Toggle light / dark theme

The United States military has teamed up with Elon Musk and the company he heads, SpaceX. The goal of the tie-up is to build a rocket capable of delivering weapons anywhere on the globe in an hour. The benefits of quickly delivering weapons and other cargo anywhere on the planet very quickly are readily apparent.

The rocket would travel at 7500 miles per hour and would be able to carry 80 metric tons of cargo into orbit. The rocket could then land anywhere on the planet. The contract will see SpaceX begin by assessing costs and technical challenges for the project. Gen. Stephen Lyons, the head of US Transportation Command, said on Wednesday that initial tests are expected to begin in 2021.

What the military and SpaceX are trying to do is incredible. Using rockets to deliver massive payloads would allow the 7652 mile trip from Florida to Afghanistan could be completed within an hour. To compare, a C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft has a maximum speed of 590 mph and would require 15 hours to make the same journey.

SpaceX in the News Episode 115. Today we catch up on all the latest Starship and Super Heavy updates. Go over recent Dragon news. Talk Starlink and other upcoming missions, and finish with today’s Honorable Mention.

SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/spacexcentric

BECOME AN XCENTRIC MEMBER: https://www.youtube.com/spacexcentric/join

SUPPORT ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/spaceXcentric

JOIN OUR DISCORD: https://discord.gg/UCv4yx4

WEBSITE: https://spacexcentric.com

The Pentagon’s Transportation Command and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are teaming up to examine using rockets to ship cargo through space. The plan raises the prospect of sending urgently needed supplies to U.S. troops anywhere on Earth, within minutes. While the idea is technically feasible, there are several factors, including cost and preparation time, that could make it unworkable.

DIVE DEEPER ➡ Read best-in-class military features and get unlimited access to Pop Mech, starting now.

NASA said Saturday that the launch of four astronauts on SpaceX’s first operational Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station has been delayed from Oct. 31 until “no sooner than early-to-mid November,” allowing time for SpaceX to resolve an issue with Falcon 9 rocket engines that halted a recent launch attempt with a GPS navigation satellite.

The engine concern appeared during an Oct. 2 launch attempt of a Falcon 9 rocket with a GPS satellite at Cape Canaveral, prompting computers controlling the final seconds of the countdown to abort the mission just two seconds prior to liftoff.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, tweeted after the abort that the countdown was stopped after an “unexpected pressure rise in the turbomachinery gas generator,” referring to equipment used on the rocket’s Merlin main engines. The gas generators on the Merlin 1D engines drives the engines’ turbopumps.

Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has given emergency responders in Washington access to its Starlink satellites to help fight fires.

Through the satellite-based internet constellation Starlink, SpaceX plans to provide broadband internet across the globe and enable connectivity to billions of people who may not have reliable internet access.

SpaceX has already launched hundreds of satellites into orbit, though the firefighters’ use of the network is the first early application of the internet service to be disclosed.