WASHINGTON — A senior U.S. lawmaker and leading critic of the U.S. Air Force’s primary satellite launching program questioned the service’s plan to rely on the prime contractor’s cost estimates to determine how many rockets to buy over what time period, saying the data are unreliable and represent a conflict of interest for the company.

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Warren Ferster is the Editor-in-Chief of SpaceNews and is responsible for all the news and editorial coverage in the weekly newspaper, the spacenews.com Web site and variety of specialty publications such as show dailies. He manages a staff of seven reporters...