Read up on ITAR. It's a ridiculously over-constraining set of laws on the manufacture of anything considered to be a munition - which SpaceX's rockets certainly qualify for. It's not surprising SpaceX is being overly conservative in this area - the penalties for a violation are massive, and could quite easily end the company.
Posted Sep 24, 2012 22:07 UTC (Mon) by SiB (subscriber, #4048)
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ITAR is the reason that cooperating with US institutes in space projects becomes increasingly unpleasant. I almost prefer working on ESA lead missions these days.