"It has been a great privilege to lead ULA through its transformation and to bring Vulcan into service."
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In a surprise announcement, Tory Bruno is out as CEO of United Launch Alliance
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Not the news I was expecting when I started my day watching him interview Santa.
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Definitely unexpected. Of course, now we're all wondering what the new opportunity is and if Tory was pushed or left on his own accord. ULA has a very uncertain future, with or without Tory at the helm. Hopefully he turns up somewhere where he can make a difference and isn't hamstrung by short sighted corporate overlords.
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Voluntary or involuntary, it seems like there are some juicy details yet to be known about this departure. No one is buying the idea that this was a planned change in leadership.
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And now we know ULA will turn to shit, firing 25% of its staff and expecting the rest to pick up the slack
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Not surprising that Tory is gone. Ten Vulcan launches promised for 2025 and just one launch delivered. Even the screwups at Boeing (Starliner) and at Lockheed (Orion and its defective heatshield and at $25B and counting) evidently have had enough of him.
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PatientZero
Ars Centurion
This has gotta be most of the reason.
ULA didn't just fall short of its expected launch cadence -- it barely launched at all.
With SpaceX now launching 2-3 times a week sometimes, and BO now successfully landing rockets, I'm starting to wonder why ULA even exists anymore, outside of honoring their already-scheduled launches on older rockets.
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Blue Origin needs to fly either 2 or 4 more successful flights before they can bid for National Security Space Launch contracts. After that, yeah ULA is down to launching already sold flights.
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Your comment is being downvoted, but I think it is directionally correct. Vulcan was years late, and then the Space Force publicly called ULA out for its failure to build up the capacity for a high flight rate. Just a single launch this year, with ongoing rumors of SRB issues, was likely the final straw.
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"already sold flights" constitute a backlog of over 80 launches and a combined value of over $10B. A backlog several times larger than anything they've had at any point in their existence. They'll survive, for now.
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Over the years sentiment here in the comments has largely been that Tory was constrained by ULA’s owners, and that given enough funding and latitude he could have led it to a more competitive footing. Maybe we’ll get to find out? It will be disappointing if it turns that, for all his knowledge, enthusiasm and outreach, it was Tory that was the problem all along.
Edit: Maybe not the problem per se but just not up to the task.
Edit: Maybe not the problem per se but just not up to the task.
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I honestly don't see this as a surprise.
ULA has been struggling (which is putting it very diplomatically) for more than a decade. It's not fiscally competitive with the state of the art. And their latest efforts at space haven't changed in overall approach since the inception of the Space Program. If you're relying on government contracts, and the government is looking to save money, you HAVE to do what the customer wants, and they pretty much failed at that.
Being the back-up if something else that can do the job isn't available isn't a sound fiscal way to do business. You're literally the last resort in a line of providers that are doing the same job, faster, cheaper, smarter.
Bruno's been in charge for a while, and ULA has all but thrown itself on its sword just trying to stay a rocket company.
So, while this news may seem unexpected, my take was, "God, I'm surprised that didn't happened years ago." I've been expecting ULA to tank for a while, simply because it IS the mastodon in the tar pits now. Bruno's the fall guy, and did a great job when there wasn't much in the way of competition. ULA just never seemed to get the memo that you if you don't throw away all of the rocket to put a payload into orbit, and reuse some of it, you can get the job done for less, usually with faster turn-around. They had that opportunity when they decided to build a new rocket. And they didn't take it.
I can't say if ULA will stay in business, but TBH, I'm kind of flabbergasted that it's still in business now.
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Pretty sure he was pushed. Although the failure of the Vulcan program to scale launch cadence this year certainly left him vulnerable to corporate backstabbing. I suspect if ULA had managed somewhere between 6 to 10 successful Vulcan launches in 2025, that his job would have been a lot more secure.
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The delay in Vulcan was BOs fault mostly though. Centaur V was planned to be delivered in 2023, the delay in BE-4 caused them to cancel the Centaur III Vulcan and go straight to V. I guess you could say the snafu with Centaur V testing was responsible for another 6 months ish.
As far as Vulcan flight rate, I guess you would know better than I why that isn't scaling up. Amazon gave them like 2 billion to make sure they could launch the things twice a month after all. If it really is still the SRBs, that's on NG isn't it? The Space Force is of course going to call out ULA because they are the prime contractor, but incidentally the Space Force let one company pretty much take over the large SRB market.
I guess I have a hard time faulting Tory for any of this, as he did the best he could to make the rocket he was grudgingly allowed to design as competitive as it could be. The constraints of its parent companies basically dictated these dependencies. He did manage to cut the costs enough to win half the bid for Amazon LEO nee Kuiper, which basically saved the company.
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As a Boeing employee, I'd love to see Tory as Boeing CEO one day. One can dream...
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It’s interesting that we hear very little out of ULA besides Tory. So it’s hard to know what to make of this. My impression is he was trying reasonably hard to keep the company viable, even though the owners seemed like they probably gave up years ago. I wonder if the Amazon launch deal will really happen when they are so slow though.
