Jane Edwards
Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, has said the competition between ULA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made the former company re-evaluate its cost structure for space launch services, Forbes reported Friday.
Bruno told Forbes contributor Loren Thompson in an interview that the Boeing–Lockheed Martin joint venture has made a 35 percent reduction in supply chain costs and reduced cycle times by half in response to the U.S. Air Force’s adoption of a price-driven competitive business model.
He said he predicts ULA’s revenues that come from national security launches to drop from approximately 60 percent in 2016 to 42 percent by 2020, with the remaining 58 percent of revenue to come from NASA and commercial space launches in the next four years.
According to the report, ULA has secured deals from NASA to bring astronauts and cargo supplies to the International Space Station as well as provide launch services for the agency’s scientific satellites.
Bruno told Thompson that he believes ULA only needs to perform two out of 20-30 commercial launch missions on an annual basis in order to remain profitable and move through the challenge posed by changes across the three space launch market segments.
