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US Military Told To Move From 'Expendable' To 'Reusable' Rockets (arstechnica.com)
schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica: The conference report from the U.S. House and Senate calls for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program of the Department of Defense, commonly known as the EELV program, to be named the "National Security Space Launch program" as of March 1, 2019. No longer will the military rely solely on expendable rockets. Moreover, the report says the U.S. Air Force must consider both expendable and reusable launch vehicles as part of its solicitation for military launch contracts. And in the event that a contract is solicited for a mission that a reusable launch vehicle is not eligible to compete for, the Air Force should report back to Congress with the reason why. The U.S. House has already agreed to the conference report, and it should be taken up in the Senate next week. After that, it will need the president's signature to become law. [...] It is quite a change from the state of play just 13 years ago, when ULA was dominant and SpaceX was roundly dismissed by the courts and the broader aerospace community.
SpaceX's recent launch of a Tesla vehicle as proof of concept was cool, perhaps poetic and arty even, but not the most impressive part: I have to admit that my jaw dropped open when I saw 2 of the 3 rockets returning and landing again (3rd one was lost). I found it a triumph of good engineering, really impressive that it actually worked considering the rocket shape and gigantic powers involved.
Bullets are mostly reusable.
The casing can be reused directly, and the projectile might need to be remelted.
Other than that just replace the primer, and repack with powder.
Can the NRO hand craft the needed observation systems at that rapid rate from bespoke 100% made in the USA parts?
If they have a brain in their skulls they already have backups sitting on the ground on standby in a launch ready (or nearly so) condition. If they are already building one it saves a lot of money to build a second (or more) at the same time. Heck even commercial companies like SiriusXM build backup satellites that are ready for launch should one of their orbiting satellites experience a problem. It would be almost criminally stupid for a government agency tasked with defense to not do the same thing.
Skylon is sadly a stillborn concept. They're so obsessed with the complicated that they overlooked the simple. Making a rugged winged first stage would have been much more practical than building a winged SSTO at the outermost of our capability.
Ezekiel 23:20