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A comment on ULA bows out of Pentagon launch competition, paving way for SpaceX. Parent comment

Re:ULA bows out of Pentagon launch competition, paving way f... by tgb on Wednesday November 18, 2015 @06:44AM (#10587143)
I don't understand. Can you explain this and the parent's comment on engines?
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Re:ULA bows out of Pentagon launch competition, paving way f... by JumpCrisscross on Wednesday November 18, 2015 @07:09AM (#10587220)
ULA's vehicles were designed around the RD-180 rocket engine [1][2]. This is an engine built and designed in Russia.

After Russia annexed Crimea, Congress banned the Pentagon from using Russian rocket engines. Russia responded by counter-banning the Pentagon from using its engines [3]. This made things complicated for ULA.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-180

[2] http://www.ulalaunch.com/faqs-rd-180.aspx

[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-13/russia-ban...

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Re:ULA bows out of Pentagon launch competition, paving way f... by fleitz on Wednesday November 18, 2015 @10:54AM (#10588367)
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=all%20hat%2C%...

So if you're a rocket company and don't make your own engines you're not really a rocket company, you're just talk.

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Re:ULA bows out of Pentagon launch competition, paving way f... by avmich on Wednesday November 18, 2015 @01:32PM (#10589723)
Or if you don't have a reliable supplier of engines. In this case world politics meddled with space rocketry, so supplier's goods became less than completely available.
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Re:ULA bows out of Pentagon launch competition, paving way f... by danmaz74 on Wednesday November 18, 2015 @07:05AM (#10587203)
The ULA launchers use the Russian produced RD-180 engine
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Re:ULA bows out of Pentagon launch competition, paving way f... by avmich on Wednesday November 18, 2015 @01:34PM (#10589733)
Only Atlas-V. Delta-IV uses American hydrogen engines (RS-68); however Delta-IV is rather more expensive than Atlas-V. Even though Atlas-IV is rather more expensive than Falcon-9 - which uses simpler, less performant but cheaper technology.
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