FTC will not block the purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris
How nice of them! The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday that it will not block the planned purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris, which the company expects to now complete in mere days.
The deal, if finalized, would place L3Harris on a solid footing to achieve Kubasik’s long-stated goal of positioning the company as the sixth major defense prime.
The forthcoming acquisition has also garnered support from an unlikely source: RTX, the parent company of missiles giant Raytheon. Executives from the company, which rely on Aerojet to deliver crucial parts, have been open in recent weeks that while they don’t love strengthening a competitor, they feel Aerojet is in desperate need of new leadership. “We’ve obviously always been concerned about Aerojet. But I would say some of these things have been magnified by all these external inputs,” Wes Kremer, Raytheon president, told Breaking Defense during last month’s Paris Air Show.
Aerojet has had problems for years, especially because the rocket engines it makes are very expensive. It has failed to garner any market share in the new emerging rocket industry, remaining dependent entirely on very generous government contracts and the older big space contractors. But even here, it lost out to Blue Origin when ULA was looking for engines for its new Vulcan rocket.
It is likely that after this merger, the name Aerojet Rocketdyne will vanish, a sad end to a company whose roots go back to the very beginning of the space age.
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 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
How nice of them! The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday that it will not block the planned purchase of Aerojet Rocketdyne by L3Harris, which the company expects to now complete in mere days.
The deal, if finalized, would place L3Harris on a solid footing to achieve Kubasik’s long-stated goal of positioning the company as the sixth major defense prime.
The forthcoming acquisition has also garnered support from an unlikely source: RTX, the parent company of missiles giant Raytheon. Executives from the company, which rely on Aerojet to deliver crucial parts, have been open in recent weeks that while they don’t love strengthening a competitor, they feel Aerojet is in desperate need of new leadership. “We’ve obviously always been concerned about Aerojet. But I would say some of these things have been magnified by all these external inputs,” Wes Kremer, Raytheon president, told Breaking Defense during last month’s Paris Air Show.
Aerojet has had problems for years, especially because the rocket engines it makes are very expensive. It has failed to garner any market share in the new emerging rocket industry, remaining dependent entirely on very generous government contracts and the older big space contractors. But even here, it lost out to Blue Origin when ULA was looking for engines for its new Vulcan rocket.
It is likely that after this merger, the name Aerojet Rocketdyne will vanish, a sad end to a company whose roots go back to the very beginning of the space age.
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 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
Having worked for a company that went through some of those sales, I would speculate that the Aerojet Rocketdyne name will be preserved as a divisional name of L3Harris. There is too much recognition of Aerojet Rocketdyne as a manufacturer of rocket engines to just throw it away. However, L3 needs to reform those assets into a lean mean rocket building macine.
L3Harris is one of my investors and development partners. I have huge respect for them. That being said: they should jettison both “Aerojet” and their own name, and call the whole shooting match “Rocketdyne.” History aside, what a great name!!