Podcast: ULA CEO Tory Bruno On Navigating The Space Race

United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno discusses launch campaign details, the future of Vulcan and the National Security Space Launch program market.

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Rough Transcript

Irene Klotz:

Welcome to this week's Check 6 podcast. I'm Irene Klotz, Aviation Week's Senior Space Editor, and today I am joined by my colleague, Vivienne Machi, our military space editor on the West Coast. And we have a very special guest with us today, Tory Bruno, the President and CEO of United Launch Alliance. There's been so much going on, Tory, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Maybe if we could start a little bit with your campaign for this year, now that you've got Vulcan certified and you've got a small number of Atlas Rockets still to fly out. And maybe you could give us a little update on where you are with the Kuiper campaign as a whole and your upcoming launches on Vulcan under the National Space Security Launch Phase 2 program.

Tory Bruno:

Yeah, sure. Well, Kuiper, they've got their factory up and going. It's producing more than a satellite every day, so we've got that first batch of 27 sitting on the Atlas. We have, depending on availability of the range, four or five, even six of those Atlas's we'll try and get through for Amazon, and start flying Vulcan's for them later this summer as well.

Irene Klotz:

Tory, do you have any extra room on the Atlas for any other flight test programs or secondary payloads, or are those 100% devoted for Kuiper satellites?

Tory Bruno:

Almost 100%, we have just a little bit of mass margin, and in fact we'll be flying some experiments of our own, some additional instrumentation, things like that. But in terms of a whole up satellite, no, we've just packed that thing as full as we could.

Irene Klotz:

One other question about the Atlas while we're still on that. I believe you have 15 of those available to fly, and of course Amazon has purchased eight of those remaining, and I believe you have Viasat for one and then six reservations for the Boeing Starliner. When do you expect to be able to close out the Atlas line, and do you have any backup plans for maybe the last three Atlas's that NASA has not yet exercised options for post certification missions from Boeing?

Tory Bruno:

Yeah, well you are really well informed with the details. You should be in our operations group, Irene. Well, I think that I will get Viasat and Amazon's Atlas's flown in 2026, so by next year we should have those cleaned out, and then we'll just have the six that we are holding for Boeing to fly their Starliner. If for some reason Boeing and NASA don't want to fly all of them, then we would take them back to a commercial customer and see if they would like them. It's a little complicated because those are Boeing's rockets, they actually bought those launch services, and we would be acting as a broker to almost like a sublease. We would be selling their launch service on their behalf to somebody else. And yeah, we know there's folks out there who might be interested and we've had conversations with them, but it's really up to Boeing and NASA.

Irene Klotz:

Thanks, Tory. So let's turn over to Vulcan now, ULA's future, a big program that began, oh gosh, more than a decade ago and pretty much has occupied your career so far at ULA. And you were able to get your certification recently to begin flying the missions for the DOD customer. You've had two flight tests already on Vulcan. Where do you see the program now as far as ready to begin operations, and maybe Vivienne, if you're able to chime in a little bit on what the whole NSSL market looks like these days? It's really been changing quite dramatically.

Tory Bruno:

Yeah, we're pretty excited to start flying Vulcan for customers. There are a series of Space Force payloads that are due to fly this summer, satellites are done or almost done. And so after this Kuiper launch, when those customers are ready, we'll start flying them. I don't know if I'm allowed to say what those payloads are, national security payloads. And then we're also standing up what we call the second track at the launch pad, or in fact we call it Track A for Track Amazon. And what it really is one pad, but a second vertical integration facility where we stack up the rocket and put the payload on top. And then obviously a second set of railroad tracks where we roll the mobile launch platform, also another duplicate, down to the launch pad. So we're able to be building Vulcan in an Atlas or two Vulcan's simultaneously in these two buildings.

That thing, the second one, will get going later this summer, and then the first mission we intend to fly off of that is in fact for Kuiper. So we'd step it up from the 27 satellites we're able to put on an Atlas for them to 45, and it's the first flight of our LEO optimized Centaur V upper stage.

So all of that is happening this summer, pretty busy.

Vivienne Machi:

Tory, I want to ask you more about your launch infrastructure progress and development, and also how else you might be optimizing the Centaur upper stage. But before we do that, I thought we might take a quick step back and share where the NSSL program sits today and give that context. So as Irene mentioned earlier, ULA alongside SpaceX, you both are currently supporting launches that were awarded under the Phase 2 contract, and you have launched one mission to date under that contract on an Atlas rocket to my knowledge. And then the other 24 missions left to launch, we'll use Vulcan.

