ULA's reasoning was pretty straightforward. The main reason they dropped out of the competition is because the bidding was to be decided largely on price, and they can't compete with SpaceX on price -- their selling point these days is that they're the boring, less-risky option that nobody ever got fired for buying. This is totally a valid selling point, until SpaceX gets a longer track record, but GPS satellites are the kind of payload that wouldn't be too disastrous to lose, so in this case going for the cheaper launch option makes a lot of sense.
If they're not time critical, chances are they don't care that much. They've got insurance on the launch and payload. It'd have to happen enough for the premiums to start going up.
This just means they don't insure and instead absorb losses. AFAIK they don't even set aside a pool of money like corporate self-insurance tends to do.
>CRS missions appear to carry commercial insurance
This is to (partially) cover the losses to the commercial space companies, since NASA withholds money in the event of a failure. None of it covers the payload. (Actually at least in Orbital's case they get paid a portion of the CRS contract, since there's technically two milestones – ignition/liftoff and mission success. They lose out on the latter.[1])
Thanks for bringing this up. This is a oft forgotten point as to why private space flight is so difficult in the US. Private ventures can't compete when the rules are set up so they've been kneecap'd from the start.
Ironically, I can't drive my car without insurance but I can fly a plane without it.
ULA's reasoning was pretty straightforward. The main reason they dropped out of the competition is because the bidding was to be decided largely on price,
The reason they had to drop out is because they're a space launch company without any goddamned engines. The chatter about the bid process is just the typical jawing members of the defense cartel engage in when they deign to speak of competitors. Sometimes they're even successful in reopening the bid process. [1]
> (From Article) Congress wants to phase out the use of the RD-180 engine for national security launches by 2019 as a result of Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
I have't been paying close attention, but maybe you know this. Didn't Russia actually ban export of engines for military launches over Crimea before congress?
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.
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.
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.
Bit embarrassing isn't it, that a joint venture between two of the US's (and world's) largest aeronautics and defence companies doesn't have their own engines – and has to rely on the Russians?
Well, Russians are world leaders in at least kerosene-based rocket engines for one. And ULA doesn't quite lack just any engines - they have RS-68 hydrogen engines.
