Jeff Bezos’ next move could forever change the game board of the aerospace industry. His company Blue Origin would be close to buying United Launch Alliance (ULA), the space launch business of the old glories Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
The deal is “almost done.” There were three potential buyers for ULA, but according to Ars Technica, Blue Origin is very close to closing the deal and taking the cake, so a formal announcement is expected in a couple of months.
According to the same source, the other two interested parties are a private equity firm and a smaller aerospace company that have been left in the background. The price of the acquisition, still a matter of conjecture, could range between 2,000 and 3,000 million dollars.
Bezos sells Amazon shares. One of the most intrusive clues to the movement is Jeff Bezos’ recent sale of Amazon shares. The tycoon sold $4 billion in shares of the company he founded and ran until the end of 2021.
In addition, Bezos made public in a filing to the SEC his intention to sell up to 50 million Amazon shares, valued at about $8,475 million, in the next 12 months. He will benefit from the low tax burden applied to capital by the state of Florida, where he recently moved to be close to his parents… and Blue Origin.
The end of an era: New Space now rules. ULA was created as a joint venture between the giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which dominated space launches in the United States until the emergence of SpaceX.
ULA specializes in government launches, but the price crash caused by SpaceX’s reusable rockets forced it to implement deep internal changes under the leadership of Tory Bruno. Bruno has managed to match his offer with that of Falcon rockets thanks to a new, more modern and cheaper launcher, the Vulcan Centaur, which debuted earlier this year with Blue Origin engines.
The unknown: what will happen to Tory Bruno. The leader of ULA is beloved, charismatic, and has had several run-ins with Elon Musk, a natural enemy of Jeff Bezos. But his role after the hypothetical sale to Blue Origin is unknown.
Blue Origin, founded in 2000, changed its CEO a few months ago. During this time, its new leader, David Limp, has managed to change the company’s image with more transparent communication focused on its progress. The object of ridicule for never having reached orbit, the company has just launched its first orbital rocket, the gigantic New Glenn, and expects its maiden flight this year (with a mission to Mars for NASA, no less). .
Hold on, Elon Musk, curves are coming. The competition between SpaceX and Blue Origin is more aspirational on the part of Jeff Bezos than a reality. After all, Blue Origin has yet to prove that it can reach orbit and land a giant rocket.
However, ULA’s technology (such as its advances in storing cryogenic fuels in space) gives Blue Origin a boost to compete with SpaceX and its Starship in the numerous missions to the Moon and deep space expected in the years. next years. Not to mention juicy contracts with NASA and the Pentagon, ULA’s main business.
The Elon Musk predictions They are not always fulfilled, but when they are, they save you a bad time.
In February 2018, Elon Musk made a powerful promise: if his main competitor’s Vulcan Centaur rocket flew before 2024, he would eat his hat with mustard. Six years later, hat digestion will not be necessary.
The origin of the promise
Like many of Musk’s promises and predictions, this one arose to correct a person who was criticizing one of his products: the Falcon Heavy. That person was Doug Ellison, an engineer with NASA’s Mars rover program.
According to Ellison, SpaceX’s most powerful rocket offered less specific impulse than NASA’s rockets. United Launch Alliance (ULA); except in its disposable version, which is more expensive than a high-end Atlas V.
Ellison had extracted the data from NASA’s launch vehicle performance website, but Musk replied that it was not accurate, since it referred to the Block 1 version of the Falcon Heavy instead of the current Block 5.
“Even if they were accurate, a fully expendable Falcon Heavy, which far exceeds the performance of a Delta IV Heavy, costs $150 million instead of more than 400 million dollars what the Delta IV Heavy costs,” added the businessman.
The Delta IV Heavy is ULA’s most powerful rocket, far above the Atlas V. It has launched some very important payloads for NASA, such as the Parker Solar Probe, the ship that touched the sun and broke all the speed records of the objects of human origin.
It was then that another Twitter user, David L., entered the conversation to clarify a fact: “The Delta IV Heavy It costs less than $400 million, no more. The launch cost of the Parker Solar Solar Probe is $389.1 million.”
