America looks for rockets to take off

In the 1960s, a rocket launch was big news all over the world. Sixty years later, it’s still a big deal.

Sure, SpaceX has leaped forward with reusable vehicles, but the ability to make space travel a reliable, everyday event is still a way off.

The U.S. government and some private companies want to change that.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is putting up $10 million to encourage launch firms to get faster and nimbler about traveling to space.

The goal of the Rapid Launch Challenge is to hurl a small satellite into orbit with only a day’s notice — or less — from virtually anywhere in the country. In doing so, the agency hopes to accomplish a necessary next step in humankind’s path to other worlds. “The real goal has always sort of been to enable a more real-time, tactical use of space,” Todd Master, a program manager in Darpa’s tactical technology office, said.

“And that’s something we’ve been envisioning as a future need.”

One of the earliest goals of SpaceX and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, was to make rockets not just reusable but to relaunch them quickly, on consecutive days.

Other companies, such as Arizona-based Vector Launch Inc., also see reusable rocketry and frequent, lowcost launches as the key to successfully commercializing space.

For the Department of Defense, space is considered a contested domain.

The array of top-secret spy, communications and missile-detection satellites are the most probable targets for an enemy, and both China and Russia have demonstrated their ability to obliterate satellites with groundbased missiles.

The U.S. satellite fleet’s vulnerability has spurred talk in Congress and the White House of a new “space corps” with the ability to react quickly if a satellite is destroyed or fails during operation.

One concept gaining purchase among military planners is using a constellation of smaller satellites instead of larger, more sophisticated birds that can be easily destroyed.

If one is lost, another can be quickly sent to replace it.