SpaceX's Dispute With The Air Force Just Got Even Uglier
The Air Force plans on spending $60 million to certify SpaceX for carrying its payloads, but that apparently doesn’t mean the ongoing dispute between Elon Musk’s aerospace startup and the federal government is over. There’s still the matter of several dozen launch contracts that SpaceX believes were awarded to a competitor without a fair bidding process — possibly because of a corrupt Air Force official that Musk has now called out by name.
In April, Musk’s company sued the Air Force for allegedly granting no-bid launch contracts to United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. And last night on Twitter, Musk claimed that a specific Air Force official helped ULA obtain the contracts for 36 launches in exchange for employment at a ULA-affiliated company:
V likely AF official Correll was told by ULA/Rocketdyne that a rich VP job was his if he gave them a sole source contract
Why air such a specific and public accusation in the midst of a lingering and still-unresolved dispute with the Air Force? It’s possible that SpaceX is just really confident that both the political winds and changes in the U.S. aerospace industry are working in its favor.
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http://www.businessinsider.com.au/spacexs-dispute-with-the-air-force-just-got-even-uglier-2014-5
