What bothers me about Elon is the delivery of his accusation. It almost sounds like he is whining about it and, boy, do I hate whiners, complainers, and kevetchers. But at least he put it out there.
I would tell him that he needs to just focus on getting his @$$ to Mars and don’t worry about that. In the end he’ll win because his rockets will outclass all others.
Why? Check this headline out.
SpaceX Set to Test Raptor Engine Components at NASA Stennis
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3158358/posts?page=22
This engine will generate a million pounds of thrust and will be used for the launch vehicle that will lift the Mars Colonial Transporter. This will be a super-heavy lift launch vehicle similar to a Falcon 9 Heavy but on steroids.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_rocket_engine_family
In February 2014, they announced that Raptor would be used on both a new upper stage as well as for the very large 10-meter-diameter launch vehicle of the Mars Colonial Transporter. Each booster core will utilize nine Raptor engines, similar to the use of nine Merlin 1s on each Falcon 9 booster core.
As of February 2014, Raptor is being designed to produce 4.4 meganewtons (1,000,000 lbf) of thrust with a vacuum specific impulse (Isp) of 363 seconds and a sea-level Isp of 321 seconds.
When all is said and done the military is going to begging him to carry their satellites into orbit.
Just the Falcon 9 Heavy, set for liftoff either the end of this year or early next year, will outclass all other competitor’s (US companies, Chinese, Russians, Europeons) launch vehicles because it will be able to lift 53,000 lbs. into LEO and 21,200 lbs. into GTO.
And if he can recover his strap-on boosters, main stage, and the second stage and re-use them again in an money-saving manner he will simply leave them all in the dust.
All accusations are prone to sound like whining, but I think there is a lot of truth behind his claims.
And as events have evolved, the era of good feeling vs. Russia, which is what led to the early success of ULA, has evaporated and we are now facing an adversary.
I would much rather see some real competition among US companies for the US launch business. Why should US launches strengthen Russia? Lockheed and Boeing got much too friendly when they proposed ULA. Neither company wanted to lose, so they combined to become the "only game in town" and raised the price enough that they both won.
SpaceX has now shown that they can be very successful and the competition should be re-opened.