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DARPA Launches Military Spaceplane Project
RocketAcademy writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched a new program to develop a reusable first-stage launch vehicle. Experimental Spaceplane 1 (XS-1) would be capable of flying 10 times in 10 days, with a small ground crew, reaching speeds of Mach 10, and deploying a small upper stage to place a 3,000-pound satellite into orbit. The XS-1 program is complementary to the Air Force's Boeing X-37, which is a reusable upper stage. The X-37 is currently launched by an expendable Atlas rocket but could be launched by a vehicle derived from XS-1 in the future. Military planners have dreamed of a two-stage, fully reusable Military Spaceplane for several years, but funding has not materialized up to now."
Competition is good.
Although we're comparing apples with oranges here. Many of Elon's technical choices are extremely conservative, e.g. old gas-generator cycle engines, pintle injectors, etc. OTOH, DARPA is doing what DARPA does best -- highly speculative, high-risk, high-payoff research which may or may not result in a working launch vehicle.
What _will_ be interesting, is if DARPA comes up with totally new ways of building tough, low maintenance hypersonic vehicles cheaply.