Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article: > "Orbcomm understood from the beginning that the orbit-raising maneuver was tentative," Nelson wrote. "They accepted that there was a high risk of their satellite remaining at the Dragon insertion orbit. SpaceX would not have agreed to fly their satellite otherwise, since this was not part of the core mission and there was a known, material risk of no altitude raise." High risk, to me, says that th…
That's pretty clearly a little doublespeak going on. Of course it's shitty that the secondary mission didn't happen, but neither Orbcomm nor SpaceX wants this to go down in the press as a failure, so the party line is "Well, it was a big risk, and we accepted it." There's not much else Orbcomm could say unless they wanted to lambaste SpaceX as a scapegoat, which they don't want to do because of an ongoing relationshi…
Besides polluting the relationship with SpaceX, raising a fuss would put their own plans into doubt. Orbcomm's stock price already fell 15% in the past week, I don't think they need more trouble:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=ORBC+Interactive#symbol=o...;