Stakeholder #3

Allison, Roy. "United Launch Alliance Atlas V" via wikimedia, 2/11/2013. Public Domain.

There are many key stakeholders in the argument over privatized space flight. Varying from NASA to the companies themselves, to the workers who build and design the components, all of them have different views and claims. Read more about one of them below.

The United Launch Alliance is a 50/50 alliance between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, to create cost effective rocket launches to space. They are known as being the older, more established company that will have the money, expertise, and reputation, to carry out reliable space flight. They're probably known to the public as just a name behind big named rockets, such as the Atlas or Delta series rockets, that have served and launched payloads for years. They also have a reputation for being very reliable and very rarely having failures to launch. Overall though, they are not one of the more well known companies, but rather the mainstay of launches that are ordinary and reliable. Their headquarters is an angled office building, looking like it was built in the 90s, with dark black windows contrasting with the brown tiles that line the floors of the building. Walking inside you would noticed the green grass outside, the smell of the grass and humid air wafting over as you hear the sprinklers spring on. This is the headquarters of a very formal, efficient, and mainstay company of the aerospace engineering business, and caters to almost every corner of the business. Rather than innovating and creating the next technology, this company perfects every step of current technology to make it the best it can be.

United Launch Alliance:

• "We are always working with our customers to reduce costs while still achieving 100 percent mission success. The recent block buy is a prime example of a best-practice acquisition strategy that has resulted in a $4.4 billion savings over the next five years." - This claim is bold and trying to show objectively the cost saving that their company is making by buying in bulk for rockets for launches over the next five years. Not playing on the emotions, but rather playing to the facts that it has created with the numbers for its estimates. However credible this may be, as it does come from a company that is known for its reliability, I am not sure if it would report higher costs, but they do have knowledge over their exact budget, and they can't outright lie, so their facts could just be misconstrued. This might be pointed out by outside private companies, and other players such as NASA, but engineers and workers might not have the knowledge or be able to do the research in order to find if this claim is true.
•  "The average price of a mission, accounting for all current firm contracts for Atlas and Delta launch services, is $225 million, not $460 million as has been claimed. This includes all missions, Department of Defense (DoD), NASA, commercial, Atlas V 401 through Delta IV Heavy." - The average price is a good indicator of how much the costs of the rockets are going to cost in the future. This is a credible metric, coming from the company itself, but it only includes current firm contracts, and it does not say specifically who said the average cost was $460 million, therefore the comparison does not have such high standing, and is only relevant when you know how much other companies cost on average too. Therefore this is a credible fact, but doesn't include relevant information. Other companies, depending on where there average costs lie, may point this out, and NASA might as well, as they both know the exact costs for the budget on space flights, but once again, workers may not have full access to budgetary records on the flights.
• "No. ULA has met all contracts on schedule and on – or under – budget.  We have never experienced a cost overrun on any contract. Inside the block buy, ULA is contractually committed to year-over-year cost reductions." - ULA is known for being reliable and filling out contracts on time, but they do have a high price for their success. While this claim that they have never experienced a cost overrun for their contact may be true, they have a reputation also for being a very expensive company to launch rockets from, and now that they don't have a monopoly on the market, other private companies would be quick to point this out, and NASA may not pick them for new launches, while workers will see this as an exaggerated statement.