The U.S. Air Force has unveiled new details about its ambitious and controversial plan to develop a capability to send payloads weighing up to 100 tons, including cargo and possibly personnel. Equivalent to the maximum load of a C-17 transport aircraft, a rocket or its derivative can be launched through space to reach anywhere in the world within one hour. The program now hopes to demonstrate the basic feasibility of the concept in a real end-to-end test next year.
This information is included in the Air Force’s proposed fiscal year 2022 budget, which includes a request for nearly $48 million in additional funding for the program. This is almost a five-fold increase from the funding the project received during the current fiscal cycle.
The Air Force seeks to leverage current billions of dollars in commercial investment to develop the largest rocket ever built with sufficient reusability to develop and test the ability to use commercial rockets to deliver cargo to anywhere on Earth in less than an hour. . Department budget documents explain the main goals of the rocket cargo program. Rather than investing in commercial rocket development, the Air Force is investing in science and technology to meet DoD logistics needs and extend commercial capabilities to DoD's unique missions.
This is broadly consistent with how U.S. military officials have described the concept in the past. In October 2020, U.S. Army Gen. Stephen Lyons, commander of U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), talked about “moving the equivalent of a C-17 transport aircraft around the world in less than an hour.” Anywhere” possibility. Official information from the U.S. Air Force on the C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft states that its maximum payload capacity is approximately 82 tons.
The Air Force’s latest budget proposal talks about using traditional and non-traditional contract mechanisms, such as the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), to support rocket cargo efforts. Last year, the Air Force appeared to have officially launched its rocket cargo program as its own unique project rather than any broader advanced development program. The program received more than $9.7 million in project funding and the Air Force described it as a "major driver" in the fiscal year 2021 budget.
In the fiscal year 2022 budget request, U.S. Military Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), with the strategic airlift mission, is one of two commands identified by the Air Force as having the potential to utilize rocket cargo capabilities. The other is Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), which allows special operations forces to "perform current rapid response missions at a lower cost and meet one-hour response requirements," according to the budget request.
The U.S. Air Force said it was "using modeling, simulation, and analysis to conduct an operational analysis of the rocket cargo concept, trajectory, and design considerations and to validate military utility, performance, and operating costs" as part of its fiscal 2021 plan, which The year will end on September 30. The department also intends to "collect operational data from ongoing commercial large-scale, instrumented, reusable launch campaigns."
The department's plans for fiscal year 2022 are more ambitious, including completing "the initial AFRL (Air Force Research Experiment) chamber) wind tunnel testing to evaluate new trajectories required for airdrop capabilities, as well as high-speed separation physics "and completion" industry extensions of the load master concept, including novel container designs, loading/unloading concepts, and testing Air Force cargo with rocket launch and Space environment compatibility. Beyond that, the Air Force actually wants to "test and demonstrate initial one-way transport capability to an austere location" and "perform early end-to-end testing to fully identify technical challenges." "
From what we've seen, the Air Force has been working on an operational concept for rocket cargo that would involve taking a reusable rocket-propelled vehicle, like SpaceX's Starship, through space or at least to the extremes of the atmosphere. high altitude, sent to forward positions. They will then land at these locations, unload and/or reload, and then return to their original point of departure.The 2022 budget request mentions "airdrop capabilities," suggesting the department is also interested in the potential of vehicles flying in space, or at least close to it, to release payloads in designated airdrop areas.
At the same time, the potential pitfalls of this concept, which has been explored to varying degrees since the beginning of the space race in the 1950s, are equally clear. There are still many unanswered questions about the basic operational feasibility of using reusable spacecraft to transport cargo (let alone personnel) to forward locations, let alone trying to make these spacecraft ready for any austere environment. return. On top of that, it's unclear how the general concept of such operations might be survivable, given the potential difficulties that might involve concealing these types of launches and shielding the aircraft from enemy attack during landing. Launching from the front would require a fully fueled rocket booster , which only makes it a very attractive target.
The Air Force said the rocket cargo program will explore "rapid launch capabilities from unusual locations, characterization of potential landing surfaces, ways to rapidly improve those surfaces, and adversary detectability." How the department seeks to address these issues remains to be seen.
In addition to these technical considerations, there are also potential cost issues. SpaceX said on its website that a launch cost about $62 million using the reusable Falcon 9 rocket , while a launch using the larger Falcon Heavy rocket costs about $90 million. Of course, these prices depend on a variety of factors, including the need to get the object into orbit rather than moving along a suborbital route and based on the weight of the payload, which is significantly larger than the Air Force's announced target of 100 tons for rocket cargo. Last year, SpaceX stated that the average launch cost of Falcon 9 was close to $28 million. The company's CEO Elon Musk also said he hopes the cost of launching Starship in the future can be as low as $2 million.
In any case, the cost of rocket cargo will not be lower than the cost of sending a C-17 to anywhere in the world. Previous estimates were that it would cost about $540,000 to complete the work with one of the aircraft. That's just over a quarter of Elon Musk's cost target for launching Starship, according to SpaceX, and significantly less than the average price of a Falcon 9 launch. Globemaster III also has good capabilities for landing, refueling and takeoff from very harsh locations.
Of course, speed is the main difference. This C-17 flight takes about 18 hours. At the same time, unless potential operational and other practical issues surrounding the rocket cargo concept can be resolved, the Air Force may not be able to reach its full potential and be unable to reach anywhere in an hour or less. Of course, there may also be niche missions, such as rapidly reinforcing overseas facilities, a U.S. embassy under attack, for example, where a dramatic landing of a spacecraft like this might actually be beneficial from a psychological warfare perspective, which is still very Valuable abilities. However, it is unclear whether this will justify the cost of developing and fielding such a capability.
This is not the first time the U.S. military has explored this concept but failed to translate it into actual capabilities. The Pentagon National Security Space Office and The U.S. Marine Corps Small Unit Space Transportation and Insertion (SUSTAIN) in the 2000s is one of the more recent efforts that is said to be "feasible" by the end of the next decade. ". Apparently this is not the case.
The hope now is that reusable space launch technology, like the one pioneered by SpaceX and developed by other companies, will be enough of a game-changer to help rocket cargo succeed where previously it failed. The Air Force is now certainly eager to prove the viability of this concept. It will be very interesting to see how any such real-world testing plays out over the next year or so. (Power Talks the World/Zhang Mi)
