SpaceX is set to be the U.S. military’s top launch provider, raking in close to $6 billion in contracts with the Pentagon to get satellites into orbit. This is set to take place well into the 2030s.
But what does this mean for the future of Texas skies?
Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica and wrote about the contract. He joined Texas Standard to discuss how this came about and what the risks are. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Well, is this something that is part of the privatization of space? Is this something NASA used to do? Or is this different because of things like the Space Force, which is coming on board?
Stephen Clark: The Space Force is, for a long time – previously, of course, it was the Air Force – has purchased launch services from the commercial industry. And what’s really different this time is the Space Force introducing more competition into the marketplace.
So for a long time, a company called United Launch Alliance – which is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, two of the most established defense contractors a lot of people are probably familiar with – had a monopoly on this market. And about 10 years ago, SpaceX entered the marketplace to actually sue the Air Force for the right to compete with ULA, United Launch Alliance. The Air Force relented and that entered this new era of competition.
However, for the last 10 years, United launch Alliance, the incumbent, was still winning the majority of the contracts and as of earlier this month, that changed. And for the first time now, SpaceX is now responsible for launching most of the military’s satellites into orbit.
And, you know, this is a result of this new move toward competition that we’ve seen on this trajectory for more than 10 years. But the script flipped, so to speak, earlier this month with SpaceX taking the top position.
I imagine people might be looking at this and saying, “well, I know why this switched. It’s because somebody has got a good friend in the White House.”
Is that too simplistic? Has this been a longer time in the making than that? Or what’s your view of that?
In my view, that’s a perfectly understandable question to ask, but I think there are legitimate reasons why this has changed. In fact, it’s almost surprising to me that it took this long.
SpaceX offers lower costs than the competitors in Launch Alliance. SpaceX has more schedule assurance, is what they call it. SpaceX is launching every couple of days.
You know, Launch Alliance hasn’t launched a rocket since last year. They haven’t even launched this year. So if the Space Force wants to have satellite into orbit on a given date or a given week, SpaceX is really the best choice and at a lower cost, too, than the competition.
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So what is the U.S. military’s plan over the next five years with all these launches?
The military has had satellites in orbit since the late 1950s actually, so putting military satellites in an orbit is nothing new. What is different now is really since the Obama administration has recognized that we’re in a new period of what they call “great power competition” with China.
China has drastically increased their presence in space over the last 10, 15, 20 years. They have a space station in orbit. They have satellites that replicate what we do with GPS in this country with navigation. And they’re also launching satellites now that have really impressive advanced intelligence-gathering and surveillance capabilities.
And really, there’s a pretty broad consensus, bipartisan consensus, that in the event of a conflict with China, God forbid, there would be a space component of that war. And in fact, the war could start in space with an attack on U.S. assets in space that are providing navigation for precision bombing and air travel. Could be a cyber attack, for example, on our communications networks to disable and degrade what the United States military can do before an actual attack on the ground.
So there’s a big worry about that that’s been building for 10 or 15 years. So the United States is launching more and more satellites in orbit to counteract that threat.
Most recently, the Space Force is talking about having offensive capabilities in space for the first time – satellites that can actually disable or attack other spacecraft in orbit. That’s really kind of been a sea change over the last few years, that the military is more open about talking about that because for 50 or 60 years, that’s kind of a topic that has been danced around because the U.S. government has been really fearful of starting an arms race in orbit.
In the last few years, I’ve noticed that the military and the Pentagon has changed their language and they’re more open about talking about it. And that really actually started before Trump came into office – that started in the last couple of years under the Biden administration.
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Well, talk to me, I guess, just a little bit about what this might look like for Texas skies – and not just there, but above that. I mean, is space getting a little crowded?
Yes, yes. So SpaceX, of course, has their Starlink network, which I’m sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with – providing internet from space. They have more than 7,000 satellites in orbit. That’s a commercial network. However, the military does buy services from that.
And we’re about to see a competitor, Amazon, launch satellites. These are commercial satellites, but the military uses them. So it’s a different type of thing that we’re talking about here. Amazon is launching a competitor, really within a matter of days, to begin competing with Starlink.
And China’s launching thousands of satellites. They have two different constellations of satellites that are just starting to deploy that each will have 10,000 satellites or more.
So yeah, space junk, space debris is a big topic and the military is launching more and more satellites as well. So it’s a really big problem to track all these satellites and to determine where they’re at and try to avoid collisions because, of course, of two satellites collide, they create a debris cloud and that actually just exacerbates the problem and increases the risks of further collisions down the road.
