Mick has it, in my opinion. The whole thing took far more than one senator from Alabama.

It is also my opinion that ULA was formed as a result of the penalties imposed in the price information case, so that DoD launch needs were covered.

I can tell you first hand that the old ATK was excellent at spin. I am hoping that the new Orbital/ATK will be excellent at engineering.

I still do not know if SpaceX’s VTOL will work, and I’d like to see Plan B flyback from ULA. If Musk wants to set up his own small plan B team, that would probably be wise, given international technology developments.

Sen. Shelby is the Field Marshal of the Alabama Legacy Aerospace Army. He fights to defend both ULA and MSFC, but it’s pretty obvious who was the favored child after Constellation – and now SLS – were ginned up in succession. Especially since MSFC was already full grown while ULA was still a bun in the oven.

That’s the answer to your mystery – Sen. Shelby. There were people in the mid-2000’s at what was about to become ULA and NASA who wanted an EELV-based approach, but there were more NASA people who wanted a big new monster rocket. Most of them worked at MSFC.

ULA is – true – the child of Boeing and LockMart, but ULA was about to be set up with its cushy USAF monopoly as Constellation was being plotted and with the EELV people at both Boeing and LockMart about to be hived off, there would have been a lot more people remaining at both Boeing and LockMart with rice bowls standing to be filled by, first, Constellation and then by SLS when Constellation cratered.

The correlation of political forces was plainly in the direction of the monster rocket crowd getting its way. ULA, being a nascent entity still in the process of gestation at the time, would have had no institutional clout capable of standing against the monster rocket tide that was running. And they had every reason to take the not inconsiderable goodies about to come their way and not make any waves. ATK gathering the Utah Congressional delegation to the monster rocket side was just gravy.

Don’t blame the Ares fiasco on ULA. ULA is the primary victim of that program. Had Ares not existed, NASA would have a BLEO exploration program based around existing EELVs built by ULA. ULA, Boeing, and NASA all came up with architectures to do that at a much lower cost than Constellation.

How MSFC and ATK were able to overpower the combined political might of Boeing and Lockheed Martin is probably the biggest space politics mystery of the century (so far).

But time moves on and things change. SpaceX was a tiny garage shop when the Constellation program got underway. SpaceX had yet to launch its first Falcon 9 at the time Ares 1-X flew. Now SpaceX has launched 11 Falcon 9’s with no failures. ATK is a division of Orbital Sciences, a company whose future ambitions are much more SpaceX-like than old-style-ATK-like. Constellation is dead and SLS is on life-support. ULA is looking iffier and iffier due to Russian engine supply issues and SpaceX’s at least thus far successful legal effort to crack open ULA’s block buy Hail Mary play.

Pilotfish whose shark suddenly dies and sinks to the bottom are not happy pilotfish. These Alabama Good ‘Ole Boys of aerospace are looking to hedge their bets and are, doubtless, not finding a lot of love for their combative Congressional delegation as they knock on various doors outside the Old Confederacy. Thus the “cool it” letter. It will be interesting to see who has more pull with Congress now, a collection of worried subcontractors or a wounded, but still arrogant prime. Life has just gotten very complicated for Alabama’s Congresscritters. Couldn’t happen to nicer guys.

Why did Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, et al tie their space sector economies to ATK’s Ares1?

Perhaps the answer lies in Utah.

Editorial bias, “what do I want to cover?”, is one of the few biases that are allowed to the editor of a publication or forum.

If you have not noticed the cheering for SpaceX…

Now Musk has chosen to go with VTOL for re-usability, which I am not sure will work.

It is long past time to get a Plan B going – winged or drogue chute/parafoil first stage return.