SpaceX Loses Lawsuit Against U.S. Air Force Over Starship Funding
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
A federal judge had denied SpaceX’s claim that the U.S. Air Force should have provided development funding for its Starship booster, according to media reports.
USAF awarded $2.2 billion in contracts in October 2918 to Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and United Launch Alliance (ULA) to help the companies develop new rockets to launch national security payloads. SpaceX’s proposal for Starship funding was rejected.
U.S. District Court Judge Otis Wright II said the Air Force’s conclusion that Starship was too risky and expensive for its needs was not arbitrary, capricious or in violation of the law, Reuters reports.
Wright’s Sept. 24 order contained information about the Air Force’s concerns about SpaceX’s proposal, Reuters said.
According to the order, part of SpaceX’s pitch to the Air Force included a previously unreported less-reusable version of Starship whose upper stage would not return to Earth after delivering a payload into orbit – a “substantial” design change to the rocket’s fully reusable architecture that the Air Force considered too complex of a challenge.
The order was briefly posted online last month before being sealed because it contained sensitive information. SpaceX was given a week to provide objections that might change the decision. The judge entered a final order to dismiss the case on Friday.
The Air Force provided the development funding in advance of a competition to launch defense payloads from 2022 to 2027. SpaceX and ULA won multi-billion launch contracts in August.
SpaceX will use its existing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. ULA will use its Vulcan rocket, which is now in development, with the company’s existing Atlas V launch vehicle as a backup.
The Air Force rejected bids from Blue Origin to use its New Glenn booster and from Northrop Grumman to fly payloads on the company’s OmegA rocket. Neither rocket had yet flown.
Blue Origin, which earlier challenged the Air Force’s plan to award only two launch contracts, is continuing to develop New Glenn. Northrop Grumman has canceled the OmegA program.
Starship prototypes are undergoing testing at SpaceX’s facility at Boca Chica Beach in south Texas. The company plans to use the rocket to launch satellites, send cargo and people to the moon and Mars, and provide point to point transportation between distant cities on Earth.
6 responses to “SpaceX Loses Lawsuit Against U.S. Air Force Over Starship Funding”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
It makes a lot more sense that they’d reject it if SpaceX threw in a major design change just for the Air Force with no guarantee that it would work.
Starship has a lot of design changes between now and first orbit.
According to Elon, the initial orbital design is already pretty much locked down. Details are to follow at the annual Starship Update in about three weeks.
That is not, of course, to say there won’t be a lot of design changes following initial achievement of orbit. At a minimum, purpose-built freighter, tanker, depot, lunar lander and mass passenger carrier versions will be elaborated from the basic design. Work on all these is, doubtless, well underway already.
Okay … We shall see. I’m very doubtful. How many of the statements at the last major update turned out? ….. Things are not that much more advanced now from then. There is some good solid development, but so much more to go.
The case was correctly decided.
Given how much SpaceX has gotten done toward SH-Starship over the last two years it’s easy to forget that the initial proposal SpaceX made to USAF would have involved the carbon fiber version. USAF was correct to regard that as too risky. SpaceX came to the same conclusion about the same time the NSSL Phase 1 awards were announced two years ago.
In the meantime, SpaceX and the USSF seem to have come to agreement on how the latter will pay the former for the specialized infrastructure needed to fulfill the more exotic of the NSSL launch requirements – which was pretty much what the lawsuit was about in the first place. So this court decision, at the end of the day, has no practical effect.
By the time proposals for the next round of NSSL contracts are due, SH-Starship – in its stainless steel incarnation – will already be operational. So, one presumes, will be Vulcan and New Glenn. So the next NSSL competition will probably feature neither any development money in prospect for “paper rockets” of any sort nor any of the associated drama that characterized the recently completed round of competition.
SX is better losing this and gaining major launch contracts. Long before ULA, BO, or NG have systems that compete in size with FH, SX will have BFR going to orbit with at least cargo and likely fuel depot. IOW, SX is sure to win major contracts for lots of launches, esp if they go to the moon.