[shreezus]

This article sounds like it was written by ChatGPT. That said, it's wild we were still using expendable rockets like Delta IV Heavy when SpaceX offerings are objectively better & cheaper. What SpaceX has done for the industry is nothing short of incredible.

[Rebelgecko]

I think that's a bit overly reductionist. This launch cost about $150m (granted, without competition from SpaceX it probably would've been much pricier). I think the going rate for a Falcon Heavy is around $120m. Not a huge difference, and it's very possible that changing the mission requirements to work with Falcon Heavy would cost more than $30m. In the past SpaceX had limitations like no vertical integration, narrower fairing, limitations with higher orbits, shorter time limits between engine burns, less accuracy in some orbits, etc. I haven't followed the launch industry as much lately so maybe thats not true anymore, but I think those things were still true when this launch was purchased ~5 years ago

[martythemaniak]

Wikipedia says NRO launches are $440m, so the price difference is really really big, which is the reason why this is the last launch - not even the US Government has that kinda cash for launches.

The other reason is there's a lag of several years between when a capability is established (Falcon Heavy) and when large customers can take advantage of it. For example, we really shouldn't expect Starship to make a dent in way satellites and telescopes are designed and built until the 2030s.

[icegreentea2]

Delta IV is notoriously expensive, but USG has plenty of DoD cash for expendable launches in general. The next block (phase 2) NSSL launches are 60% ULA Vulcan. We'll see what phase 3 looks like. I suspect it'll be far more weighted towards SpaceX to try to give ULA a kick in the pants.

DoD and USG learned through the 90s-now how screwy things get when you don't have enough competition or you can't spread your money evenly amongst vendors. They will spend the money now and indefinitely to assure they can get to space when they want to, how they want to.

That doesn't mean they're happy about it though. I'm sure they'd love if everyone was as affordable as SpaceX.

[Rebelgecko]

I think Wiki is wrong, IIRC this was part of a block buy of three launches for $450 million

[lern_too_spel]

Yes, Wikipedia says $2.2 billion for 5 launches, but the reference says $1.18 billion for 5 launches, where NROL-70 was part of a three launch buy for $467.5 million. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Delta_IV_Heavy_launc...

[zaphoyd]

the reference says $1.18 billion just for "launch operation costs" that doesn't include the hardware. Farther down the source cites the hardware + operations as $2.2B/5 launches

[AnimalMuppet]

Does that Wikipedia figure include the satellite?

[subatomicspace]

The figure would be for just the launch itself (however accurate it may be). Satellite costs for these big missions would be in the "multi-hundreds of millions of dollars" range.

[numpad0]

Is SpaceX running out of patience with slow, or near nonexistent growth of so-called launch market?

[throwaway48476]

The problem is satellites take a long time to manufacture, upwards of 10 years, and everything is very mass optimized. The industry is too slowly adapting to cheaper more frequent launches.

[dotnet00]

They have their own launch market keeping them busy. Also, even without Starlink, there has been growth in the launch market, it just happens that with modern electronics, most satellites don't need to be very large, and there are a few sets of orbits most of them want to go to. So you can just have a regularly scheduled trip to an orbit and absorb a lot of the demand in one launch.

[perihelions]

The point of overpaying on the 2nd-best choice is that it maintains an independent backup if the 1st-best disappears suddenly. The client (DoD) is willing to pay for that insurance: they do not want a multi-year downtime interval they're unable to launch military hardware.

(This isn't an anti-SpaceX thing, really: the dual-provider system (Atlas/Delta) long predates them).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Space_Launch

(And besides, these satellites are orders of magnitude more expensive than their launch vehicle! The NRO's budget alone is around $10 billion per year).

[walrus01]

If you stop building anything for long enough you lose the capability to do it. There's reasons why the DoD wants to maintain at least two contractors, so I agree with your point here.

As an example when the UK built the first Astute class submarine about ten years ago they ran into a huge number of delays and technical issues because everyone who had been involved in their previous nuclear submarine construction program in the early to mid 1980s had retired or moved on to new things.