FLYING ABOVE THE PACIFIC \u2014 SpaceX has been certified for military space launch, the US Air Force announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The long-awaited announcement is a game changer, with SpaceX becoming only the second provider cleared by the service to launch national security payloads into orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first opportunity for SpaceX to compete comes in June when the service releases a request for proposal GPS III launch services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“This is a very important milestone for the Air Force and the Department of Defense,” Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said in a DoD press release. “SpaceX’s emergence as a viable commercial launch provider provides the opportunity to compete launch services for the first time in almost a decade. Ultimately, leveraging of the commercial space market drives down cost to the American taxpayer and improves our military’s resiliency.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
In the same release, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said: “This is an important step toward bringing competition to National Security Space launch. We thank the Air Force for its confidence in us and look forward to serving it well.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The process has not been easy for the California-based company. Supporters of SpaceX, including Musk, have criticized the service <\/span>Air Force for the lengthy process to achieve certification. Musk had gone <\/span>went so far as to intimate service <\/span>Air Force officials were purposefully slow-rolling his firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, in the midst of the certification process, the company also decided to <\/span>sued the Air Force over a decision to award legacy provider United Launch Alliance (ULA) with a block-buy of contracts. That <\/span>The lawsuit was eventually settled, with the service promising to do a better job in the future of keeping contracts open for competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking to Defense News in April, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell acknowledged a culture gap between SpaceX’s Silicon Valley startup culture and that of the Pentagon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SpaceX is challenging ULA, a joint venture from Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which has had a monopoly on military space launch through the service’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) contract. The hope from the Air Force is that competition leads to cheaper prices for the Pentagon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even before SpaceX was formally certified, it had <\/span>forced the legacy provider <\/span>ULA to change how it does business \u2014 . That <\/span>including es<\/span> the development of a new rocket vehicle, known as the Vulcan, as well as a focus on driving down cost. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SpaceX has been certified for military space launch, the US Air Force announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":66088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-36603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-home"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"N6OHUOEGARECLMGHVU3RIIFW4Y","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2015\/05\/27\/usaf-certifies-spacex-for-military-launches\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n