Aerojet Rocketdyne has again made an offer to Lockheed Martin and Boeing to purchase the United Launch Alliance.

Aerojet Rocketdyne has again offered Lockheed Martin and Boeing to sell ULA.

The American manufacturer of power rocket launchers Aerojet Rocketdyne has offered Lockheed Martin and Boeing to buy out the main launch services company in the space industry, United Launch Alliance, for at least $ 2 billion.

At the moment, the initiative is under consideration, but a final decision may be made as early as this week. As Aerojet Rocketdyne says, the $2 billion offer is just the beginning, but the company could significantly increase the value.

ULA, located in Denver, operates and has industrial rights to the Atlas-5 and Delta-4 rockets, which together put into orbit the vast majority of the American, government, payload. ULA is a joint venture created by Boeing and Lockheed Martin in 2006. He also owns a launch complex in Decatur, Alabama, some infrastructure at Canaveral and Vandenberg Base in California.

The company is now in a very awkward situation. It, due to the prohibition by Congress on the use of the Russian RD-180 engine, which drives the Atlas-5, must develop and install exclusively a national power plant on its missiles by 2019.

Congress is ready to fund work to replace the RD-180 and Aerojet Rocketdyne is already developing the AR-1 engine, but ULA, last year, announced plans to use an alternative proposed by the rocket company Blue Origin, owned by the founder Amazon.com Jeff Bezos.

Its BE-4 engine uses fuel different from the RD-180 and cannot be integrated into the current Atlas-5 design without first changing the rocket design. ULA plans to phase out the expensive Delta-4 and in April unveiled a new rocket project called Vulcan, which uses the BE-4. The new carrier should debut in 2020. In essence, it will be an Atlas-5 equipped with a new, more powerful first stage.

But to implement these plans, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which manage ULA's financial resources, must agree to invest approximately $1 billion. for the development of Vulcan, and Blue Origin independently finance the development of BE-4, the amount of which is also in the range of $ 1 billion.

Therefore, it would be logical to put everything in the hands of one company to perform all the work on the launch vehicle with new engines. That is why in May, all three companies, including Aerojet Rocketdyne, made a request to the US Department of Defense about the possibility of selling industrial rights to Atlas-5, but were refused.

The purchase of ULA, if approved by the founding firms and the government, would be a major success for Aerojet Rocketdyne, which was disappointed by the decision of the United Launch Alliance to use the BE-4, instead of the AR-1. ULA continues to finance work on the AR-1, but with the expectation that the engine will be used as a backup option in case Blue Origin cannot cope with the work. Les joueurs de 1xBet peuvent périodiquement obtenir et trouver des combinaisons uniques de lettres et de nombres. C'est spécial code promo 1xbet gratuit que vous devez entrer lors de la création du compte ou dans le coupon pour les Paris. Ainsi, le bookmaker attire de nouveaux parieurs et stimule les joueurs existants. À ce jour, la société 1xbet offre aux nouveaux clients un code unique pour augmenter le bonus de bienvenue. Le bookmaker envoie également périodiquement les clients déjà enregistrés Promotions spéciales pour les différentes vacances.