The article clearly paints SpaceX as the newcomer and underdog who is trying to compete with the big monopolists. I wonder if there is another side to the story, though. Is anyone involved in the industry who can tell more, or point to good sources?
SpaceX IS the newcomer and underdog, but one that's advancing very quickly. The big monopolist in this case is ULA, the "United Launch Alliance", which was created in 2006 as a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space & Security.
For years, ULA was only option for US government launch contracts. They had more than 100 launches – all of them successful except one single minor anomaly [1].
SpaceX tried and succeeded [2] to get into the lucrative government contract business, arguing that their launches are five times cheaper (90M vs 460M USD).
Before that, an interesting meeting of the U.S. Committee on Armed Services took place [3], discussing ULA's dependency on russian-made RD-180 rocket engines for their Atlas V launch system.
That sounds rather new to me, considering that space tech has been around since what, the 60s? If someone told me SpaceX was originally started in 2006 I'd be only slightly surprised, but I'd figure it just took years to attract expertise and set the whole thing up before we start hearing about it.
All I'm asking is for the other side of the story. ULA is being painted as evil here and no matter how true every word from SpaceX's side is, I would always like to read ULA's comments on the matter.
> The other side of what? That SpaceX isn't a newcomer competing with monopolists?
Okay they are a newcomer, but I don't know that ULA is the only other player out there. The article sure sounds like it, but it seems a bit odd that nobody else ever develops anything space-related for the US government.
And you forget the second part of my question where I ask for the other side of the story. According to the article, SpaceX had to sue to be accredited, which is weird if there is a normal accreditation process so I am assuming ULA (or someone else?) was causing trouble. Telling the story from only SpaceX's side is always incomplete, now matter how right they might be.
Boeing and Lockheed were the main companies providing launch services, but merged both of their space launch divisions into a joint venture, ULA. Effectively becoming the only player and not having to competitively bid against each other anymore.
And because of that, space launch contracts tended to not be competitively bid. For about a decade, where ULA was the only game in town and they could and did quote any price they could justify with a straight face. One such occasion is what brought SpaceX to sue under antitrust laws. They also had to be certified to take part in the bidding process, but the lawsuit was to force the contracts to get competitively bid in the first place instead of simply being rubber stamped to ULA.
