Daily Archives: August 8, 2020

As a child, Elon Musk would read comic books and sci-fi novels and dream of fantastical worlds. Now the tech entrepreneur is on the verge of visiting one.

Musks focus narrowed some 20 years ago while poking around NASAs website. He noticed that there was no timetable for a manned mission to Mars. He later called the lack of vision shocking.

Musk, then already a millionaire from the sale of a software company, ditched Silicon Valley for Los Angeles, in order to be closer to the aerospace industry, and set his sights on the stars.

Now the future of space is largely in his and the hands of other free-spending, big-dreaming billionaires like him, including Amazons Jeff Bezos.

But what will this future look like?

Some answers can be found in the new book Star Settlers: The Billionaires, Geniuses, and Crazed Visionaries Out to Conquer the Universe (Pegasus Books) by Fred Nadis, out now.

I see [guys like Musk] almost like medieval cathedral builders, with this multi-century project that theyre willing to take their time and their livelihood, Nadis told The Post.

That said, the author thinks these billionaires may be dreaming a bit too big.

Musk, the founder of Tesla, has said that all of his earthly business ventures are just a way to fund his true passion: colonizing Mars.

His company, SpaceX, is planning to send humans to the red planet in 2024. Within a century, Musk envisions reusable rockets blasting off every two years and ferrying some 200 passengers at a time, ultimately establishing an outpost of a million people.

Its still unclear how theyll survive.

At its closest, Mars is some 35million miles from Earth, and a trip would take around nine months. Once you get there, the problem explorers will face is that Mars atmosphere is much thinner than Earths and the planet generates no electromagnetic field, meaning it gets pounded by cosmic rays and other harmful-to-humans energy.

Its really challenging, Nadis says. Not quite as simple as SpaceX might make it out to be.

Musk has offered sketchy details of what life off-world might look like. Any Mars colony would have to be self-sustaining and not rely on supplies from Earth. Musk has suggested food be grown on hydroponic farms, either underground or in an enclosed structure to protect the crops from radiation, but because Mars surface gets about half the sunlight Earth does, whatever plants that can be grown will likely have to be supplemented with artificial lights and powering those lights will be no small challenge.

Musk has said farms will be powered by solar panels, though hes offered few details.

Really pretty straightforward, he told Popular Mechanics last year.

In the same interview, the billionaire suggested Mars inhabitants might live under a glass dome with an outdoorsy, fun atmosphere, until the planet is terraformed artificially transforming the planet to make it more Earth-like, with a livable atmosphere.

But that plan also presents a problem: A 2018 NASA-sponsored study concluded terraforming Mars is impossible, because there is not enough carbon dioxide locked in the soil to release into the air.

Musk, however, isnt daunted. He has suggested exploding 10,000 nuclear missiles over Mars surface in order to melt the planets ice reserves, thereby releasing the carbon dioxide locked within. His company has even produced nuke Mars T-shirts.

Scientists are divided on whether the idea would work. Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, for example, told US News and World Report in 2015, There are so many things that could go wrong here, it is difficult to know where to start.

Meanwhile, Bezos and his company, Blue Origin, are also focused on moving off-world but onto space colonies. Bezos is worried that the Earths resources will be gone in a few hundred years, necessitating the need to leave.

Bezos draws much of his inspiration from the work of Gerard ONeill, a Princeton physicist who in the 1970s laid out a grand design for space colonies.

There are so many things that could go wrong here

ONeill envisioned two giant counter-rotating cylinders rotating in order to create artificial gravity joined at each end by a rod. The massive structures could be 4 miles in diameter and at least 16-miles long.

The interior of each cylinder would offer controlled climates and temperate weather, with an Earth-like landscape consisting of forests, artificial rivers and mountains. To protect from cosmic radiation, the cylinders would be lined with moon rock. Plants, pigs and chickens might be raised for food. Low-gravity sports might serve as entertainment.

Colonists might reside in apartments overlooking farmland and living conditions in the colonies should be much more pleasant than in most places on Earth, ONeill wrote in 1974.

With certain technological advances, ONeill envisioned the size of the cylinders being able to grow to encompass some 30,000 square miles, allowing room for up to 700million people.

The colony would likely be parked in a stable orbit between the earth and the moon, first calculated by a mathematician in 1772. ONeill has said that there is room for several thousand colonies there.

Bezos is a fan of ONeills designs, and has said that he one day envisions a trillion of us living on space colonies, though Nadis predicts thats hundreds of years away.

