ULA has abruptly gotten way more competitive in their pricing. A few years ago they were not. Their "Best deal" for the Atlas V was a 36-rocket "bulk buy" price

ULA has abruptly gotten way more competitive in their pricing. A few years ago they were not. Their "Best deal" for the Atlas V was a 36-rocket "bulk buy" priced the lowest-tier Atlas V 401 at $164M/launch[1]. That does 9,797kg to LEO[2], or $16,740/kg. The GAO cites $164M/launch as the price for the cheapest Delta V[3] (is there some kind of threshold at $165M?), which when the Falcon 9 was introduced could put 8,500kg to LEO[4], or $19,294/kg. (It has since been uprated and gotten slightly cheaper). Must've screwed up my calculations earlier, because those aren't tallying. Anyhow, as you can see, SpaceX is already around 7x cheaper compared to where ULA was, and should cross the 10x threshold shortly. Nice to see ULA responding to competitive pressure, however! 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20160324172526/http://www.ulalaunch.com/faqs-launch-costs.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20160324172526/http://www.ulalau... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V 3: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-609 http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-17-609 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV#Delta_IV_Small https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV#Delta_IV_Small