A crowd that included Air Force leadership, congressional representatives and senators, executives and plant personnel from the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Corporation attended a ceremony dedicating the delivery of the final F-22 Raptor in Marietta, Ga., May 2. (U.S. Air Force photo/Don Peek)
From Reuters News – Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington, D.C., Editing by Greg Roumeliotis
Dec 20 (Reuters) – Lockheed Martin Corp (NYSE: LMT) said on Sunday that it has agreed acquire U.S. rocket engine manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc (NYSE: AJRD) for $4.4 billion, including debt and net cash.
The deal is Lockheed’s biggest acquisition since Jim Taiclet took over as chief executive in June. He is seeking to beef up the company’s propulsion capabilities amid competition from new entrants such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, for space contracts with the U.S. government.
“Acquiring Aerojet Rocketdyne will preserve and strengthen an essential component of the domestic defense industrial base and reduce costs for our customers and the American taxpayer,” Taiclet said in a statement.
Lockheed said it will pay $56 per share for Aerojet Rocketdyne, a 33 percent premium to Friday’s closing price. The purchase price will be reduced to $51 per share after the payment of a pre-closing special dividend, Lockheed added.
The Bethesda, Maryland-based company already uses Aerojet Rocketdyne’s propulsion systems in its aeronautics, missiles and fire control offerings.
Lockheed said the transaction, which is set to be scrutinized by regulators given the company’s leading position in the defense sector, is expected to close in the second half of 2021.
A crowd that included Air Force leadership, congressional representatives and senators, executives and plant personnel from the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Corporation attended a ceremony dedicating the delivery of the final F-22 Raptor in Marietta, Ga., May 2. (U.S. Air Force photo/Don Peek)
ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX accused the U.S. Air Force of breaking contracting rules when it awarded money to three rocket makers but passed on Musk’s rival bid, and said the tender should be reopened, according to a court filing unsealed on Wednesday.
In the complaint, Space Exploration Technologies Corp said contracts were awarded for three “unbuilt, unflown” rocket systems that would not be ready to fly under the government’s timeline, “defeating the very objectives” outlined by the Air Force’s program.
SpaceX asked the court to force the Air Force to reopen the $2.3 billion Launch Service Agreements competition and reconsider the Hawthorne, California-based company’s proposal.
The agreement is part of a Department of Defense initiative to assure constant military access to space and curb reliance on Russian-made RD-180 engines.
In the watershed race for dominance in the space industry, new entrants including SpaceX and billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, compete for lucrative contracts for military launch services. The arena has been long dominated by incumbents like Boeing Co-Lockheed Martin Corp’s United Launch Alliance (ULA).
ULA was granted $967 million under the program for developing its heavy-lift Vulcan rocket, Blue Origin won $500 million for its New Glenn rocket, and Northrop Grumman Corp was awarded $791.6 million for its OmegA rocket development.
In separate court filings this week, all three companies argued they should be parties to the lawsuit because of their direct financial interest in its outcome.
A SpaceX spokesperson said the company sued to “ensure a level playing field for competition.”
Representatives for the Air Force and ULA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Blue Origin declined to comment.
SpaceX’s complaint was filed with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims last Friday under seal, along with a request for the court to keep the proceedings secret under a protective order, citing proprietary information. A redacted complaint was filed Wednesday.
SpaceX alleged the Air Force broke contracting rules on five different counts and asked the court to halt deliveries of the award to the three companies and force a re-evaluation of the proposals.
The Air Force rejected a formal objection from SpaceX in April regarding the terms of the awards.
SpaceX has sued the government over contracts before, most prominently in 2014 to protest a multibillion-dollar, non-compete contract for 36 rocket launches to United Launch Alliance. It dropped the lawsuit after the Air Force agreed to open up the competition.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette in Orlando, Florida; Editing by Eric M. Johnson and Richard Chang)
FILE PHOTO: SpaceX headquarters is shown in Hawthorne, California, U.S. September 19, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
BREMEN,
Germany (Reuters) – Ariane 6, Europe’s next-generation space rocket, is
expected to win its first two commercial launch orders in coming weeks,
company officials said, a key milestone as the European launcher vies
for orders against Elon Musk’s U.S. competitor SpaceX.
Operator
Arianespace faces increased competition from SpaceX and Blue Origin,
owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Japan and India also pose a growing
challenge.
Ariane
6 has three institutional orders in hand from the European Commission
and France and is close to signing deals with two commercial customers,
said Mathias Spude, spokesman for ArianeGroup, a joint venture of Airbus
and Safran, that is the majority stakeholder in Arianespace.
ArianeGroup
has invested 400 million euros (£347 million) of its own funds in the
3.4-billion-euro development of Ariane 6 – a project key to ensuring
Europe’s independent access to space and a market valued at over $1
trillion by 2040.
Manufacturers
say the rocket will be more versatile than Ariane 5, able to carry out
missions from placing as many as 90 small satellites in low-earth orbit
to taking classic spy satellites to far higher perches in geostationary
orbit.
