SpaceX has just been awarded a USD $102M contract from the USAF to “demonstrate technologies and capabilities” to quickly transport humanitarian aid and military supplies anywhere on earth using their rockets.
The award, won on Jan 14 and originally reported on by Aviation Week, is the latest step in the US military’s “rocket cargo program.” The research is being led by the Air Force Research Laboratory and is the fourth of the USAF’s Vanguard Programs, though the US Space Force is the “lead service” according to the USAF announcement.
The Rocket Cargo program is investigating whether or not it’s feasible to use commercial rockets for point-to-point terrestrial transportation of payloads, including on “a wide range of non-traditional materials and surfaces, including at remote sites.” Greg Spanjers, the AFRL’s rocket cargo program manager, told Space News that this contract will help “determine exactly what a rocket can achieve when used for cargo transport, what is the true capacity, speed, and cost of the integrated system.”
Spanjers also said that they are “exploring a wider range of novel trajectories to mitigate overflight issues, exploring a broad range of landing options for austere sites, researching human factors when landing near populations, and integrating a broader range of cargo including medical supplies.”
The contract doesn’t state which vehicles the AFRL is interested in. According to SpaceNews, the AFRL will have full access to the data for all of SpaceX’s launches and booster landings to make their decision, including data from upcoming launches. SpaceX will also be providing ARFL “cargo bay designs that support rapid load and unload and are compatible with U.S. TRANSCOM intermodal containers” as part of the contract.
That said, observers like science communicator Scott Manley expect that the focus will be on SpaceX’s upcoming Starship vehicle simply due to its one-stage vertical landing ability and potentially-immense cargo capacity. Manley is skeptical about the utility of the Starship for these types of deliveries, however, due to the immense cost of transportation compared to other, less-exotic options.
Manley also points to the important communications issues involved in ballistic and/or suborbital cargo delivery. It is easily possible for governments to assume that these launches could be seen as ballistic WMD launches, which could potentially cause difficult or even catastrophic misunderstandings. In a time of heightened tension between global powers, this could affect the US Government’s decision over whether to employ suborbital rockets for these kinds of deliveries.
SpaceX isn’t the only company that the US Air Force is contracting with on rocket cargo, nor is this the only contract of its type. In 2020, US Transportation Command signed cooperative research and development agreements (CRADA) with SpaceX and XArc, and signed another CRADA with Blue Origin just last month. Spanjers also told SpaceNews that “we continue to talk to other launch vehicle providers and will consider awarding additional contracts later in the program.”
It’s important to note that these R&D contracts are extremely useful to SpaceX, Blue Origin and others. The application beyond military cargo transportation, at least for SpaceX, is in part to determine if Starship is a viable vehicle for point-to-point commercial transportation of cargo and people. If this is borne out as viable, this could end up being an important secondary source of income for a variety of space launch companies, not just SpaceX.
