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SpaceX nears big US govt. missions as ULA handwaves about risks of competition

Falcon 9 B1045 rolls out to Pad 40 ahead of its first launch in April 2018. (NASA/SpaceX)

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Speaking at the 2018 Von Braun Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, ULA COO John Elbon expressed worries that the US National Security Space (NSS) apparatus could be put at significant risk if it comes to rely too heavily on the commercial launch industry to assure access to space.

Given that the US military’s launch capabilities rest solely on SpaceX and ULA and will remain that way for at least three more years, Elbon’s comment was effectively an odd barb tossed in the direction of SpaceX and – to a lesser extent – Blue Origin, two disruptive and commercially-oriented launch providers.

Reading between the lines

For the most part, Elbon’s brief presentation centered around a reasonable discussion of ULA’s track record and future vehicle development, emphasizing the respectable reliability of its current Atlas V and Delta IV rockets and the ‘heritage’ they share with ULA’s next-generation Vulcan vehicle. However, the COO twice brought up an intriguing concern that the US military launch apparatus could suffer if it ends up relying too heavily on ‘commercially-sustained’ launch vehicles like Falcon 9/Heavy or New Glenn.

To provide historical context and evidence favorable to his position, Elbon brought up a now-obscure event in the history of the launch industry, where – 20 years ago – companies Lockheed Martin and Boeing reportedly “set out to develop … Atlas V and Delta IV” primarily to support the launch of several large satellite constellations. The reality and causes of the US launch industry’s instability in the late ’90s and early ’00s is almost indistinguishable from this narrative, however.

Despite the many veils of aerospace and military secrecy surrounding the events that occurred afterward, the facts show that – in 1999 – Boeing (per acquisition of McDonnell Douglas) and Lockheed Martin (LM) both received awards of $500M to develop the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets, and the military further committed to buying a full 28 launches for $2B between 2002 and 2006. Combined, the US military effectively placed $3B ($4.5B in 2018 dollars) on the table for its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program with the goal of ensuring uninterrupted access to space for national security purposes.

Rocketing into corporate espionage

“The robust commercial market forecast led the Air Force to reconsider its acquisition strategy.  The EELV acquisition strategy changed from a planned down-select to a single contractor and a standard Air Force development program [where the USAF funds vehicle development in its entirety] to a dual commercialized approach that leveraged commercial market share and contractor investment.” – USAF EELV Fact Sheet, March 2017

The above quote demonstrates that there is at least an inkling of truth in Elbon’s spin. However, perhaps the single biggest reason that the EELV program and its two awardees stumbled was gross, inexcusable conduct on the part of Boeing. In essence, the company’s space executives conspired to use corporate espionage to gain an upper-hand over Lockheed Martin, knowledge which ultimately allowed Boeing to severely low-ball the prices of its Delta IV rocket, securing 19 of 28 available USAF launch contracts.

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Ultimately, Lockheed Martin caught wind of Boeing’s suspect behavior and filed a lawsuit that began several years of USAF investigations and highly unpleasant revelations, while Boeing also had at least 10 future launch contracts withdrawn to the tune of ~$1B (1999). USAF investigations discovered that Boeing had lied extensively to the Air Force for more than four years – the actual volume of information stolen would balloon wildly from Boeing’s initial reports of “seven pages of harmless data” to 10+ boxes containing more than 42,000 pages of extremely detailed technical and proprietary information about Lockheed Martin’s Atlas V rocket proposal.

“If you rewind the clock 20 years, there were folks on a panel like this having dialogue about commercial launch, and there were envisioned several constellations that were going to require significant commercial launch. Lockheed Martin and Boeing set out to develop launch vehicles that were focused on that very robust commercial market – in the case of McDonald Douglas at the time, which later became Boeing, the factory in Decatur was…sized to crank out 40 [rocket boosters] a year, a couple of ships were bought to transport those…significant infrastructure put in place to address that envisioned launch market.” – John Elbon, COO, United Launch Alliance (ULA)

 

In reality, Boeing was so desperate to secure USAF launches – despite the fact that it knew full well that Delta IV was too expensive to be sustainably competitive – that dozens of employees were eventually roped into a systematic, years-long, highly-illegal program of corporate espionage specifically designed to beat out government launch competitor Lockheed Martin. Humorously, Delta IV was not even Boeing’s design – rather, Boeing acquired designer McDonnell Douglas in late 1996, five days before the USAF announced the decision to reject Boeing and another company’s EELV proposals, narrowing down to two finalists (McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin).

Seven years after the original lawsuit snowballed, Boeing settled with Lockheed Martin for a payment of more than $600M in 2006, accepting responsibility for its employees’ actions but admitting no corporate wrongdoing. Five years after that settlement, John Elbon became Vice President of Boeing’s Space Exploration division. This is by no means to suggest that Elbon is in any way complicit, having spent much of his 30+ years at Boeing managing the company’s involvement in the International Space Station, but more serves as an example of how recent these events are and why their consequences almost certainly continue to reverberate loudly within the US space industry.

SpaceX forces change

Worsened significantly by the consequences of Boeing’s lies about the actual operational costs of its Delta IV rocket (it had planned to secretly write off a loss on each rocket in order to steal USAF market share from LockMart), the commercial market for the extremely expensive rocket was and still is functionally nonexistent. 35 out of the family’s 36 launches have been contracted by the US military (30), NOAA (3), or NASA (2); the rocket’s first launch, likely sold at a major discount to Eutelsat, remains its one and only commercial mission.

