Raptored Vulcan Part 3: But Why?
As I tried to show in Part 2: Performance, Vulcan would get a big performance boost from switching to Raptor. But is it worth it for ULA? And would SpaceX sell?
Is it worth it for ULA?
Performance is attractive, but at what cost? Since BE-4 seems to be adequate for ULA, and since an engine swap wouldn't get Vulcan flying any sooner this close to the finish line, what would ULA get out of switching?
Contracts would have to be renegotiated, Vulcan structures (plumbing, thrust structure, lower dome position), would have to be modified, there would be software changes, and there might even be operational changes. The work would be non-trivial, and so would the one-time cost. What, besides raw performance, might make it worth it?
Lower recurring costs, for one. Rumors circulated a while back of Raptor production costs falling below $2M, and this seems to be in line with numerous tweets from Elon Musk. And much more aggressive cost cutting is planned for the future. This, of course, is just production cost and does not include amortized development costs or profit margins on sales to an external customer. It may or may not include validation and transportation costs; if it doesn't, though, those are likely to be within the error bars of the engine cost. Also this is for sea level engines -- RVacs with their much larger nozzle and lower production rate are likely to be more expensive.
~$3M is probably the lowest price SpaceX would consider selling these engines for at this time, though they'd almost certainly try to get as much money as they could for them (if they were willing to sell, that is -- we'll get to that). What this would mean in this scenario is that they would have to be substantially cheaper than BE-4 to be worth ULA's while to switch.
Estimates for how much ULA is paying for BE-4 seem to range between about $6M and $12M per engine. This suggests SpaceX could easily undercut BE-4 pricing while making a healthy profit and saving ULA as much as a few million dollars per engine.
Furthermore, some launches that might have needed 4 SRBs could probably fly with 2, and many needing 6 SRBs could fly with 4. Between the cheaper engines and fewer SRBs on average, ULA might save in the neighborhood of $5-10M per launch (big error bars here, of course).
If ULA prices Vulcan to capability rather than hardware provided, this could have a dramatic impact on Vulcan's operating margins, and assuming it flies often enough and long enough (Vulcan already has 30+ flights lined up), it could potentially more than cover development costs for the engine swap and have a big positive impact on ULA's bottom line.
Another motivation could be to have a shot at getting contracts ULA otherwise might not. One of the reasons ULA lost the prestigious Europa Clipper contract to SpaceX was that Vulcan lacked the performance to launch Europa Clipper to Jupiter using the same Mars-Earth gravity assist scheme Falcon Heavy will use. ULA had apparently made reference in their bid to future engine upgrades that could provide enough performance for that mission, but NASA found these proposed upgrades too vague and uncertain (EC source selection statement, pg. 8). It's worth noting that the RVac upgrade simulated in Part 2 happens to provide almost exactly the performance upgrade called for (the need was to go from ~5000kg to 6065kg for the mission trajectory).
Contracts would have to be renegotiated, Vulcan structures (plumbing, thrust structure, lower dome position), would have to be modified, there would be software changes, and there might even be operational changes. The work would be non-trivial, and so would the one-time cost. What, besides raw performance, might make it worth it?
Lower recurring costs, for one. Rumors circulated a while back of Raptor production costs falling below $2M, and this seems to be in line with numerous tweets from Elon Musk. And much more aggressive cost cutting is planned for the future. This, of course, is just production cost and does not include amortized development costs or profit margins on sales to an external customer. It may or may not include validation and transportation costs; if it doesn't, though, those are likely to be within the error bars of the engine cost. Also this is for sea level engines -- RVacs with their much larger nozzle and lower production rate are likely to be more expensive.
~$3M is probably the lowest price SpaceX would consider selling these engines for at this time, though they'd almost certainly try to get as much money as they could for them (if they were willing to sell, that is -- we'll get to that). What this would mean in this scenario is that they would have to be substantially cheaper than BE-4 to be worth ULA's while to switch.
Estimates for how much ULA is paying for BE-4 seem to range between about $6M and $12M per engine. This suggests SpaceX could easily undercut BE-4 pricing while making a healthy profit and saving ULA as much as a few million dollars per engine.
