SpaceX Wins $130 Million Air Force Launch Contract, Marking a First For Falcon Heavy (geekwire.com)

The U.S. Air Force has awarded a $130 million firm-fixed-price contract to SpaceX for the launch of its classified AFSPC-52 satellite on a Falcon Heavy rocket. From a report: It's the first national security contract won for SpaceX's heavy-lift rocket, which had its first test flight in February. AFSPC-52 is tue to lift off in 2020 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch will support the Air Force Space Command's "mission of delivering resilient and affordable space capabilities to our nation while maintaining assured access to space," Lt. Gen. John Thompson, Air Force program executive officer for space and commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, said today in a news release. In an emailed statement, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said her company was "honored by the Air Force's selection of Falcon Heavy to launch the competitively awarded AFSPC-52 mission."

Comments

Re:MAGA with American Rocket Engines

[Brett Buck]

Probably not by the end of the year.

    Everyone is mocking it, but this has been coming for a long time. Space is already a separate command in the Air Force, formed about 15ish years ago, more-or-less, to consolidate space acquistion (Los Angeles, mostly) and operations (Colordao, mostly). It's a logical development, they really are separate disciplines.

Only one launch

[Bruce Perens]

Note that $130M is only enough to pay for one Falcon Heavy launch with the additional government book-keeping. Commercial satellite vendors pay less, because they don't require as much compliance and paperwork.

So, it's really nice that Falcon Heavy got a government contract. However, SpaceX is not even close to recovering the cost of the engineering it put into it, and the first test launch. And they may never recover it before this business shifts to their new rocket, fondly called "BFR".

Payload adapter

[Bruce Perens]

Are they going to let SpaceX make the payload adapter this time? The Northrop Grumman one on Zuma resulted in mission failure.

Reliability compared to ULA

[Eravnrekaree]

SpaceX is good for commercial launches where they are willling to accept a little higher risk to launch off the shelf commercial satellites. For things relating to national security, and one off NASA stuff thats been underway for a decade like James Webb, can they be so confident that it will be as reliable as the ULA stuff. The idea of something like James Webb being lost is pretty scary after its taken so long. SpaceX not being there yet as far as having the same record as ULA, doesnt mean its a bad platform for lower risk launches.

Re:Reliability compared to ULA

[EnsilZah]

Well, they've definitely had a couple of bumps on the road, but they're getting there.
They said they're pretty much locking down the design of the current iteration of the Falcon 9 and will continue flying it unchanged as they shift focus to the BFR.

I think if you look a little bit further ahead, you'll have to ask the reverse question, does ULA's record of reliability hold when they retire their current rocket families (Which they must, one for being too expensive, and the other for using Russian engines) and start launching on a newly designed rocket with newly designed engines when SpaceX will have more than a hundred launches under their belt?

Re: Nice!

[Bruce Perens]

Gosh, I hate Slashdot's handling of Unicode. An Atlas at $177M can lift 4,750-8,900 kg (10,470-19,620 lb) to GTO, while a Falcon Heavy at $130M can lift 26,700 kg (58,900 lb) to GTO.