SpaceX's biggest rival has a 'genius' plan to cut its rocket launch costs more than 70%

SpaceX turned heads around the world on February 6 with the first-ever launch of Falcon Heavy.

The 230-foot-tall rocket's three boosters helped push Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster into space, peeled off after running low on fuel, and then careened toward Earth.

Two of the 16-story boosters rocketed to a safe landing (the third fell into the ocean), and the flight was hailed as a huge success. It proved SpaceX could lift twice as much payload to space for about 25% of the cost of its closest competitor while recycling rocket parts worth tens of millions of dollars.

That primary rival is United Launch Alliance, a company that aerospace industry titans Boeing and Lockheed Martin formed in 2005.

ULA's largest rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, costs $350 million per launch, according to company CEO Tory Bruno. Delta IV Heavy is far more expensive that SpaceX's $90-million Falcon Heavy in part because it isn't reusable. 

ULA plans to retire that launcher after about seven more missions, but the company is currently developing its own reusable rocket, dubbed Vulcan, to compete with innovative companies like Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

"Vulcan will first fly in mid-2020," Bruno told Business Insider, adding that the rocket "will start at sub-$100-million"— a 70% discount compared to the company's Delta IV Heavy.

Here's what Vulcan will be capable of, why one ULA engineer described its recovery system as "genius," and how the rocket may earn its keep in an increasingly crowded and challenging industry.

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Delta IV Heavy used to be the world's most powerful operational rocket. It can send nearly 32 tons of payload into low-Earth orbit — more than two standard school buses' worth of weight.

Sources: CNN, SCAPT

Since Bruno took the helm of ULA in 2014, the company has been developing its more powerful and partly reusable Vulcan rocket system. That's supposed to launch for the first time in mid-2020.

"Sometimes it's more than just, 'Hey my rocket's really big,'" Bruno said. "Sometimes you need the rocket to do some rather unique and exotic things after they're up in orbit."

Vulcan should lift 40 tons (nearly three school buses) into low-Earth orbit.

"Vulcan is modular, so you can add solid rocket boosters to kick up its size," Bruno said.