Furthermore, some launches that might have needed 4 SRBs could probably fly with 2, and many needing 6 SRBs could fly with 4. Between the cheaper engines and fewer SRBs on average, ULA might save in the neighborhood of $5-10M per launch (big error bars here, of course).
If ULA prices Vulcan to capability rather than hardware provided, this could have a dramatic impact on Vulcan's operating margins, and assuming it flies often enough and long enough (Vulcan already has 30+ flights lined up), it could potentially more than cover development costs for the engine swap and have a big positive impact on ULA's bottom line.
Another motivation could be to have a shot at getting contracts ULA otherwise might not. One of the reasons ULA lost the prestigious Europa Clipper contract to SpaceX was that Vulcan lacked the performance to launch Europa Clipper to Jupiter using the same Mars-Earth gravity assist scheme Falcon Heavy will use. ULA had apparently made reference in their bid to future engine upgrades that could provide enough performance for that mission, but NASA found these proposed upgrades too vague and uncertain (EC source selection statement, pg. 8). It's worth noting that the RVac upgrade simulated in Part 2 happens to provide almost exactly the performance upgrade called for (the need was to go from ~5000kg to 6065kg for the mission trajectory).
Strange Bedfellows
Surprisingly, the best reason to switch engines might be the relationship with the engine supplier. This is quite counterintuitive since SpaceX and ULA have butted heads from the beginning whereas ULA and Blue Origin have a much more congenial relationship, but underneath the surface, the Achilles heel of the ULA-Blue Origin collaboration seems to be that the two companies need each other to succeed but not to succeed too much.
Although it hasn't yet reached orbit, Blue Origin is vying to be a serious competitor in orbital launch, like SpaceX and ULA. But from the start, Blue Origin was a lot friendlier to established aerospace companies and norms than SpaceX was. When Blue Origin first bid for the Vulcan engine contract, the expectation was that Blue Origin would compete in the commercial launch market once dominated by European and Russian launch vehicles, while ULA would continue to focus on US government launches over which it had enjoyed a lucrative monopoly. Blue Origin was aiming for a modest but substantial cadence of around 12 launches per year, and ULA would keep focusing on government launches.
But SpaceX threw a wrench in these plans when it came along and started both underbidding the dominant players in commercial launch and suing to be allowed to bid for defense launches. It took a huge bite out of the commercial launch market (the bite Blue Origin wanted to have) and put massive pricing pressure on all of the launch providers, including ULA.
Out of all them, ULA responded to the pricing pressure perhaps most aggressively, choosing to retire its very expensive and seldom used Delta IV line of launch vehicles, dramatically cutting costs on Atlas V production, and slashing its launch prices. SpaceX was still cheaper, but now ULA was cheap enough to to compete in the commercial sector against rockets like Ariane 5, with future cost reductions via Vulcan making it potentially competitive with Ariane 6 and New Glenn.
On the flipside, with SpaceX having opened the door to other providers for defense launches and while also making it harder for other to make money in commercial launch, Blue Origin decided to compete in the defense market. BO competed to be one of the two launch providers who would share a batch of over 30 lucrative defense launches over a period of 5 years under the NSSL program. Blue Origin did not win one of the coveted spots -- the winners were ULA and SpaceX, but Blue's decision to compete for defense launches strained relations with ULA.
Although it hasn't yet reached orbit, Blue Origin is vying to be a serious competitor in orbital launch, like SpaceX and ULA. But from the start, Blue Origin was a lot friendlier to established aerospace companies and norms than SpaceX was. When Blue Origin first bid for the Vulcan engine contract, the expectation was that Blue Origin would compete in the commercial launch market once dominated by European and Russian launch vehicles, while ULA would continue to focus on US government launches over which it had enjoyed a lucrative monopoly. Blue Origin was aiming for a modest but substantial cadence of around 12 launches per year, and ULA would keep focusing on government launches.
But SpaceX threw a wrench in these plans when it came along and started both underbidding the dominant players in commercial launch and suing to be allowed to bid for defense launches. It took a huge bite out of the commercial launch market (the bite Blue Origin wanted to have) and put massive pricing pressure on all of the launch providers, including ULA.
