ULA Says it Has no Plans to Cede Medium-Lift Market

摘要

United Launch Alliance (ULA) has enough unsold Delta 2 rockets in inventory to meet NASA's forecasted demand through at least 2015 and could wait until 2012 to decide whether to restart production of the reliable but increasingly expensive workhorse, a top company executive said.Dan Collins, ULA's chief operating officer, also said the company is considering ways to reduce the Delta 2's price tag as well as developing a less powerful, lower-cost variant of its larger Atlas 5 or Delta 4 rockets. Speaking June 25 here at a meeting of the National Research Council's Space Studies Board, he said UIA of Denver has no intention of ceding the medium-lift launch market it has dominated for decades to new rockets being developed by Orbital Sciences Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX).