ULA slashes launch prices for Atlas 5
Capitalism in space: In order to compete with SpaceX ULA announced this week that it will cut its launch price for the Atlas 5 rocket by one third.
United Launch Alliance has dropped the price of its workhorse Atlas 5 rocket flights by about one-third in response to mounting competition from rival SpaceX and others, the company’s chief executive said on Tuesday. “We’re seeing that price is even more important than it had been in the past,” Tory Bruno, chief executive of United Launch Alliance, or ULA, said during an interview at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “We’re dropping the cost of Atlas almost every day. Atlas is now down more than a third in its cost,” Bruno said.
It appears that they have discovered that the prime reason they lost their bid of an Air Force GPS satellite launch to SpaceX was because their price was too high.
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Capitalism in space: In order to compete with SpaceX ULA announced this week that it will cut its launch price for the Atlas 5 rocket by one third.
United Launch Alliance has dropped the price of its workhorse Atlas 5 rocket flights by about one-third in response to mounting competition from rival SpaceX and others, the company’s chief executive said on Tuesday. “We’re seeing that price is even more important than it had been in the past,” Tory Bruno, chief executive of United Launch Alliance, or ULA, said during an interview at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “We’re dropping the cost of Atlas almost every day. Atlas is now down more than a third in its cost,” Bruno said.
It appears that they have discovered that the prime reason they lost their bid of an Air Force GPS satellite launch to SpaceX was because their price was too high.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
What? An upstart can reduce prices and force the big boys to have to match it to stay competitive? That is UNPOSSIBLE! We have been told thusly for decades. Must be fake news.
Wow, cutting at least 70 million dollar pounds right out of the profit flesh per launch must hurt.
See immediately preceding post by BtB – – a 30% or so price cut won’t be enough to be competitive when SpaceX starts selling flights to USAF on re-used Falcon 9 boosters.
James Ulvog– Good stuff on Russell Roberts at your site!
Why doesn’t ULA swollew its pride, admit they were wrong, and start down the road of recovering their boosters. Space X has proven its possible, Blue Origin is working towards it, so it must be the way of the future. That rubbish about catching the engine assembly mid air with a helicopter is looking even more ridiculous than when they first announced it. They have brilliant engineers that could come up to speed with the tech. I mean, the hardest part was probably not knowing if recovery, then reuse was possible.
Does anyone know how the RD 180 would go in a re-use situation?
Scott
The toughest part, Scott, is to fundamentally change the culture of existing organizations. ULA and the Europeans will never turn around managing by consensus. Musk and Bezos are classic visionary entrepreneurs who take risks with their own resources. They are out in front setting expectations for results that disrupt markets to change customer buying habits.
Thanks Frank. I agree that the culture is a problem. That’s why, I thought, Tory Bruno was appointed; to make them competitive. Reducing the workforce will only get them so far. They are all smart. They must look at what Space X is doing and think “we’re stuffed unless we start doing what they are doing”. What are the shareholders saying? Will there be questions at ULA’s next annual shareholder meeting, asking the uncomfortable questions that need to be asked, namely, what the F are you guys doing to compete with Space X and soon, Blue Origin (I know that Boeing and LM are the shareholders, but they have shareholders).
I don’t know. I’m just shaking my head.
Scott
Scott said:
“I agree that the culture is a problem. That’s why, I thought, Tory Bruno was appointed; to make them competitive. ”
Tori Bruno was hired when it became obvious that the CEO who had spent 10 years schmoozing congressional committee chairs was not going to be able to keep the ULA monopoly in place. However, Tori Bruno is on a short leash, held by a BoD made up completely of LockMart and Boeing Space and Defense Corp. board members. Both of these groups have spent the last 70 years in the cultural vat that Congress has used to produce compliant corporate dependents of their will.
Congress shifted what the profit center for aerospace corporations was completely between 1947 and 1987. Their corporate profits are now mostly made in the R&D phase of a government project. Production, much less operations, is mostly a tedious afterthought for their CFOs. The ULA BoD is still looking longingly to the Hill to save them, while they risk as little as possible of their own money. That is why Tori Bruno has to go with a method for recovering hardware that allowed him to point to at least one group of BoD members and say, “You guys have done this before!”.
In 1960 the first recovery of film capsules in the Corona program, run by Lockheed and the CIA, were finally successful. The capsule dropped from orbit behind its re-entry shield, fell to 50,000 feet, and popped open a parachute that lowered it slowly toward the ocean. A C-119 cargo plane flew by above capsule, and snagged it by its parachute, and then hauled it into the cargo bay. This went on for nearly 10 years, IIRC.
Lockheed is still quite proud of its achievements in this, and that gave Tori the leverage to get any recoverability for Vulcan past the ULA BoD at all. He then combined it with forward movement on the ACES stage that has been a slow march project inside ULA since about 2012, IIRC. That does not need a heat shield, because it is to be re-used in Space. IMHO, its use may be the sum total of ULA operations by sometime between 2025 and 2030.
Hello. I just heard your JBS interview this evening – good stuff as usual. Re: the interview, Slashdot ran this
https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/04/08/0039225/arca-plans-2018-launch-for-revolutionary-single-stage-rocket
April 8, 2017 article about even more innovation – a single stage booster to LEO. I don’t have the engineering background to judge feasibility, of course, but it certainly looks like more creative competition, and booster recovery has probably occurred to ARCA. As you always explain, and I agree, competition only benefits everyone . . .