The Amazon founder said its his generations job to begin laying the groundwork for the colonies so that future generations can actually construct them.

The kids here, and your children, and their grandchildren, youre going to build the ONeill colonies, Bezos told attendees at a Washington, DC, press conference last year.

A colony on the moon might be a more realistic bet in some of our lifetimes. Making it to the moon has long been a dream for many, including Bezos and the Japanese tech billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who tweeted earlier this year that he was looking for a girlfriend to join him on a trip to the orbiting body.

Nadis said the most likely habitats at first will be simple modular units, built on Earth then flown via rocket to the moon. But one tantalizing prospect is the moons lava tubes seemingly massive underground tunnels made by lava flows. Living inside them would offer protection from radiation and a more stable temperature (about -4 degrees Fahrenheit) than the surface.

Scientists arent yet sure how big or deep these tubes are and what they might look like inside. In his influential magazine, Moon Miners Manifesto, sci-fi fan Peter Kokh once described a civilization of thousands of people living on the rocky terrain, almost like setting up camp in an Earth cave. Sunlight would be piped down below via shafts or optical cable bundles. Elevators would be built to carry inhabitants to the surface. Ultimately, it might be possible to seal a tube and pressurize it, just like with an airplane, creating a breathable habitat.

But one major problem none of these dreamers have been able to solve is human procreation: It may be extremely difficult in space. Never mind the challenges of having sex in diminished gravity. The radiation in space could render males temporarily and females permanently sterile, Nadis writes.

In one Russian experiment, rats were unable to produce babies in space, and when those space rats returned to earth and mated with regular rats, the offspring tended to have significant abnormalities.

Other bodily functions might suffer in space, as well. Take sleep, for example. Our bodies are cued by light exposure and the 24-hour day. On the moon, though, a day lasts more than 27 Earth days, severely screwing with human circadian rhythms. (Mars day is very similar to Earths.)

One solution is to equip habitats with lights that simulate the sun. The compartments then get darkened for night.

And what about peeing and pooping in diminished gravity? Early astronauts had to do their business in a bag (bits sometimes missed and floated around their space capsule). But, in the future, waste might be recycled. A 2017 paper in the journal Life Sciences in Space Research detailed a compact bioreactor that could recycle Numbers 1 and 2 into an edible goo.

Even with so many potential complications, Nadis appreciates the vision of the billionaire space explorers.

What once was fringe thought escaping to the stars has been inching toward the center, the author writes. A potentially profound cultural change appears underway, as we shift from thinking of ourselves as an earthbound species to one of (potential) spacefarers.

But, he concludes, whether we are worthy candidates for dispersal through the solar system or galaxy remains an open question.

Read more here:
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk's plans to colonize space are even crazier than we thought - New York Post

SpaceX just flew a full-size prototype of its Starship Mars-colonizing spacecraft for the first time ever.

The Starship SN5 test vehicle took to the skies for about 40 seconds this afternoon (Aug. 4) at SpaceX's facilities near the South Texas village of Boca Chica, performing a small hop that could end up being a big step toward human exploration of the Red Planet.

"Mars is looking real," Musk tweeted shortly after today's test flight.

Related: SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy Mars rocket in pictures

The stainless-steel SN5 rose into the air at 7:57 p.m. EDT (2357 GMT; 6:57 p.m. local Texas time). It traveled sideways a bit during the brief, uncrewed flight, which Musk had previously said would target a maximum altitude of about 500 feet (150 meters). The spacecraft deployed its landing legs as planned and stuck the landing.

The SN5 is just the second Starship prototype to get off the ground, and the first to do so in nearly a year. A squat and stubby vehicle called Starhopper took a few brief flights in the summer of 2019, retiring after acing its own 500-foot-high hop that August.

Ending this flight lull fell to the SN5 after several of its predecessors were destroyed during pressurization or engine-firing tests.

Starhopper and the SN5 both feature a single Raptor, SpaceX's powerful next-generation engine. The final Starship vehicle will sport six Raptors, stand about 165 feet (50 m) tall and be capable of carrying up to 100 people, Musk has said.

The operational Starship will launch from Earth atop a gigantic rocket called Super Heavy, which will have 31 Raptors of its own. Both vehicles will be fully and rapidly reusable, potentially slashing the cost of spaceflight enough to make crewed trips to and from the moon, Mars and other deep-space destinations economically feasible, Musk has said.

