SpaceX sues US Air Force over satellite contracts

SpaceX has filed a lawsuit against the US Air Force over its decision to issue multibillion dollar national security launch contracts with a single company, CEO Elon Musk said Friday. The US military spends billions yearly with United Launch Alliance, a merger of aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to launch government satellites. Soaring costs, lack of competition and the reliance on Russian-made rocket engines have raised the ire of Musk and some lawmakers, who have called for more transparency by the Pentagon into the process. "This is not right," Musk told reporters, describing the policy of "uncompeted procurement" by the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. "SpaceX has decided to file suit and protest the Air Force EELV block buy," Musk said. The process "essentially blocks companies like SpaceX from competing for national security launches," said Musk at a press conference in the US capital. The suit was filed in the court of federal claims, he added. "This is not SpaceX protesting and saying these launches should be awarded to us. We are just protesting and saying these launches should be competed," Musk said. "If we compete and lose that's fine, but why were they not even competed?" An Internet entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal, Musk has gained a high profile in the business world with SpaceX and his electric car company, Tesla. In 2012, SpaceX's Dragon capsule became the first unmanned spaceship made by a private US company to reach the International Space Station. A version that could carry crew is expected by 2017. The California-based firm is also working on a novel rocket, called the Falcon 9 reusable, that could return to Earth from a space launch intact and be used again and again for space launches. The latest test of the rocket showed it was able to land upright with all legs deployed, but SpaceX was unable to retrieve it intact from its ocean landing, possibly due to stormy seas and lack of access to a big enough boat, he said. Still, Musk said he hoped the next ocean test landing would go more smoothly, since it would be closer to land. If that goes well, he said he was "optimistic" that the reusable rocket's first land-test return could happen at Florida's Cape Canaveral later this year.