Michael Gonzalez for The Texas Newsroom SpaceX is set to be the U.S. military’s top launch provider, raking in close to $6 billion in contracts with the Pentagon to get satellites into orbit. This is set to take place well into the 2030s. But what does this mean for the future of Texas skies? Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica and wrote about the contract. He joined Texas Standard to discuss how this came about and what the risks are. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below. This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity: Texas Standard: Well, is this something that is part of the privatization of space? Is this something NASA used to do? Or is this different because of things like the Space Force, which is coming on board? Stephen Clark: The Space Force is, for a long time – previously, of course, it was the Air Force – has purchased launch services from the commercial industry. And what’s really different this time is the Space Force introducing more competition into the marketplace. So for a long time, a company called United Launch Alliance – which is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, two of the most established defense contractors a lot of people are probably familiar with – had a monopoly on this market. And about 10 years ago, SpaceX entered the marketplace to actually sue the Air Force for the right to compete with ULA, United Launch Alliance. The Air Force relented and that entered this new era of competition. However, for the last 10 years, United launch Alliance, the incumbent, was still winning the majority of the contracts and as of earlier this month, that changed. And for the first time now, SpaceX is now responsible for launching most of the military’s satellites into orbit. And, you know, this is a result of this new move toward competition that we’ve seen on this trajectory for more than 10 years. But the script flipped, so to speak, earlier this month with SpaceX taking the top position. I imagine people might be looking at this and saying, “well, I know why this switched. It’s because somebody has got a good friend in the White House.” Is that too simplistic? Has this been a longer time in the making than that? Or what’s your view of that? In my view, that’s a perfectly understandable question to ask, but I think there are legitimate reasons why this has changed. In fact, it’s almost surprising to me that it took this long. SpaceX offers lower costs than the competitors in Launch Alliance. SpaceX has more schedule assurance, is what they call it. SpaceX is launching every couple of days. You know, Launch Alliance hasn’t launched a rocket since last year. They haven’t even launched this year. So if the Space Force wants to have satellite into orbit on a given date or a given week, SpaceX is really the best choice and at a lower cost, too, than the competition.