ULA’s Delta Heavy seen during the August 2018 launch of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. (Tom Cross)

Atlas V, typically priced around 30% less than comparable Delta IV variants, has had a far more productive career, albeit with very few commercial launches since the Dec. 2006 formation of the United Launch Alliance. Since 2007, just 5 of Atlas V’s 70 launches have been for commercial customers. Frankly, although Atlas V was appreciably more affordable than Delta IV, neither rocket was ever able to sustainably compete with Europe’s Ariane 5 workhorse – Ariane 5 cost more per launch, but superior payload performance often let Arianespace manifest two large satellites on a single launch, approximately halving the cost for each customer. Russia’s affordable (but only moderately reliable) Proton rockets also played an important role in the commercial launch industry prior to SpaceX’s arrival.

After fighting tooth and nail for years to break ULA’s US governmental launch monopoly, SpaceX’s first dedicated National Security Space launch finally occurred less than a year and a half ago, in May 2017. SpaceX has since placed a USAF spaceplane and a classified NSS-related satellite into orbit and been awarded launch contracts for critical USAF payloads, most notably winning five of five competed GPS III satellite launches, to begin as early as mid-December. Falcon 9 will cost the USAF roughly 30% less than a comparable Atlas 5 contract, $97M to ULA’s ~$135M.

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A bit more than two decades after Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas and began a calculated effort to steal trade secrets from Lockheed Martin, Elbon – now COO of the Boeing/Lockheed Martin-cooperative ULA – seems to fervently believe that the most critical mistake made in the late 1990s and early 2000s was the USAF’s decision to partially support the development of two separate rockets. Elbon concluded his remarks on the topic with one impressively unambiguous summary of ULA’s position:

“We have to make sure that we don’t get too much supply and not enough demand so that the [launch] providers can’t survive in a robust business environment, and then we lose the capability as a country to do the launches we need to do … [That’s] the perspective we have at ULA and it’s based on the experience that we’ve been through in the past.”

In his sole Delta IV vs. Atlas V case-study, what ULA now seems to think might have been “too much supply” under the USAF’s EELV program appears to literally be the fundamental minimum conditions needed for competition to exist at all – two companies offering two competing products. Short of directly stating as much, it’s difficult to imagine a more concise method of revealing the apparent belief that competition – at all – is intrinsically undesirable or risky.

A recording of the Von Braun Symposium’s Commercial Space panel can be viewed here at timestamp 01:11:40.

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla Model Y L’s new features flexed at unveiling event at Diner

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Tesla Model Y L in a field
Credit: Tesla

Tesla flexed the new features of the Model Y L with a dedicated media event at the company’s Diner on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.

The Model Y L is the extended-wheelbase version of the all-electric crossover, which has been voted the best-selling car in the world on three occasions. The vehicle is already rolling off production lines at Gigafactory Texas, and first deliveries are slated to take place later this year.

Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990

Teslarati was invited to the event, but due to some scheduling conflicts, we could not make it to Los Angeles. Instead, we will have our hands on a media unit sometime in August, so we’ll be able to spend some more extended time with the Model Y L.

However, plenty of those who made it to LA shared some cool features that set the Model Y L apart from the Model Y.

Multi-Row Climate Control

Tesla fitted the Model Y L with full climate control on all three rows on the front screen. It can be adjusted by selecting which row you’d like to modify on the right-hand side of the touch screen:

Better Rear Window Visibility

One of the strangest things about the Model Y, especially the Juniper iteration, is the rear window has extremely limited visibility when looking into the rearview mirror.

Tesla has improved upon this with the Model Y L:

PowerShare will be included

Model Y L will come with PowerShare in North America, with an 11.5kW output to your home. Tesla said it would require Powerwall 3 for operation.

Wireless Charging Pad

There has been some speculation that Tesla would upgrade the wireless charging pads in the United States, but this is not the case.

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Tesla owner fixes common feature complaint with crafty DIY retrofit

Tesla confirmed that it does not come with the cooled pads as the Y L in China does. This is because North America has not adopted Qi charging yet.

Thermal Management Improvements

These improvements in the Model Y L were seen with thermal management:

  • Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
  • +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather, 7 miles of real-world range gained
  • 8x more solar energy reflection off of glass roof
  • 30% reduction in solar energy entering the cabin

Demand

Tesla said the Model Y L is almost sold out in the U.S. It comes with

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  • 1 year of FSD Supervised
  • 1 year of Supercharging
  • 1 year of Premium Connectivity
  • Free exterior paint color, interior, and wheel option at no additional cost
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Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Thursday night to deny a ridiculous rumor regarding the sale of the company’s Chinese vehicle production plant, Gigafactory Shanghai.

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter, claimed in a scathing new report that Tesla was exploring a potential sale of the entire China business in an effort to help bolster a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk immediately denied the rumor not once but twice, initially calling it “fake news,” and then calling it “absurdly fake news” in a separate post just a few moments later:

The original poster of the Wall Street Journal article that Musk saw deleted the initial post sharing the headline and the rumored sale of Tesla’s China business.

The report seemed absolutely and unequivocally false to begin with; Tesla’s business in China is among the most important pieces of the company’s business. Not only does the factory supply vehicles for the domestic market, but also for various other markets in Asia and Europe.

China is also one of the largest automotive markets in the world, and Tesla has performed well there despite the robust competition.

The speculation regarding a Tesla and SpaceX merger has started to gain steam this year as the space exploration company went public just a month ago. There has been speculation that Musk will bridge all of his companies under one “umbrella company,” and analysts believe this could happen before the end of the decade.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

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This is the latest iteration of Musk’s very evident war on mainstream media. Reports regarding any of Musk’s companies are quick to get the dreaded “false” or “fake news” response from the CEO when they are unfounded.

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Elon Musk

Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get

Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.

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Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]

Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”

The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.

The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.

Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress

Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.

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Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.

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