ULA Concedes GPS Launch Competition To SpaceX (spacenews.com)

schwit1 writes: ULA has decided against bidding on a military GPS launch contract, leaving the field clear for SpaceX. "ULA, which for the past decade has launched nearly every U.S. national security satellite, said Nov. 16 it did not submit a bid to launch a GPS 3 satellite for the Air Force in 2018 in part because it does not expect to have an Atlas 5 rocket available for the mission. ULA has been pushing for relief from legislation Congress passed roughly a year ago requiring the Air Force to phase out its use of the Russian-made RD-180 engine that powers ULA's workhorse Atlas 5 rocket."

This decision might be a lobbying effort by ULA to force Congress to give them additional waivers on using the Atlas 5 engine. Or they could be realizing they wouldn't be able to match SpaceX's price, and decided it was pointless wasting time and money putting together a bid. Either way, the decision suggests ULA is definitely challenged in its competition with SpaceX, and until it gets a new, lower cost rocket that is not dependent on Russian engines, its ability to compete in the launch market will be seriously hampered.

Comments

They could have bid with their Delta

[sasparillascott]

ULA also has the Delta 4 rocket which uses U.S. designed / made rocket engines. Previously they were letting the 3 core Delta 4 handle the big launches and the single core Atlas 5 handle the smaller launches, but there is no reason they couldn't have bid with a single core Delta 4 if they wanted. Something smells politically fishy with this.

Re:They could have bid with their Delta

[Fire_Wraith]

They could have, but their bid would have been in no way competitive with SpaceX since the Delta 4 is a lot more expensive, and doesn't make economic sense to use on a small launch.

Another interesting point is that ULA has the full production rights, schematics, etc for the RD-180 engine, as that was part of the original deal. However, it would cost a lot of money to set up production, and on top of that, their production costs would be more expensive than just buying the engines from the Russians. Thus, ULA doesn't want to do that if they can avoid it, and would rather try to convince Congress to let them resume buying from Russia, at least until the newer engines they've made deals with Blue Origin to build are available.

Wait, wait, wait. WHAT DID YOU SAY?

[Opportunist]

The Atlas, you know, THE Atlas, the rocket that carries the name of the rocket that got the first US satellites into orbit and that got the first US astronaut into orbit, that very rocket that bears a rather ... let's say symbolic name, that damn rocket is in its current iteration powered by RUSSIAN engines?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Please don't tell me that's true for the ICBMs too. Depending on the international diplomatic situation it MIGHT get a wee bit tricky to get spare parts should the US actually feel the urge to use them...