The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

by Christian Davenport

After SpaceX sued the US Air Force over the right to compete for the national security launches, the parties finally settled and the Pentagon finally certified the Falcon 9 for the missions. Musk had been pursuing the lucrative launches for years, and now it was finally able to compete against the Alliance, which had held a monopoly on the billions of dollars’ worth of contracts for a decade. The victory was the end of what Tim Hughes, SpaceX’s general counsel, called a “decade-long grind.” “Our mantra from day one was: allow us to compete. And if we lose on the merits so be it,” he said. “But you’ve got to let competition flourish, and you need to let what we perceive to be the home team, play. And by home team we mean this is an all-American rocket. No reliance on Russian engines or other major component parts.” But the first time the air force held a competition for one of the launches, the Alliance balked, saying it was unable to submit a bid. It claimed that the procurement was set up so that the competition was weighted toward who had the lower price—SpaceX—and not who had the most experience and record of past performance, which would have given the Alliance the edge. Congress had limited the use of a Russian-made engine that the Alliance used in its Atlas V rocket, and those restrictions made it impossible to bid, the company said. SpaceX and others weren’t buying it. “I thought it was a coward’s move. You can quote me,” said Shotwell. “They did not want to lose. A...