spacetoday.net: Air Force considering billion-dollar EELV aid package

Posted: Sat, Dec 14, 2002, 7:17 PM ET (0017 GMT)
Atlas 5 liftoff

The Air Force is considering spending up to $1 billion over a five-year period to help support Boeing and Lockheed Martin's launch vehicle programs in an era of slow commercial launch sales, Bloomberg News reported. Robert Dickman, deputy for military space in the office of the undersecretary of the Air Force, told Bloomberg News that the Air Force is considering spending $200 million a year from 2004 until 2009 to keep two lines of Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs), Boeing's Delta 4 and Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5, alive in the depressed launch market. The money would be used in part to pay for leasing government-owned land at the launch sites, at a total cost of $60-70 million a year. The rest would be used for engineering and quality assurance work. The Air Force had been considering some kind of financial support for the EELV companies because of the current state of the launch market, but Dickman's comments were some of the most detailed to date about what the Air Force is considering.