Out of all them, ULA responded to the pricing pressure perhaps most aggressively, choosing to retire its very expensive and seldom used Delta IV line of launch vehicles, dramatically cutting costs on Atlas V production, and slashing its launch prices. SpaceX was still cheaper, but now ULA was cheap enough to to compete in the commercial sector against rockets like Ariane 5, with future cost reductions via Vulcan making it potentially competitive with Ariane 6 and New Glenn.
On the flipside, with SpaceX having opened the door to other providers for defense launches and while also making it harder for other to make money in commercial launch, Blue Origin decided to compete in the defense market. BO competed to be one of the two launch providers who would share a batch of over 30 lucrative defense launches over a period of 5 years under the NSSL program. Blue Origin did not win one of the coveted spots -- the winners were ULA and SpaceX, but Blue's decision to compete for defense launches strained relations with ULA.
Now the worlds of Vulcan and New Glenn have collided, and there might not be room for both. With SpaceX's pricing moat, the share of the market available to Vulcan and New Glenn has shrunk faster than the market has grown. There is room for two heavy-lift providers, but there might not be room for three. If one of these two new rockets proves to offer definitively better value than the other, it might mean the other will flop.
But such success would be a pyrrhic victory. The two vehicles share engines, and by extension, bear together the fixed costs associated with BE-4 development. If one goes bust, the other could get more expensive to fly. The higher the cadence of a rocket's launch, the cheaper it is to operate, since fixed costs are divided across launches. But if one rocket captures market at the expense of the other, the fixed costs associated with their shared components will not go down. And if the success of e.g. New Glenn causes Vulcan to fail, and New Glenn is unable to capture all of Vulcan's market, New Glenn could potentially get more expensive (and vice versa). Success has diminishing returns, and it's not clear that the cadence plans that ULA and Blue Origin have made are compatible in a world where both are flying alongside SpaceX and some upcoming new entrants to space launch.
Wouldn't this be the case with SpaceX too? Not exactly. At this point, ULA doesn't have much of a shot at sustainably outcompeting SpaceX on price (Space Force purchases incorporating vertical integration development costs are not a good indicator), regardless of what engines they use.
ULA will get launches (quite a few of them) from customers who care about maintaining redundant launch providers, those who don't want to fly SpaceX (because they're competing against them in the communications satellite space), and those looking for ULA's real and perceived unique capabilities. But pricing is unlikely to be the cause of ULA winning contracts SpaceX would otherwise get. Even the performance increase which would have helped their chances at winning the Europa Clipper contract is unlikely to make very much of a difference.
SpaceX, for its part, is planning to produce so many engines for Starship that the ones they sell to ULA wouldn't make much of a difference in production rates or amortization. Furthermore, the success of Starship and Raptor primarily depends on the success of Starlink -- which is gearing up to provide a lot more launch demand on its own than the total of global launch capacity today, not on the ups and downs of the launch market. In otherwise, SpaceX wouldn't need ULA to keep buying engines in order to keep their costs low.
But such success would be a pyrrhic victory. The two vehicles share engines, and by extension, bear together the fixed costs associated with BE-4 development. If one goes bust, the other could get more expensive to fly. The higher the cadence of a rocket's launch, the cheaper it is to operate, since fixed costs are divided across launches. But if one rocket captures market at the expense of the other, the fixed costs associated with their shared components will not go down. And if the success of e.g. New Glenn causes Vulcan to fail, and New Glenn is unable to capture all of Vulcan's market, New Glenn could potentially get more expensive (and vice versa). Success has diminishing returns, and it's not clear that the cadence plans that ULA and Blue Origin have made are compatible in a world where both are flying alongside SpaceX and some upcoming new entrants to space launch.
Wouldn't this be the case with SpaceX too? Not exactly. At this point, ULA doesn't have much of a shot at sustainably outcompeting SpaceX on price (Space Force purchases incorporating vertical integration development costs are not a good indicator), regardless of what engines they use.
ULA will get launches (quite a few of them) from customers who care about maintaining redundant launch providers, those who don't want to fly SpaceX (because they're competing against them in the communications satellite space), and those looking for ULA's real and perceived unique capabilities. But pricing is unlikely to be the cause of ULA winning contracts SpaceX would otherwise get. Even the performance increase which would have helped their chances at winning the Europa Clipper contract is unlikely to make very much of a difference.
