After 25 years, the military has said to go from "recoverable" rockets to "reusable" rockets

Less than a year and a half has passed since SpaceX used it for the first time a first Falcon 9 rocket, but this achievement has already shaken the glacial process of legislation and military budgeting. The final version of the Defense Budget Bill for FY 2019 will bring about a symbolic and significant change in policy with respect to reusable rockets.

The US House of Representatives report calls the program the Department of Defense, known as the EELV program, will be named the "Launch Program of the National Security Space" to count March 1, 2019. The military will no longer rely solely on rockets non recoverable.

In addition, the report states that the US Air Force must consider reusable and reusable launchers as part of its solicitation for military launch contracts, and in the event that a reusable launcher is available but not selected , report to Congress why. The US House of Representatives has already accepted the report of the conference, which is expected to be considered in the Senate next week. After that, the signature of the president will have to become a law

EELV history

The new policy marks a significant change in a program that goes back about a quarter of a century.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the US military relied heavily on modified intercontinental ballistic missiles – the precursors to the modern line of Lockheed Martin's Atlas rockets and Boeing's Delta vehicles – to send its satellites into l & # 39; space. Under the leadership of the White House in the late 1970s, the Air Force worked with NASA and its space shuttle program to meet the launch needs of the military. The first flight of the Department of Defense Shuttle was launched in June 1982 on the fourth flight of the program, but the accident Challenger in 1986 finally ended the relationship

. The army was asked to develop multiple ways to enter the space, which led to the concept of the EELV program in 1994. Thomas Moorman, then chief of staff of the United States Department Air Force, urged Lockheed and Boeing to "evolve" the Atlas and the Delta. fleets by improving their reliability and reducing their costs. Before the late 1990s, the Air Force granted $ 3 billion to Lockheed and Boeing for this modernization effort.

The companies hoped to compete with the nascent and lucrative geostationary satellite market with their new rockets. Delta rockets were more expensive than the Russian and European boosters available at the time. So Boeing and Lockheed ended up with only the US national security market. Both companies began to wonder if they should continue to fly if they shared only part of the military market.

To ensure its access to space, the Ministry of Defense negotiated an agreement in which Lockheed and Boeing would merge their rockets. starts a company, United Launch Alliance (ULA). Each parent has retained a 50% interest in the new venture, which would be required to maintain the Atlas and Delta fleets. The military had redundant access to space, and the major aeronautical companies, Lockheed and Boeing, had a monopoly.

Increased Reuse

Elon Musk and his new company SpaceX were not happy and filed a lawsuit to stop this merger in 2005. It did not work. Without getting discouraged, SpaceX left and developed the Falcon 1 rocket and then won a NASA contract to finalize the Falcon 9 rocket and deliver goods to the International Space Station. With this new powerful rocket, SpaceX wanted to compete with United Launch Alliance for these national security launch contracts.

SpaceX sued four years ago, filing a lawsuit against the awarding of launch contracts to the ULA. SpaceX has applied for the right to compete for these launches, and this time the trial has worked. The Falcon 9 rocket will be certified by the Air Force to participate in national security launches

. In December 2015, SpaceX successfully landed the first leg of the Falcon 9 rocket for the first time. Then, in March 2017, he flew one of these used rockets for the first time and has since piloted a 14 times used propeller. Earlier this year, he stole the Falcon Heavy rocket. The significance of this larger rocket, fueled in part by recycled Falcon 9 cores, is that it can reach the nine reference orbits of the Department of Defense for missions. This effectively means that there are more military missions that a "reusable rocket" can not reach.

The US Congress seems to have noticed these important achievements. As part of the conference report, Congress directs the Air Force to report on how the military will ensure that used rockets are safe and how much money the government will save as a result. That's all a change from the situation just 13 years ago when the ULA was dominant and SpaceX was downright rejected by the courts and the aerospace community as a whole.