But
the business case depends on drumming up enough commercial business to
augment the 5-6 institutional launches expected in Europe annually in
coming years, about a quarter of those planned in the United States.
European governments also face industry pressure to use Ariane 6 even if they could get cheaper rides using SpaceX.
“Europe
continues to need its own access to space – the market of the future,”
said Matthias Wachter with the BDI German Federation of Industry. “It
doesn’t make sense to use European tax money to develop our own rocket
but then launch satellites with competitors from the United States or
Asia.”
Ariane
6, due for a first launch in 2020, was designed to save significant
costs compared to Ariane 5, but industry experts say it will still cost
around 70 million euros per launch – well above the rate offered by
SpaceX, which uses reusable rocket technology and can count on larger
U.S. orders.
Ariane
6’s designers insist innovative production techniques will favour the
European launcher when the commercial market recovers from a recent
slump.
“When
it wakes up … we will be on the market with a rocket that is 40
percent cheaper, and will continue to reduce costs after that,” Spude
told Reuters at the Ariane 6 production site.
Still,
experts say SpaceX is widely credited with jolting the overall market
with a keen focus on cutting costs, forcing Europe to shake up its
launch industry.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, Editing by Tim Hepher)
MOJAVE, Calif., Dec 13 (Reuters) – A Virgin Galactic space tourism vehicle took off from California’s Mojave desert under clear skies on Thursday bound for the fringes of space, a mission that if successful would mark the first U.S. human flight beyond the atmosphere since the end of America’s shuttle program in 2011.
The test flight foreshadows a new era of civilian space travel that could kick off as soon as 2019, with British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic battling other billionaire-backed ventures, like Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, to be the first to offer suborbital flights to fare-paying tourists.
In the first steps before a high-altitude rocket launch, Virgin’s twin-fuselage carrier airplane holding the SpaceShipTwo passenger spacecraft took off soon after 7 a.m. local time (10 a.m. ET) from the Mojave Air and Space Port, about 90 miles (145 km) north of Los Angeles.
Richard Branson, wearing a leather bomber jacket with a fur collar, attended the take-off along with hundreds of spectators on a crisp morning in the California desert.
If all goes according to plan, the carrier airplane will haul the SpaceShipTwo passenger rocket plane to an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13.7 kms) and release it. Seconds later, SpaceShipTwo will fire, catapulting it to at least 50 miles (80.47 km) above Earth, high enough for the pilots to experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the planet.
Virgin’s latest flight test comes four years after the original SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight that killed the co-pilot and seriously injured the pilot, dealing a major setback to Virgin Galactic, a U.S. offshoot of the London-based Virgin Group.
“We’ve had our challenges, and to finally get to the point where we are at least within range of space altitude is a major deal for our team,” George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic’s chief executive, told reporters during a facilities tour on Wednesday in Mojave, where workers could be seen making pre-flight inspections of the rocket plane.
While critics point to Branson’s unfulfilled space promises over the past decade, the maverick businessman told a TV interviewer in October that Virgin’s first commercial space trip with him onboard would happen “in months and not years.”
Thursday’s test flight will have two pilots onboard, four NASA research payloads, and a mannequin named Annie as a stand-in passenger. More than 600 people have paid or put down deposits to fly aboard Virgin’s suborbital missions, including actor Leonardo DiCaprio and pop star Justin Bieber. A 90-minute flight costs $250,000.
Short sightseeing trips to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket are likely to cost around $200,000 to $300,000, at least to start, Reuters reported in July. Tickets will be offered ahead of the first commercial launch, and test flights with Blue Origin employees are expected to begin in 2019.
Other firms planning a variety of passenger spacecraft include Boeing Co, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch.
In September, SpaceX said Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, founder and chief executive of online fashion retailer Zozo, would be the company’s first passenger on a voyage around the moon on its forthcoming Big Falcon Rocket spaceship, tentatively scheduled for 2023.
Musk, the billionaire CEO of electric carmaker Tesla , said the Big Falcon Rocket could conduct its first orbital flights in two to three years as part of his grand plan to shuttle passengers to the moon and eventually fly humans and cargo to Mars.
According to Virgin, SpaceShipTwo is hauled to an altitude of about 45,000 feet (13.7 kms) by the WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane and released. The spaceship then fires its rocket motor to catapult it to at least 50 miles (80.47 km) above Earth, high enough for passengers to experience weightlessness and see the curvature of the planet.
Bezos’ New Shepard has already flown to that altitude – an internationally recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space known as the Karman line – though the Blue Origin trip did not carry humans.
Virgin’s Thursday launch likely will not go as high as the Karman line. Virgin’s pilots are aiming to soar 50 miles into the sky – the U.S. military and NASA’s definition of the edge of space and high enough to earn commercial astronaut wings by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
Thursday’s test flight carried two pilots, four NASA research payloads, and a mannequin named Annie as a stand-in passenger.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Mojave, California Additional reporting by Irene Klotz in Cape Canaveral, Florida Editing by Leslie Adler and Nick Zieminski)
