Hacker News Reader

ULA is already dead in the water. The only reason why they're around is because of the monopoly they have with US military launches.

View on HN

With the sheer amount of money backing ULA, there's no way they can be considered dead in the water. Their launch vessels are incredibly reliable, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

They're not just viable competitors, they're the current market leader. SpaceX is the peppy young upstart here (and still, failures like this are stepping stones to future reliability, if they're spending the time learning from their mistakes like they should be).

At least it was unmanned.

ULA wins very little commercial business. So yes, they're the market leader for US government launches of extremely expensive satellites. The rest of the market, commercial and US government launches of less expensive stuff, is where SpaceX is way ahead of ULA.

Looking at SpaceX's and Orbital Science's recent performances, ULA seems to be in good shape.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com