“With just weeks before a critical deadline to fund the federal government looms, a fight is brewing on Capitol Hill over the kind of rocket engine the Defense Department can use to send its military satellites into space,” according to the Fiscal Times .  

“Last week, United Launch Alliance, a Lockheed Martin-Boeing joint venture, dropped out of the competition to launch the Pentagon’s next-generation Global Positioning System satellite in 2018. They surrendered a long-held industry monopoly and put Elon Musk’s SpaceX on track to win its first military contract.”