ORLANDO, Fla. — The U.S. Air Force is pressing forward with plans to demonstrate point-to-point rocket travel perhaps in a few years.
Among the reasons for optimism are SpaceX’s launch rates and ability to reuse rockets, which “dramatically changes the business case,” said Gregory Spanjers, chief scientist overseeing the rocket cargo program at the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Speaking on a panel Jan. 30 at the Space Mobility Conference, Spanjers said AFRL and SpaceX have been “digging through different scenarios” for the use of the company’s giant rocket Starship for rapid, global cargo transportation.
“We’ve looked at this for seven years, and it never makes any sense,” said Spanjers. “Now we’re finding that, indeed, it’s looking a lot more attractive than it has in the past.”
The Air Force two years ago awarded SpaceX a $102 million five-year contract to demonstrate technologies and capabilities to transport military cargo and humanitarian aid around the world on a heavy rocket.
The rocket cargo concept, however, faces significant technical hurdles, questions about the safety of having rockets drop cargo and whether the economics will ever work. But AFRL and SpaceX are taking the long view, Spanjers said, and it’s conceivable that if Starship is ready, a demonstration could be performed as early as 2026.
Optimism about Starship
AFRL’s new confidence is based on projections of Starship’s reusability and rapid turnarounds. Each launch could deploy over 100 tons to orbit — enough to rival payload transported by military C-17 cargo jets.
If Starship can achieve high launch rates, it could be relatively inexpensive for cargo containers to be released from the rocket like satellites, Spanjers added. “We can insert cargo transport as part of their regular launch rate progression, and treat it just like another satellite in their flow, or have contracts in place where we can inject it into…
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