Your crystal ball (3/6/23)

Good morning, happy Monday, and welcome back to the workweek. It’s shaping up to be a busy one, so let’s just dive right in.

In today's edition...📊 ULA buyer: full poll results💥 Vega C postmortem🗓️ The week ahead🚀 Space @ SXSW

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Who Will Buy ULA? Y'all Have Spoken

Last week, we polled Payload’s 16,000+ readers to predict who will buy United Launch Alliance (with the obvious caveat that we’re assuming ULA is indeed sold). We ran the poll for 48 hours, asking y’all to cast your votes in Thursday and Friday’s newsletter. It was a strong showing, with ~2.2% of all Payload readers casting a vote.

First, let’s start with the high-level results.

Blue Origin ultimately came away as the favorite, with 23.7% of the vote. A Lockheed buyout of Boeing was the runner-up, finishing with just three fewer votes and being overtaken by Blue Origin late on Friday. Private equity took bronze with ~16% of the vote.

What you’re saying

Your write-in answers were thought-provoking, with a few funny ones added into the mix for good measure. One common throughline for write-in answers was that Boeing is in a tough situation, strategically and financially, and may be looking to pare losses from space programs and swap a launch asset for cash. By the same token, a few of you observed that any aerospace and defense contractors purchasing ULA outright could be a non-starter from an anticompetitive lens.

On Lockheed:

• “This makes more sense for Lockheed to buy out Boeing from a product rationalization standpoint. Lockheed Martin's recent failed acquisition of Aerojet created synergies and a team of individuals looking to copy/paste their work and can apply to ULA acquisition.”

• “Lockheed has been itching to expand its presence in space. With the falling out of the Aerojet Rocketdyne merger and recent investment in Terran Orbital, Lockheed has money to spend and a reason to launch their own rockets.”

Re: Blue Origin and Amazon

• “I don’t see Amazon going through such an investment after throwing billions for Blue & with Ariane.”

• “Not sure what Blue or Amazon gain from owning ULA, but maybe an acqui-hire that also gets you national security launch credibility as you develop New Glenn.”

• “I still think the rumor that Bezos wants [ULA CEO Tory] Bruno to run Blue Origin might happen when ULA is sold.”

• “Tory as Blue ceo??????????”

The private equity play:

• “ULA is a perfect and almost easy PE play since simply getting it out from under its parents creates significant new value.”

• “Feels like even odds for other contractors or private equity. Space launch is not generally speaking massively profitable, especially with SpaceX being SpaceX, so another contractor doing a tech or contracts acquisition could make some sense, or a private equity firm that doesn't fully understand the margins yet but sees (correctly) competitive opportunity and possible profit from Space Launch could make a move here.”

An F500 wild card: One of you, we suspect facetiously, thinks John Deere is the mystery buyer. Another reader noted that “Microsoft has around $100B cash reserves [and] Apple has twice that. I’d guess one of those guys would like to make sure they are not beholden to SpaceX’s Starlink for future connectivity.”

Payload's asking the wrong question: “There's NO SINGLE BUYER. Once the analysis is complete, the conclusion will find that the liabilities of an expendable launch system are too great to compete with reusable launch systems. However, the elements—like location real estate, facilities, test, manufacturing, comms & tracking & PNT, etc.—are individually valuable [and] will be bundled and auctioned separately to many specialist bidders."

Give these respondents a medal: The buyer, one of you wrote, will end up being “a billionaire who wants to be a millionaire.” Alternatively, one of you has seen the future: it’s one in which “the milk industry tries to stake its claim in the space sector by acquiring ULA and rebranding as Udder Liquid Aerospace.” Finally, one of you confidently observed that the mystery buyer is “someone not named SpaceX.” Feels like we can all agree on that one?

Share this story with the future CEO of Udder Liquid Aerospace:

Vega C Failure Revealed

The European Space Agency announced on Friday that an eroded engine nozzle component caused the Vega C rocket failure in December. Yuzhnoye, the Ukrainian nozzle component supplier, will now need to be replaced. The supplier swap will push back the next Vega-C launch attempt to late 2023.

A mishap with high stakes: “I would claim we are in a crisis,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said on Friday. “This is really a moment where we need to reflect deeply on how to regain independent access to space for Europe.”

This recent failure marks another setback for the European launch scene, which has now experienced three Vega C failures in eight attempts, and a number of Ariane 6 schedule slips.

With both rockets grounded until late 2023—at best—ESA and European satellite operators will have to continue looking elsewhere to tackle a growing backlog of spacecraft that need rides to space. Last month, Swedish broadband provider Ovzon said it would launch the Ovzon 3 on a Falcon 9 in the back half of the year due to its own manufacturing delays and Arianespace being unable to accommodate the schedule shift.

Waiting in the wings? Though the European launch sector is in crisis mode, a range of privately developed small launch vehicles are passing key milestones and due to attempt orbital flights in the next two years.

In Other News

• The US may soon launch what appears to be some sort of hypersonic weapon test from Cape Canaveral, per The Drive.

• Blue Origin is still investigating what went wrong with its New Shepard booster, which experienced a mid-flight anomaly about six months ago.

• X-Bow Systems will spend $25M to build a solid rocket engine factory in Luling, TX, a town 50 miles south of Austin.

• Hungary has narrowed down its astronaut candidate list to four. The chosen one is slated to travel to the ISS in late 2024.

• NASA will award the final extension of ISS cargo resupply contracts to Northrop Grumman, Sierra, and SpaceX (H/T SpaceNews).

Find Your Beach, Space Edition

It looks like retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has won himself a vacation to Corona Island, as it’s impossible that anyone will be able to top his lost luggage story: