Implications Of Ultra Low Cost Access To Space

Since the advent of the space age, a primary constraint on military, commercial, and civil space missions has been the cost of launch. Launching objects into space requires substantial investments in launch systems and infrastructure, which has restricted the market to only a handful of national governments and several large private companies. This study explores the possibility of a space industry significantly less constrained by the cost of access to space.

Since the advent of the space age, a primary constraint on military, commercial, and civil space missions has been the cost of launch. Launching objects into space requires substantial investments in launch systems and infrastructure, which has restricted the market to only a handful of national governments and several large private companies. This study explores the possibility of a space industry significantly less constrained by the cost of access to space.

This 2017 report played a crucial role in the decisions involved in creating United States Space Force and remains an essential guide to thinking about the strategic value of ultra-low-cost launch. This document discusses the potential for the US Air Force to leverage new concepts and technologies to gain strategic advantage in space. It highlights the increasing vulnerability of the current space architecture and the need for the US to regain advantage in the face of growing competition. The document proposes a \"Fast Space\" approach, which envisions an ecosystem of concepts, capabilities, and industrial partnerships that prioritize speed as the defining attribute of advantage in space. This approach includes sortie-on-demand launch capability, economically viable business cases, high launch rates, lower costs, rapid turn-around, and higher reliability. The document also emphasizes the importance of reducing costs through reusability and increased flight rates. It recommends partnering with US commercial firms pursuing ultra-low-cost access to space and creating a purpose-built organization to manage these partnerships. Additionally, it suggests shaping the interagency environment to ease regulatory burdens and integrating high launch rate rapid-turnaround approaches into the joint requirements and acquisition process. Overall, the document emphasizes the need for the US to seize the opportunity presented by the changing landscape of space exploration and exploitation. This annotated edition illustrates the capabilities of the AI Lab for Book-Lovers to add context and ease-of-use to manuscripts. It includes five types of abstracts, building from simplest to more complex: TLDR (one word), ELI5, TLDR (vanilla), Scientific Style, and Action Items; three essays to increase viewpoint diversity: Grounds for Dissent; Red Team Critique; and MAGA Perspective; and Notable Passages and Nutshell Summaries for each page.

The Department of Defense (DOD) faces a strategic choice: whether to focus on modernization for high-tech conflicts with China and Russia or expand forces and improve readiness to meet a superpower’s commitments for ongoing conflicts and crisis response. In their FY 2018 budgets, the services all complain that they are too small for the demands being put on them and hedge toward expanding forces and readiness. In the new DOD strategy being developed for 2019 and beyond, the services hope to pursue all three goals—expand forces, improve readiness, and increase modernization—but the fiscal future is highly uncertain, and they will likely have to make difficult trade-offs.

In the past five years, Russia, China, and others have accelerated their development of hypersonic missiles to threaten U.S. forces in the homeland and abroad. The current Ballistic Missile Defense System, largely equipped to contend with legacy ballistic missile threats, must be adapted to this challenge. The same characteristics that make hypersonic missiles attractive may also hold the key to defeating them. This CSIS report argues how a new hypersonic defense architecture should exploit hypersonic weapons’ unique vulnerabilities and employ new capabilities, such as a space sensor layer, to secure critical nodes. These changes are not only necessary to mitigate the hypersonic threat but to defeat an emerging generation of maneuvering missiles and aerial threats.