It has been revealed that Elon Musk and his Space X program are to help the United States military develop a rocket that could send cargo and military hardware to anywhere in the world in a matter of hours.
Space X was formed in 2002 by the PayPal co-founder and Tesla entrepreneur with the explicit goal of colonising the planet Mars. In 2008, it sent the first commercial liquid-propellent rocket into space and, in partnership with NASA, has sent rockets to the International Space Station. In 2017, it became the first rocket to launch and successfully land the first stage of an orbital rocket back on Earth.
The rockets would travel at over 10,000 miles per hour and take 30 minutes to travel from California to Japan. The fastest the US military can transport large amounts of cargo at present is via the C-17 Globemaster aircraft which travels at around 500 miles per hour. That same trip from California to Japan takes the huge cargo aircraft around 12 hours.
Unlike cargo transporters, rockets do not require refuelling tankers in support or permission of countries to travel through their airspace, as the rockets are technically travelling through altitudes not sovereign to any country. The high altitude also means that it would be incredibly difficult for enemies to shoot down the rockets, particularly those less advanced. Another positive is that while the C-17 can transport around 35 tonnes of hardware, the rockets can transport around 100 tonnes.
Gen. Stephen R. Lyons, the head of Transportation Command, told Air Force magazine:
"Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour."
While each rocket flight would cost millions of dollars, mass transportation in the US military already costs similar astronomical sums already and therefore should not pose much of an issue in terms of funding constraints.
Many will question though the logic or morality of spending tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of taxpayer's dollars on military hardware at a time when the nation is suffering a massive economic downturn. They will wonder why when hospitals go underfunded, education remains poor by international standards, and millions are out of work, that billionaire Elon Musk should receive a huge bump to his bank account.
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