US Government's Assignment of National Security Launches to ULA is Unconscionable

Government cronyism at its worst

For around the last 20 years, ULA has been the government’s go to launch company for national security launches. That is everything from spy satellites to navigation satellites and more. ULA had an essential monopoly and charged like it.

SpaceX slowly but surely cut away at this, not only by launching at less than 50% of the cost but at a much higher cadence.

ULA is in a bad spot. They bet everything on their next generation rocket, the Vulcan. But it’s now years behind schedule with only a single test launch completed. They can’t even get a 2nd launch off the ground which is necessary to certify to carry national security payloads.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is launching a rocket every three days on average reliably and cheaply. Yet when the latest two national security launch grants were given, it was about 50/50 between ULA and SpaceX. This was despite ULA even having a working rocket and the proposed rocket being more expensive than a Falcon 9 and as yet unproven.

It’s well known ULA is extremely close to the government and they spend heavily on lobbying. But from a purely logical standpoint, it’s ridiculous that the Pentagon would give any missions to a launch provider when their upcoming rocket has not yet even flown. They did no such thing for SpaceX or any other rocket maker in history.

This is government cronyism at its absolute worst. ULA’s delays are jeopardizing national security so much the Pentagon has begun fining them under the terms of their contracts.

It’s about time the Pentagon and national security above all else give credit where credit is due and switch all launches to SpaceX who has proven they are not only more reliable and available than ULA, but significantly cheaper.