Super Heavy will land back on Earth after each liftoff; Starship will be powerful enough on its own to get itself off Mars and the moon, both of which have much weaker gravitational pulls than our planet does.

Musk is particularly keen on the Red Planet, stressing repeatedly over the years that he founded SpaceX back in 2002 primarily to help humanity colonize Mars. If all goes well with the development of Starship and Super Heavy, the spaceflight system could enable our species to get a million-person city up and running on the Red Planet in the next 50 to 100 years, the billionaire entrepreneur has said.

A lot of development still needs to get done, of course. SpaceX will iterate repeatedly before arriving at the final Starship design, which will then need to be tested. And then there's Super Heavy, no version of which has yet been built, let alone gotten off the ground.

But if all goes well, we could see Starship and Super Heavy flying together soon, on exciting and important missions. The SpaceX system is a contender to land NASA astronauts on the moon in the mid-2020s and beyond, for example. And Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has booked a crewed Starship trip around the moon, with a targeted launch date of 2023.

In the much nearer term, however the coming days and weeks we should expect a few more short test hops like the one we saw today.

"Well do several short hops to smooth out launch process, then go high altitude with body flaps," Musk said in another tweet today. ("High altitude" could be around 12 miles, or 20 kilometers, up, if previous Musk tweets are any guide.)

Today's Starship milestone comes just two days after another big moment for SpaceX. On Sunday (Aug. 2), the company's Crew Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast, bringing an end to Demo-2, SpaceX's first crewed mission. Demo-2, a key test flight for the system, sent NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station for two months.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Excerpt from:
SpaceX's Starship SN5 prototype soars on 1st test flight! 'Mars is looking real,' Elon Musk says - Space.com

Damian Wilson

is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU.

is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU.

The latest successful rocket test by SpaceX could mean well see humans on Mars in the next decade, funded by private entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But will they take charge of the newly conquered Red Planet too?

On a clear night, theres nothing better than gazing towards the heavens, wondering whats out there, but if the answer to that eternal question ever turned out to be Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and their billionaire pals sitting on Mars and gazing back at Earth, then, Houston, we have a problem.

Its not a completely unlikely scenario in the exciting new climate of space exploration, marked this week by the safe return from the International Space Station of two NASA astronauts aboard a SpaceX craft, and the successful testing of Musks latest prototype for his next Mars rocket just yesterday.

These events show us a future in which individuals have taken over the funding of our exploration of space, in an arena in which competing national governments once strived to outdo each other to provide the only possible sources of the huge funds needed to finance those dreams.

But before we get too excited and start planning vacations to the Red Planet, lets look at wholl be calling the shots now. Do we really want car-maker Musk, Bezos the bookseller or Branson the balloon man holding all the cards when it comes to the logistics of actually sending people to Mars and making something habitable of the dusty red rock? Living in a Martian society with these guys or their cronies at the helm would be unbearable.

Whats strange to me is that they never seem to profess any huge interest in anthropology, astrophysics or astronomy. What they like is talking about their crazy dreams of building big rockets, sending up satellites, and getting further than the last guy. Its an interest that seems based on a mixture of science fiction and fantasy, in which theyre the emperors of their new kingdoms. They indulge in the same kind of fancies as those guys who attend comic conventions and marvel at Star Wars collectible figurines while chatting in fluent Vulcan.

Id rather step outside my pressurized biodome on the Red Planet and have my eyes pop out of my head and all my internal organs blister from the radiation as I fried like a crisp before I chose to serve at the command of this sort of uber-geek.

Although these are the guys, or others like them, wholl one day make it possible for us to live on Mars, Im not so sure Id want to live alongside them, or that theyre that well equipped to run a brave new world in any case.

Musk is notoriously thin-skinned, insulting the poor chap in Thailand who mocked his offer of a rescue submarine for the football team trapped in a cave as a pedo guy and challenging Johnny Depp to a cage fight over allegations he had an affair with Depps former wife Amber Heard.

Then there was the intergalactically crass exhibition of consumerism as he pointlessly launched a Tesla car into orbit, as if even more junk was needed circling above our heads. Is this someone we want to lead us?

As for Bezos, well, watching him squirm, bald and bug-eyed in front of the US Congressional Committee investigating the amount of power held by the tech giants was not exactly endearing.

And as the current owner of several mega-houses on earth, you could expect that, were he to ever relocate to the fourth rock from the Sun, then his crib would most certainly be the largest. And therein lies the problem.

