Curious things are happening in the market of "private" astronautics.
Orbital Sciences (the one that, with SpaceX's Elon Mask, won a NASA tender for the next generation space shuttle), complained to the US Federal Trade Commission about its competitors, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, which illegally restrict access to Orbital Sciences to important ingredients.
We are talking about the RD-180 rocket engines manufactured by the Russian NPO Energomash, which Orbital Sciences is going to install on its next generation carrier rockets because, according to a representative from Orbital Sciences, these engines are optimal for this class of rockets and without them Orbital Sciences are simply not competitive .
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The fact that Orbital Sciences competitors - the United Launch Alliance (a joint project of Lockheed-Martin and Boeing) - already uses the notorious RD-180 for Atlas missiles, and Orbital Sciences itself in the current prototype Antares missiles uses another Russian-made engine - NK-33 manufactured by SNTK named after Kuznetsov (under the name Aerojet AJ-26).
www.vz.ru/economy/2013/6/14/637080.htmlen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_rocket#Current_Atlas_familyen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_%28rocket%29#Design