ULA enjoys a good working relationship with the FAA and addresses licensing issues with the agency in real-time… The FAA is doing an excellent job ensuring public safety in today’s regulatory environment, and we urge all parties to remain focused on safety rather than sidestepping oversight for convenience.
The Atlas and Delta vehicles have been safely launching commercial missions for decades, yet during the regulation streamlining process, it has often seemed that the stakeholders being given the reins by government to drive the conversation include companies that are very new to the launch market or have yet to fly anything to space. These companies may not understand how challenging it is to reliably and safely launch to space, and in some instances have experienced repeated, damaging and dangerous launch failures…
It is my observation that many actors portray the FAA as a barrier to success to explain program delays. ULA does not view the agency that way because we understand why their mission is important to the promotion of commercial space.
That was Kelly Garehime from United Launch Alliance (ULA), testifying June 26, 2018 before the Subcommittee on Aviation. This testimony is in contrast to the one I posted earlier from Blue Origin complaining about overly stringent regulatory requirements.
As the legacy sole-source provider for launch capabilities, ULA co-evolved along with the regulations so that their business processes mirror the regulatory processes. The regulations also erect barriers to entry which protects ULA’s market position. Their stance in favor of the status quo is thus not surprising.
However, ULA does advocate for a shift to a performance-based approach, rather than the prior methods of detailed review and approval of design, production procedures, test, and so forth. Yet ULA cautions that performance-based regulations should not allow firms to “cut corners to the point that public safety is compromised.”
ULA also advocates streamlining requirements that are duplicated across three or four government agencies, including USAF, NASA, and the FAA. They prefer a single agency, or joint-agency group. In these ways, ULA is bending to calls for change which also benefits their competitors.
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