ULA have seen Temple of Doom

If you don't like Elon, you're left with trashrockets and RocketLab. ULA exist but so far they've been on the 1960s track of wasting expensive boosters. Aviation Week report that ULA are looking into reusability - like Elon and da 'Lab. Irene Klotz has a summary.

ULA's first idea was to catch the BE-4 booster with a helicopter, like Rocket Lab do with their lighter boosters. The booster would be slowed with a parachute and, also, an aeroshell. But if the booster is light enough and the aeroshell inflates large enough... the aeroshell can float.

So all ULA have to do is to drop the booster in its shell into some deep lake somewhere - maybe even the ocean. The booster doesn't get corroded because the booster is bobbing up and down on a plastic raft.

The claim is twice as fast and twice as high as the Falcon 9, which needs to keep propellant on-board so as to reland. Most of us care more about "twice the cargo" if we're just doing LEO but, maybe the BE-4 is meant for between Van Allens. Another claim is that three reflights would turn a profit. Falcon 9, of course, reflies much more than that.