DARPA announces $10 million launch challenge for smallsat rocket companies
Capitalism in space: DARPA yesterday announced a new launch challenge competition for smallsat rocket companies, with prizes of $10, $9, and $8 million for first, second, and third prizes, respectively.
Contest rules call for teams to be given the full details about where and when they’ll launch, what kind of payload they’ll launch, plus what kind of orbit the payload should be launched into, only a couple of weeks in advance. And that’s just half the job. Teams will be required to execute another launch, from a different site, no more than a couple of weeks later.
The precise time frames for giving advance notice are still under discussion, but “I would measure the time scale in days,” Todd Master, program manager for the challenge at DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, told reporters today.
Considering that we right now already have at least two smallsat rocket companies, Rocket Lab and Vector, on the verge of doing exactly this, without the need of government money, with a slew of other companies to soon follow, I wonder why DARPA is proposing this competition. It seems somewhat irrelevant at this point, making me wonder if its real purpose is not to encourage rocket development but to find a clever way to hand some government cash to these specific companies.
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Capitalism in space: DARPA yesterday announced a new launch challenge competition for smallsat rocket companies, with prizes of $10, $9, and $8 million for first, second, and third prizes, respectively.
Contest rules call for teams to be given the full details about where and when they’ll launch, what kind of payload they’ll launch, plus what kind of orbit the payload should be launched into, only a couple of weeks in advance. And that’s just half the job. Teams will be required to execute another launch, from a different site, no more than a couple of weeks later.
The precise time frames for giving advance notice are still under discussion, but “I would measure the time scale in days,” Todd Master, program manager for the challenge at DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, told reporters today.
Considering that we right now already have at least two smallsat rocket companies, Rocket Lab and Vector, on the verge of doing exactly this, without the need of government money, with a slew of other companies to soon follow, I wonder why DARPA is proposing this competition. It seems somewhat irrelevant at this point, making me wonder if its real purpose is not to encourage rocket development but to find a clever way to hand some government cash to these specific companies.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I was under the impression that Orbital ATK’s Pegasus is already capable of doing this. Their most rapid turnaround was four weeks (August 1, 1997 and August 29, 1997), but I am not sure that this timing was due to limitations in turnaround time.
It may be that the prize money is to encourage the competition to be for a lower priced rocket (closer to $5 million per launch) rather than the $40-ish million price tag of the Pegasus small satellite launch vehicle, but that seems to be around the price-point of the small launchers anyway.
The rocket companies listed are all positioned to launch different payload weights, so DARPA is not interested in a specific weight category. In addition, the article says that “Bigger launch providers such as SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin would be welcome to enter,” meaning that to DARPA size does not matter much.
Since SpaceX would be welcome to enter, and since SpaceX is already working on the high-cadence-multiple-launch-site model, it is unclear just what DARPA’s interest really is. Indeed, SpaceX has suggested that its launch price could eventually come down to $5 million per launch, matching the prize amount for the two launches. SpaceX (along with the other companies that Robert mentioned) seems to already be working toward DARPA’s goal. If SpaceX eventually launches virtually any payload for the same price tag as the small-sat launchers, then it seems that the competition would be over.
Could it be that this competition has been in the works for years, but now that the competition seems obsolete, the bureaucracy has only just now managed to come out with the announcement?
People have talked about being on the verge of this for decades but no one has yet shown they can do it. Being able to replace satellites during a war against another great power is well worth $27 million.
I came across the following essay a few weeks ago. I was having trouble finding it for another post a few days ago, here on BtB, but found it again today. It seems that there are a lot of companies now interested in providing launch services for small payloads. The last I heard, there were a whopping 20, too many to be likely to survive in the marketplace, but Jeff Foust has come across many more. There will be quite a bit of competition, even if only a low percentage survive the initial weeding out.
http://spacenews.com/foust-forward-riding-a-big-wave-of-small-rockets/
This suggests that SpaceX has had a greater impact on the space market than many have thought.
Perhaps this competition was created to ensure that the decades-old talk, that FC mentioned, finally turns into reality.
Maybe Falcon 9 can outcompete small launchers too? TESS’ launch mass was only 330 kg. It needed the large F9 to get to its inclined cis-Lunar orbit. But a satellite could make use of the same extra capacity to allow for a heavier, cheaper, longer lived satellite design with more station keeping fuel and redundancies. Cheaper because there would be no real mass constraint for the design. They could use cheaper less efficient but larger Solar arrays and batteries. Thick lead protection against micrometeorites and radiation so that some electronics won’t need to me radiation hardened. And more fuel to maneuver the heavier spacecraft.