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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.