Senate Armed Services Committee Sticks to Its Guns on RD-180 Rocket Engines, Space Policy Online
“U.S. national space transportation policy requires that at least two independent launch systems be available for national security launches. If one suffers a failure, access to space is assured by the other. For more than a decade, those two have been Atlas V and Delta IV, both ULA rockets. SpaceX argues that now the two can be its Falcon plus ULA’s Delta IV. ULA and its supporters insist, however, that the Delta IV is prohibitively expensive compared to Atlas V and the best choice for the taxpayers is to keep Atlas V available until the early 2020s when ULA’s new Vulcan rocket — with a U.S. engine — will be able to compete with SpaceX on price. SASC insists that a new U.S. engine can be ready by 2019 and only nine more RD-180s are needed until that time. That is the number set by the FY2015 and FY2016 NDAAs. However, the Senate Appropriations Committee undermined that authorization language in the FY2016 appropriations bill, essentially removing all limits.”
– ULA Begs Congress To Let Them Kill Delta Rockets, earlier post
– Earlier RD-180 posts
This is a contest between patriotism and capitalism. The patriot won’t buy rocket engines from Russia while they work against our interests in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. The capitalist must buy the cheapest rocket engines and sell the most expensive launches. My guess is that the capitalists will win, and every one of them will have a tiny Stars and Stripes on his lapel.
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” – Lenin
FWIW, I’d buy the number of launches in the period 2016-19 + 50% because common sense demands that you give yourself some margin for failures or unexpected extra missions.