Having taken an interest in this topic, and having watched the Sentate hearing (among others) where the ULA was asked to defend/validate it's model I find there

Having taken an interest in this topic, and having watched the Sentate hearing (among others) where the ULA was asked to defend/validate it's model I find there's "sour grapes" everywhere among the incumbent players. You could easily swap the quoted line with this (related to Tesla) and it would still make sense: "We tried to make an electric car before," ... "Look how long and how much money it took for us to do that, and we still weren't successful for all parts."