2024-01-06 20:25:48
The first launch of the new Vulcan rocket by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, will be decisive.
A successful launch from Cape Canaveral next week would allow ULA to fill a large mission order backlog worth hundreds of millions of dollars and establish a better competitive basis with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
And it might prove vital to the plans of the two US aerospace companies to sell their joint venture.
“It’s a very nervous time for them,” said George Sowers, the former ULA science director who played a key role in the creation of Vulcan. “It’s really regarding the future of their business.
The first mission is a highly anticipated step following months of various delays in the home stretch of Vulcain’s development, and following an incident that occurred last year during a test with a Vulcain upper stage booster. ULA CEO Tory Bruno said Vulcan performed well in recent ground tests.
“This is an incredibly complicated and powerful machine. Everything has to work,” Bruno said Saturday at the Vulcan launch pad. “It’s always risky to fly a rocket. But what we know how to do is manage that risk.”
The mission checklist includes carrying a lunar lander that aims to achieve the United States’ first soft landing on the Moon in half a century. The rocket will for the first time use engines supplied by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company.
The Vulcan launch also comes as Boeing and Lockheed, which created ULA in 2006 by merging their rocket programs, are seeking to sell the joint venture, according to three people familiar with the negotiations.
The negotiations have been a complex and painstaking process for which the launch of Vulcan might have crucial implications, said the sources, who asked not to be identified.
ULA declined to comment on possible negotiations. Bruno has previously said his company might be ripe for an acquisition.
Boeing and Lockheed declined to comment.
Vulcan’s first launch, scheduled for 2:18 a.m. ET (0718 GMT) Monday, is the culmination of a years-long development effort, born largely out of ULA’s need to replace its Atlas V rocket. rocket, imported from Russia, has faced criticism from lawmakers. That rocket’s engines imported from Russia drew criticism from lawmakers, leading to its planned retirement.
The retirement of Atlas – as well as Vulcan’s other rocket, Delta – will leave the 60-meter-tall Vulcan to carry out dozens of lucrative missions and serve as the sole challenger to the reusable Falcon 9 rocket. from SpaceX.
Vulcan’s first mission will be to send a private lander from space robotics company Astrobotic to the moon. But the launch itself will also serve as the first of two certification flights required by the U.S. Space Force before Vulcan can fly Pentagon satellites.
The Space Force is a critical customer for Vulcan: in 2020, the military branch chose ULA’s Vulcan and the retiring Atlas V to launch 60% of the Pentagon’s missions through around 2027.
Priced lower than its predecessors at around $110 million per launch, Vulcan will look to take market share from Falcon 9, which is priced at around $62 million per launch. SpaceX’s cheaper flights have eroded ULA’s dominance over government satellite launches over the past decade.
Vulcan will also compete with Blue Origin’s upcoming New Glenn rocket, which uses the same engines as Vulcan.
ACQUISITION NEGOTIATIONS
Negotiations to acquire ULA have been underway for more than a year, with dozens of companies, including Blue Origin, expressing interest, the sources said.
Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment.
The reasons and timing of Boeing and Lockheed’s sale of ULA are unclear. But the U.S. space industry has undergone significant changes since ULA was founded in 2006, aiming to dominate government launches and capture some of the commercial demand from the then-nascent satellite market.
Growth in the commercial market has been slower than expected, said Richard McKinney, an aerospace consultant and former director of the Air Force’s space acquisition unit until 2007. “But it seems like we let’s get close to getting there.
Amazon’s Kuiper network project is expected to provide ULA with crucial launch revenue. That gave Vulcan a multibillion-dollar backlog for regarding 70 missions, split roughly evenly between government and commercial customers, Bruno said.
The development of Vulcan and ULA’s abandonment of its Atlas and Delta rockets have made it difficult to estimate the company’s value, but analysts estimate it might be between $2 billion and $3 billion.
Boeing and Lockheed each have their own competing space units. Lockheed, among others, has moved into building lunar rovers and made strategic investments in ABL Space, a small launch company that plans to build larger rockets in the future.
Boeing’s space program has struggled, primarily with its long-delayed Starliner astronaut capsule, which competes with SpaceX’s more established Crew Dragon capsule. Starliner development problems have cost Boeing some $1.5 billion since 2014.
New ownership might allow ULA to innovate beyond the launch business, something its parents were unwilling to do, said former ULA chief science officer Mr. Sowers.
“The company charter was fixed and very restrictive,” he said. “They’re always competing and can’t agree on anything. We weren’t allowed to innovate. (Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Ben Klayman, Rosalba O’Brien and Leslie Adler)
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