Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The United States Air Force (US) said Friday (06/04/2021) that it is expanding its program to develop space cargo rockets, such as those developed by SpaceX.
Citing CNBC International, Sunday (06/06/2021), this experimental military program will be led by the US Space Force. It is noted that the program will cost nearly US$ 50 million or equivalent to Rp 700 billion until 2022.
“This program will research and help develop capabilities such as landing rockets on a variety of non-traditional materials and surfaces, engineering rocket cargo spaces for rapid loading and unloading, and (methods of) dropping cargo from rockets,” the Pentagon said.
Meanwhile Dr. Greg Spanjers, Head of the Air Force Research Laboratory in the Rocket Cargo program, said that they will have a competition on the companies that are eligible to work on this project.
But so far it has not decided what company to cooperate with. Even so, he admitted that he saw that three companies, namely Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Leidos’ subsidiary, Dynetics, were worthy of working on this project after the success of the three companies developing a NASA program that focuses on human landing systems in outer space. .
“We spoke to a number of providers that we saw potentially come to the table to compete for these contracts,” said Spanjers.
“SpaceX is certainly the most visible, no doubt… (but) what you’re trying to do is get into an orbital or suborbital trajectory, unload its payload, and land it on planet Earth. There are a lot of companies that have that technology capability right now, not just SpaceX,” he continued.
SpaceX has already tested its cargo rocket prototype at its Texas facility and completed the SN15 rocket prototype after a high-altitude flight test.
Elon Musk’s company also added that they aim for the SN15 to become a reusable rocket instead of throwing the rocket away after launch.
They also claim to have carried out a high-flight test without any problems. But SpaceX said it had not yet reached orbit with the rocket.
(wia)
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