The Pentagon wants to make some of the Starship upper stage and the two-stage super heavy booster and Starship into government-owned, government-operated assets instead of contracting the company every time the rocket is needed according to Aviation Week.
The Pentagon has funded a project to develop the capability and have a proof of concept demo for the single upper stage fully reusable SpaceX Starship to deliver cargo anywhere on Earth in under one hour. There were two fundings for total of about $150 million.
The new discussions are for an expanded effort. The first effort is like contracting a Boeing to prove it could use one 787 to make one delivery.
The initial new option could be for the military to take full operational control of SpaceX Starships while they performed a secret mission. The military would staff the operations to use the DOD owned reusable rockets for secret missions. If the Starship survived then it would be returned to SpaceX.
Another option could eventually be the full purchase of multiple SpaceX Starships and Booster The military would also need to have many Mechazilla launch towers built. The military would staff the operations to use the DOD owned reusable rockets for secret missions.
The Pentagon has approached SpaceX about potentially taking over Starship for sensitive and potentially dangerous missions as a government-owned, government-operated asset instead of contracting the company to launch payloads.
The company has been exploring its options in responding, Gary Henry, a senior adviser with SpaceX, told the audience at the Space Mobility Conference here Jan. 30.
SpaceX is already on contract for development of the Department of the Air Force’s Rocket Cargo mission, with the goal of delivering cargo point to point through space. But this is beyond that plan.
The pricing of expended SpaceX Falcon 9 versus reusable Falcon 9 missions would not apply to pricing for fully reusable Super Heavy Starships or fully reusable Starships. There have been about 20 reuses of the booster first stage of SpaceX Falcon 9. This will be increased to 40 reuses with a new maintenance and certification program. The expectation is that Falcon 9 boosters can be reused one hundred times or more. This gives confidence that Super Heavy boosters and Starship can be reused one hundred times or more as well.
Col. Eric Felt, director of space architecture for the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, says there are certain concepts of operation that could be relevant for a government-owned, government-operated space vehicle.
“If we can buy the commercial service, that’s what we’re going to do, but there might be some use cases where there needs to be a government-owned, government-operated [vehicle] and that transfer can happen on the fly,” Felt says.
The Boeing C-17 Globemaster III is a military transport aircraft used to carry equipment, personnel and vehicles. C-17 costs about $326 million each and have a maximum payload of about 85 tons. It has a top speed of ~500 mph.
The SpaceX Starship with improved Raptor engines could transport 200 tons of reusable cargo at about 10-20 times the speed of sound.
The B-2 stealth bomber cost $2.1 billion. B-2 Spirit travels up to 628mph and has up to 20 tons of bombs. It costs $60 million every seven years for maintenance.
The new B-21 stealth bomber is expected to cost about $600-700 million each. It will also have a top speed of about 600 mph and a bomb payload of about 15 tons.
A SpaceX Starship would have more range than most airplanes. It could fly about 8000 miles. It could be converted into a reusable hypersonic bomber.
NASA funded a single use of the SpaceX Lunar Starship for $3.5 billion. The first ownership transaction for the SpaceX Military Cargo Starship would be priced to recover some of the $10 billion SpaceX has spent to develop the Starship and Super Heavy booster.
The price for the capability of SpaceX Starship justifies pricing in the $500 million to $2 billion price range per unit.
The SpaceX Starship is not a stealth rocket but its high speed makes it like a much faster bomber of the SR71 spy plane.
It is obvious that eventually the US military and Space Force will end up buying and owning hundreds of SpaceX Starships and dozens of boosters. They will build hundreds of mechazilla launch towers.
The US has 935 military cargo planes and there are 27000 commercial passenger jets and there are about 2270 freight cargo planes in the world. The US military could end up with 10-40% of the world inventory of reusable Starships and boosters if the ratio ends up similar to the ratio of US military planes vs regular commercial planes.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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At some point, I think the Federal Govt will go after Elon Musk’s SpaceX for monopoly and anti-competitive practices, just like they did to United Aircraft and Transport in the 1930s, which was split into Boeing, United Technologies and United Airlines. It was a vertically integrated carrier that built its own planes and engines. Sound familiar? They’ll wait until Starship is completed first, probably like 5 to 10 years from now. Space Force wanting it’s own Starships is just the start.
