An interesting report on the internecine battle within the company in the wake of the FTC disallowing the acquisition by Lockmart. I found this amusing:
Aerojet has traditionally structured itself as an engineering company with high fixed costs and low margins, Thompson said. But if private equity buys the company, it will want to see more robust financial returns, which could come at the cost of innovation.
“This really comes down to whether the financial interests or the engineering interests within Aerojet prevail in the struggle,” he said. “My heart is with the engineering interests. My brain, which knows the history of these types of struggles, assumes the financial interests will ultimately prevail.”
Yes, for me, the first word that comes to mind when I hear the word “Aerojet” is “innovation.” Not.
The most useful buyout would be by NGIS. AR-1 would be a drop-in replacement for RD-180, if they somehow manage to keep Antares going. Or a 9-engine, reusable Antares III down the road
I’m having trouble caring enough to muster up some good snark. The RS-25 production program turns 50 this March, and the RL-10 is still going strong after more than 60 years.
And R-7 based LVs, in production for 66 years, are second only to Falcon 9 in annual launch volume. Perhaps we’re onto something!
Innovation, I do not think it means what you think it means.
When I hear Aerojet, I remember deep rumbles echoing across mile after mile of the Sacramento Valley as they tested rocket motors out between Folsom and Mather AFB (now Mather Airport).
Innovation? Never entered my head — they built and tested things designed to loft heavy objects, based pretty much on the principles pioneered by Goddard and Von Braun.
That article is pretty much unreadable, as it’s obviously ghostwritten by Loren Thompson, who is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed-Martin. Is he slanting the article to support the merger, or to give it up as a lost cause? He seems to change his own mind several times throughout.
At any rate, Aerojet hasn’t innovated in decades; it’s just a holding company with a lot of Superfund sites that they’d like to sell off at a profit. LM may have dodged a bullet there.