MAYDAY FOR PENTAGON SPACE PROGRAM

While pri­vate com­pa­nies are touch­ing the edge of space, and NASA is fig­ur­ing out how to get to the Moon and Mars, key parts of the Pentagon’s already-​​troubled space pro­gram are crash­ing, fast.
The U.S. mil­i­tary relies on satel­lites to guide its bombs, relay its orders, and spy on its ene­mies. But the next wave of orbit­ing eyes and ears is cost­ing tens of bil­lions of dol­lars more than expected. It’s an open ques­tion whether they’ll ever make it into space.
The trou­bles start with Space-​​Based Infrared System-​​High (“SBIRS-​​High”), a series of satel­lites designed to spot mis­sile attacks, both on dis­tant bat­tle­fields and against the con­ti­nen­tal U.S. The Air Force just had to add another $1.5 bil­lion to the project. That means the cost for SBIRS-​​High has tripled since it was first intro­duced, Aviation Week reports.
But those hiked prices seem down­right petite, com­pared to the boon­doogle that is the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (“EELV”) pro­gram. The Pentagon rocket mod­ern­iza­tion project was sup­posed to “reduce the gov­ern­ments total [space] launch costs by up to 50 per­cent,” notes Defense News.
Not any more. Originally billed at $18.8 bil­lion, the EELV’s is now pro­jected to rise to $31.8 bil­lion, accord­ing to a new Congressional report.
The gov­ern­ment blamed the weak com­mer­cial space launch mar­ket and “incor­rect assump­tions about infla­tion” for most of the added costs. But, given the Pentagon’s dis­mal recent his­tory in space, that’s a lit­tle bit like say­ing, “the dog ate my satel­lite.“
THERE’S MORE: “People don’t real­ize that in many ways the DoD space pro­gram is even more of a dis­as­ter than NASA’s (partly because they sweep so much dirt under the black pro­gram car­pet),” notes space blog­ger Rand Simberg.

June 29th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.