Bezos’ Blue Origin targets Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s Ula to challenge Musk’s SpaceX?
According to the Wall Street Journal, Bezos' aerospace company, Blue Origin, and the Cerberus fund have made offers to acquire United Launch Alliance, a 50/50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin
Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' aerospace company, aims to acquire United Launch Alliance (Ula) in the latest move in the space race among American billionaires.
Space launch company Ula, owned equally by Boeing and Lockheed Martin for nearly two decades, dominated Pentagon launches before the entry of Elon Musk's SpaceX. And it may soon have new ownership and a different billionaire owner.
Ula has in fact received acquisition offers from Blue Origin and Cerberus, the private equity giant led by billionaire Stephen Feinberg, sources familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal . The American financial newspaper's article confirmed Ars Technica 's November report that Ula was for sale and Blue Origin was a potential buyer.
Business jet maker Textron has also expressed interest in Ula, according to the Journal .
Bezos is trying to improve his position in the billion-dollar space race by acquiring one of the largest rocket manufacturers around, Obsever comments. Meanwhile, 15 months after the failure of the NS-23 suborbital mission, caused by an engine anomaly, the New Shepard rocket from the company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has returned to flight .
All the details.
ULA POINTED BY BLUE ORIGIN, CERBERUS AND TEXTRON
“If I were to buy a space company, I would take a look at Ula,” its CEO Tory Bruno told Bloomberg News in October. And now offers from Blue Origin and Cerberus would be on the table. Beyond Textron's expression of interest.
Private equity funds have shown interest in space companies that have exposure to government contracts, a segment dominated by Elon Musk's SpaceX, notes Reuters .
Founded in 2006, Ula is one of the few orbital launch providers in the world, having completed more than 150 missions for the Pentagon and NASA over the years. Before SpaceX's reusable rockets went into operation, USA's Delta and Atlas rockets dominated the U.S. space launch market.
The US Space Force awarded 21 launches to SpaceX and ULA worth about $2.5 billion, CNBC reported in November, with the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture receiving 11 missions worth $1.3 billion of dollars.
However, the joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin has faced delays in the development of its new rocket called Vulcan Centaur, which will carry Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander on its first launch in January. ( Here to listen to the episode of Spaziale, the Start Magazine podcast, entitled NASA ready to return to the Moon with Peregrine ).
Not to mention that in 2018, Blue Origin won a deal to build the BE-4 engine for the Vulcan. Also Ula producing one of the launch vehicles selected to putAmazon.com's satellite Internet network, Project Kuiper, into orbit.
THE VALUE OF ULA
The Boeing-Lockheed joint venture could be worth between $2 billion and $3 billion in a potential sale, financial services firm Jefferies estimates.
BLUE ORIGIN'S NEW SHEPARD IS FLYING BACK
Finally, the news of Blue Origin's bid for Ula comes at a sizzling time for billionaire Bezos' aerospace company. After 15 months of hiatus, Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket has returned to flight. The launch of the NS-24 uncrewed mission took place successfully on Tuesday, December 19 at 5:45 pm Italian time from the company's base located in Texas.
The suborbital flight ended as expected after about ten minutes, with the rocket's return to the Texan desert and subsequently the soft landing of the capsule with the experiments, slowed down by the three perfectly deployed parachutes. As reported by Ansa , the hosts of the live broadcast broadcast by Blue Origin concluded by stating that the next manned suborbital flight will take place "soon".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/blue-origin-di-bezos-punta-la-ula-di-boeing-e-lockheed-martin-per-sfidare-spacex-di-musk/ on Fri, 22 Dec 2023 13:25:14 +0000.