It was my understanding that ULA was a joint alliance rather than an individual company? Isn't it comprised of Boeing and Lockheed Martin among others? Wouldn't Bezos have to buy it from them?
ULA is a 50-50 joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, yes.
So if Blue Origin wants to buy ULA, it has to negotiate with both Boeing and Lockheed Martin to be able to do it.
I have no idea if Boeing and Lockheed Martin would be interested in selling. Both Boeing and Lockheed Martin have their own space businesses separate from ULA, and likely view part-owning ULA as having some synergies with their own space businesses, and selling ULA to Bezos could threaten those synergies. OTOH, as they say, everyone has their price, and Bezos has enough money to pay just about anybody's.
Eventually ULA could be so far behind in technology that its worth would be scrap value minus workforce disposal (whoever buys them would have to either stomach continued wages or the political impact of mass layoffs). And Boeing/Lockheed Martin can't be entirely unaware of it, negotiations shouldn't be that hard.
Infusing the existing org with a state of the art rocket/rocket development process has many failure modes (the new becoming "infected" with the stagnant mindset), but it could also work quite well, pairing the "cowboys" who know how to land a rocket stage with skilled "regulation jockeys".
But BO has a much better chance of succeeding without ULA than ULA has without BO and in this situation entering in an alliance of equals would just be silly. The icing on the cake is that the failure mode (stagnancy infection) would also be far more likely in arm alliance of equals.
> Infusing the existing org with a state of the art rocket/rocket development process has many failure modes (the new becoming "infected" with the stagnant mindset)
It is funny saying that ULA might infect BO with a "stagnant mindset", given how little BO has actually delivered so far. BO had a two year head start over SpaceX, but in the same time that SpX has had over 100 successful orbital missions, BO hasn't made it to orbit once. In fact, thus far BO's only paying customer appears to be ULA – BO is supplying rocket engines to ULA's new Vulcan Centaur rocket. Vulcan Centaur is supposed to have its maiden launch by the end of this year; I wouldn't be surprised if it slips to next – but still, for all we know, Vulcan Centaur might make it to orbit before New Glenn does.
BO feels like a Bezos project thats just doing it because Elon is. I don’t think Bezos is really invested in it, more like “yeah I have a rocket company.” credits, at least that is the vibe of it.
So Boeing and LM should be wise to maybe invest or partner up with BO in this scenario. Could be interesting. But ULA still got some good contracts from the military afaik. On the short term they aren’t going anywhere.