SpaceX, for its part, is planning to produce so many engines for Starship that the ones they sell to ULA wouldn't make much of a difference in production rates or amortization. Furthermore, the success of Starship and Raptor primarily depends on the success of Starlink -- which is gearing up to provide a lot more launch demand on its own than the total of global launch capacity today, not on the ups and downs of the launch market. In otherwise, SpaceX wouldn't need ULA to keep buying engines in order to keep their costs low.
Ironically, despite the bad blood between the two companies, the future fortunes of SpaceX and ULA don't seem to have a negative coupling nearly as strong as the one between the fortunes of ULA and Blue Origin.
This would also apply acutely to ULA's proposed SMART reuse scheme. Blue Origin would likely be quite unhappy with ULA starting to reuse BE-4s and dramatically cutting their new engine orders. They would likely try to use pricing pressure to stop it from happening -- e.g. on contract renewals they might stipulate a minimum delivery cadence or an annual fixed fee with a big discount on individual engine prices. Such a strategy would likely be very effective at stopping SMART, since even with fixed unit prices, the profitability of engine reuse at ULA's launch cadence is marginal -- savings on engine purchases would have to be greater than amortized development and ongoing operational costs.
ULA's proposed SMART scheme for recovering and reusing the first stage engine pod only
Credit: ULA
SpaceX, on the other hand, would be unlikely to be impacted much by loss of engine sales, and in fact would be likely to support ULA's attempts at reuse because of Elon Musk's not only pragmatic but also ideological opposition to expending rocket parts.
It makes a lot of strategic sense, then, for ULA to get its engines from SpaceX rather than Blue Origin. It would give them more room for success, while also keeping them from supporting a rival that's in theory more dangerous for ULA's market position than SpaceX. The lower cost and performance gains would really be the icing on the cake.
What about the disadvantages?
Aside from the work involved in switching engines and providers, there are three big considerations I can think of that *might* put Raptor at a disadvantage from ULA's perspective:
1. Reliability
I'm not going to claim here that Raptor is a less reliable engine than BE-4. The bottom line is that we don't know. Yes, there have been some public failures, but that's been with engines in an active hardware-rich development program, and as far as I know the only in-flight failures (still with development engines, mind you) have been on re-light -- an operational mode that is irrelevant for ULA.
What I will say is that Starship has very different engine reliability requirements from Vulcan. Since SpaceX's plan is to eventually launch and land passengers propulsively with Starship, it's tempting to think that whatever the requirements for BE-4 are, Raptor must have higher requirements, but the picture is not as simple as that.
For one, passenger flights (and even professional crewed flights) are a ways off in the future. Starship is still very much in development. Once it is operational it will start with SpaceX-internal cargo deliveries (Starlink), progress to commercial customers and tanker flights, and then high-value government missions, and only with a big leap in reliability go on to crewed launches and landings in the absence of a separate abort mechanism.
Perhaps more importantly, Starship has a lot of engine redundancy available to it. I've covered in an earlier post how this can allow for unprecedented levels of safety with relatively modest engine reliability.
1. Reliability
I'm not going to claim here that Raptor is a less reliable engine than BE-4. The bottom line is that we don't know. Yes, there have been some public failures, but that's been with engines in an active hardware-rich development program, and as far as I know the only in-flight failures (still with development engines, mind you) have been on re-light -- an operational mode that is irrelevant for ULA.
What I will say is that Starship has very different engine reliability requirements from Vulcan. Since SpaceX's plan is to eventually launch and land passengers propulsively with Starship, it's tempting to think that whatever the requirements for BE-4 are, Raptor must have higher requirements, but the picture is not as simple as that.
For one, passenger flights (and even professional crewed flights) are a ways off in the future. Starship is still very much in development. Once it is operational it will start with SpaceX-internal cargo deliveries (Starlink), progress to commercial customers and tanker flights, and then high-value government missions, and only with a big leap in reliability go on to crewed launches and landings in the absence of a separate abort mechanism.
Perhaps more importantly, Starship has a lot of engine redundancy available to it. I've covered in an earlier post how this can allow for unprecedented levels of safety with relatively modest engine reliability.