From Wikipedia:
“After the Air Mail scandal of 1934, the U.S. government concluded that such large holding companies as United Aircraft and Transport were anti-competitive, and new antitrust laws were passed forbidding airframe or aircraft engine manufacturers from having interests in airlines. This law forced United Aircraft and Transport to split into three separate companies. Its manufacturing interests east of the Mississippi River (Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, Vought, and Hamilton Standard Propeller Company) were merged as United Aircraft Corporation (later United Technologies Corporation), headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut, with Rentschler as president. The western manufacturing interests (including Northrop Aviation Corporation, formerly Avion Corporation), became Boeing Airplane Company, headquartered in Seattle. The airline interests were merged into a single airline, United Air Lines, Inc.,[2] headquartered in Chicago.”
I don’t know “the relationship” SpaceX has with our military. From what I’ve gleamed from open source media, SpaceX is providing acceptable services to our military. (Yes, that doesn’t say much because, surprise!, I don’t know much.) So if it ain’t broke, why try to “fix it”? Since military space launches are usually highly classified, the nitty-gritty of what goes on is not public information. (That information is not impossible to get, it’s just not easy. If one has the inclination, I don’t).
Honestly, Elon Musk does scare me. He’s a wild man. With his money, power, and reach, and unpredictability, that’s very scary. But if SpaceX is providing acceptable services to our military, try not to tinker with something just because you can. That’s just silly.
Musk is in an uncomfortable position:
Tesla manufactures tons of cars in China.
Chinese companies compete there with Tesla.
The Chinese are watching SpaceX with envy. They want their own SpaceX.
They definitely don’t want SpaceX to give the USAF spaceships that could bomb the Chinese Navy to smithereens. It’ll make ‘repatriating’ Taiwan (and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC)) way too dangerous.
Meanwhile, idiot leftists are calling for SpaceX to be nationalized. Don’t think for a moment there aren’t leftists in the current administration contemplating this.
Good thing Elon relocated Tesla HQ to Texas. He needs to move SpaceX HQ out of California also. Florida, Alabama, Texas – anywhere NASA has a significant footprint. And someplace not run by the crazy leftists gunning for Mr. Musk.
Keep going, Elon…
Alabama is the best place. Texas is purple.
Mobile Alabama is located near two stainless steel plants and is at the mouth of a big river. The SLS pathfinder was made in G&G Steel near Birmingport in central Alabama and floated down.
You need Starships by a river.
A Starship could loft quite the bunker buster or maybe a “Rods from God” twelve pack.
Yahoo, orbital wars.
I’ve been waiting for this for twenty years. You can drop fast hypersonic bombs, or you can drop slow containers (braking in the atmosphere) with conventional bombs and drones. Thousands of satellite and ICBM interceptors can be launched into orbit. You can install a large laser cannon. It is finally possible to place 400 – 800 nuclear warheads on one senior ship
As discussed previously, ‘rapid cargo delivery by Starship’ is mostly nonsense.
MAYBE it could be made to work if one is willing to expend the ship and drop the cargo with parachutes after Starship goes subsonic. But the time to select and pack and load the cargo, assuming it needs to be customized for a particular crisis, seems to run against the idea of getting it there REALLY FAST. (Unless we’re talking about making it a bomber – that could be preloaded and ready to launch.)
A more sensible program would be to develop the capability to rapidly launch a large number of replacement satellites, in the event that an enemy wipes out our existing satellites. Again, that could be pre-loaded, ready to launch.
I would say the DOD intense interest in Space-X’s super-heavy wedded to starship effectively will end significant EPA / Fish and wildlife or any other agencies ability to effectively stonewall further test launching of such. As long as the idea was that it was for some “fanciful” “colonize space” sort of “indulgence of a billionaire” (Musk) they (said agencies) could have fun with imposing delay after delay. Don’t think that will hold any sway over DOD; now we are talking about getting in the way of national security. Of course launches approved for one purpose (national security) would inevitably lead to Space-X being able to develop/launch for commercial/private purposes. Can’t really allow it for one and ban it for the other. Very lucky (probably engineered) break for Musk/Space-X
Well, SpaceX essentially has a monopoly on this tech with no competitor in sight and I don’t know why you’d give that up without significant compensation. I think some kind of licensing arrangement would make the most sense. Like, sure you can operate a starship as long as you pay a $10 billion general licensing fee. And then increase that by a billion dollars for each Starship that is operating.