Elon Musk promises to eat his hat if the Vulcan Centaur flies before 2024
This response irritated Musk, judging by the poison dart he launched in response: “That contract is from three years ago, before ULA canceled all medium versions of the Delta IV. Future missions have all the fixed costs of the Delta program. accumulated, so the price is now more than $600 million for missions contracted to launch after 2020. It’s crazy.”
The tweet unleashed a war between CEOs which I’ll summarize below, but before that, it triggered Musk’s promise to eat his hat.
Let’s remember that we are in 2018. ULA’s plans were to replace its rockets with the new Vulcan Centaur with engines from Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company) starting in 2020.
When a third Twitter user pointed out these plans to Musk, the mogul responded: “Maybe that plan will work, but I’ll eat my hat with a side of mustard if that rocket launches a Homeland Security spacecraft between now and 2023.” “. Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA, responded with a terse: “wow.”
Waiting for Vulcan Centaur
He Vulcan Centaur by ULA It is intended to replace the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, including the Delta IV Heavy, whose last flight is scheduled for March 2024.
However, the maiden flight of the Vulcan Centaur has been delayed several times since 2018. Firstly, because it took a long time for Blue Origin to deliver the first two BE-4 engines of the first stage to ULA. These engines use liquid methane instead of liquid hydrogen, and have not flown on any rockets yet: they will debut with the Vulcan and will also be used on Blue Origin’s future New Glenn rocket.
Tory Bruno and a rocket dummy in its configuration with four solid propellants
Elon Musk he has it sworn to Jeff Bezos and has been picking on ULA over engine delays until a couple of years ago. “I can send you some spare engines, just in case,” he told Bruno on one occasion. “Thank you for the offer, but I heard that your birds need quite a few to fly and I wouldn’t want you to be short,” Bruno replied, referring to the almost 40 methane engines each Starship uses.
The engines ended up arriving, but the debut of the Vulcan was delayed again due to the explosion, during ground tests, of a second stage of the rocket, called Centaur V. And later due to a hydrogen leak in the first stage.
Those problems were also behind us, and the rocket was finally ready to fly in late 2023. Its first mission, scheduled for Christmas Eve, was send the CLPS-1 mission to the Moon, the return of the United States to the lunar surface after 50 years. However, the abrupt end of a wet test forced the launch to be moved to January 8, 2024: next week.
This latest delay has prevented Musk from having to eat his hat, as he himself has taken it upon himself to remind us. But it’s not that the Vulcan Centaur hasn’t been able to launch its first National Security mission in 2023, it’s that it hasn’t flown at all.
The first Vulcan mission for the United States Air Force is scheduled for the second quarter of 2024. And whether the Pentagon authorizes it depends on its two previous missions (CLPS-1 and Dream Chaser) going well.
Against Tory Bruno and his partner Jeff Bezos
ULA is one of the historic rocket manufacturers Lockheed Martin and Boeing. It was created to provide launch services for the United States Government, especially the Pentagon and NASA, and has played a leading role in launching military and reconnaissance satellites; that is, National Security.
SpaceX has been pushing for years to compete on equal terms with ULA. The company successfully sued the United States Government so that its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets could launch National Security space missionswhich they started doing in 2017. But Elon Musk continued calling ULA a monopoly.
“Boeing and Lockheed get a billion dollar annual subsidy even if they don’t launch anything. SpaceX doesn’t,” Musk tweeted incendiarily in 2017. He was referring to a unique ULA contract with the US government that requires there to always be a rocket ready for a National Security mission. The pressure must have paid off because now ULA is for sale.
Who is going to buy the rocket manufacturer? To no one’s surprise, one of the most rumored candidates is Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ company.
The Vulcan Centaur and the Blue Origin BE-4 engines They will end up flying, possibly next week. But the sale of ULA will mark the beginning of something new. Only time will tell if it is the definitive victory for SpaceX or a new, even more intense stage of the feud between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
