Although the world is awfully excited about Elon Musk’s announcement this week that he’ll be selling tickets to Mars, there are other pressing issues facing SpaceX, such as the cause of the Sept. 1 explosion that destroyed a Falcon 9 rocket and much of its launch pad. The day that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 exploded on the…
By Colin ClarkModernizing military simulation with open systems architecture
Best-of-breed common models and architecture enable virtual training and testing with the same data in a cyber-resilient posture.
UPDATED: ADDS SMC Statement; 45th Space Wing Statement WASHINGTON: Elon Musk’s SpaceX faces a stark accounting after today’s explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket during engine testing at Cape Canaveral. Hopeful of greatly increased business with Air Force Space Command, who has already awarded one contract to Musk’s company for the second GPS III satellite…
By Colin Clark
CAPITOL HILL: The Senate battle over Russian rockets keeps rocking. Senators Dick Durbin and Richard Shelby sent most of this morning’s defense appropriations hearing defending the Pentagon’s plan to keep using the cheap and technologically reliable but politically toxic RD-180 until an American-made replacement is ready, sometime around 2020-2021. Durbin and Shelby denounced the effort…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATED with independent analysis from ICFI ARLINGTON: The race is on to build hypersonic weapons, missiles that blow through a target’s defenses at more than five times the speed of sound. Or should that be “the race to grow hypersonic weapons”? It turns out an unrelated cutting-edge technology, 3D printing, may be the key to making hypersonics work.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: It’s not officially official, but the head of Pentagon acquisition, Frank Kendall, says the Treasury Department has not found any reason for sanctions to be applied against the United Launch Alliance. “The preliminary indications from Treasury (Department) are that they do not apply,” Kendall told reporters after a lunch address to the Washington Space…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called today for an international debate about the use of intelligent weapons and of boosted human beings. “Where do we want to cross that line, and who crosses that first?” asked Gen. Paul Selva — considered one of the brainier occupants of an office that…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: Boom. The explosion that destroyed CRS-7 as it headed to orbit could mean Elon Musk’s fevered efforts to win the highly lucrative business of sending intelligence and Air Force satellites into space are, if not endangered, then at least in question. While the failure of SpaceX’s resupply mission to the International Space Station isn’t directly tied…
By Colin Clark
Modernizing our supply chain is a national security imperative
Closing supply chain gaps in innovating technology will reposition the industrial base to be a strategic source of value.
WASHINGTON: While few doubted it would happen, the news that Elon Musk’s scrappy, pushy and — yes — disruptive launch company SpaceX won certification from Space and Missile Systems Center carries enormous import for the international launch industry, for the Pentagon, the Air Force and the Intelligence Community. It’s not that Musk’s SpaceX is going…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: The still-newish CEO of the United Launch Alliance, Tory Bruno, faces tough questions from his board of directors. He faces tough questions from the House and the Senate about his use of Russian-built RD-180 rocket engines. But his biggest short-term problem — being allowed to use enough RD-180 engines to get his company from here to…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: SpaceX appears to have succeeded in cracking open the EELV program a bit in return for dropping its suit in the Court of Federal Claims against the Air Force. The agreement was announced by the Air Force and SpaceX after the stock market closed this afternoon. “The Air Force and SpaceX have reached agreement on a path forward…
By Colin Clark COLORADO SPRINGS: SpaceX does not look likely to get what it most wants from Capitol Hill in its battle against the United Launch Alliance and the Air Force: more launches sooner. Support for competition between the two companies remains vibrant, with Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jim Clapper, director…
By Colin Clark and Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
COLORADO SPRING: Message to Elon Musk of SpaceX: the head of Air Force Space Command is not really happy with you, and he personally supports development of a new rocket engine that would mean the United States did not have to depend on the Russians’ RD-180 rocket engine. I asked Gen. Willie Shelton, who will…
By Colin Clark
COLORADO SPRINGS: After more than a month during which upstart rocket company SpaceX defined the debate about how much America should pay to launch big satellites into space, the Boeing-Lockheed United Launch Alliance crawled out from under its own rock and let fly. Feisty CEO Michael Gass sat opposite a phalanx of defense and space…
By Colin Clark WASHINGTON: It is shaping up as one of the great corporate brawls in the aerospace world: snappy and feisty and hungry newcomer, SpaceX, versus the titan of heavy launch, the near-perfect expression of big corporatism, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin United Launch Alliance. The focus of their competition is obscure to most Americans: the purchase by the…
By Colin Clark
