Sierra Space in negotiations to buy ULA
According to the Reuters news agency, Sierra Space is negotiating with the joint owners of ULA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to buy the rocket company.
The sources, which are all anonymous, said the sale price is in the range of $2 to $3 billion. Those same sources said no deal has yet been worked out, and might not happen at all.
For Sierra, the deal would give it its own launch vehicle, Vulcan, for placing its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles into orbit. It would also give it a profit stream from the many military and commercial launch contracts already on ULA’s manifest. The combined cababilities of ULA and Sierra will create a formidable new player in the aerospace launch market.
For Boeing, it would provide it some much needed cash that it will be able to use to both restructure and revitalize its presently questionable operations.
It is unclear what Lockheed Martin will gain from the sale, other than the cash and the removal of this Frankenstein-like partnership with Boeing, which in the long run has probably not done it a lot of good.
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According to the Reuters news agency, Sierra Space is negotiating with the joint owners of ULA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to buy the rocket company.
The sources, which are all anonymous, said the sale price is in the range of $2 to $3 billion. Those same sources said no deal has yet been worked out, and might not happen at all.
For Sierra, the deal would give it its own launch vehicle, Vulcan, for placing its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles into orbit. It would also give it a profit stream from the many military and commercial launch contracts already on ULA’s manifest. The combined cababilities of ULA and Sierra will create a formidable new player in the aerospace launch market.
For Boeing, it would provide it some much needed cash that it will be able to use to both restructure and revitalize its presently questionable operations.
It is unclear what Lockheed Martin will gain from the sale, other than the cash and the removal of this Frankenstein-like partnership with Boeing, which in the long run has probably not done it a lot of good.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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c/o Robert Zimmerman
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
I’d throw in 2 broad factors as well:
-weapons have a much higher margin, less scrutiny, and both have ramped up production, and it looks like SpaceX has caused a fundamental restructuring of “big space, inc.” where it counts the most.
wayne,
It isn’t so much that weapons have high margins as that – being mostly produced on cost-plus contracts – they have predictable and guaranteed margins. For now, at least.
ULA used to be the same, but SpaceX came along and knocked all of that to flinders. Long term, the legacy primes now have to worry that “SpaceX disease” – nimble start-ups with new and less expensive ideas willing to work on fixed-price contracts – will invade the rest of defense procurement, not just the launch market.
This seems to be happening. The USSF is doing mostly fixed-price procurements for its new proliferated satellite systems. There are also four start-up competitors entering the long-somnolent market for small solid rocket motors of the types used in all sorts of tactical missiles. The Russo-Ukraine War has goosed demand that the two legacy suppliers cannot meet.
As drones replace piloted aircraft, we should see the same process of new player market entry and lower, fixed prices on all types of aircraft as well as on smaller classes of naval units/vessels. Strategic bombers, major capital ships and ICBMs will probably be the last bastions of the old, cost-plus, generational program way of doing things, but even they are no longer impregnable to the new ways. The next decade or two are going to be interesting in that respect.
Dick-
Good stuff.
“…guaranteed margins…”
Eisenhower’s Other Warning:
Scientific Technological Elite
January 17, 1961
https://youtu.be/fRb_9l-3I3w
There aren’t a lot of folks who can weld armor plate—and energetics have taken a dip.
Placing too much trust in start-ups can backfire.
When I am not here, I am over at the Secret Projects Forum—lots to learn from that site.
Wayne,
Makes me think of “The Shape of Things to Come”, about technocratic government.
sippin_bourbon
absolutely. excellent observation.
Things to Come (1936)
https://youtu.be/knOd-BhRuCE
1:35:08
– very nice print.
and…
Did you know there is Woodrow Wilson Fan Fiction?
“Philip Dru Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow 1920-1935”
Colonel Edward Mandell House (1912)
Casual Historian (2020)
https://youtu.be/y1E5Av9nCkM
12:15
As far as rumors go, I kind of like this one. Sierra would have a working Vulcan and Centaur V, a cargo DreamChaser right around the corner, and then ACES, manned DreamChaser, and a LIFE space station coming down the pike.
Quite the cool little manned spaceflight company that would be.
This was surprising news to me. Sierra Space, along with it’s parent company Sierra Nevada, will get to sit at the grownups table. I don’t think it will be a complete sale to Sierra Space, Boeing and Lockheed will still have a small percentage of the business.
If Sierra Space does buys ULA, the Orbital Reef station will become more of a reality.