This is CBS, I'm The World.

I'm John Batch with Bob Zimmerman, Behind the Black.

Space Force has been passing around contracts to what end, Bob?

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of different contracts have been awarded,

and they're all going to commercial companies to do things for the military.

And I want to focus on two specific contracts in particular.

One is by Ersum, given to Ersum Major, for hypersonic test flights using its Draper rocket engine,

and a second contract to a rocket startup called Radion, which is building a commercial reentry

capsule. It's got a contract to do hypersonic testing upon reentry of that capsule.

Those two startups, they haven't actually flown anything yet.

But this is part of the military's increasing hypersonic research program depending on private

enterprise.

Not only these two companies, but the military has gotten Rocket Lab, Varda, and Strata launch,

winning contracts,

and actually doing a whole variety of hypersonic test flights for the military.

And I should point out that the hypersonic test program by the military for literally decades

was slow, not accomplishing much.

If it could fly a test flight once a year, it was doing well. And that was because

the military at the time was building and develop everything in itself. They did it badly.

They switched now to asking the private sector to provide them the services, and they're getting

many different companies, providing many different launch capabilities, and they're getting tests

flown regularly now. And so that's just indicating once again how private enterprise is good, John.

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