A “War Rocket” That Can Transport 80 Tons Of Weapons Anywhere In The World In Only An Hour Will Be Built By Elon Musk For The U.S. Military

The Mercury News

The Pentagon has signed a deal with billionaire Elon Musk’s aerospace corporation SpaceX for a rocket that can deliver 80 tons of war cargo anywhere in the world in only one hour. Sounds like Mr Musk is hoping to be a real-life Tony Stark. The new deal would revolutionize war logistics and could transport weapons anywhere in the world 15 times faster than the current standard in large military transport, the Boeing C17 Globemaster III aircraft.


The rocket spaceX will build will travel at 7,500 mph, and could deliver, for example, from Florida to Afghanistan, a 7,652 mile journey in an hour. Compare this to the current standard using the $ 218 million C-17 aircraft which would take 15 hours travelling at a little over 500 mph. General Stephen Lyons of US Transportation Command said, Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour.” He added enthusiastically,I can tell you SpaceX is moving very, very rapidly in this area. I’m really excited about the team that’s working with SpaceX.”

By way of background, the company SpaceX was originally meant to pursue the colonization of Mars and revolutionize space transportation while drastically minimizing space travel costs. However, SpaceX has been eager to deal with the Pentagon to augment and secure US military dominance across the planet. Just recently this month, Elon Musk’s company won a $149 million contract with the US military’s Space Development Agency to produce four new missile-tracking satellites that will be fitted with wide-angle infrared missile-tracking sensors.

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The US army also worked with SpaceX to develop new military navigation networks using the company’s Starlink broadband satellites. Last August, SpaceX also succeeded in getting 40 percent of a billion-dollar Pentagon project to launch new rockets for the US Space Force. The 60 percent was awarded to the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s space divisions.

The concept using rockets to transport weapons sort of resembles the concept for passenger space travel Musk proposed 3 years ago, which involved firing passengers into space before they quickly landed at their terrestrial destination point. It’s just exchanging people for weapons, in this case.


For quite some time, rivals China and Russia have accused the US for using its massive war budget to militarize outer space. And Donald Trump’s presidency only escalated things when he inaugurated the Space Force last December. The “space-race” has been a contest between powerful nations since the early 1960s. It has intensified with the advent of the 1990s, as the race focused on developing and deploying weapons platforms  and “dual-use” military hardware in space. It began in the 1960s with Russia’s Sputnik satellite, and the US Echo.

While the race for space is a noble and scientific endeavor, strengthening military power as a “sidetrack” for the same cause seems a bit paranoid. But that is the reality of things to come, hopefully it does not lead to a catastrophe.

 

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