This Man Beats Elon Musk by $27 Million on Space Force Contract and its Not Jeff Bezos

Jamie P., Tech Times 21 August 2020, 02:08 pm

The United States Space Force agency has recently announced its chosen private companies to accommodate its future space missions. Two of them includes Elon Musk's SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance (ULA). We all know who Elon Musk is, but who is the man behind ULA? Here's what we know about him so far.

Meet ULA CEO Tory Bruno

Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA since 2014, has recently closed deals with the US Space Force for one of the biggest funded space military missions of the country called National Security Space Launch Phase 2 Launch. This project will last until 2027.

Just like ULA, Elon Musk's SpaceX also won on the said contract. This means that both of their companies will help the government agency to fly rockets into space for at least three missions.

However, interestingly, ULA was more valued compared to the SpaceX.

According to Business Journals, Bruno expected the government's support with their company. After all, ULA received 60% of all their launches, amounting to $337 million to launch two satellites in 2022.

This was compared to SpaceX that only receives $316 million to launch one satellite on the same year. Technically, that's ULA winning against rival SpaceX for a prize of exactly $27 million.

"I was able to sell them two missions for the price of SpaceX selling one," Bruno said in an exclusive interview with the Denver Business Journal. "That's pretty remarkable."

Though it was interesting, Elon Musk seemed to take this news as a challenge for his company.

Efficiently reusable rockets are all that matter for making life multiplanetary & “space power”. Because their rockets are not reusable, it will become obvious over time that ULA is a complete waste of taxpayer money. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2020

He called Bruno's company as a "complete waste of taxpayer money."

ULA CEO answered it back and said that "this was a big, competitive procurement. It's in the country's best interest to have a broad industrial base."

It is not just ULA vs. SpaceX; its Blue Origin too!

The rivalry between SpaceX and ULA is not just a two-way fight. Its actually a three-way fight and the other one belongs to another tech billionaire Jeff Bezos called Blue Origin.

Just like SpaceX and ULA, Blue Origin also offers space rocket businesses and also presented to the U.S. Space Force. As Tech Times unfortunately reported, the agency denied their proposal, which was actually surprising since they were the previous partner of the agency in 2019.

Maybe the world needs to know more about Tory Bruno now.