But starting last year, last June, the Space Force began the competition for Phase 3, which will support launches that will take place into the early 2030s. And the Space Force divided that program into two lanes for the first time, with Lane 1 meant to onboard newer launch service providers and fly some maybe lower priority missions, but also ULA is supporting that as is SpaceX, so it's not just new providers in that. And then Lane 2 is the follow-on to your ongoing Phase 2 program, that supports more sensitive missions, has more intense certification requirements.

My understanding is that ULA is currently certified to support launches for both those lanes from the Eastern range, but you're still in the works standing up your Western range at Vandenberg Space Force Base. So can you tell us a little bit of what your current timeframe is to get launches going from Vandenberg in California, right up the road from me actually?

Tory Bruno:

Well, it's the other thing I also didn't mention that's trying to happen this summer and fall as well. We did a hard cutover of the launch pad to go from Atlas to Vulcan there at Vandenberg, so SLC-3, Space Launch Complex 3. So we're in process right now of doing all of that. We have the buildings and the launch platform all put together. I should pause for a minute, because you're probably familiar with the way the Cape works, where we have a building that is naturally attached to the ground and we roll a mobile launch platform with the big mast inside it, build the rocket, roll that platform and the rocket out to the pad and launch it.

Vandenberg is a different arrangement. The launch pad itself is fixed, and believe it or not, the building moves. And so that's all been put together, and what we're doing right now is populating that with all of the environmental control systems. So dehumidifiers and humidifiers, and temperature control and all of the pneumatic systems and cryogenic systems that make all that work, they're actually pretty complicated. That's coming along well. I'll share with you guys that it's been a challenge the last couple of years, because the sub-tiers that the contractors below the people that are helping us install all that have had some trouble getting some of this hardware.

And believe it or not, it's been a holdover from COVID when there were supply chain disruptions. So actually getting the equipment on site was delayed, and then we and our supplier, main supplier, have been working extra shifts and whatnot to get all that installed. I expect to have that pad activated by the late summer, maybe early fall at the latest. And then as soon as the Space Force is ready with their missions, we'll fly them, and that'll be the next launches that go off of that pad.

If not right after it's activated, as soon as they're ready. And then after that, we we'll be business as usual for the West Coast. Probably worth understanding that on the West coast, you don't fly as often as you do on the east because that particular launch site is especially well suited for polar orbits in low earth orbit, in fact. And there are fewer of those missions than the other kind, which we prefer to fly out of the Cape on the East Coast.

Irene Klotz:

Tory, do you expect any of the Kuiper flights to go out of Vandenberg?

Tory Bruno:

Yes, there will be Kuiper flights that want to be a very high inclination. It's not quite polar, like when we say polar in terms of an earth observation mission like a weather satellite or a land set, but high enough that that's a great launch site for them. And again, because you fly less often out of Vandenberg, there's more range availability as well, so it's a double benefit.

Irene Klotz:

Thanks. One more question before we go back to the NSSL line of your business. What's the status of ULA being able to bid Vulcan for NASA missions?

Tory Bruno:

NASA has their own certification process, but their missions come in classes. And the most difficult or most critical science missions that they fly are their top class. You have to have flown once in order to bid on those, and then you have to of course be certified by NASA to actually fly them. We've flown, so we're now able to bid on those as they come available for competition, and they're doing their certification process right now as we speak. It's very efficient, so it does utilize the data from the NSSL certification flights. They have some unique requirements and analyses they like to do, and we work with them on that. But it's really pretty straightforward once you've done the other certification first, because now you have all that data.

Irene Klotz:

I know you're just digging out from Phase 3, but do you have any inklings of what's coming up in the next round for the NSSL?

Tory Bruno:

Well, yeah, they'll do individual competitions in the Lane 1 every year, what we call the sandbox, which is as when Vivienne described the two lanes. Lane 2, just like she said, is very similar to the Phase 2 competition, where there's a 60 and a 40% share and the bidders have to be able to fly everything, and they're usually the higher-end missions. In Phase 3, which is way more complicated, we have this additional Lane 1, which are intended to be less challenging and less critical missions that allow new providers to cut their teeth on.

