Well said. This smells like a hatchet piece put together by the gray hairs at StratCom who've continued to be incredulous that a private enterprise can put things in orbit and have hoped for SpaceX to fail from the outset.
> incredulous that a private enterprise can put things in orbit
What's with this commonly repeated narrative that SpaceX is the only private company in space? I think the formation of ULA between Boeing and Lockheed was garbage as much as the next person. Just like Boeing buying McDonnell Douglas was garbage. But look at a list of rockets to take something to space and they are all private (ULA, Orbital, and SpaceX).
SpaceX plays the game just like everyone else. They hire the retired generals from the military. They bid on government launches. They use government ranges for launching.
All of the incumbent's R&D was paid for by US taxpayers. Their bloated pricing is a product of not having to compete commercially on cost. SpaceX has to seek business where the opportunities are. They in turn plow their profits back into the business rather than waiting for the next handout.
That doesn't explain why ULA has such insane launch costs. It's a classic government fleece job. They've been stealing taxpayer dollars because they could.
SpaceX is charging a fraction of the cost.
ULA has been paying lobbyists and trying to squeeze SpaceX out of bidding. It has been purely due to the hype around SpaceX that they were not successful.
Why the government let Boeing and Lockheed form the ULA is beyond me. The US used to have 3 solid launch providers and went to 1. I'm glad we're back to 2 with SpaceX. We were handing lots of business to Arianespace.
In another article [1], the GAO says that they cannot talk about any information in the report because it is still in preparation and has not been publicly made available, so others cannot even verify the claims of the author. The preliminary report must have been leaked to the author of the WSJ article.
