming home at about 25,000 mph. That is faster than any crewed spacecraft has ever come back through the atmosphere.

We see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere. That's us, together, watching as our astronauts make their journey to the Moon.