That thought has occurred to me as well.

”If readiness isn’t actually the issue, what do you think is? Cost?”

Having done my share of government contracting, I can think of a whole bunch of things it _could_ be, some of which reflect poorly on ULA and some of which reflect poorly on the Space Force, but I’m not sure of what it actually is.

It could be that the combined loads analysis found some incompatibility between Vulcan and GPS III. Or perhaps there’s a particular Vulcan vibration mode that GPS III is susceptible to. Or perhaps the government contracting officer just doesn’t like ULA. (Some of them can be rather petty. They are government bureaucrats after all.) Or it could be something else entirely.

As for cost, Falcon 9 is cheaper than Vulcan, which is cheaper than Falcon Heavy, which is cheaper than Vulcan Centaur Heavy. Launching a GPS 3 satellite on Falcon 9 instead of Vulcan saves money, and so does launching a GPS 3F satellite on Vulcan instead of Falcon Heavy. The net effect is to convert a Falcon Heavy launch into a Falcon 9 launch, so the switch saves money in each direction.

But this was known when the original launch assignments were made, so it would be surprising if the switch were done for that reason, but I really don’t know. It’s still a mystery.

ULA may have a few more years, but I don’t think it has anywhere near another decade in it. Right now, it has a bunch of Amazon Leo launches contracted but had better get about doing those pretty soon if it expects to keep them. Amazon is perfectly capable of doing what the Space Force has lately been doing.

In any case, I don’t see ULA being in a good position to pursue additional Amazon Leo work once its current contract is completed. There will be too many other reusable or partly-reusable alternatives offering lower launch prices as Amazon Leo moves from initial deployment to maintenance replacement of its constellation.

The wild card would be if ULA actually gets bought by some other entity. There was a recent rumor involving Rocket Lab as a potential purchaser. If such a deal was to take place, it’s hard to see why RL would continue Vulcan. The main ULA asset of any likely use to RL would be the Decatur manufacturing plant. So, if such a deal happens, it looks more like being a real estate play than a rocket play.

Jeff Wright,

I think I’d like chunky blue cheese dressing on my word salad this time, Jeff.

mkent,

It seems to me that if ULA was actually ready to launch the two payloads it had “taken away” from it and handed to SpaceX, then ULA is in even worse trouble with the Space Force than we thought. If readiness isn’t actually the issue, what do you think is? Cost? I’ll admit to being a tad baffled.

”…it indicates ULA has been unable to get Vulcan ready on time.”

Whatever the reason for this change of venue, this isn’t it. The Vulcan for this flight has been sitting at the launch site for well over a year now waiting for its payload. If the Space Force wanted ULA to launch it, all it had to do was ship the payload to ULA. For reasons not publicly identified, the Space Force won’t do that. It could have been launched in December had the Space Force done so.

”…this is the second time the Pentagon has taken a launch from ULA for these reasons.”

This wasn’t the reason the first time either. Back then not only was the Vulcan for that flight already at the launch site waiting for its payload, there was an open launch slot as well. Had the Space Force delivered the payload to ULA instead of SpaceX, ULA would have launched it last May. They wouldn’t even have had to displace a Kuiper flight to do it, because the Kuiper satellites weren’t ready to fly then either.

So whatever the reason is, it’s not that Vulcan isn’t ready.

They ticked off Ares and SpaceX alive.