The Wall Street Journal set off a firestorm Monday evening with an article by Andy Pasztor suggesting that Boeing is about to be named the walk off winner in NASA’s next phase of the Commercial Crew Competition, CCtCap, with an award made in conjunction with Blue Origin. Anything could happen. As long time observers will […]
The battle over the USAF Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program took a new turn Thursday evening with a blistering series of tweets from Elon Musk, made in response to a report regarding a contracting official deeply involved in the award. The story, linked to in the Musk tweet says in part: “From March 2011 […]
Image Credit: ULA Doing what it undeniably does best, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lofted a National Reconnaissance Office satellite into orbit this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The classified NROL-33 launch lifted off at 9:09 AM EDT this morning aboard the most basic version of the Atlas-V, the 401, which includes a […]
Following last week’s finding by a Federal Judge that the absence of any proof that sanctioned Russian Defense and Space minister Dimitry Rogozin was benefiting from the sale of RD-180’s was good enough to lift a temporary injunction against further purchases, it might have looked as if the issue was reverting back to the […]
Yesterday, the Court of Federal Appeals issued a temporary injunction barring United Launch Alliance from making further purchases or receiving shipments of Russian built RD-180 rocket engines until the matter can be reviewed by three different oversight agencies. The order came as a result of the lawsuit filed Monday by SpaceX against the USAF/ULA EELV […]
Well, it wasn’t about Mars Colonial Transport, or even the official reveal of Dragon 2.0. Instead today’s SpaceX press conference held at the National Press Club, and delivered by Elon Musk, was primarily to announce the fact that SpaceX is filing a lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims in an attempt to halt […]
In the six weeks which have passed since SpaceX’s Elon Musk and ULA’s Michael Gass squared off in Congressional testimony over the EELV program, SpaceX has completed another successful mission with the Falcon 9, the ninth overall and the fourth of the Falcon 9 V1.1/ F-9R. ULA has also completed two more launches, both by […]
Image Credit : ULA Editorial Karl Marx once said “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” He may have been right on at least this point. Underscoring once again America’s self-inflicted dependence on Russian technology for launching its own most expensive intelligence assets, a United Launch Alliance Atlas […]
RD-180 What exquisite timing. In a week where the Russian built RD-180 main engine, used to power the United Launch Alliance Atlas V, has come under heavy scrutiny, word comes out that Orbital Sciences has dropped its lawsuit against ULA over access to the engine. From a Space News article on the issue: “The parties […]
An Innerspace Editorial On Wednesday, March 5th, Elon Musk is scheduled to appear before the Defense Sub-committee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, for a hearing concerning national security space. Also on the panel will be Scott Pace, head of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, and Christina Chaplain of the Government Accountability Office. The hottest […]
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