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He was a nice guy. Interactive with fans. Approachable. Unfortunately, he had to be fired based on the performance of the Vulcan program. So it goes.
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ya and then vulcan itself is basically the only new disposable rocket. Thing is, the dude is genuinely smart, he's just forced into this constraint by the company he runs where he's allowed none of the budget for R&D that it would take to build a new rocket from scratch.
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Tory worked hard and had good ideas but ULA's owners were actively hostile to any kind of modernization or diversification effort that might threaten their primary space divisions. That he was allowed to build Vulcan at all was a minor miracle.
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id really like to see him head of the next space station tbh. given the right resources I think he could do much better. ULA was always a cash box for the shareholders. they held him back
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even after russian engines became impossible to source the shareholders still balked at the cost to build a new rocket.
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A decade ago, sure, but I wouldn't blame him if he's burned out. The last few years have been hard on him.
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I doubt seriously that was his role - that would have been up to ULA’s owners. Noise was that LM was willing to sell at a viable price, but Boeing wasn’t.
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I followed that series of posts. Someone else responded that SpaceX mounts the controllers, fluid management, and TVC on the booster. So it wasn’t the dunk people made it out to be.
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The big problem with Vulcan is that you can't even make it reusable. Its stages are sized for big launches in deep orbits, same with Ariane and H3. That engine recovery might've been a nice stepping stone solution several years ago, but with New Glenn and Starship going online, even that'll be way behind. They'll need a new rocket if they survive at all
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Really hard to see any conceivable path where they survive at all, whether or not anyone at Lockmart/Boeing leadership wants to say it out loud yet. But to the extent they ever had any window it sure looks closed. SpaceX of course is SpaceX. But with not just Blue Origin but also Rocket Lab and other players having medium to medium-heavy lift rockets either launched or credibly getting close, and all designed for at least partial reusability, trying to start a new rocket now looks hopeless for an American effort. Other countries or groups of countries might well see enough value in trying to secure some sovereign path to space as to be worth long term subsidies/investment even if not directly price competitive, but that's not going to fly here once we've already got 3+ vibrant young competitors. And as we saw with Boeing and Starliner, there seem to be really root organization structural issues that come from orienting around traditional cost-plus contracting for so long that make it incredibly difficult even with good intentions to try to compete on fixed price. It's hard to see either of those companies wanting to sink any more capital into it. And that sure seems to mean that yeah, writing is on the wall.
Doesn't mean there won't be more of a steady downward hill for awhile of course, they do have existing contracts to fulfill, and BO/RL/whomever aren't all ramped up yet. But given the time horizons hard to see any quick recovery, nor what unique value they'd have that'd even make them that attractive to buy vs the baggage that'd come with them. End of an era really, though can't say it's an unwelcome one either.
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There are a number of disposable rockets newly arrived or in development - just not in the US. (There have been a couple of recent - as in last few years - small disposables in the US, but they were either stillborn or are unlikely to be successful commercially.). In most(?) cases, these non-US rockets are part of national programs (or international in the case of ESA), which (sort of like here, with SLS) still operate on legacy paradigms, or they are from startups targeting (at least initially) small to very small capacity, which due to the weight penalty of reusability, aren’t good candidates for it.
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Honestly loved seeing him passionately speak about rocketry on channels like smarter everyday,
He clearly cares and is involved.
We’ll know his legacy in 5-10 years,
I can’t imagine him not having started a retrievable rocket design in the background by now.
Best of luck, hope you enjoy retirement/a next challenge
He clearly cares and is involved.
We’ll know his legacy in 5-10 years,
I can’t imagine him not having started a retrievable rocket design in the background by now.
Best of luck, hope you enjoy retirement/a next challenge
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He got a lot of flak, but the guy was, I think genuinely tried to build the best rocket ULA capable of. They're legacy company. Old Space. Even worse, they're the result of a merger of two legacy company. They're not going to suddenly embrace vertical integration, cost optimization, rapid reuse and other things being done at their startup rival. I hope he enjoy retirement or some cushy advisory job at the other rocket startup. Or maybe BO just poached him to make merger more likely?
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I'm surprised there isn't much mention/speculation on timing of his unscheduled departure for "a new opportunity" and Issacman being appointed.
I'm waiting to see if Tory shows up at NASA, as many have said his passion for space is there, he's personable. Idk seems lile a good fit to help revive the beleaguered agency, he has experience in tight budget environments with senior leaders who are apathetic or hostile budgetarily.
Could be a good fit for managing space flight contracts or ISS replacement development, etc
I'm waiting to see if Tory shows up at NASA, as many have said his passion for space is there, he's personable. Idk seems lile a good fit to help revive the beleaguered agency, he has experience in tight budget environments with senior leaders who are apathetic or hostile budgetarily.
Could be a good fit for managing space flight contracts or ISS replacement development, etc
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Are those orders ironclad? They may cancel because of failure to deliver and go to cheaper and more secure launches with SpaceX - or if they have Musk Derangement Syndrome then with BO, and eventually a few others (depending on the size of the payload).
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