A Boeing-Lockheed joint venture's launch of a new Vulcan rocket this week inaugurated a formidable rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX, a milestone long sought by the U.S. government as it seeks to build a list of launch suppliers for its satellites.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin's United Launch Alliance sent Vulcan into space for the first time on Monday, a first step toward reclaiming market share from SpaceX, whose reusable Falcon 9 rocket for years has been the main option for countries to get their satellites into space. The payload, a privately funded moon lander, will not finish its mission because of tech problems, but the Vulcan launch in Florida was a success.
"This launch puts ULA in the front-runner position to challenge SpaceX's de facto monopoly over launch," said Caleb Henry, a space analyst at Quilty Analytics. "If ULA can prove that Vulcan can scale up to a rapid launch cadence quickly, they will provide the market with another route to space."
Dependence on SpaceX has been a concern for the Pentagon, which wants multiple vendors of rides to orbit.
"If SpaceX has a bad day in the future, we'd still have a pathway to space for our national security needs" with Vulcan, said Michael Lembeck, a space consultant and director of University of Illinois Advanced Space Systems lab.
Demand for launches has soared, driven mainly by plans from countries and companies like Amazon to put thousands of internet satellites in space. But supply to the West has dropped, with Europe's sovereign space access held up by rocket development delays and Russia's rocket program being isolated by the West over the Ukraine war.
Bigger U.S. rockets, such as SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn, are months or years from reaching orbit.
"It takes a long time to develop a new heavy-class launch vehicle, so the scarcity is going to be here for about 10 years," ULA CEO Tory Bruno said in an interview at Vulcan's launchpad before its launch.
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