The American company Blue Origin, which is a competitor to SpaceX, is considering participating in a competition of the US Department of Defense, which provides for the possibility of using spacecraft instead of aircraft to deliver military cargo around the planet, SpaceNews reports .
According to Thomas Martin, director of National Security Programs at Blue Origin, the company is currently negotiating with the United States Transportation Command.
SpaceNews reminds that Blue Origin may become the second company after SpaceX, which, in the interests of the Pentagon, will develop systems for delivering cargo across the planet through space.
The publication notes that the main problem of this approach may be too high speed of cargo delivery across the planet, which takes several tens of minutes, compared with the time it takes to organize and implement related operations.
In October 2020, C4ISRNET reported that in 2021, SpaceX could demonstrate its own capabilities for orbital cargo delivery to the US Department of Defense for the first time. According to the publication, we are talking about "the delivery of cargo from one place to another through space." C4ISRNET writes that the Pentagon is interested in SpaceX's "provocative idea" involving the delivery of 80-ton cargo from one point of the planet to another, which is comparable to the capabilities of the C-17 Globemaster III strategic military transport aircraft.
Ivan Potapov