"The Defense Department on Nov. 27 directed the Air Force to end a launch monopoly"
"A week later, the service awarded the trial missions to Musk’s firm, known as SpaceX."
"SpaceX...now has the opportunity to prove that its rockets are capable of launching satellites serving Pentagon planners, ground troops and the nation’s spies."
"The missions, scheduled for 2014 and 2015, are designed to help the company become certified to carry the military and spy satellites."
- Much will be made here of Lockheed's comments. To me the real story is a h/t to government for opening up and encouraging disruption in a key market. Given the general negativity (often deserved) towards government by entrepreneurs it's important to acknowledge when they do positive things.
There are other things going on here which are a little off the radar in the public. Military launch costs have been rather high but the bigger issue has been the cost and management of military satellites. The procurement of next generation spy satellites has been nothing short of a debacle, as they've gone hugely over budget and behind schedule and there are some indications that they've missed the mark in terms of capabilities and reliability as well. All of this is, of course, shrouded in secrecy so there's much we don't know but there's enough publicly available data to be able to divine that the whole thing has been a GDCF for at least the last decade.
This in turn puts more pressure on the launch providers as any failures, delays, or cost increases there just adds salt to the wound. Which partially explains the enthusiasm the DoD is showing for putting military hardware on SpaceX rockets. Also, the ability to take advantage of the Falcon Heavy's increased payload may give some breathing room to the spacecraft manufacturers, since there are few problems in spacecraft design which can't be made easier by merely adding more mass. And the ability to launch cheaper and potentially more often could enable a more iterative style of satellite development, and also a more competitive one (launching full-up prototype satellites prior to awarding a multi-satellite contract, for example). Which could put satellite procurement on a more reasonable footing for the future.
Given the general negativity (often deserved) towards government by entrepreneurs it's important to acknowledge when they do positive things.
It's important to also realize they aren't doing this because they're motivated to disrupt the military/industrial complex, they're doing it because Elon is a master of public relations and has promoted SpaceX heavily.
> they're doing it because Elon is a master of public relations and has promoted SpaceX heavily.
While this may be true, one point that your comment doesnt address is that Boeing/Lockheed (and most of the defense industry) are incredibly adept at promoting their business within the broader Gov and DoD. It's both incredible that Elon/SpaceX achieved this milestone amidst intense opposition from the current defense industry, and that the statement from the industry basically defends the practice of massively overshooting on costs and passing that on to the taxpayer.
Or maybe because they (the government) think they have a shot to lower the cost of actuals 460M$ launches. Competition is great even for public contracts.
Moreover in this case it seems quite unexpected some peoples have been crazy enough to start building rockets and one day directly concurrence and disrupt Boeing and Lockheed. I'm sure Boeing and Lockheed would never have thought such possibility. It's amazing imo.
I would wager that they may not care so much about reducing their annual costs, but they probably do care about per-mission costs. If they can cut their per-unit costs in half, then they can have twice as many toys without having to convince Congress to give them more money.
They don't care about the satellites either. They care about the relationships. What they're buying and how much it actually costs is irrelevant compared to who they award the contract to. The big contracts really do have to get awarded to the right people or reelection becomes impossible.
In fairness, the DoD didn't just wake up one day and decide to Do The Right Thing. This development is the result of years of effort and millions of dollars spent on lobbying by SpaceX.
And even then, SpaceX is only getting a couple of launches worth at most a couple hundred million dollars. The entrenched monopoly that Lockheed runs, on the other hand, is trying to get locked into about $10 billion worth of no-bid contracts.
These trial missions could be a beachhead for SpaceX in the DoD market, but this is a pretty tiny step in the right direction by the US government.
Given the general negativity (often deserved) towards government by entrepreneurs it's important to acknowledge when they do positive things.
This is far more like undoing a negative thing. Relatively, it's positive, but it's starting from a bad position that was the result of the government's actions to begin with.
Positivity is always relative. You can always frame the government's actions as negative as long as you put the zero point somewhere besides where they are now.
- Much will be made here of Lockheed's comments. To me the real story is a h/t to government for opening up and encouraging disruption in a key market. Given the general negativity (often deserved) towards government by entrepreneurs it's important to acknowledge when they do positive things.