The US Air Force will explore the possibility of delivering military cargo using missiles and has entered into a contract with Elon Musk's company. I figured out what kind of rocket we can talk about and how it might work. SpaceX has won a US Air Force contract to develop a technology demonstrator for delivering military payloads over long distances using heavy rockets. This is reported by Aviation Week magazine.
The contract is designed for five years, according to which the military will transfer $ 102 million to Elon Musk's companies. Air Force Research Laboratory cargo rocket program manager Greg Spangers told Space News: “The contract formalizes a government-industry partnership to find out exactly what a rocket can achieve when used as a cargo vehicle: what is its real capacity, speed and final price?
The Ministry of Defense is very interested in the ability to deliver cargo anywhere in the world on a humanitarian mission or to help in emergency situations.
It is known that since 2020, SpaceX has been jointly developing with the US Transportation Command, and at the end of 2021, Blue Origin joined the cargo rocket program.
The new contract does not specify which SpaceX rocket is in question. It is only said that the Laboratory will be able to observe commercial orbital launches and landings of rocket boosters to find out what effect they have on the surrounding area and how they work in practice.
In addition, SpaceX will design cargo bays that are designed for rapid loading and unloading and are compatible with standard military containers. In addition, the contract provides for the possibility of a full demonstration of the finished transport system. The new contract has no strict deadlines, Defense Ministry officials say, and the military plans to collect data and explore the possibility first.
Although the contract does not specify which missiles the company is talking about, it is very likely that, among other things, the military is referring to the Starship system, which is now in the early stages of testing. Starship is a next-generation super-heavy rocket, its main feature will be the ability to reuse both stages with the help of a jet landing on the tail. Potentially, this will reduce the launch cost by many times, which, combined with a payload capacity of 100 tons, will provide an unprecedentedly low price per kilogram of payload.
There are several arguments in favor of the fact that the military is considering Starship. Firstly, Elon Musk has been saying since at least 2016 that Starship (which was then called BFR) could be used as an airliner carrying passengers along a ballistic trajectory between spaceports in different parts of the Earth. Under this scenario, the rocket will take off into space, but not accelerate to the first space velocity, but will return to the atmosphere again. Thermal protection will allow you to survive the descent side-first, and aerodynamic rudders will provide an accurate choice of landing site. Shortly before contact with the ground, the rocket will turn on the engines, turn vertically and land on the pad.
In his opinion, this will be a convenient replacement for hours-long intercontinental flights. In turn, if the transport system is suitable for the regular transportation of a large number of passengers, then in theory nothing prevents it from being adapted for cargo as well.
Second, in the summer of 2021, the US Air Force released an explanatory document justifying the planned spending for 2022. It says the following:
The Air Force plans to use a multi-million dollar investment to develop the largest missiles in history that will be completely reusable. We also plan to develop and test a method that will allow a private rocket to deliver up to one hundred tons of air force cargo anywhere in the world in less than an hour.
Of the active and developing missiles, only Starship fits this description.
Thirdly, despite the impressive financial capabilities of the US military, the cost of cargo delivery still plays an important role for them. An hour of flight of a heavy military transport aircraft Lockheed C-5 Galaxy costs about $ 100 thousand, respectively, a ten-hour flight will cost about a million. SpaceX generally doesn't reveal the exact cost of a Falcon 9 launch, but Musk said in 2019 that it would cost around $50 million. Accordingly, in order for rocket transportation to be financially justified and to compete with aviation, it is necessary to reduce the launch cost by several times - which SpaceX promises to achieve with the help of Starship.
However, in some cases, the price may not be so important. The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, expressed the opinion in an interview that Starship could be used for the urgent transfer of special forces.“For example, a beautiful idea, which was immediately supported by our enthusiasts, is the intercontinental rapid delivery of people. The idea is really very beautiful, fantastic, let's hope that one day it will become realistic, but today, in order to put people in a rocket so that it flies from one continent to another, one will have to take enormous risks,” he said. “These are risks similar to the first test of a military or civil aircraft. Therefore, ordinary passengers will never use these services, this is ridiculous. This is an overload, an emotional shock. This is all history for special forces. To transfer specially trained people from one continent to another, such technologies will be good.”
So far, Starship prototypes have made only a few test flights with a height of no more than 15 kilometers. Only one test can be considered completely successful, during which the SN15 rocket managed to land and not explode. Suborbital flight is expected only in 2022.
In any case, the new contract concluded once again confirms the serious attitude of the US military to Elon Musk's company and its innovations.
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