Rocket Cargo is a United States Space Force program run through the Air Force Research Laboratory for

suborbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital r ...

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 rocket A reusable launch vehicle have parts that can be recovered and reflown, while carrying payloads from the surface to outer space. Rocket stages are the most common launch vehicle parts aimed for reuse. Smaller parts such as rocket engines and boost ...

s that can perform propulsive landings on a variety of landing sites, to deliver a

C-17 The McDonnell Douglas/Boeing C-17 Globemaster III is a large military transport aircraft that was developed for the United States Air Force (USAF) from the 1980s to the early 1990s by McDonnell Douglas. The C-17 carries forward the name of two ...

's worth of cargo in an hour. The program was discussed in 2020 and announced in 2021, with a budget allocation request for Fiscal Year 2022.

History

In the 1960s, the military studied using Douglas Ithacus T-100 rockets to rocket off aircraft carriers to deliver marines to theatres. In 2018, the Air Force started studying delivering cargo via rockets. In 2020, U.S. Transportation Command consulted with

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

on the delivery of 100-tons of cargo via rocket anywhere in the world in under 1 hour with

Starship A starship, starcraft, or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for interstellar travel, traveling between planetary systems. The term is mostly found in science fiction. Reference to a "star-ship" appears as early as 188 ...

. In 2021, the Pentagon announced the Rocket Cargo program, with the U.S. Space Force as the lead service on the program. $9.7 million U.S. dollars were allocated to Rocket Cargo in FY21. The Pentagon Budget Office has requested $48 million US for FY 2022 for the program. In 2022, the Department of the Air Force awarded a $102 million, 5-year contract to SpaceX to demonstrate technologies and capabilities to transport military cargo and humanitarian aid around the world.

Objectives

The program is an Air Force Research Laboratory "Vanguard" program, a top importance science and technology research and development program. At the time of announcement, it was one of four such programs for the United States Department of the Air Force. The program is to examine modifying existing commercially available hardware for the program objectives. It would involve moving approximately a C-17 Globemaster III's worth of cargo or approximately , anywhere in the world in under 1-hour. It would use a propulsively-landing reusable rocket that would transport cargo from source to destination, landing in all kinds of environments.

History

Objectives

References

Further reading

See also