The Space Enterprise Initiative is a new one-stop shop for space research and related activities across RAND.
Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California
Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA
The initiative builds on long-standing RAND relationships across the national and international space domains to marshal the broad perspectives necessary for optimizing the exercise of space power.
A panel discussion hosted by the RAND Space Enterprise Initiative tackles issues related to the global space launch enterprise. The panel of RAND Corporation experts joined Brigadier General D. Jason Cothern to consider how U.S. Space Force decisions affect domestic launch providers, how recent trends affect future strategies and policies for responsive space launch, and the capabilities and limitations of U.S. space launch facilities.
The Space Enterprise Vision (SEV) describes an integrated approach to building a force across space mission areas. Achieving this vision requires reducing acquisition time lines and improving integration of the space enterprise. The research team examined potential acquisition approaches to support SEV and identified several promising ones that merit in-depth examination: modular open system architectures, agile acquisition, rapid prototyping.
To address concerns that warfare could extend to space, the national security space community has taken steps to enhance space mission assurance (SMA), leading to an increasing demand for assessments of SMA. The authors describe decisionmaker needs for assessments of SMA, challenges for conducting assessments, the shortfalls that may result from the challenges, and options for addressing the shortfalls.
RAND researchers gathered open-source launch data that describes "addressable launches" of heavy lift vehicles — the commercial portion of the launch market over which launch firms compete. This tool charts the size of the total heavy lift launch market, as well as the addressable launch market for heavy lift vehicles.
The U.S. Air Force (USAF) today stands at a crossroads over its launch acquisition strategy. In this report, authors analyze the heavy lift launch market to help the USAF gain clearer insight into the number of U.S. launch service providers that the global heavy lift launch market can support and the impact of near-term decisions on the USAF's ability to (1) meet NSS launch demand using U.S. providers and (2) sustain two or more U.S. providers.
