An Atlas 5 rocket carrying the U.S. Navy's second Mobile User Objective System satellite launches at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 19, 2013. U.S. Navy photo courtesy of NASA by Patrick H. Corkery
Lara Seligman, Foreign Policy: The New Space Race
The latest front in a return to Cold War rivalry is the effort to build an all-American rocket for military launches.
As Russia and China increasingly threaten U.S. interests on land and in orbit, the space race that so defined the Cold War is once again becoming a focus for the U.S. Defense Department.
The latest front in the emerging scramble for dominance of the stars is the U.S. government’s attempt to develop a domestic source of rocket engines to boost military spy satellites and other sensitive payloads into space—an industry that even now still depends on Moscow.
For almost 20 years, the United States has relied on the Russian RD-180 engine to power national security space launches. But Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 and Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election brought an end to the tentative post-Cold War truce. The U.S. government now increasingly views Moscow as a source of instability worldwide and the U.S. military’s reliance on the RD-180 for access to space as a liability.
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WNU Editor: It still shocks me that the U.S. still does not have an American made rocket for its military launches.
3 comments:
What do you mean no American rocket for its military launches?
We have three!
SX Falcon 9, Delta IV and the DIV Heavy. The buggabo is the Russian engines on the Atlas single stage.
What is embarrassing is the US not having a crew launch system using American parts.
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Clinton had the Peace dividend to squander
Bush had the War on Terrorism
Obama had the American nation to fundamentally transform to socialism.
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