The sort of galactic pioneer looking to head to Mars isnt interested in building a community in which he inhabits the lower rungs as the wider population grows and thrives. He wants others to do all the hard graft while he builds on his fortune and the rest of the colony serves his every whim.

The founder of the Coalition to Save Manned Space Exploration, and former adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, Art Harman, told the International Mars Society Convention in 2019 that all the heavy lifting required obviously easier in gravity 37 percent of that on Earth would be undertaken by workers signing contracts. They would specify their rights and obligations within the new colony, presumably determined by the billionaire businessmen who arranged for their passage and are bankrolling the whole project.

Sound familiar? It would certainly suggest we could be looking at an emerging Green Lives Matter movement sometime next century. It seems weve arrived at this point of possibility in a bit of a rush.

Quantum advances in technology have been made and now the space business is big business. Nation states with a satellite to launch, or a few astronauts to send to the International Space Station, call on those with the know-how and hardware to do that, with Musks SpaceX, Bezoss Blue Origin, Bransons Virgin Galactic and even the joint Lockheed Martin-Boeing outfit United Launch Alliance among the choices.

Elsewhere, the moneybags sheikhs of the Middle East are competing in their own Arab space race, with Saudi Arabia sending up satellites and the United Arab Emirates launching its own mission to Mars.

The skies are suddenly becoming very crowded. With thousands of satellites now orbiting above us, rockets launching more regularly than ever before from all points of the globe and tremendous public buy-in to the idea of actually sending humans to planets previously considered out of reach, the dream of one day building a new civilization is in the realm of possibility.

And thats amazing. To think that, just a little over 50 years ago, we were excited about sending a man to the moon, and here we are on the cusp of landing him on Mars. Its what happens next that should now occupy our dreams under the star-filled skies.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Excerpt from:
Mars colonization is ever more likely, but dont get too excited itll be billionaires deciding who gets there, and how - RT

SpaceX Crew Dragons successful return from the space station has added a new dimension in humanitys plans for space travel. Granted we have been sending spaceships out for a while, but the successful entry of Elon Musk to this space (literally!) promises a new direction or energy that our plans for living on Mars probably need! While NASA figures out the logistics to get us there, we want to focus more on the quality of life at the red planet and the architecture that will be used to house the people. After all, they promise a great view from any window we get!

Paris-based Interstellar labs have planned to build a network of biomes in the Mojave desert in California to create and study the future of human settlement on Mars. Named EBIOS (experimental bio-regenerative station) the design is a circular village (enclosed on itself) with regenerative life support technologies. Sentient life is likely very rare in our universe complex life may be rare in our solar system, said founder and CEO Barbara Belvisi. At Interstellar lab we are building technologies to help its preservation and regeneration on earth now and in the future on other planets. What we need to bring on mars for life is what we need to protect on earth right now. The only path to becoming a multiplanet species is to join our energy in the same direction. Following this philosophy, Interstellar is working closely with NASA to create the ideal habitat to help humans start the next leg of our journey across the Milky Way. After all, once we settle on Mars, who is to stop us from finding new planets!

SpaceX got their rocket to the space station and back successfully. So its only logical the next step for them is to build us a solar-friendly housing there (after all the roadster is already orbiting in space!) and we even have a date for it! The Dragon Crew included a crew of two, whereas rehabilitation requires mass transportation with SpaceXs 100-passenger reusable rocket design (named Starship) preparing to get us there. Elon Musk has said it would take 1,000 of SpaceXs starship rockets 20 years to transport the cargo. A series of tweets by Musk outlines how many rockets he thought it would need to carry the necessary cargo to set up a base on Mars. A thousand ships will be needed to create a sustainable mars city as the planets align only once every two years, he said. Musk also stated a full Mars base alpha a preliminary city on the red planet could be completed as soon as 2028. SpaceX intends to use the BFR to build a base on the moon and for return trips to and from mars. the most recent images of the mars base photo include the updated BFR design, which this year added bigger fins.

When NASA announced a competition to design the best Martian habitation design, AI SpaceFactory came in second place with its vertical, egg-shaped structure that holds a double shell system to handle the internal atmospheric pressure and the structural stress the design may have to endure. Designed to be constructed on Mars, the design keeps in mind using elements already present on the planet, reducing the dependency of construction materials to be carried from Earth. The team developed an innovative mixture of basalt fiber, extracted from Martian rock, and renewable bioplastic (polylactic acid) derived from plants that would be grown on Mars. The design envisions individual structures instead of a communal habitat but given the area it covers, it should comfortably house more than one Martian at a time!

