Faced with the prospect of the majority of US launch vehicles no longer using its engines, the US rocket engine firm, Aerojet Rocketdyne, has had to come up with a strategy for survival. That strategy became clear in September after it made an unsolicited US$2 billion bid to purchase United Launch Alliance (ULA), the Boeing-Lockheed Martin-owned firm that jointly builds and operates the Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles for government and military launches.
However, senior executives at ULA’s co-owner and previous owner of Rocketdyne, Boeing, have firmly declined the offer, saying it was not in their firm’s interest to move away from space launching.
The Aerojet Rocketdyne bid was to a large extent forced on Aerojet Rocketdyne by its own dwindling fortunes. While it is developing a 500,000 lbf thrust, advanced ox-rich staged combustion liquid oxygen (LOx)/kerosene burning engine called the AR1, the firm looked to have “missed the boat” with respect to quickly replacing the Atlas V’s politically unacceptable Russian-built RD-180.
Meanwhile, under current ULA plans, Atlas V will eventually be replaced by the Vulcan rocket, which will use Blue Origin LOx/Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) BE-4 main engines, which are being built for Blue Origin’s own competitive launch vehicle.
For cost reasons and because it competes with SpaceX, which builds its own Falcon 9 rockets and engines, ULA has decided to end the use of most versions of ULA’s Delta IV. This will reduce the need for its expensive Aerojet Rocketdyne-produced RS-68 main engines.
