ULA’s Tory Bruno: US Government Should Help Redirect Focus to New Space Activities

Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance and a previous Wash100 Award winner, said the U.S. government should encourage investments in new space activities with national security and commercial applications to make them attractive to investors, SpaceNews reported Thursday.

Bruno said the U.S. government should communicate its national security requirements to companies and shift its focus to new space activities, such as in-space factories and mining, that could back government and commercial goals and drive demand for launch services.

He recommended that the Department of Defense encourage startups that have no federal contracting experience to work with traditional contractors and fund nontraditional companies with technologies that could help improve satellites’ resiliency to attacks.

Bruno made the recommendations after he warned that the U.S. launch market is becoming “overheated.”

“It’s down to a third or even a fourth of the cost of what access to space was just a handful of years ago,” Bruno said Thursday at a NewSpace New Mexico-hosted webinar. “Yet we have seen no increase in the overall size of the launch market nor have we seen a corresponding tripling or quadrupling of space activity.”Â