Space competition at risk if rocket crashes, general warns

The future system for launching US military satellites could founder if a rocket belonging to one of the two likely providers blows up, the US Air Force's most senior space commander said on Tuesday in a rare warning about competition's pitfalls.

General John Hyten was speaking as Elon Musk's SpaceX, one of the two companies set to handle future military satellite launches, proved the inherent difficulty of space operations when it failed with its latest attempt to capture a rocket booster for reuse.

The future US military market is likely to be split between SpaceX, with its Falcon rocket systems, and United Launch Alliance, which is developing a new rocket known as Vulcan. ULA - a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin - currently holds a monopoly on national security launches. But it is required to maintain two separate systems - Atlas and Delta - to ensure that, if one suffers a crash, the other can handle launches until the problem is resolved.

Under current plans, SpaceX - which is likely to receive permission to carry military satellites later this year - and ULA will compete for all national security launches from 2019 onwards.

However, Gen Hyten, commander of the US Air Force's space command, said he had received no answers as to what might happen if one of the providers suffered a crash like the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster.

"We stood down the rocket for a period of time - one year, two-and-a-half years, whatever it took to figure out the root cause of that," Gen Hyten said of the aftermath of previous crashes.

Many of the US's military satellites gave the country critical capabilities and cost more than $1bn to build, Gen Hyten said.

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"I'm not going to stand up and put a $1bn satellite on top of a rocket I don't know is going to work," he said.

However, there were still no answers as to how one of the launch providers would survive if its single launch system was forced out of action.

"If [an accident] happens to this company that's on this very busy launch environment, how do they stay in business without launching?" the general asked.

He made his remarks at the annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. The event has been dominated by issues surrounding the growing competition to provide national security launches and fallout from the decision to end the Atlas launch system's reliance on the Russian-made RD180 rocket engine.

SpaceX was trying on Tuesday for the second time to capture for reuse a booster returned to earth after flight. A previous attempt failed when a rocket hit a corner of the unmanned drone barge and broke up.

Mr Musk wrote on Twitter that the rocket's take-off had been successful and it was carrying its Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station.

But he went on: "Rocket landed on droneship, but too hard for survival."

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