Tory Bruno, a veteran engineer and aerospace industry executive, has resigned from the top job at United Launch Alliance after more than a decade competing against the growing dominance of SpaceX, the company announced Monday.
The news of Bruno’s sudden resignation was unexpected. His tenure was marked by a decline in ULA’s market share as rival SpaceX competed for and won ever-larger US government launch contracts. More recently, Bruno oversaw the successful debut of ULA’s Vulcan rocket, followed by struggles to ramp up the new rocket’s launch cadence.
Bruno had a 30-year career as an engineer and general manager for Lockheed Martin’s ballistic missile programs before taking over as president and CEO of United Launch Alliance in August 2014. He arrived as SpaceX started making inroads with its partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket, and ULA’s leading position in the US launch market looked to be in doubt.
In his first year, Bruno announced what would become the Vulcan rocket and the phaseout of ULA’s legacy Atlas and Delta launch vehicles. He also selected Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, then an emerging space company, to build the Vulcan rocket’s booster engines, bypassing the industry’s established propulsion contractor.
The decision to develop a new rocket and the selection of the engine to power it proved to be correct. The Atlas V rocket, now nearing retirement, is powered by Russian engines, a nonstarter in today’s geopolitical reality, and the already-retired Delta IV launch vehicle was prohibitively expensive. The Vulcan rocket has been successful in all three of its flights so far, and the performance of Blue Origin’s liquid-fueled BE-4 engine has, by all accounts, been exceptional.
Hard times at the rocket ranch
But ULA’s potential for regaining its position atop the launch market was hamstrung by the company’s decision to make the Vulcan rocket fully expendable. There are long-term plans to recover and reuse the rocket’s main engines, but not the entire booster. And the new rocket’s entry into service has not been smooth. The Vulcan rocket flew just once this year after receiving certification from the US Space Force to carry national security satellites into orbit, well short of Bruno’s goal of flying the new launcher up to 10 times.