In recent years, the traditional aerospace industry has faced disruption from new space companies—most notably SpaceX, but also other players such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. These new companies have pushed hard to lower the cost of access to space through various reusable launch systems.

At the insistence of Congress, NASA has been slow to adopt to the new space industry's attitude toward cost and risk. The agency continues to fund hardware modeled on basic technologies that have legacies several decades old, particularly with the heavy-lift rocket NASA is building, the Space Launch System. Under development now for six years, this rocket remains at least two years from the launch pad, and it will cost billions of dollars to fly.

Whereas civil space has not embraced rapid, low-cost spaceflight, the US military increasingly seems ready to support the new technology. The most recent evidence of this came Tuesday, when Gen. John Hyten, the head of US Strategic Command, met with reporters in Washington, DC. To succeed, Hyten said, the US military needs to accept some failure. This is a similar ethos to that espoused by new space entrepreneurs such as SpaceX's Elon Musk, who has famously said, "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

Hyten echoed those words, according to an account from Space News: “We’ve lost the ability to go fast, test, and fail. We tie the hands of our engineers and acquisition folk because we expect every test to work, and if it doesn’t work it’s on the front page of the newspaper. We have got to get back to where we accept risk.”

As leader of the US Strategic Command, Hyten oversees the nation's military space operations.

Zero to the Moon

During the course of the discussion, Hyten complained about cumbersome, expensive government contracts in the modern era compared to a less risk-averse, more nimble era of the past. “We went from zero to the Moon really in about six or seven years,” he said. “They went from the failure on the launchpad of Apollo 1 in January 1967 to walking on the moon in July of 1969, 30 months later. From the most horrible failure we had in the space program to the greatest success maybe mankind will ever have in space: walking on the Moon for the first time. We were able to go fast.”

Hyten praised both SpaceX and Blue Origin for taking risks and working through failures. He criticized media coverage of Blue Origin's powerpack hardware failure earlier this year. “Blue Origin just had a failure. Son of a gun. That’s part of learning,” the general said. “It really upsets me when I see headlines come out in the newspaper after the Blue Origin failure the other day: ‘Blue Origin takes huge step back, big failure!’ I’m going, ‘no, they’re pushing the envelope.’” (Ars reported on the failure as a "setback" that would have no lasting effects on the company.)

These comments come after other military officials have embraced the ideas of new space. Earlier this month, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson revealed that the upcoming fifth mission of the X-37B spy spaceplane will be launched into space by a Falcon 9 rocket instead of an Atlas V rocket. She also praised the value of competition in bringing down launch prices.

Additionally, the Air Force's Air University conducted a study that found that developments by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other companies, such as Vulcan Aerospace and Virgin Galactic, had given the United States a definitive edge over global competitors in this new area of reusable rocket technology. However, the report warned, other countries, such as China, could copy these ideas and surpass the United States if strategic government investments are not made. The report urged the Air Force to embrace failure, and make investments to secure the US edge in reusability and rapid, low-cost access to space.