Potential sale of ULA

[TrevorMonty]

My prediction is Amazon buying ULA now and merging it with Blue Origin 5 years later.

Amazon and Blue are totally separate companies. Bezo only has 10% stake in Amazon and is no longer in charge.
The saying "stick to your knitting" applies here, Amazon knows nothing about launch.

[Vahe231991]

Who would hazard a guess as to its price? Also, I would think a few successful Vulcan launches would make it a prettier bride.

And that a sale to BO might be very disrupting, since such a parent might mess with its structure in general, and its upper managerial structure in particular.

Yeah, but why would anyone other than BO buy it?

It's one thing to keep going with what you've got since, well, you're stuck with it.  But why would an external uninvolved party jump into that?  It's not a healthy bed.

BO may just want to bring everything together, have in-house BE-4 based launches before NG, have a smoother Vulcan-to-NG transition process...

Another option is if one parent wants to buy the other out, since they have a development plan and the other parent doesn't want to play.  That might be a happier story.

Amazon is not going to buy ULA, but Blue Origin might do so because it then could have a portfolio of SLVs of varying sizes for carrying satellites to both low earth orbit and geostationary orbit, just as the Angara rocket family comprises variants of differing sizes.

[TrevorMonty]

Northorp is my favorite. They are already ULA's solid booster supplier for Atlas/Vulcan and the new Antares 330 looks like it could use a Centaur 2nd stage. The community likes to joke about rockets != legos, but the engineers Northorp acquired from Orbital ATK seem to have made careers out of making stage mixes/swaps work.

I agree Amazon would be weird.

There is also NG interest in Firefly which brings liquid propulsion to partnership. In saying that NG could build a liquid propulsion team from scratch.

[russianhalo117]

I see this as one or both parents trying to cash out before ULA becomes non-competitive. That isn't a great endorsement, but as long as ULA is profitable short term someone will be interested if the asking price is low enough.

I suspect the winning bid will be Blue, Northorp, or one parent buying out the other.

Northorp is my favorite. They are already ULA's solid booster supplier for Atlas/Vulcan and the new Antares 330 looks like it could use a Centaur 2nd stage. The community likes to joke about rockets != legos, but the engineers Northorp acquired from Orbital ATK seem to have made careers out of making stage mixes/swaps work.

I agree Amazon would be weird.

The easiest path with the US government is a joint sale by both parties of the non ULA owned property and assets which Jim stated earlier in the thread. It is not a straightforward joint venture given the reason behind its creation and government oversight while Boeing and LM remain the involved parties.

[Jim]

there are some former engineers who worked on the Delta II who have criticized Boeing's acquisition of McDonnell Douglas (which built the Delta II).

that has no bearing on the matter.  And Boeing's acquisition of MDC had nothing to do with the demise of Delta II.  Also, Boeing's backing allowed Delta IV to go forward.

[Steve G]

Does anyone have a ballpark price tag on the sale?

[Markstark]

8 years ago.

https://spacenews.com/aerojet-makes-2-billion-offer-for-united-launch-alliance-sources/

[M.E.T.]

I’m struggling to see the Blue Origin interest.

Blue has no money, other than what Jeff Bezos pumps into it - historically about $1B a year. I have no idea what ULA is valued at, but I would hazard a wild guess that it’s around $5B-$10B, based on revenues in the low billions per annum. But it’s a wild guess, as I said.

Anyway, that would require up to 10 times the amount that Bezos annually pumps in to keep the current BO business afloat. And what does he get in return?

He loses the only real customer and revenue source BO currently has - which is the sale of their rocket engines to ULA.

And imagine BO then shifting to Vulcan rockets after such a purchase - invalidating all the work and expectations that have gone into the much hyped New Glenn rocket for a decade or more.

If anything, his long term vision should be to replace Vulcan with New Glenn as the second DoD launch provider. Not develop a vested interest in keeping Vulcan alive in competition with New Glenn.

As for experienced staff - he has more than enough staff already, and can poach anyone he needs to fill remaining gaps without having to pay billions for an entire rival rocket company.

So I don’t think Blue Origin will be a contender. My bet is on one of the parent companies wanting to buy the other one out. Lockheed Martin would be my pick. And it would only cost them half the price.

