The founder of the commercial space launch company SpaceX says his firm will sue the U.S. Air Force over an alleged monopoly on satellite launches for the Pentagon by the Lockheed Martin Corp.-Boeing Co.
Elon Musk said SpaceX would file a suit next week in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, in an attempt to reopen competition for military launch contracts.
"These launches should be competed," he told reporters in Washington. "If we compete and lose, that is fine. But why would they not even compete it?"
Filing of a suit will result in a judicial appraisal of the Air Force's decision to award launches to United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
The court is empowered to issue an injunction, one that would halt the process.
"This is not SpaceX protesting and saying that these launches should be awarded to us," Musk said. "We're just protesting and saying that these launches should be competed."
SpaceX says it has the capability to launch 60 percent of the Air Force's planned missions, and could offer 100 percent capability when its Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, currently being developed, enters operations.
It could save the military and the U.S. government something on the order of $1 billion a year on launches of national security missions, the company says.
SpaceX rockets represent a $60 million cost per launch cost, which could increase to around $90 million to meet certain Air Force requirements.
Still, Musk says, that's far less than the estimated $360 million cost for a United Launch Alliance mission launch.
"The ULA rockets are basically four times more expensive," Musk said. "This contract is costing us taxpayers billions of dollars for no reason."
Musk has put forward another reason SpaceX should get consideration as a launch provider; the Atlas V rockets ULA uses to launch military and spy satellites are powered by Russian-built RD-180 model engines in the first stage to hurl payloads into orbit.
That puts national security at risk from ups and down of events involving international diplomacy, he says.
"In light of Russia's recent actions, it does not make sense to reward Russia with a huge contract for rocket engines," Musk said after a recent Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing.
Some recent events give strength to that argument; Canada, citing the worsening conflict in Ukraine, canceled a launch of a military satellite set for June from Russia's spaceport located in Kazakhstan and said it would seek a different launch provider.
