SpaceX, United Launch Alliance win major Pentagon launch contracts

[RV_]

I can't believe that the ULA is still launching using Putin's Russian RD-180 rocket engines and got these contracts! And instead of building their own rocket engines, or buying them from the worlds largest small rocket engine manufacturer, Space X, and soon to be the largest large engine maker too. Instead of building their own engines and vehicles like Musk and Space X did, they are using Jeff Bezos Blue Origin engines? Why not just use Space X until the ULA builds and tests and gets certified their own engines, or award the contracts directly to Blue Origin?

So we will still have a dependency on Russia! Why not just use Blue Origin directly? We've seen that Boeing can't even do their old job of building jet planes without covering up problems leading to the crashes of their new 737s. So it makes sense they pretend to build rocket engines.

Excerpt:
"The firm fixed-price, indefinite delivery Phase Two contracts under the Pentagon's National Security Space Launch Services initiative are aimed at securing reliable, flexible and lower-cost access to space while ending the nation's reliance on the Russian RD-180 engine used in ULA's workhorse Atlas 5 rocket.

During an afternoon Zoom briefing from the Pentagon, Roper said he could not discuss anything about the nature of the classified payloads that will be launched in the first three missions or which rockets will carry them.

ULA is building a powerful, partially reusable new rocket, the Vulcan Centaur, that eventually will replace the company's Atlas 5 and Delta 4 boosters. The new rocket features Blue Origin's high-power BE-4 methane-oxygen engine in its first stage and a hydrogen-burning Aerojet Rocketdyne Centaur upper stage engine."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-united-launch-alliance-big-winners-in-pentagon-launch-contracts/

Edited August 8, 2020 by RV_