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Comment by borgia | Hacker News Reader

>The Pentagon is eager to certify SpaceX as a second launch provider, given mounting concerns in Congress about ULA's use of a Russian-built engine to power its Atlas 5 rocket.

What's this about? Is there any substance to it? Or is it congress members upset the engines weren't bought from one of their buddies?

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I think it's because Russians have banned US from using their engines for military launches.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180#2014_availability_concer...

Ah I see, thank you very much, this is exactly what I was looking for.

Well, that and the US congress have banned themselves from using their engines at all, apart from ones already bought.

There's actually a lot of substance behind this, and Elon has used it to pressure lawmakers into considering SpaceX over the incumbents.

The basic summary is that yes, Russia has been supplying these engines and this wasn't a 'problem' until recent events (Ukraine etc.)

I imagine the Antares launch explosion has something to do with it, since the Antares was using a refurbished Russian engine as the base stage.

Plus, if the Pentagon's goal is independence from a Russian supply chain, buying parts from Russia kind of works against that.

Also, we do have sanctions in place against Russia that could cause issues with supply[1], though I guess that was resolved for the interim[2].

[1]: http://spacenews.com/40431court-bars-ula-from-buying-russian...

[2]: http://www.ulalaunch.com/preliminary-injunction-lifted--ula....

Not really -- the engines that USAF is using for launching spysats are new-build (RD-180, not the rebuilt NK-33s on Antares), and their supply was a political issue for months before the Antares launch failure. The politics got tense here when the US put trade sanctions on Russia in response to the trouble in Ukraine.

In any endeavor when you rely on a single supplier that supplier has power over you. In the case of a nation it can exert political pressure on another nation.

It absolutely is from both the operational side and the political side: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180#2014_availability_concer...

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