In a Jan. 13 order, Judge Susan Braden denied ULAs motion to dismiss and said SpaceX and the Air Force would begin mediation this month.
The order also said the Air Force has told the court it would not make a final decision on certain launch contract awards until later in 2015.
The names of the missions and the target date for the contract awards were redacted in the court documents. One pending contract, the award of which industry sources recently said was imminent, is to launch a satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.
Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX and ULA of Denver bid for the contract in August, but SpaceX must win Air Force certification to launch national security missions before it can be eligible to win. That certification, until recently expected by the end of 2014, now is anticipated by mid-2015.
The delay has led to speculation that ULA would win the contract by default.
The Air Force has advised the court that it will not make a final decision about the [REDACTED] missions until [REDACTED], 2015, the order said.
In addition, the Air Force will also make another mission available for competition in the near future, the court documents said. The name of that mission was also redacted. I suspect part of the judge's gag order on this has been lowered. Go to Bloomburg and listen to Musk's interview. I doubt he would have dared to give it will a full gag order in place. He even tells a story about the judge telling the Justice Dept lawyer that he was representing the American People and not a representative of Boeing/LockMart/ULA!
He took it further and announced a mass production factor to make lots of sats in Seattle. There would be offices in this building for Seattle rocket workers (as compared to the sat workers) who didn't want to move to LA. and yes he had hired people away from Boeing and Lockmart and would continue to do so. He would NOT hire AirForce Procurement Officers who worked on contracts he bid on.
He could afford to enter the satellite business as he would be using current tech and launching prototypes on his SpaceX reused rockets to verify new satellite ideas.
...
Yeah, actually, we've - NASA's certainly been a key customer of ours for a few years. The first five years or six years of the company, nobody would talk to us on the government side, NASA or the military, and we got a few sort of fringe customers on the commercial side, that was it. We didn't have any government anything for the first half decade. Then NASA nibbled a little bit and we were able to get a small contract, then we were able to get a much larger contract, and now NASA is a pretty significant supporter. They're about a quarter of our missions, are NASA. They're like our, I mean, they're our anchor customer. Our biggest single customer. The commercial missions are collectively more than NASA. On the military side we've not yet been able to - we've not yet been allowed to compete for the primary military contract because Boeing and Lockheed have managed to shut down all competition, but we're close. I think we're getting close.
[Because of your very public challenge?] Yeah. Well, people have tried but usually the military industrial complex is able to resist any attack by a newcomer. It's like fighting this giant citadel with very high walls, and usually if a small force attacks a large citadel it is not the citadel that falls. [What makes you optimistic?] Well, there's this whole certification process that we've gone through, which is - we're being held to a much higher standard than Boeing and Lockheed were when they actually did their competition. But still, the excuses get harder and harder and thus far all the Falcon 9 missions have been successful, in the ascent phase, so.. the federal law requires competition, it's fundamental, so they can stave off competition for a long time and they have been able to do that, but they won't be able to do it forever, unless we mess up. We have a lot of support in Congress. Initially things like - the people fighting it are in the bureaucracy of the Pentagon and the procurement officers who then go work at Boeing and Lockheed or their prime contractors, which is actually what happened. It's easy to understand from a game theory standpoint because essentially we're asking them to award the contract to a company where they're probably not going to get a job, against the company where their friends are. So they've gotta go against their friends and their future retirement program. This is a difficult thing to expect.
...
#3
I mean, Boeing and Lockheed make decent rockets but three times more is really crazy, and then the main engine is Russian and the engine maker is majority owned by the Kremlin, directly, there's not even a fig leaf between. So, why are we sending hundreds of millions of taxpayer money to fund the Russian war machine? In the interests of national security, we're sending hundreds of millions of dollars to a country that is doing terrible things and certainly not acting in our best interests. This makes no sense, it's like a Joseph Heller novel. Ya know, it's so crazy.
#4
The justice department is the one defending the defense department. They shouldn't be defending the defense department, this is crazy, they should care about justice
#5
Yeah, I guess, they're afraid that we'll take some of the huge gravy train they have exclusive access to, or that it's not going to be as big. The truth is they'll still be the primary supplier for a long time. We're just talking about taking some portion of that, and I think, even in the very long term, the defense department is likely to want to retain two companies.
#8
Latest from PACER:
Quote
01/12/2015 181 **SEALED**REPLY to Response to Motion re 162 MOTION to Dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) and response to plaintiff's request for a preliminary injunction, 75 MOTION to Dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) Portions of Plaintiff's Complaint Defendant's Combined Reply in Support of its Motions to Dismiss, Reply in Support of Rule 52.1 Judgment on the Administrative Record, and Opposition to Plaintiff's Request for Injunctive Relief, filed by USA. (Attachments: # 1 Appendix Part 1, # 2 Appendix Part 2, # 3 Appendix Part 3, # 4 Appendix Part 4, # 5 Appendix Part 5, # 6 Appendix Part 6, # 7 Appendix Part 7, # 8 Appendix Part 8)(Sverdlov, Alexander) (Entered: 01/12/2015)
01/13/2015 182 **SEALED**ORDER denying 176 Motion to Dismiss Signed by Judge Susan G. Braden. (ct) Copy to parties. (Entered: 01/13/2015)
01/13/2015 183 REDACTED ORDER DENYING JANUARY 7, 2015 MOTION TO DISMISS Signed by Judge Susan G. Braden. (ct) Copy to parties. (Entered: 01/13/2015)
Document 183 is attached. Apparently "ULA insists that enactment of the NDAA and specific reference to DoD’s payment obligations under the 002 and 003 Contracts “ratify” or render them lawful." The judge denied this motion because Congress can only ratify unlawful agency conduct if they're aware of it and most of this case is under seal and hence Congress isn't aware of it.
The second to last paragraph of #183 has some info on what will happen soon:
Quote
On June 30, 2014 and November 25, 2014, the Government filed Motions To Dismiss.
Dkt. Nos. 75, 162. On December 19, 2014, SpaceX filed a Motion For Judgment On The
Administrative Record under RCFC 52.1(c). Dkt. No. 171. Briefing is now complete on all of
these motions. The court has advised the parties that it will not rule on pending motions for
jurisdictional discovery or on the merits until the mediation, scheduled to commence this month,
is concluded. In turn, the Air Force has advised the court that it will not make a final decision
about the [REDACTED] missions until [REDACTED], 2015. Dkt. No. 166, at 3, 11. In addition,
the [REDACTED] has been scheduled as a competitive mission to be awarded in the near future.
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