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[Naked Snake]

Article: http://www.universetoday.com/111535...air-forces-national-security-launch-monopoly/

Press conference video (32 minutes, the part about the lawsuit starts at 15:30): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_rnija1nOA&

Snippet from press conference (2 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHj3a0sJBC0

Elon Musk, CEO and founder of the upstart commercial launch venture SpaceX, announced at a press conference today, Friday, April 25, that SpaceX is filing suit against the Federal Government to protest and break the US Air Force’s awarding of lucrative launch contracts for high priority national security satellites to a sole rocket provider – United Launch Alliance (ULA) – on a non competitive basis.

US Air Force awarding launch contracts solely to ULA without competition
The contracts are expensive/overpriced; the rockets are 4 times more expensive than SpaceX's (unnecessarily costing US tax payer dollars billions of dollars)
The primary engine used by ULA is Russian-made and headed by someone on a sanctions list.

 

[Oriel]

Good on him. The world needs more innovators like Musk.

Oh, and obligatory Tony Stark/Iron Man reference.

 

[Tesseract]

i still can't believe they did it, what a massive accomplishment.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

While the principle behind it is understandable, the Atlas V has a near flawless operational record. No one wants their precious military payloads to end up in the bottom of the ocean.

It's been known for years that the ULA is ripping off the US GOV.