Pentagon contract figures show Boeing-Lockheed Martin venture ULA’s Vulcan rocket is getting more expensive at $214 million for two launches each. That’s about 50 percent more expensive than SpaceX’s price per mission.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/pentagon-contract-figures-show-ulas-vulcan-rocket-is-getting-more-expensive/
7 Comments
Only 50% more? I was expecting it to be much higher. That’s honestly a decent price to pay to ensure SpaceX never gets a monopoly.
Sounds like SpaceX should be charging more. If Musk was a true capitalist, he should be charging what the customer would bear.
Or maybe money alone isn’t the motivation, and SpaceX sets a “good” price, leaving a lot of profit on the table.
This is 50% more than Falcon Heavy, a rocket more capable than Vulcan for any energy. For ULA this is probably close to their costs while for SpaceX this is a cash cow
Beyond concerns over monopolies, its wise to not have a single point of failure. Paying a bit more to keep ULA alive is worth it to address the risk of SpaceX being their only option.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[DIVH](/r/Space/comments/1ny3uh0/stub/nhshcjj “Last usage”)|Delta IV Heavy|
|[DoD](/r/Space/comments/1ny3uh0/stub/nhshcjj “Last usage”)|US Department of Defense|
|EELV|[Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_Expendable_Launch_Vehicle)|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/1ny3uh0/stub/nhshcjj “Last usage”)|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|[GTO](/r/Space/comments/1ny3uh0/stub/nhshcjj “Last usage”)|[Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/20140116-how-to-get-a-satellite-to-gto.html)|
|NRHO|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[NRO](/r/Space/comments/1ny3uh0/stub/nhsfss4 “Last usage”)|(US) National Reconnaissance Office|
| |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO|
|[NSSL](/r/Space/comments/1ny3uh0/stub/nhs9ca9 “Last usage”)|National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/1ny3uh0/stub/nhsjxht “Last usage”)|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1ny3uh0/stub/nhs182i “Last usage”)|SpaceX’s world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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Pentagon also hasn’t passed an audit in years. I don’t trust them with money or understanding budgets.
Worth noting this article is saying ULA was actually charging similar prices to SpaceX until these recent contracts.
This could just be an impact of inflation where SpaceX are still selling at a similar price to a few years ago because of reusing boosters that they made under those prices while ULA have to make new boosters at current prices, especially since they are using a new rocket.