The simpler Merlin engine on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has a historical failure rate of around 1:700 during the primary burns, based on two engine failures over nearly 140 flights with nine sea level engines and one vacuum engine. In both cases, the failure was on the first stage with its engine-out capability, and the rocket carried on to orbit, only leading to one partial failure as it placed its primary NASA payload in the right orbit but had to deploy a secondary payload too low (leading to failure of the secondary payload) in order to meet a NASA performance margin requirement for the primary payload.
Merlin relight failures that I'm aware of for the landing engines have been due to inadequate ignition fluids (not an issue for Raptor) and damage during reentry (more easily preventable on Starship because of the reentry angle and engine skirt). The upper stage Merlin engine has never failed to relight for its secondary burn as far as I know.
On Starship, a 1:700 engine failure rate, if achieved for the landing burn, could be enough to reduce landing risk due to soft engine failure down to around 1:50 million, while even a quarter of that reliability could be enough to bring it down to close to one in a million.
Merlin relight failures that I'm aware of for the landing engines have been due to inadequate ignition fluids (not an issue for Raptor) and damage during reentry (more easily preventable on Starship because of the reentry angle and engine skirt). The upper stage Merlin engine has never failed to relight for its secondary burn as far as I know.
On Starship, a 1:700 engine failure rate, if achieved for the landing burn, could be enough to reduce landing risk due to soft engine failure down to around 1:50 million, while even a quarter of that reliability could be enough to bring it down to close to one in a million.
By contrast, Vulcan, with its two engines, doesn't have engine-out capability -- certainly not for the slick configuration early in flight, and for all others, it would have to fly with untenably large performance margins in order to have engine-out capability across the full flight envelope. Engine lighting failures can be caught before take off, but engine shutdown could be catastrophic for a Vulcan flight. Even a failure rate of 1:700 per engine could mean up to a ~1:350 launch failure rate from engine failure alone, likely a higher risk than ULA would be interested in accepting with their unblemished record.
Moreover, because redundancy protects Starship very effectively from engine-out scenarios but not so much from engine-explode scenarios, SpaceX is likely to prefer tradeoffs with Raptor that minimize risk of RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) potentially at the cost of increasing risk of soft failure.
Again, this isn't to say Raptor won't be at least as reliable as BE-4 or that it won't be reliable enough for Vulcan, but it can't be taken for granted that it will.
2. Design Stability
2. Design Stability
This concern was brought up by a Twitter user (unfortunately I can't remember who it was to give them credit). SpaceX is known for frequent and sometimes major changes to mature designs. ULA is known for wanting to play it safe with stable designs.
Ultimately this seems to be more of a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference. ULA does occasionally fly new versions of the RL-10 engine on its upper stages, and is planning to fly new versions of BE-4 as they come. And SpaceX would undoubtedly validate new versions of Raptor on Starship cargo flights before selling them to others.
However, ULA might potentially require more due diligence with contingency analysis than SpaceX is willing to do, which could bifurcate the Raptor production line and close ULA off to engine upgrades, making both parties less than completely happy.
This would be less of an issue, though, if ULA goes forward with the SMART reuse scheme. Once that's in place, a modest stockpile of engines could serve Vulcan, likely for the remainder of its service life, and ULA could upgrade to new engines if and when they choose.
3. Redundancy for Customers
Ultimately this seems to be more of a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference. ULA does occasionally fly new versions of the RL-10 engine on its upper stages, and is planning to fly new versions of BE-4 as they come. And SpaceX would undoubtedly validate new versions of Raptor on Starship cargo flights before selling them to others.
However, ULA might potentially require more due diligence with contingency analysis than SpaceX is willing to do, which could bifurcate the Raptor production line and close ULA off to engine upgrades, making both parties less than completely happy.
This would be less of an issue, though, if ULA goes forward with the SMART reuse scheme. Once that's in place, a modest stockpile of engines could serve Vulcan, likely for the remainder of its service life, and ULA could upgrade to new engines if and when they choose.
3. Redundancy for Customers
The reason ULA exists is because the Air Force was afraid that a corporate espionage scandal that landed Boeing in court would narrow the field of launch vehicles available to them from two to one. The Air Force was willing to pay the higher prices of a monopoly, but they wanted two vehicles with independent architectures so that if one was grounded for some reason, the other could still fly critical national security payloads. So they facilitated a merger of Boeing and Lockheed Martin's launch businesses with the stipulation that both Boeing's Delta IV and Lockheed Martin's Atlas V rockets would be kept operational.
