Butt-Rocket

Forget shooting our Space Program in the foot, these Obama policies, according to The DailyCaller, “SpaceX Faces Off Against Russia To Supply Rockets To US Military“, have rammed a “Butt-Rocket” of monumental proportions up our collective suppositoriums.

Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX and Russian company NPO Energomash are locked in a struggle to supply rocket engines to the U.S. military.

NPO Energomash currently sells RD-180 rocket engines to American company United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing. ULA inspects the engines, then uses them to power the workhorse rocket of America’s military space program.

ULA had almost cornered the market for national security-related rocket launches until last year, when SpaceX won U.S. Air Force certification for national security space missions.

The RD-180 is an old Soviet design built in Russia by NPO Energomash. Though the design has a record of safety and reliability, some in Congress worry that America’s dependence on Russian rocketry may give Russian President Vladimir Putin dangerous leverage over the American military.

“It is morally outrageous and strategically foolish to subsidize Vladimir Putin’s corrupt military industrial complex with the purchase of Russian rocket engines when Russia occupies Crimea and destabilizes Ukraine, menaces our NATO allies in Europe, bombs U.S.-backed forces in Syria to prop-up the murderous regime of Bashar Assad, and threatens to cut off U.S. access to space,” Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain