GATE - War of Two Worlds Part 2

V16 - Chapter 196 DARPA

"NASA Director Abby Shaw, Space Force Major General Tyler Webb, Army Major General Daniel Robbin, and Air Force Major General Lorelei Stafford testify to the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

The testimony was behind closed doors; however, internal leaks have stated the military was reporting the progress of a top-secret program called Ptero. Nothing is known about the program itself, but the name is an apparent reference to Pterodactylus, an extinct dinosaur. Rumors are that the program is related to SpaceX, but no official statement has been made.

Last week, there was another closed-door testimony related to a program called Ottawa. Ottawa has been an open and closed program to the public going back to 2009. Related to the current US Army Future Vertical Lift program, one subsection of the program has become a joint venture between many branches, the Future Heavy Lift Tactical Aircraft (FVL-Ultra) or previously known as the JMR-Ultra.

The FVL-Ultra concept was developed in 2009 as a radically new kind of helicopter, being the size of a tactical fixed-wing aircraft however it still retains the helicopter VTOL capabilities. The Army has struggled to find a role for this new concept while other subprograms were prioritized, mainly the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft and Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft.

The Ottawa program was given importance last year after a closed-door meeting with SpaceX. Since last year, the Space Force and the Air Force have agreed to join the ventures. Since then, the program went into a blackout.

With the emerging space economy and with SpaceX's first Starship first arrival to the Moon last week. It was considered a testbed, bringing personal, habit modules and a repurposed NuScale Power to support the Armstrong Outpost construction. Some believe FVL-Ultra is related to space in some manner, but all is still speculation.

While SpaceX has become a dominant player in the Space economy, Boeing and Lockheed Martin squeeze out market share. In addition to this however, SpaceX has the bid for both the Orbital Assembly Space Station (OASS) from Boeing and the Orion spacecraft weapons module from Lockheed Martin from Space Force. The goal with the OASS program is to allow NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Space Force to construct larger spacecraft and not need to launch everything in one rocket launch.

The OASS program is a part of NASA, ESA, and JAXA's plan to construct the Nautilus-X spacecraft, and SpaceX Starship modules. As well as In addition to helping with the maintenance of spacecraft and satellites. Currently, there are forty-six people at Armstrong Outpost, with an additional hundred and eight on the seven space stations around Earth and Lunar orbits from multiple nations. This number is expected to grow to over a hundred within the next two years as Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Dragon capsules and Starship begin regular travel between the Moon and Earth.

The Russian Federation has remained a core partner with the United States with the International Space Station or ISS. When the ISS had first constructed two decades ago, its purpose was to be an orbital research station. As new private space stations become online from Boeing, Bigelow Aerospace, Axiom Space, and Aurora Space Station by Orion Span, the ISS has been retooled as a commercial docking station. While the Russians are thrilled with ISS's progress, allowing its space industry to continue and expand, Russia has stated they have not been happy being excluded from the other space expansion and exploration adventurers.

China has partnered with Iran to expand both large Chinese modular space stations. Both countries partner to use the Chinese station for their upcoming mission to land on the far side of the Moon. While China does not publicly state the amount of personnel they have in space, experts believe there are about eight Chinese and two Iranians between the two stations." – Space News.