Big Aerospace Contribution Recipient Complains About Imaginary SpaceX Monopoly
For some reason, Ron Paul has taken to Fox News to skewer SpaceX, Ars Technica
“Three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul has written an opinion piece for Fox News that comes out swinging against SpaceX, accusing the company of benefiting from potentially having a monopoly on national security launches. The article also attacks US Sen. John McCain as a “lead sponsor” of provisions to give SpaceX a monopoly on launch services.”
Ron Paul: Crony defense budget hands SpaceX a monopoly – why?, Ron Paul, Fox News
“Allowing SpaceX to obtain a monopoly over launch services harms taxpayers much more than forbidding the Pentagon from purchasing Russian products harms Vladimir Putin. If this provision becomes law, SpaceX will be able to charge the government more than they could in even a quasi-competitive market. This monopoly will also stifle innovation in rocket launching technology.”
Keith’s note: This is just too funny. Only a few years back SpaceX was shut out of national security launches for dubious reasons. So they kept launching rockets and doing the dance moves DoD asked them to do. When they had a chance to compete against a government created – and sanctioned duopoly (ULA) they won on cost and performance. And now former members of Congress who got big donations from ULA’s parent companies Lockheed Martin and Boeing (also Coalition for Deep Space Exploration charter members) are complaining about an imaginary SpaceX monopoly?. Coincidence?
Never been a fan of Ron Paul. He was always worried about the Federal Reserve (“audit the Fed”) but never concerned about the hundreds of billions of dollars drained out of the economy by military spending.
I’m no Ron Paul fan, but this just isn’t fair to him – he’s been a relentless advocate for major defense cuts for years. It’s part of his general isolationist posture.
Isn’t ULA monopoly, not a duopoly? A duopoly would imply Lockheed Martin and Boeing competing against each other in that market, which they don’t.
In any case, ULA are being paid ~$160M by Defence to develop two RD-180 replacement (AR1 and BE-4). And they’ve already received ~$200M from Defence for Vulcan. Together, that’s almost as much as SpaceX got from NASA to develop Falcon 9 + Dragon (~$400M). Plus other cash the ULA have scraped from the through over the years, ULA and their supporters can hardly complain (but they do, of course).
Perhaps. But you clearly get my point.
This is silly SpaceX is still in its starry eye’d “don’t be evil” phase (except for maybe on a few labor issues but i digress). If they suddenly went full monopoly on ya they’d hold it for how long like 3-4 years before vulcan is a thing? Assuming the military doesn’t just hold off on launches to minimize damage, or congress doesn’t legislate itself out of the mess after the fact?
Really things move slow in space when something like this goes wrong you have enough time to fix it after you know for sure its going wrong. You don’t need to worry about the “Oh it might go wrong wooOOooOOooOOoo….”
EDIT: Oh god I hadn’t read the foxnews article side of this at first this is beyond silly in fact its beyond dumb just… the logic oozes with conservative rhetoric forcibly painted over everything even when it clashes horribly with reality. Why would spaceX want the “rd180 replacement engines only” provision at all when previous iterations of the bill gave them money directly to develop thier stuff… just just… I agree that the “rd180 replacement engines only” provision should be stopped but god what is wrong with all you republicans!? When ever you do the right thing its for the worst possible reasons GAHH!
Indeed. This is one of the more ridiculous claims I have seen in a long time.
This Ron Paul bit is sad, and disconcerting, not so much because of either his delusions at best or his outright bending of reality to defend his old pal donors, but because his base reading his rants will nod and agree.
Obviously you haven’t read the comments. But that’s okay, I see that just about every thread here immediately goes to Republicans-are-evil, so whatever.
“expressly forbids the Air Force from developing new launch vehicles by
restricting expenditures to the development of new engines or the
modification of existing systems.” This may be aimed at O-ATK NGL SRB. Also may be why Northrup-Grumman Is buying O-ATK. They will develop it themselves. Although ARES 1X may be an existing system and NGL is a modification. So USAF could continue funding NGL and competition for SpaceX. It may be now and always was NGL= Northrup-Grumman Launcher.
Honestly, I think this has more to do with Paul’s loathing of John McCain, and his isolationism-driven corollary distaste for his anti-Russian foreign policy drive, than it does any campaign contributions.
Wow, SpaceX breaks the ULA monopoly on national security launches and are now being accused of having a monopoly, when they don’t? This makes zero sense to anyone who has a clue what is really happening.
Exactly. If monopolies are bad, that should make money killers good, right?
Just that much more water leaking into Ron Paul’s sinking credibility ship. We Republicans are all about privitization until it bites us in our own wallets.
Where has he been?
Did Paul totally ignore all the other space industry companies when he wrote this bit? It’s hilarious. Subsidies… hmm.