When Elon Musk founded Spacex in 2002 with ambitions as grandiloquent as the conquest of Mars, few would have bet money to unseat the two giants of the US space industry: Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Now it is a reality in every way because Spacex has just officially become the main military pitcher in the United States.
Overtaking. The US space force has awarded $ 13.7 billion in public contracts to launch the most critical satellites of the Pentagon from here at the beginning of the next decade. Among them, new advanced GPS satellites and strategic communications systems capable of resisting even a nuclear conflict.
Spacex has taken most of the cake with 28 missions, valued at 5.9 billion dollars. There are nine more than those awarded to United Launch Alliance (the Boeing Joint-Venture and Lockheed Martin), with 19. For its part, Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos’ Aerospace Company) has received seven missions.
Goodbye to the duopoly. When the New Space emerged with new rocket startups such as Spacex and Blue Origin, Boeing and Lockheed Martin shielded their military contracts with a joint business called ULA. For years, and thanks to the demonstrated reliability of its rockets, the Pentagon continued to feed the duo with the exclusivity of its juicy contracts.
Spacex managed to open a gap in 2015 with its first military contract after a hard legal battle to compete on equal terms. Since then, he has not only managed to consolidate, but to become the preferential provider of the space force with the highest number of contracts.
Excuses are over. With about 140 successful releases in the last year and more competitive rates than competition thanks to its unique reuse capacity, the Pentagon does not have many excuses to maintain the treatment of favor with ULA instead of choosing Spacex.
Spacex requested 212 million dollars to the space force for launch in its Falcon 9 rockets and Falcon Heavy, compared to the 282 million that ULA requested for the Vulcan and the 341 million that Blue Origin requested for the powerful New Glenn rocket, which has barely flown once.
There is a game. In spite of everything, ULA still has a lot to offer with its new Vulcan rocket, especially thanks to the upper Centaur V stage that offers greater maneuverability and orbit thrust than the Spacex falcon.
Blue Origin for its part, has the most powerful rocket of the four, with a huge cofia in which all kinds of loads fit, and the same reuse aspirations as Spacex. Of course, he has barely completed a test launch, and failed in his first attempt to land in a barge in the Atlantic. He has at least one certification flight to launch military charges.
Images | Spacex, United States Department of Defense
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