Edit

But maybe I’m wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time that Blue Origin’s business decisions have perplexed me.🤷‍♂️

[Zed_Noir]

Will point out that if Amazon is interested in acquiring ULA for deploying Kuiper for connecting AWS (Amazon Web Service) hubs. That means AWS competitor Microsoft might be interested for connecting their hubs as well. Also Microsoft have too much cash on hand and is looking to diversified their business.

Someone with even more cash on hand and also looking to diversified is Apple.

[Hug]

My personal preference is probably Lockheed. Blue just hurts me with the duplication of efforts. I feel like if you're Lockheed and you want to ensure long Orion, taking control of the ULA reigns would be the start. Depending on what you think of the future of Starship, you may think this is superfluous. But I think it's fair to say that it attacks SHLV more than crew to NRHO. Capacity of crew will be question mark with 2 reusable landers. Vulcan was always more of a successor to Atlas V than Delta IV. + they get a 50% discount compared to everyone else.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-says-that-boeing-squelched-work-on-propellant-depots/

[Michael S]

If the sale does happen, what do you think ULA will get renamed to?

[russianhalo117]

If the sale does happen, what do you think ULA will get renamed to?

Usually the company that buys it for an acquisition and the company surviving a merger with the legally decided name  eing the factor or a new name all together or a combination of the two.

[TheRadicalModerate]

I floated Blue buying ULA years ago…. Wouldn’t be surprised if the price is right.

Boeing is probably the instigator since they aren’t doing so hot right now…

Would be niece to see them liberated from their extractive parents either way.

What are ULA's most valuable assets? Would a buyer get more value by maintaining ULA as a unified entity or by breaking it up?
Here is an incomplete and unsorted list of assets:
  *workforce
  *real estate, buildings, factories.
  *Vulcan
  *Other IP
  *remaining 19 Atlas V launchers and launch contracts
  *one remaining Delta IV and launch contract

By far the biggest asset is institutional memory.  They've seen all the problems.  They know how to do a huge variety of payload integrations.  They know how to sell their platform to get the design wins.  They know how to organize and run the missions.

All of that goes away if they break up the team very much.  The hard assets and the IP aren't worth very much without all that good will.

I'm skeptical that even Tory Bruno could figure out a way to merge somebody else's launch platform line into the Vulcan and Centaur teams without breaking something.  My bet is that the most likely buyer is Blue, and they'd clearly want to push hard on reusability.  But trying to stuff ULA ops and engineering into a New Glenn package doesn't have better than a 50-50 chance of succeeding.

Not for nuthin', but Blue would do much better selling the BE-4 groups to ULA than ULA would do selling itself to Blue.  And if the buyer is anybody other than Blue, I'd think that owning all the BE-4 production and IP would be a precondition of sale.

[TheRadicalModerate]

There's another weird piece to this puzzle:  What the hell is Boeing contributing to the National Team Mark II?  This may be completely unrelated, but since NorGrumm is out and Boeing is in, it kinda makes sense that Boeing must be contributing the transfer element,¹ which was presumably a mutant version of Cygnus in National Team Mark I.

But what does Boeing have that could serve as a TE?  DCSS?  ULA is taking the line down.  EUS?  Way too big, and with the wrong thrust structure to be able to be chopped down to serve as a TE.  Something brand new?  Please.  Boeing's in-house space engineering operation is a train wreck.

Maybe this is more complicated than a straight sale of all assets.  If ULA were to sell the DCSS/ICPS IP and production tooling back to Boeing, that could not only act as the contribution to National Team Mark II, but also be the basis of a plausible orbital transfer/tug business.

After that, selling ULA to almost anybody makes more sense.  Nobody wants a mostly-dead Delta line--except maybe for the DCSS.

I guess this scenario doesn't rule out selling everything to Boeing and just buying out LockMart.  But I'm pretty sure that Tory would last about three months in that nest of vipers, and then ULA would be close to worthless. 

On the other hand, selling ULA minus the Delta pieces-parts to Blue and putting Tory in charge might be viable.  Of course, that assumes that Blue + Tory can figure out how to be a competitive launcher operation.  I still don't think that's possible if Starship is even vaguely successful.  And it certainly doesn't turn Blue into the dominant player in cislunar and lunar surface ops, which is what they need to be if they ever hope to execute on Jeff's original vision.

____________________
¹Let's assume that the joke about Boeing's contribution being lobbying isn't true...

[mn]

I'll put this out here just because I don't think anyone else did. And half in jest.

