Air Force Will Soon Test Shipping Cargo Via SpaceX Rockets

The U.S. Air Force announced on Monday that it intends to build two landing pads on a remote island in the Pacific. It wants to land rockets there as part of a test of the Rocket Cargo Vanguard program, which involves shooting rockets into space loaded down with supplies to ship stuff around the planet faster.

The pitch for Rocket Cargo Vanguard is that it could allow the U.S. military to deliver anything anywhere on the planet in “90 minutes or less.” How? By shooting a rocket (presumably a reusable SpaceX one) loaded down with supplies into space and then bringing them back down to Earth. The military is pretty good at firing rockets, both into space and through the air, it’s less good at making sure those things land safely.

Enter Johnston Island, a small land mass in unincorporated U.S. territory that’s about 700 nautical miles off the cost of Hawaii. As first noticed by Stars and Stripesthe Air Force uploaded a notice to the Federal Register on March 3 that signaled its intent to build test platforms on the island.

It’ll take some time before they can start building, however. “Johnston Atoll includes the Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge and is within the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument,” the notice said. Because of that the Pentagon will have to study the effects landing massive rockets on the island may have on the “essential fish habitat, migratory birds, and other protected species.”

The Air Force thinks that all these studies will show that building two landing pads on the island so it can try landing rockets there will have “no significant impact” on the island, but it plans to make its reports public in early April. Once those reports go live, it’ll allow a 30 day period for the public to comment on the proposal.

The military has been working on shooting cargo into space for at least half a decade. Now retired general Stephen R. Lyons gave a speech at a National Defense Transportation meeting in 2020 where he teased a future of rocket shipping. “Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” Lyons said. “Think about that speed associated with the movement of transportation of cargo and people. There is a lot of potential here and I’m really excited about the team that’s working with SpaceX on an opportunity, even perhaps, as early as 21, to be conducting a proof of principle.”

A military is only as good as its logistics. One of the reasons the American military has been so dominant in the 20th and 21st century is its ability to move humans, supplies, and equipment anywhere on the planet. One of the most iconic images from the Global War on Terror is a Burger King supply truck disembarking from a C-17 in Afghanistan in 2004. Imagine the same thing happening, in 90 minutes or less, via Elon Musk’s rockets.

One of the problems with the rocket shipping plan is cost. Fueling and flying a C-17 loaded down with up-armored Humvees to the Middle East is expensive, yes, but it’s still cheaper than launching a rocket into space. One of SpaceX’s goals is to drive down the cost of launches by re-using pieces of the rocket, but a single launch is still estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars.

Despite the costs, the dream of shooting guns, food, and gear into space persists. “Once realized, Rocket Cargo will fundamentally alter the rapid logistics landscape, connecting materiel to joint warfighters in a fraction of the time it takes today,” John Raymond, a retired Space Force general, said in a press release about the program in 2021. “In the event of conflict or humanitarian crisis, the Space Force will be able to provide our national leadership with an independent option to achieve strategic objectives from space.”