The winner of NASAs competition to design 3D-printed habitat for Mars is the Zopherus designed by an Arkansas-based team. The design is envisioned to be built from the materials available on the planet and showcases a settlement with rounded hut-like structures. The construction is designed to be 3D printed, without any human intervention to keep the place ready for the humans before they arrive. The process starts with a lander who settles and looks for a suitable area to start building the settlement, the lander deploys autonomous robots who gather the material for the process to start.

Danish architect Bjarke Ingelss Mars Science City is designed to operate as a space simulation campus for scientists to understand humanitys march into space. Located in Dubai, the experimental city is built to hold a team for a year which will recreate the conditions expected on Mars. The laboratories are dedicated to investigating self-sufficient forms of energy, food and water for future life on Mars. Ingels, the founder of Danish firm BIG, will work on the AED 500 million (101 million) project with a team of Emirati scientists, engineers, and designers led by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre and the Dubai Municipality. The UAE seeks to establish international efforts to develop technologies that benefit humankind, and that establishes the foundation of a better future for more generations to come, said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, vice president and prime minister of the UAE, and ruler of Dubai.

NASA scientists and the University of Arizonas agricultural department have teamed up to develop this inflatable greenhouse that can be used to grow vegetables in deep space. The result of this experiment is to sustain astronauts on a vegetarian diet while staying for long term on the Moon or Mars. While NASA scientists have been growing crops in the International Space Station, this 187 feet design can be used for air revitalization, water recycling, or waste recycling and also repurposing the carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts. R. Gene Giacomelli, director of the controlled environment agriculture center at the University of Arizona states Were mimicking what the plants would have if they were on earth, and using of these processes for life support. The entire system of the lunar greenhouse does represent, in a small way, the biological systems that are here on earth.

Warith Zaki and Amir Amzar plan to use the bamboo grown on Mars to actually build the first colony, named Seed of Life, on Mars. The conceptual colony design is actually a series or cluster of structures woven by autonomous robots from bamboos. The aim of the project is to create structures that do not rely on construction materials being shipped from Earth or to use 3D printing. After doing a lot of research on Mars colonization, we realized that half of the ideas would go about deploying fully synthetic materials made on earth to build shelters, while the other half is about using the locally available regolith, said Zaki and Amzar. Human civilization has yet to build anything on any other planet outside of Earth. That fact alone opens up infinite possibilities of what could or should be used. Sure, 3D printing seems to be a viable proposition, but with thousands of years worth of experience and techniques in shelter construction, why shouldnt we tap on other alternatives too?

The construction industry emits 4 times more CO2 than the aviation industry and that is enough proof they must focus on ecodesign to reduce their colossal impact especially when sustainable materials, like mycelium composites, already exist! This material is created by growing myceliumthe thread-like main body of a fungusof certain mushroom-producing fungi on agricultural wastes. The mycelia are composed of a network of filaments called hyphae, which are natural binders and they also are self-adhesive to the surface they grow on. This mushroom material is biodegradable, sustainable, and a low-cost alternative to construction materials while also possessing thermal and fire-resistant properties. The Living has designed an organic 42 feet tall mycelium tower to show the potential of using mushrooms for stable structures which is just one of many such projects. Mycelium materials are also being tested for being acoustic absorber, packaging materials, and building insulation. Even NASA is currently researching using mycelium to build sustainable habitable dwellings on Mars if we have to move into a mushroom house, might as well test it on Earth first, right?

23 shares Dezeen Mars One

Would you be ready to move to Mars and establish the first civilization on Mars? Well, more than 200,000 people from 140 countries have applied for a one-way ticket to join such a human settlement. Established by non-profit organization Mars One, the 4 billion project, founded by Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp in 2012, plans to establish the first permanent human settlement on Mars in 2023 and has proposed that humans will live in a modular environment made up of multiple inflatable units. As the habitat will be modular, and constructed using fully redundant systems, even if one inflatable unit is damaged beyond repair, the habitat will still be secure and fully functional, said the organization. The first footprint on Mars and lives of the crew thereon will captivate and inspire generations; it is this public interest that will help finance this human mission to Mars, said Mars One.