SpaceX is planning to eventually fly all of their payloads with Starship. If ULA switches to Raptor engines, the Space Force would be susceptible to having both of their launch providers grounded because of a Raptor problem like a quality control issue that might crop up in the production line and take months to sort out.
That concern might cause the Space Force to nip such a change in the bud or to consider buying New Glenn flights. A similar consideration might motivate commercial customers with expensive payloads who seem accustomed to paying a premium to have multiple launch providers. They might choose a European Ariane 6 or a Russian Angara A5 when they may have gone for a Vulcan.
This loss of engine diversity might not be all that problematic, though, given SpaceX's well-earned reputation for quickly solving problems that come up. And given the cadence SpaceX intends for Starship, Raptor might have a chance to quickly develop a reputation for demonstrated reliability that makes other engines seem like risky unknowns by comparison.
From the perspective of the Space Force, it's worth mentioning that both Atlas V and Delta IV fly with AR's (AerojetRocketdyne) RL10 upper stage engine -- there's no redundancy there. A important factor might be that AR is an American manufacturer. At the time of the Boeing-LM launch division merger, it was Boeing with the less competitive bid and the legal troubles, making it very likely that the Air Force would have been left with only the Atlas V with its Russian RD-180 engines, giving Russia effective veto power over US national security launch capability. A reliance on a SpaceX engine might be a lot less of a concern.
Additionally, there are small and medium launch vehicles in development right now that could provide effective backup capability for payloads bound for LEO, which is the class of orbit the Department of Defense seems to be focusing on for future development.
Why Would SpaceX Sell?
I've already argued that SpaceX's finances and Starship's success wouldn't be much impacted one way or another by how many engines they sell to ULA. We also know that Elon Musk doesn't like ULA. So why would they sell engines to them?
First, what's the downside?
Raptor, despite its impressive FFSC technology and performance specifications that make it very useful for Starship, isn't actually the secret sauce behind SpaceX's plans for launch market dominance. The not-so-secret sauce is full and rapid reuse. Raptor is simply an enabler or that. Employed in an expendable or partially reusable vehicle, its performance makes a marginal difference.
SpaceX is planning to eventually fly all of their payloads with Starship. If ULA switches to Raptor engines, the Space Force would be susceptible to having both of their launch providers grounded because of a Raptor problem like a quality control issue that might crop up in the production line and take months to sort out.
That concern might cause the Space Force to nip such a change in the bud or to consider buying New Glenn flights. A similar consideration might motivate commercial customers with expensive payloads who seem accustomed to paying a premium to have multiple launch providers. They might choose a European Ariane 6 or a Russian Angara A5 when they may have gone for a Vulcan.
This loss of engine diversity might not be all that problematic, though, given SpaceX's well-earned reputation for quickly solving problems that come up. And given the cadence SpaceX intends for Starship, Raptor might have a chance to quickly develop a reputation for demonstrated reliability that makes other engines seem like risky unknowns by comparison.
From the perspective of the Space Force, it's worth mentioning that both Atlas V and Delta IV fly with AR's (AerojetRocketdyne) RL10 upper stage engine -- there's no redundancy there. A important factor might be that AR is an American manufacturer. At the time of the Boeing-LM launch division merger, it was Boeing with the less competitive bid and the legal troubles, making it very likely that the Air Force would have been left with only the Atlas V with its Russian RD-180 engines, giving Russia effective veto power over US national security launch capability. A reliance on a SpaceX engine might be a lot less of a concern.
Additionally, there are small and medium launch vehicles in development right now that could provide effective backup capability for payloads bound for LEO, which is the class of orbit the Department of Defense seems to be focusing on for future development.
Why Would SpaceX Sell?
I've already argued that SpaceX's finances and Starship's success wouldn't be much impacted one way or another by how many engines they sell to ULA. We also know that Elon Musk doesn't like ULA. So why would they sell engines to them?
First, what's the downside?
Raptor, despite its impressive FFSC technology and performance specifications that make it very useful for Starship, isn't actually the secret sauce behind SpaceX's plans for launch market dominance. The not-so-secret sauce is full and rapid reuse. Raptor is simply an enabler or that. Employed in an expendable or partially reusable vehicle, its performance makes a marginal difference.