There is also a factor of statistics. When (yes, when) DoD crashes F9, it will tarnish the stats for F9, and SpaceX by extension. To avoid that, there has to be a clear separation, not sharing. Also, when (yes, when) DoD turns F9 into a weapon, and such weapon draws fire from people who can do such a thing, all SpaceX flights will be considered military by those people who make such determinations. A clean separation is imperative for Mars enterprise and SpaceX business. Starlink is already considered ‘dual-use’, as it is mounted on combat drones that are purely weapons. If space vehicles are put into that category, they will be fired upon at the first suspicion of representing a threat, which is every single flight.
Very true. This defense stuff Elon is doing is dangerous for the commercial success of his companies. Elon’s already terrified of China banning Tesla sales there in retaliation for some sort of perceived threat from any of his other companies. If he doesn’t to it right, his commercial offerings will be bogged down by the expenses of being a defense company.
[B-2 ~75t fuel ~6900mi range (~25t payload)
B-21 ~~40t ~2500mi (~20t)
C-17 ~135t ~2700mi (~85t)
Starship ~1200t ~8000mi (~200t)
2037 controversy vs. accompanying drones
Tupolev PAK DA ~? ~7500mi (~30t)
Xian H-20 ~? gt~~8500mi (gt~~10t)
‘Defense company means any business entity that holds a valid Department of Defense contract or any business entity that is a subcontractor under a valid Department of Defense contract. The term includes any business entity that holds valid contracts or subcontracts for products or services for military use under prime contracts with the United States Department of Defense, the United States Department of State, or the United States Coast Guard.’ ]
How much for a CIA tweaked, smartphone-like camera set-up on all future Starlink birds? Add IR & sidescan radar & you’d know everything about the whole planet every day. Storing, managing & analyzing the data would be … epic.
I think SpaceX will put a commercial version of that, something like an upgraded Planet Labs sat package on every V2 Starlink. The Constellation would continuously cover everywhere on the planet and Cloud AI of the sort everybody is investing in anyway could turn the data torrent in something very useful.
Boeing does not fly B-52’s for the military. Boeing is just a contractor.
It will be the same type of relationship with SpaceX.
Spacex will make lots of money with all the customizations that the military will want
to make.
I gather this was more like renting than buying the Starships.
I think a more accurate model would be the arrangement the DOD originally sought with the Space Shuttle program. They wanted to “borrow” shuttles for national security flights, flown out of Vandenberg with Air Force crews. But then they would have given the shuttle back to NASA, until it was needed again.
I think this is correct, it’s where DOD is right now, looking for some precedent in past contracting. STS was the closest.
I don’t think they have really processed yet how big a change Starship will be. It’s just being dumped in their laps, it’s not something they had anything to do with developing.
The last DOD buzzwords it fit with is “The Third Offset” from a few years ago.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA454-1.html
Starship tech will amount to the foundation of a Third Offset.
[ ‘The history of the Third Offset showcases the importance of positive, inspired leadership in effecting organizational change.’
this is, me thinking, what’s a priority for a 21. century development premise ( How many countries/states we would enlist with this priority? (while knowing that military and security divisions are different on public announcements and relations and there’s some historical impact towards present))
The difficulty arising with private companies getting more ‘capable’ than states would be some loss in confidence/faith on reliability on governmental enforcement of (legal) power. Knowing that ‘international law’ in its essence is a ~5000yrs old and ongoing progress, it’s maybe a new (modern/contemporary) question with individuals/companies directing billions about defining their supranational role? Who would (e.g. ‘What’ would define a ‘constitution’ on Mars or would/will this be empirical legal settlings?)?
Thanks ]
That would allow them to expand their own empire and justify lots more Space Generals.
It’s sounds like a good idea. SpaceX should be focused on other things and the US Air Force is not going to compete with them anymore than it competes with any other business it buys vehicles from. The US military buys lots of things, from Bibles and Qur’ans, to Learjets and other rockets, with little controversy. It would also defang any potential smear talk about what a private business that conducts military missions for money is called.
Yes – this is about the most unsurprising thing I have read in a while!
Especially as Musk says random things – like not wanting to defend Taiwan. Obv military cannot depend on a company, let alone an individual. They would like their own Starlink equivalent too I expect.
Good point. We cannot stand random things being said as it hurts people in their feels.
Actually this sad line of thought is what has led some people to demand SpaceX be nationalized.