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Commercialization

Confusion over "The Pentagon's Rockets"

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 2, 2009

Obama Moves to Counter China in Space With Pentagon-NASA Link, Bloomberg

“President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China. Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team.”

Editor’s note: There are several things getting mixed up in this story. EELVs are not the Pentagon’s rockets. They were developed (partially) with DoD money so as to assure that the DoD had viable commercial launch options. But they have always been sold on a commercial basis (currently by Boeing/Lockheed Martin- ULA) for use by both DOD and non-DoD customers alike. NASA’s New Horizons and MRO were launched on one (Atlas) as have been a number of commercial communications satellites on both Atlas V and Delta IV EELVs.

The Obama Administration may well be thinking of pairing up NASA and DoD to compete with China, but that is a different issue than using EELVs which you can buy today from the ULA catalog.

Editor’s update: Looks like the Washington Examiner and ZDet fell for the Bloomberg story too as they rewrote their story around its inaccuracies.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.