SpaceX wouldn't be giving something away a key advantage to a competitor by selling to ULA. The only real downside would be the added work and distraction of keeping ULA happy as a customer, which admittedly is non-trivial, but SpaceX has on taken distractions before for money and strategic value.
So, what's the upside?
Well, there's the money, of course. While not mission-critical by any means, it would be substantial. At $5-6M per engine, 2 engines per launch, and 5-15 launches per year, SpaceX could be looking at a revenue from engine sales of $50-$180M a year, possibly as much as ~$1B over Vulcan's lifetime (after initial flights with BE-4), with likely >50% profit margins.
There's also the schadenfreude Elon would likely enjoy from watching ULA become dependent on SpaceX and seeing Jeff Bezos lose yet another deal to SpaceX. I don't consider this a good motivator, and I don't condone pettiness, but this likely would be a non-negligible factor.
The best reason for SpaceX to sell engines to ULA, though, would likely be the advertising. The money alone could be more trouble than it's worth, but having ULA pick Raptor as its engine of choice would send a strong message that Starship is flying with the best and most reliable engines on the market.
Despite SpaceX's long streak of successful launches, and the fact that there isn't enough evidence to think Falcon 9 in its current iteration is any less reliable Atlas V, ULA still holds a reputation of higher reliability. Much like the NASA HLS contract, a ULA engine contract would buy Starship a lot of credibility.
The best reason for SpaceX to sell engines to ULA, though, would likely be the advertising. The money alone could be more trouble than it's worth, but having ULA pick Raptor as its engine of choice would send a strong message that Starship is flying with the best and most reliable engines on the market.
Despite SpaceX's long streak of successful launches, and the fact that there isn't enough evidence to think Falcon 9 in its current iteration is any less reliable Atlas V, ULA still holds a reputation of higher reliability. Much like the NASA HLS contract, a ULA engine contract would buy Starship a lot of credibility.
With it powering Vulcan, the Raptor engine, with its complexity and low cost manufacturing, couldn't be credibly used as an excuse to claim that Starship is less reliable than other launch vehicles. Engine counts on the first stage and other components of the stack would still be open to finger-pointing, of course, but a ULA selection would still make a big difference in how Raptor, Starship, and SpaceX are perceived.
In Conclusion
Switching to Raptor isn't a solution for getting Vulcan flying sooner -- Vulcan is in the home stretch, and the design and contract work for that change would delay the first launch even more than it will already be delayed.
But would an eventual switch to Raptor on Vulcan be advantageous for ULA? Most likely, yes. Would an engine contract be advantageous for SpaceX? Almost certainly. Both companies would have a lot to gain from this.
Now, do I think it will happen? No. I won't completely rule out the possibility, but unfortunately, I think that institutional inertia and prejudice would prevent such a deal from closing.
And by the time such an engine upgrade is on the table, ULA might well have other problems to worry about than what engines Vulcan is flying and whether their supplier will let them reuse those engines...
Switching to Raptor isn't a solution for getting Vulcan flying sooner -- Vulcan is in the home stretch, and the design and contract work for that change would delay the first launch even more than it will already be delayed.
But would an eventual switch to Raptor on Vulcan be advantageous for ULA? Most likely, yes. Would an engine contract be advantageous for SpaceX? Almost certainly. Both companies would have a lot to gain from this.
Now, do I think it will happen? No. I won't completely rule out the possibility, but unfortunately, I think that institutional inertia and prejudice would prevent such a deal from closing.
And by the time such an engine upgrade is on the table, ULA might well have other problems to worry about than what engines Vulcan is flying and whether their supplier will let them reuse those engines...
...maybe a topic for another post?
UPDATE, April 2022: Amazon has decided to buy an unprecedented number of Vulcan, New Glenn, and Ariane 6 launches to deploy their Kuiper constellation (pretty much every suitable Western launcher but SpaceX's, probably because SpaceX's Starlink is a competitor for Kuiper). This is a huge boon for ULA, BO, and Arianespace, and increases the likelihood of Vulcan and New Glenn being able to coexist, as well as the likelihood of SMART reuse happening.
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