It&#x27;s pretty straightforward, entering competition would be a lose&#x2F;lose&#x2F;lose prospect for ULA at this point.<p>First off, they can&#x27;t meet SpaceX&#x27;s prices, no matter what, so they&#x27;re unlikely to win out on a straight-up bid on a single launch (they love those block buys).<p>Secondly, they don&#x27;t have any more RD-180s to build more Atlas V&#x27;s, which means they can&#x27;t realistically promise any future Atlas launches. If they did they&#x27;d have to crawl back and say &quot;sorry, can&#x27;t do it.&quot; Alternately, they could try to put forward a Delta IV launch as an option, but that&#x27;s even more expensive.<p>Thirdly, putting in a singular bid at this point and trying to cut their profit margin to the bone as much as possible would hit them doubly hard. On the one hand it would mean they&#x27;d make no money. On the other hand it would reveal publicly their true costs, and make it blatantly obvious how much they&#x27;re over-charging on launches with the block buys plus launch assurance subsidy (which run at over $300 million per core, or so).<p>They&#x27;re better off laying low and just hoping they can work their connections for more back-door block buys in the future.