12 Space Launching for Russia Russia resumed launchings of its Proton rocket booster, which lifted an Indonesian satellite into orbit from Kazakhstan.
That shut Lockheed out of the market for launchings over the North and South Poles, because it would have been too dangerous to launch satellites into polar orbits from Lockheed's base at Cape Canaveral, Mr. Thompson said.
He said that when seasoned project managers heard of the new, narrow windows for launchings, their first reaction was to start planning to take advantage of the restricted opportunities.
The statement said officials would draft a timeline for launchings, including manned missions.
Among the losers would be some public works projects of the Army Corps of Engineers, two historic preservation programs and NASA's mission to return to the Moon, which would be ended as the administration seeks to reorient the space program to use private companies for launchings.
For Orbital Sciences, it was second failure in eight launchings of the Taurus XL.
So far, most of the attention in this new commercial space race has focused on Boeing, which has five decades of experience building spacecraft, and Space Exploration Technologies Corporation — SpaceX, for short — a brash upstart that gained credibility last year with two launchings of its Falcon 9 rocket.
The letter provides new details of how American companies competed for Chinese business by offering to transfer aerospace data in connection with launchings of their satellites.
The launching has been politically problematic for the Obama administration, which only weeks ago completed an agreement with the North to provide food aid in return for Pyongyang's agreement to suspend uranium enrichment and refrain from test launchings of long-range missiles.
In the first place, they say, missile sales were becoming less lucrative than the launchings of American satellites that the new arrangement clears the way for.