Texas-based startup Orion Span plans to utilize space in a whole new way, by creating a luxury space hotel designed to open in 2022 (Im sure COVID was not featured in their plans!) Named Aurora Station, the 70 million space hotel is designed to orbit 200 miles above the earth. The hotel plans to hold four guests and two crew members for a total 12-day trip and is priced at about 6.7 million per person. Upon launch, Aurora Station goes into service immediately, bringing travelers into space quicker and at a lower price point than ever seen before, while still providing an unforgettable experience, said Frank Bunger, founder of Orion Span. The entire design will be processed by a team led by Frank Eichstadt, who is credited as being the principal architect on the International Space Stations Enterprise module. Orion Span has additionally taken what was historically a 24-month training regimen to prepare travelers to visit a space station and streamlined it to three months, at a fraction of the cost, said Bunger.

More:
Space Architecture designed to be a home to the future humans living on Mars! - Yanko Design

Elon Musk's SpaceX and Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch Alliance are the big winners in a stiff competition to secure military launch contracts, teeing up the companies to dominate the lucrative market for launching US national security satellites for years to come.

The initial awards will give $316 million to SpaceX for one launch and $337 million to ULA for two launches. But the total value of the deal could be worth far more, as the military will ask one or the other company to launch additional missions.

SpaceX is expected to handle 40% of all national security satellites slated to go up over the next five to seven years, while ULA will handle the other 60%. Military officials did not say exactly how many launches that might enetail, nor did they provide a total contract value.

Exactly what the companies will launch will remain secret. The United States' security apparatus regularly launches spy satellites and other spacecraft into Earth's orbit, and the missions are highly classified.

The contracts for launching such satellites are a core part of the rocket industry's revenue stream.

The long-awaited and hotly contested contract awards announced Friday solidify SpaceX and ULA as the go-to launch providers for the US military. The companies faced competition from Blue Origin, the rocket venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, and Northrop Grumman, a longtime government contractor.

Bezos' Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman along will ULA all received funds under an earlier round of awards under the military's contracting program called the National Security Space Launch, or NSSL. But that money was meant to help aid the development of new launch vehicles under development by each of the companies. It did not guarantee any of the award winners would receive actual launch contracts.

SpaceX and ULA have already held a duopoly on existing national security launches for years.

SpaceX filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 2014 for the right to compete for those awards, and ultimately ended ULA's decade-long monopoly on them. SpaceX's rockets are typically priced at a fraction of the cost of ULA's, and it was not immediately clear why the value of the contract awarded to SpaceX Friday was far higher than ULA's per-launch price. SpaceX's contract also put the price of its one mission at more than three times the $90 million sticker price of its Falcon Heavy rocket.

Will Roper, the Air Force's assistant secretary for acquisition, declined to comment to reporters on Friday, citing the confidential nature of the missions.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

The NSSL awards were intended to encourage more competition, with the ultimate goal of reducing the amount of money the military spends on launches. But the price points were roughly in line with what the military has been spending.

Roper added that the price may ultimately come down, and the Air Force said in a press release that newer contracting strategies have saved the military about $7 billion since 2013.

Both Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman will be able to compete for additional business in the third phase of contract awards, which are expected to be doled out in 2025. ULA's contracts will have spillover benefits for Blue Origin, which is building the massive engines that it will use on its new line of Vulcan Centaur rockets.

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith said in a statement Friday that the company is "disappointed" to be left out of the awards, though it will continue to develop its New Glenn rocket to fulfill other commercial contracts, and the company is looking "forward to supporting ULA's long-standing role in launching national security payloads."

Northrop Grumman also said in a statement that it was "disappointed" by the outcome.

Though SpaceX was expected to be a recipient of this batch of awards, the company fought back after it was left out of the awards the military handed out for new rocket development in 2018.

Like the other companies, SpaceX is developing a new launch vehicle, known as Starship, and Super Heavy, a rocket and spaceship system that Musk has described as the technology that will allow humans to colonize Mars. Theoretically, the rocket also could be used to help launch heavy military payloads into orbit.

A complaint the company filed last year against the federal government states that the SpaceX's proposal asked for money to support all three of its rockets the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which are already operational, as well as Starship.

But officials determined that including Starship would render "the entire SpaceX portfolio the 'highest risk'" of all the options. SpaceX called that claim "unreasonable," according to the complaint.

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SpaceX and ULA win military launch competition worth $653 million -- and that's just the start - WKTV