SpaceX scores first in its suit against the Air Force
A federal judge has denied the motion of the Air Force and ULA to dismiss SpaceX’s suit against their block buy launch contract that excludes competition from any other company.
The judge also required the parties go to mediation to settle their differences. Both rulings give added weight to SpaceX’s main complaint, that the company as well as others should have the right to compete for this Air Force launch work.
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No-bid Federal contract? Wasn’t the current Administration going to stop this practice? Some things never change.
The really interesting things to me about the judge’s ruling were the mandatory mediation among SpaceX, ULA and USAF, plus what amounts to a mandated discovery process into the origins of the block buy deal at issue. I think the judge smells something sufficiently rat-like that she’s going hunting for beady little eyes, whiskers and a tail. Things just got really interesting – in the Chinese sense – for ULA and the procurement apparat within USAF.
The mandated mediation is also interesting because it won’t start until mid-October. That’s about the same time that a second small shipment of RD-180’s is supposed to arrive on ULA’s loading dock. The first such shipment is due sometime in August. If, as I strongly suspect, both shipments are still in the wind by the start of mediation, the whole tenor of the process will be quite different than would be the case if it started, say, today.
Lots of twists and turns ahead on this case, folks.