Says SpaceX May Not Be The Best Deal For Taxpayers

In what may be the first real bidding war for a commercial space launch, United Launch Alliance has told the Pentagon that SpaceX may not be the best deal for U.S. taxpayers despite the lower cost of the launch.

Florida Today reports that the deadline for submitting bids for the contract was Monday, and SpaceX did not confirm that it had submitted a bid. ULA did get a proposal in on time, nearly a year after it chose not to bid on a GPS launch mission.

In a statement, ULA said that recent launch failures have shown that "rockets are not commodities. They are high-risk systems and the consequences of failure are costly and far-reaching.”

The bids were due just three weeks after the most recent SpaceX setback ... the loss of a rocket and satellite on the launchpad September 1 ... and 14 months after the company lost a Falcon 9 rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station.

While ULA did not specifically mention those events, the Falcon 9 is the only other rocket certified to carry military satellites into orbit.

The contract will be awarded by the  Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, but no date for the contract award has been given.

(Image from file)

FMI: www.ulalaunch.com, www.spacex.com