New Delhi, Aug. 29 -- HOUSTON - The United States has had a Space Force since 2019 and still has nowhere of its own to train the people who join it. On Friday, at NASA's Johnson Space Center, President Donald Trump signed an executive order announcing a US Space Academy to close that gap. Where it will stand, what it will teach, who will pay for it and when a first class might arrive are all, for now, blank.

The signing came during a ceremony awarding the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four astronauts of the Artemis II crew, which gave the announcement a room full of people inclined to welcome it. Trump reached for the obvious comparisons, invoking West Point and Annapolis before telling the audience that the country would now...