SpaceX wins injunction to stop USAF buying Russian rocket engines | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX wins injunction to stop USAF buying Russian rocket engines

reuters.com

56 pointscarbocation24 comments

Need a lawyer-ish person to help me with this:

So SpaceX has an open lawsuit against the US Government for the awarding of a contract to a joint partnership between Lockheed/Boeing, and now SpaceX is granted the legal ability for the courts to stop the Lockheed/Boeing partnership from entering into any rocket-buying agreement with a Russian company.

How can this injunction bar Lockheed/Boeing partnership from performing this seemingly separate business transaction? (More to the point, I mean, a separate business transaction that Lockheed/Boeing could 'claim' was unrelated to the government award)

Does it have anything to do with the fact that Lockheed/Boeing created this new company (Open Launch thing) which technically won the contract and presumably is the entity making the purchase to this Russian company?

The way I read it there are two separate issues. One is the fact that the launch contract wasn't competed. The other is that the US decided to put sanctions on Russia over Ukraine and those sanctions cover entities that have an interest in the Russian company these engine components are being bought from by the American companies. The court is basically saying that by buying that engine part from the Russian company that might violate the economic sanctions. Sounds like the injunction is only preliminary.

Then you've got some congress people who realize this is a PR nightmare so they proposed a new spending program to develop a new rocket engine that doesn't depend on Russia. I'm guessing Boeing and Lockheed would be the recipients of that largess.

That is interesting, if that is the case. Bc to me, if so, then really the headline is misleading bc SpaceX didn't really 'win' anything bc the purchase would never have gone through anyways, injunction or not.

Out of my own curiosity, was there a bit in this article that led you to that conclusion or had you been reading about this subject?

The suit that SpaceX filed with the courts was not asking for the contract to be awarded to them, it was asking for the contract to be competed on, as originally required by Congress. They have repeatedly said that they just want an even competition. Now if there is a fair competition and they lose and it goes to ULA, that is fine, as long as there is fair competition.

The other part of the filing was that they were asking for an injunction on the grounds that they believed that the ULA rocket shouldn't be allowed due to it using Russian parts that are under sanction due to executive orders. Under this part they did 'win' the injunction as this is one of the things they asked for. Therefore the headline is not misleading.

The Atlas V rocket built by the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which was scheduled to be the rocket to launch the majority of missions for this USAF contract is build using Rocket Engines bought from NPO Energomash part of the Russian Space Agency, specifically led by Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister of Russia.

Obama issued an executive order sanctioning Dmitry Rogozin and any organization he is involved with. Given that ULA were buying rocket engines from an organization that Dmitry Rogozin is involved with, they would be breaching the executive order by doing so.

Now this doesn't the contact has been stopped yet, as ULA have stated that they already have a 2 year stock of the engines and the injunction doesn't stop any sale pre-injunction. But if no other rulings come up as to why the contract should be stopped, they will still need to figure out a way to fulfill the launches that they do not have engine stock for.

Thank you very much for the very thoughtful reply and gives a bunch of color (also alluded to by 'pmorici').

So, would you say that the injunction would have been granted had the sanctions not in place? Or was this purely a result of the sanctions?

The full text of the order can be found here: http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/z-pdf-arch....

Note the courts dealing with SpaceX's filing is not complete, this is just an initial injunction based on one particular part of the filing.

This injunction was particularly because it was in breach of the sanctions placed on Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin, and would not have been ordered otherwise.

Rogozin tweeted a couple of days ago that US astronauts should go to space on a trampoline. It's interesting that a deputy PM can be so unprofessional as to say things like that in public, but that's modern Russian politics for you: top level bureaucrats saying embarassing things purely for internal consumption.

Rogozin's twitter timeline is pretty much designed to provoke US administration (he has Russian and English feeds, both equally ridiculous). It isn't just for "internal consumption" anymore. It's Cold War 2.0, kids, at least as Kremlin sees it. And Rogozin isn't some small potatoes in Russian admin.

I think a human rated Dragon/Falcon stack can't come soon enough. The last I read, the first crewed flight to the ISS was scheduled for the end of next year as part of NASA's "Commercial Crew integrated Capability" (CCiCap) program. I wonder if NASA will be pressured by congress to speed up the program given the situation with Russia.

Another point to be aware of is that members of the Senate from both the Republican party and the Democratic party have come out against this deal between ULA and USAF.

http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-relea... http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases...

Specifically Senator McCain has specifically stated that this 'Smacks of Cronyism'. (http://www.dodbuzz.com/2014/04/30/mccain-rocket-deal-smacks-...).

The senate hearing was a nice watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_azyt1JhI0

This is a very long video. What was nice in it? Can you give some highlights?

Move over Lockheed and Boeing. There's a new guy in town.

While I'm all for SpaceX advancing the industry, I'm curious what exactly was illegal/wrong about the Lockheed/Boeing deal to buy rockets from Russia?

Umm, have you been living under a rock during the past two months?

Nope.

Sanctions have been placed on various high-level Russian officials and organizations they're associated with, in an attempt to punish them for the annexation of Crimea, or perhaps to influence them to revert it. One of those officials happens to be involved with the company that builds these rocket engines, and so those sanctions make it illegal to do business with them now.

earlier thread on this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679372

Yes. Thanks.

I like how they said that buying Russian rockets will ensure US to secure its space program growth and future. Like buying Russian technology today when US is putting more sanctions on them is what they call "secure". If you have player building rockets of similar price point and giving jobs to US people why anyone would go and buy foreign rockets anyway?

This is the video where Elon Musk challenges the government about the "block buy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iukfjdsGsyk

Oh wow, this is huge and going to upset a lot of old players.

Most large contracts are contested, regardless of the outcome. it has become part of the scheduling in gov acquisitions it is so previlant.

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