James Dean

FLORIDA TODAY

SpaceX’s lower launch price may not be the best deal for taxpayers, United Launch Alliance has warned the Air Force in a bid to launch a Global Positioning System satellite.

The bid appears to set up the first head-to-head competition between the companies for a national security launch, nearly a year after ULA refused to pursue another GPS mission.

SpaceX did not confirm if it had submitted a bid by Monday’s deadline, and the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, which will award the contract, also did not comment immediately.

ULA did submit a proposal this time, while repeating its reservations about price again being the competition's determining factor.

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

The bids were due less than three weeks after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded in a massive fireball during a Sept. 1 test on its Cape Canaveral launch pad, destroying a $200 million commercial satellite in the process. SpaceX is investigating the incident.

That mishap came 14 months after a Falcon 9 failed minutes into a June 2015 flight of International Space Station supplies for NASA, destroying cargo worth $118 million.

ULA did not specifically cite those failures, but the Falcon 9 rocket is the only other launcher certified to compete with ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets for high-value national security missions.

SpaceX has said the Falcon 9 could return to service as soon as November.

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Speaking at an industry conference in Paris, Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell also touted SpaceX’s win of the last GPS mission — the one ULA declined to bid on — and having ended ULA’s “monopoly” on national security missions.

“I think competition is now the name of the game for national security space launches in the United States,” she said at an industry conference in Paris. “So that was a decade in coming, and we were obviously quite pleased with the outcome.”

The Air Force in April awarded SpaceX an $82.7 million contract to launch the second GPS III satellite from Cape Canaveral in 2018.

ULA, a Boeing-Lockheed joint venture, says on its Web site that a lower-end Atlas V mission costs $164 million, or twice as much. The cost was considerably lower — closer to $100 million — under a five-year block purchase the Air Force made before opening launches to competition.

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In selecting a launcher for the third GPS III satellite, which is expected to fly from Cape Canaveral in 2019, ULA said the Air Force should consider not just price but the company's record of 111 launches without a major failure and its ability to stay on schedule, providing “real and tangible value for the taxpayer and the warfighter.”

In a recent interview, ULA CEO Tory Bruno said that unlike last year, no technical barriers would prevent ULA from competing for the mission labeled GPS III-3. But the competition’s primary emphasis on price remained a concern.

“That is typically used for items of low risk and complexity — trucks, tires, office supplies,” said Bruno. “I personally don’t think it’s necessarily appropriate for this kind of activity, and the events we’ve seen recently I think underscore that.”

In seeking bids for the GPS satellite launch, Lt. Gen Sam Greaves, head of the Space and Missile Systems Center, said the Air Force remained “laser focused on mission success and assured access to space, while encouraging competition.”

He continued: "The GPS III-3 launch service competition is structured to meet these goals while providing the best value to the government.”

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.