Rocket companies in a snit

United Space Alliance (USA) and ATK have been in a legal snit lately, loudly accusing each other of a range of misbehavior including contract violations, employee-poaching, and, for all I know, illegal parking. Now it's taken a serious turn: USA (prime contractor at Kennedy Space Center) last week told employees to stop working on supporting the Ares-1 rocket program (prime contractor: ATK) effective September 22. A one-week truce called by the two companies on September 19 postponed the work stoppage threstened for the 22nd but does not leave much time to work out their differences. The losers in any continued brawl: NASA and the Constellation program. I wonder what Mike Griffin is taking for headaches these days...