Rocket Boosters.

This article reports that the U.S. Air Force officials are employing a different strategy on their $32-billion rocket program to divvy up the workload by allocating, instead of competing, a host of launches between Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. Along with the first buy, the government provided what was thought to be a one-time investment of $500 million to each contractor to pay for the development of next-generation launch systems. Brian Arnold, the Air Force's program executive officer for space at Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles. Boeing's Delta IV last year flew a heavy-lift demonstration mission that revealed a problem in Boeing's fleet after the rocket's engine prematurely shut down.