06 March 2025

Rocket Cargo

Rocket Cargo is a United States Space Force program run through the Air Force Research Laboratory for suborbital spaceflight rocket-delivered cargo involving point-to-point space travel. The program is to develop the capability to rapidly send cargo anywhere in the world on a rocket. It would involve reusable rockets that can perform propulsive landings on a variety of landing sites, to deliver a C-17's worth of cargo [anywhere in the world] in an hour. The program was discussed in 2020 and announced in 2021, with a budget allocation request for Fiscal Year 2022.
From Wikipedia.

A C-17 worth of cargo is about 100 short tons, and delivering that much cargo at hypersonic speeds is indeed impressive if you can make it work consistently.

This program for which SpaceX (an Elon Musk company) is the contractor is apparently still alive and kicking, with a recent federal register notice setting aside Johnston Atoll, an island about 860 miles southwest of Honolulu that is part of U.S. territory as a test landing site. Ten landings per year over four years at planned at two different landing pads on the atoll.

Nailing the landing is challenging, however, and rocket science, in general, tends to involve lots of fiery failures, as Space X has just demonstrated today:
Nearly two months after an explosion sent flaming debris raining down on the Turks and Caicos, SpaceX launched another mammoth Starship rocket but lost contact minutes into the test flight.

It is roughly a $100 million R&D program at this point. 

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