And think of companies like Relativity and Firefly and Rocket Lab, for example, and they don't have to have the full capability of all the missions that might end up there. They're able to come in every year, [inaudible 00:14:10] in individual missions and see what they can do. It's off to a slow start. None of those providers were able to participate in the first year of those missions, and so they went to our Competitor who will be doing those. But next year it's a whole new game. There'll be new missions and we'll see who goes [inaudible 00:14:32].

Vivienne Machi:

And we should note that currently the vendors for Phase 3 Lane 1 are ULA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and Stoke Space. But as Tory mentioned, there's an opportunity, they're trying to get new entrants in every year. So every year the Space Force is reopening Lane 1 so that new entrants can come in once they have a viable plan for a launch within the next year, year and a half from that onboarding time. So some of those other entrants like Firefly, Relativity, might very well bid in the future, but right now we're at five different vendors for Lane 1.

Tory Bruno:

Right. The other thing probably worth mentioning that's kind of unique about this Phase 3 and its additional complexity is within the Lane 2 in Phase 2, we just had two providers, two tracks if you will. Now there's a third track. So there were actually three awards, SpaceX and ULA and Blue Origin who has seven missions, all GPS missions as well. So it's a procurement setup to grow more industrial base. First off, we'd hope that folks are able to participate in future missions in Lane 1, and that they are able to perhaps be bidders in the main lane when it comes to Phase 4. And then for the three big domestic heavy launch class vehicles, us, SpaceX, Blue Origin, each of us has a contract of varying size and mission makeup, and that allows Blue Origin to move into that category as well.

So it's really positioning the country well to face challenges in space relative to national security from China by having this broader industrial base going forward.

Vivienne Machi:

And Tory, just to zoom out on that last point, we over on the military space side have been covering extensively over the past five years since the US Space Force was stood up how there has been just an explosion in the need to get things on orbit for the Space Force. The amount of capabilities that the national security apparatus, whether it's the Space Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, other partners are trying to get up onto orbit has just really exploded. So I guess I want to foot stomp that, that having a much more diverse vendor pool for the Space Force was absolutely critical at this point in time for them to, again, get new satellites up at the cadence that they need to to really be responsive in the space domain.

Tory Bruno:

Yes, I agree. And that will grow over time. The next challenge I think we'll have is for space ports and access to actually launch all of these rockets as we bring that together with our commercial demands as well. So another challenge that I think the Space Force is looking to face into.

Irene Klotz:

Tory, we are about out of time, but I did want to ask you one big picture question. There's a lot of change in the industry and in the world in general, and ULA faced this a decade ago when the RD180 engines used on the Atlas V became caught in the fallout from a geopolitical situation with Russia and Ukraine. You faced your first competitor for what had been a ULA monopoly, then we had COVID and supply issues. And throughout this of course you kept flying. My question is, what do you think has been the most important tool in your management toolbox, and why?

Tory Bruno:

Oh, what a great question. Yeah, this has been a really challenging environment and a tough job that required a lot of fundamental transformation in operational success, and developing new rockets and so on and so forth, things out of our control like COVID and geopolitics. I would say what served me the best is going through all of that was having a clear vision of where we needed to get to and what we needed to do to serve the country. And just staying calm and staying on our plan and our strategy.

Obviously things pop up and you react to them, but keeping the team focused on that North star and not panicking and not overreacting to these challenges. If they come, just being confident, we'll get through this one too. We have this mission to do for our nation, and we're going to do it and we'll just figure it out. And the team really stayed focused. Because the thing about our business that's counterintuitive to a lot of people is space is so technology intensive, and then the infrastructure is massive and expensive, these big capital monuments, and you tend to focus on the things. The equipment, the rockets, the tech, the science. And the real truth is that none of that's worth anything without dedicated people who know how to use it and what to do with it. So it really actually is just all about people, and if you focus on them and what you need to do to serve your customer, you'll be okay.

Irene Klotz:

Thank you so much, Tory. Thanks, Vivienne. That's a wrap for this week's Check 6 podcast. Special thanks to our producer Cory Hitt. If you haven't already, please be sure to subscribe to Check 6 so you don't miss any episodes. And if you found today's discussion helpful, consider leaving a rating or review or share the episode with a friend or colleague. Thanks very much, and please join us again next week for another edition of Check 6.