COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, an influential voice in the national security realm, said Thursday he “absolutely” endorses competition in the space launch market.
Clapper told an audience at the National Space Symposium that certification of new entrants like Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
(SpaceX) is important to ensure they can successfully lift spy satellites. Intelligence satellites are often estimated to be among the most expensive of national security spacecraft.
“That’s something we believe in the intelligence community and in this era of costs, launch costs are a huge part of my budget,” Clapper said. “The way to drive down costs typically is through competition.”
The Air Force, provider of national security space launches for the federal government, is embroiled in a lawsuit from SpaceX, which accuses the service of improperly awarding a “block buy” of 35 launch cores to incumbent launch provider United Launch Alliance (ULA) in late 2013. The Air Force wants competition for launches, but it reduced the number of competitive launches it planned to make in future fiscal years as part of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program from 14 to seven, prompting the lawsuit. SpaceX wants the block buy competed.
Clapper had kind words of SpaceX, saying he visited its facility in Hawthorne, Calif., and its launch facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., and that he was “tremendously impressed with their ingenuity, drive and aggressiveness.” Clapper said he didn’t want to single out SpaceX, but further endorsed competition. Another company rumored to be interested in competing for EELV launches is Blue Origin. Orbital Sciences [ORB] spokesman Barry Beneski told Defense Daily Thursday Orbital is interested in EELV if it includes medium-class missions on the level of the former Delta II launch vehicle.
ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].