Even in the era of private spaceflight companies, the process of getting a rocket into space is glacially slow: it can take months or years to schedule and prepare for a mission. That was fine when launching any rocket was a special occasion, but DARPA thinks the industry can do better. The military research agency recently kicked off a Launch Challenge that encourages companies to cut these launch timetables to days, not years. Teams will have to develop systems that can launch …..Read more