While one part of official Washington worries that Russia will follow through on a recent threat to prohibit use of RD-180 engines for U.S. national security space launches, another part is working to ensure exactly that outcome. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) yesterday adopted a McCain amendment that prohibits future contracts to purchase Russian rocket engines to launch national security satellites.
The amendment also requires the Air Force to "have a full and open competition on two satellites that they tried to sole-source" and for an investigation on "undue reliance by the U.S. space industry on foreign suppliers and parts such as engines."
This at the same time Elon Musk's lawsuit over the EELV contract where those engines are used in the Atlas 5 gets crazier. Elon's twitter tweets (name redacted so Rantburg will not delete)
Elon Musk:
V(ery) likely AF official {redacted by poster} was told by ULA/Rocketdyne that a rich VP job was his if he gave them a sole source contract
Elon Musk:
Reason I believe this is likely is that {redacted by poster} first tried to work at SpaceX, but we turned him down. Our competitor, it seems, did not.
Glenn Mahone, a spokesman for Aerojet Rocketdyne, said the allegations surrounding {redacted by poster}'s hiring are "completely without merit." He said {redacted by poster} began working at Aerojet only a week or two ago -- well after the contract had been awarded -- and that his hiring was vetted and cleared by the Air Force.
"We are confident in the process we followed in hiring Mr. {redacted by poster}," Mahone said.
{redacted by poster} did not return phone and email messages seeking comment.
An Air Force spokesman declined comment Friday, citing ongoing litigation over the contract.
The dollars in question keep getting bigger and bigger too. First reports were 4 billion then 33 billion now 90 billion and it involves a sanctioned Russian too. I have no clue at this point what the real dollar ballpark is as it is conflated between the USAF/NRO/NSA/Nat GeoSpac/ULA/LM/Boeing/PWR/RD_Amross.
The tree keeps getting bigger and bigger each part tying into another new one.
Russian leaders shouting about taking their pieces of the ISS and splitting. World scientists including Russian beliving that the pieces have been in the ISS so long that they are vacuum welded together and not possible to separate and if separated all pieces becoming quickly unbalanced and the ISS crashing. Hints of Russia just seizing the whole thing.
The motor issue messing up the non-SpaceX manned commercial options, the ISS breakup/deorbit removing the reason for commercial manned space for NASA so torpedoing all the US commercial manned options and maybe crippling SpaceX, the only way to launch critical AF/NRO etc sats in a timely manner being Delta Vs as fast as they can make them and the same for Falcon Heavy, oh and if we just make the Russian engine in the Atlas 5 well its co-production rights run out in 2022 and if we build it past that point we risk destroying the international patent union! Whew! - Its a true ClusterF***!