{"id":18559,"date":"2018-04-19T01:47:12","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T17:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/darpa-launch-challenge-offers-10m-top-prize-for-rapid-turnaround-orbital-liftoffs\/"},"modified":"2018-04-19T01:47:12","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T17:47:12","slug":"darpa-launch-challenge-offers-10m-top-prize-for-rapid-turnaround-orbital-liftoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/darpa-launch-challenge-offers-10m-top-prize-for-rapid-turnaround-orbital-liftoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"DARPA Launch Challenge offers $10M top prize for rapid-turnaround orbital liftoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rocket
The DARPA Launch Challenge is designed to provide more incentives for the development of flexible, responsive launch systems. (DARPA Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. \u2014 Almost 15 years after a $10 million competition gave a boost to private-sector spaceflight, the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is kicking off another launch contest with a $10 million grand prize.<\/p>\n

The DARPA Launch Challenge \u2014 officially unveiled here today at the 34th Space Symposium \u2014 won\u2019t send people to the edge of space, as the Ansari X Prize did in 2004. But it will introduce some new twists for the launch industry.<\/p>\n

Contest rules call for teams to be given the full details about where and when they\u2019ll launch, what kind of payload they\u2019ll launch, plus what kind of orbit the payload should be launched into, only a couple of weeks in advance. And that\u2019s just half the job. Teams will be required to execute another launch, from a different site, no more than a couple of weeks later.<\/p>\n

The precise time frames for giving advance notice are still under discussion, but \u201cI would measure the time scale in days,\u201d Todd Master, program manager for the challenge at DARPA\u2019s Tactical Technology Office, told reporters today.<\/p>\n

DARPA is setting up a meeting for interested teams on May 23 to outline a process that reaches its climax with the launch campaign in late 2019. Teams will be judged based on a formula that factors in speed, mass and orbit accuracy.<\/p>\n

The team with the highest score when all is said and done wins $10 million, plus bragging rights. There\u2019ll be $9 million and $8 million prizes for second and third place, respectively. Along the way, each team that qualifies as \u201cchallenge ready\u201d will get a $400,000 boost, and successfully pulling off the first launch to the correct orbit will bring $2 million.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wBn4-xDr__A<\/p>\n

DARPA says the rapid-launch competition \u201cwill accelerate capabilities and further incentivize industry to deliver launch solutions that are both flexible and responsive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrent launch systems and payload development were created in an era when each space launch was a national event,\u201d Master said in a news release.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to demonstrate the ability to launch payloads to orbit on extremely short notice, with no prior knowledge of the payload, destination orbit or launch site,\u201d Master said. \u201cThe launch environment of tomorrow will more closely resemble that of airline operations \u2014 with frequent launches from a myriad of locations worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n

DARPA says the challenge will be run in close coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration, which is currently in charge of licensing commercial launches. Every team that competes will have to have an FAA license for their launch activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving them as partners in the process is sort of like check-and-balance,\u201d Master told reporters.<\/p>\n

Competitors could include space startups such as Rocket Lab, Relativity and Vector Launch. Bigger launch providers such as SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin would be welcome to enter, but \u201cI have my doubts that they would,\u201d Master said.<\/p>\n

In the past, the agency has supported much pricier projects to upgrade space launch responsiveness \u2014 such as Boeing\u2019s Phantom Express hypersonic space plane, which is due to receive up to $146 million in DARPA funding. But the DARPA Launch Challenge takes a different route, aimed at stimulating the same kind of off-the-street innovation that was fostered by the Ansari X Prize.<\/p>\n

In a foreshadowing of DARPA\u2019s contest, the Ansari X Prize competition required two launches to be conducted in the space of two weeks. The SpaceShipOne rocket plane, backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and built by California-based Scaled Composites, won the $10 million prize in October 2004.<\/p>\n

Allen said he spent $28 million on the effort, but he was compensated when SpaceShipOne\u2019s technology was licensed to British billionaire Richard Branson\u2019s Virgin Galactic venture for SpaceShipTwo.<\/p>\n

Having another multimillion-dollar spaceflight contest would be a fitting way to celebrate next year\u2019s 15th anniversary of the Ansari X Prize victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The DARPA Launch Challenge is designed to provide more incentives for the development of flexible, responsive launch systems. (DARPA Illustration) COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. \u2014 Almost 15 years after a $10 million competition gave a boost to private-sector spaceflight, the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is kicking off another launch contest with a $10 million grand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1504,4851,5056,25,622],"class_list":["post-18559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-darpa","tag-darpa-launch-challenge","tag-incentives","tag-launch","tag-space-symposium"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18559"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}