For background, the pad in question is one of two Apollo/Shuttle pads. These two pads were designed for bigger rockets than any currently flying in the world. NASA is keeping the other pad not up for bid for it's far future SLS system.
ULA is Lockheed/Boeing. ULA currently does all US military launches (outside of the small stuff Orbital Sciences puts up). Neither ULA nor Blue Origin have current or publicly known future vehicles that would need this huge pad.
The theory is that by going to congress to force NASA to make this a shared pad, SpaceX's competitors hope to make the pad all but unusable by SpaceX. If the pad must be shared, all improvements must be run by all of the other's that are "sharing" the pad. Launch times and schedules must also be run by competitors. In addition, everything installed by SpaceX would need to be potentially uninstalled, if a competitor requested the pad for some reason.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#History_and_financ...
TeslaRumors has a much more descriptive version of events that summarizes how it all came about:
So in 2003, JB Straub phoned Musk and invited him to meet so that they could discuss space and electric car related interests.
[...]
During their lunch meeting, Straubel mentioned a company called AC propulsion that had developed a prototype electric sports car using a gasoline-powered kit car.
[...]
When Musk visited AC Propulsion, he not only was demo’d the car, he also got to drive it. He was impressed. He tried to for months to convince AC Propulsion to commercialize the electric vehicle and even asked them to make one for him, but they had no interest in doing so. Instead, Tom Gage, the president of AC Propulsion introduced Musk and Straubel to another team that shared the same interest so that they together they could increase their potential for success in commercializing an electric vehicle. The other team included Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning and Ian Wright.
[...]
Fortunately, one day Wright's neighbor, Martin Eberhard, started to chat about having just incorporated a electric car manufacturing company. Wright thought the idea was far-fetched but did the neighborly thing and offered to take a look at Eberhard’s business plan.
[...]
They joined forces that year and formed Tesla Motors Inc. Straubel became CTO, Eberhard became CEO, Marc Tarpenning became CFO, and Elon Musk became the Chairman and the Head of Product Design. Ian Wright became Tesla Motors’ first employee as VP of Vehicle Development. Musk provided the majority of funds for the startup with $7.5 million of his own personal cash in the first round of capital investment as well as contributing to subsequent rounds. [2]
Part of the confusion might be that Tesla also produced a Founder Series of 20 - 30 cars for both the Roadster and Model S. Musk also has a large Founder badge on the back of his Model S (which has been shown in a few videos), I'm not sure if that is on all of the Founder Series cars or not.
"Bezos, the new owner of the Washington Post (GHC) newspaper,..." is also amusing.
Bezos is serious business.
You could maybe search both sides of the statement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Awards_and_recognitio...
The idea is that NASA will focus on hard and expensive "future" space science now that trans-atmospheric transit is commoditized.
