Lockheed, SpaceX Trade Barbs 215
Lockheed Martin and Boeing have been getting all government launch contracts for the past six years. That is, until SpaceX demonstrated they could reach the International Space Station successfully this year. Asked about the new competition brought by SpaceX, Lockheed CEO Robert Stevens made light of the younger company's success. "I’m hugely pleased with 66 in a row from [the Boeing-Lockheed alliance], and I don’t know the record of SpaceX yet," he said. "Two in a row?" When he was asked about the skyrocketing price of launching his sky rockets, he said, "You can thrift on cost. You can take cost out of a rocket. But I will guarantee you, in my experience, when you start pulling a lot of costs out of a rocket, your quality and your probability of success in delivering a payload to orbit diminishes." SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was blunt about the source of the price difference between the companies: "The fundamental reason SpaceX’s rockets are lower cost and more powerful is that our technology is significantly more advanced than that of the Lockheed-Boeing rockets, which were designed last century." The Delta IV and Atlas V rockets of Lockheed-Boeing average about $464 million per launch, while SpaceX's Falcon 9 launches for $54 million. Its upcoming Falcon Heavy will go up for $80-125 million.
Re:Better / Faster / Cheaper: Pick Two (Score:5, Informative)
That failure was based on NASAs protocol to not relight the engine, and it was a secondary payload priced on that possibility. More like designed-in risk.
Re:Progress! (Score:5, Informative)
According to a federal report [nhtsa.gov], you are paying $839 and adding 125 pounds for a much safer car than you had 25 years ago, so yes. People are willing to pay more for safety.
I don't think ULA prices being 10X have anything to do with more safety, I think its mostly more overhead and lack of competition.