Posted: Fri, Feb 14, 2003, 8:23 AM ET (1323 GMT)
A top Pentagon official said this week that he would be interested in a new launch vehicle capable of launching payloads on short notice, Aerospace Daily reported Thursday. Peter Teets, the Air Force undersecretary of space, said Wednesday that while the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program has created two good vehicles, it still takes too long for them to be processed for launch. Instead, Teets envisions a booster that could be erected on a simple concrete pad and launched within days, or even hours. This booster would use simple pressure-fed engines with liquid oxygen and hydrocarbon propellants, and could be erected using mobile cranes. Teets said that spacecraft could also be redesigned to be ready for launch quickly, arriving at the launch site with propellant already loaded and capable of being simply bolted on top of the vehicle. While such a booster would be expendable, Teets said the military will not be "truly, fully operationally responsive" until it has a reusable launch vehicle; he said the Defense Department will work with industry to create a technology road map that would lead to such a vehicle.

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