Perhaps Bezos decided he's had enough of BO, and decides to buy ULA and cuts BO loose.

[Bananas_on_Mars]

My prediction is Amazon buying ULA now and merging it with Blue Origin 5 years later.

Amazon and Blue are totally separate companies. Bezo only has 10% stake in Amazon and is no longer in charge.
The saying "stick to your knitting" applies here, Amazon knows nothing about launch.

Why would they to know something about launch?
They would be buying a company that has that knowledge, not just rockets and launchpads.

It's not about Bezos.

Amazon is planning to be the second, maybe third biggest satellite operator with Kuiper.
SpaceX and Oneweb shows them that vertical integration is important, from a strategic standpoint, not just for financial reasons. And they have the cash on hands.

SpaceX and Oneweb are planning satellites with about 5 years of orbital lifetime, i have found no such information about Kuiper, but it's reasonable to expect the same for Kuiper.
That means when they finished their first deployment they're directly into replenishement.

Once they have launch secured, they might want to look into full reusability, for which IMO New Glenn might be available in 5 years time.
At that point, merging with Blue Origin makes sense for both companies, i would expect a merger not a buyout.

Just my 50 cent.

[ThatOldJanxSpirit]

I'll put this out here just because I don't think anyone else did. And half in jest.

Perhaps Bezos decided he's had enough of BO, and decides to buy ULA and cuts BO loose.

Not entirely daft. The only way a Blue acquisition of ULA would make sense to me is to allow Blue to gracefully pivot away from a New Glenn money pit without abandoning having its its own orbital launch capability. Unlikely, but it could be a smart move.

[TrevorMonty]

My personal preference is probably Lockheed. Blue just hurts me with the duplication of efforts. I feel like if you're Lockheed and you want to ensure long Orion, taking control of the ULA reigns would be the start. Depending on what you think of the future of Starship, you may think this is superfluous. But I think it's fair to say that it attacks SHLV more than crew to NRHO. Capacity of crew will be question mark with 2 reusable landers. Vulcan was always more of a successor to Atlas V than Delta IV. + they get a 50% discount compared to everyone else.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/rocket-scientist-says-that-boeing-squelched-work-on-propellant-depots/

Using Vulcan to deliver Orion to Moon would suit LM and make it lot cheaper for NASA. Would need 3 core heavy or inorbit refuelling, maybe both.

[SoftwareDude]

It seems like there is a lot of value in ULA being a major contractor for classified government launches. One has to have a lot of employees with very expensive clearances that take time to get and not just anyone can get one. Also having employees with experience dealing with the government on launches is valuable. Also, the relationships that ULA employees have built with the government are valuable. That's why buying ULA might be very good for Blue Origin.
I've worked for a couple of companies that were put up for sale. One downside is that employees become worried about their future and jump ship. ULA could immediately start bleeding brain power unless the company incentivizes employees to stay. Could a lot of employees leave ULA cripple Vulcan's schedule and drive down the value of ULA?
Why would Lockheed Martin or Northrup Grumman want ULA? The government is already their customer. There is a lot of competition rising up to challenge ULA for launches in the long term besides just SpaceX. Launches are becoming a commodity where costs are being driven down. Does anyone want to bank on ULA's business model?  Consider that Starship, if it is successful could drive down launch prices by an order of magnitude.
It seems like Blue Origin is the only buyer that makes sense but they will drive a hard bargain.

[Bananas_on_Mars]

I'll put this out here just because I don't think anyone else did. And half in jest.

Perhaps Bezos decided he's had enough of BO, and decides to buy ULA and cuts BO loose.

Not entirely daft. The only way a Blue acquisition of ULA would make sense to me is to allow Blue to gracefully pivot away from a New Glenn money pit without abandoning having its its own orbital launch capability. Unlikely, but it could be a smart move.

If Bezos had enough of Blue Origin, he would sack Blue‘s leadership first.

And New Glenn, once it’s flying, should be a decent rocket! I‘ve heard they‘re aiming for a launch price well below what SpaceX is currently charging for Falcon 9 (MECO Podcast).

Another thing that should be considered:
Would they go around and ask other potential buyers if Lockheed would be interested in buying Boeing out? I don‘t think so.

That doesn’t mean Lockheed Martin gives up ownership. They‘ve made investments in Rocketlab and ABL and seem to be content with owning just a minority interest in launch companies.