Oh, I think that’s the sense we’re hearing from sources, as well as the implication of SNC’s public remarks. I think you’d have to offer a haircut for the first certification flight of *any* new launcher.

That said, the cost differential may not have been quite so massive to begin with. The Cargo Dream Chaser is a big payload; it *might* fit within the mass limits of a Falcon 9 expendable; but with the additional expendable cargo module, it won’t fit in the standard Falcon fairing, so SNC would have to pay extra to have one built, and that would add several million right there.

Still, it really does sound like this was a high comfort level with ULA decision – their relationship goes back a long way, and that kind of thing matters in big corporate decisions like this. Maybe that’s worth a premium to SNC. Even so, they can thank SpaceX that the final price they got, whatever it was, has got to be significantly lower than it would have been if SpaceX did not exist.

If Vulcan is held to the same USAF certification criteria as Falcon 9 was – and there really isn’t any wiggle room on that with SpaceX being plenty big enough now to put ULA in the ground, legally, if any obvious favoritism is applied – then Vulcan is going to need three launches before it can be cleared to carry NatSec payloads.

The recent Dream Chaser announcement noted that the first Dream Chaser Cargo spacecraft would be payload number two for Vulcan – and a second such might well be payload number three. But either SNC wasn’t going to have Dream Chaser Cargo ready to go in time to be payload number one, or wasn’t willing to risk being the payload for Vulcan’s maiden voyage.

Enter Astrobotic. They likely got quoted the new standard F9 launch price of $50 million for a dedicated launch by SpaceX. ULA must have come in with a lower bid.

Considered in isolation, this would be a loss-making deal. But ULA needed to fly the first Vulcan as part of the three missions needed for certification whether or not it could find a payload to put aboard. So ULA – very wisely – took what it could get to minimize the loss on the first Vulcan mission and Astrobotic got a heavily-discounted trip to the Moon for its lander. Win-win.