ULA's future and potential sale

[Surfdaddy]

ULA can launch out its backlog and make some money for a number of years. But there are people who said reusability would never work, and even if it worked it would never be cost-competitive. They even used the Space Shuttle to justify that point of view. We know how that went.

Once ULA's backlog (which is mostly there because Amazon didn't want to go to SpaceX for launches, initially) is gone, unless they've designed something with reusability, they're not going to be cost-competitive - not even close. And I doubt Boeing has any appetite for investing billions for a reusable ULA booster as they don't seem to like or want to compete with lower cost commercial situations (see Starliner). Time will tell, but it looks like ULA will run out their backlog. Perhaps Congress will throw some pork their way to maintain their capabilities.

Edit: Typo

[leeloodallasmultipass]

If ULA manage to execute its reusability plans and lower cost of launch like 60-70 percent and use their upper stage for more(tugs or whatever), they will float more than 5 years. Owners(defense aerospace giants)  would want that kind of an asset. But probably they will wait a little longer(2 years for any serious attempt at reusability) and if they see the launch prices getting lower and saturated they might pull the plug on ULA and sell it.

Also we don't know the (owners) internal political considerations of keeping the company.

[catdlr]

This Potential Sale of ULA thread is based on the original post that never happened. The thread is now locked.

But there is a continuing post discussing the ULA's future and potential sale, and it can be found here:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=64121.msg2600968#msg2600968

[catdlr]

Moderator:

Since this thread originally focused on a post from August 2023 about a potential ULA sale mentioned in an "X" post, which never materialized after a year, the discussion has since shifted to many speculative ideas that are still relevant. I have kept the original thread that ultimately went stale and split it when it was bumped with new ideas. To make this split thread more meaningful to the ongoing discussion, I have renamed it 'ULA's Future and Potential Sale.'

Not a thing was deleted or lost.  Continue with your discussion.

Tony