Potential SS 433 SED for a face-on observer who sees the beam radiation as the optical bullets see it. The solid blue curve shows the UV component from the best-fit Cloudy photoionization model to the line intensities in Epoch X1 of X-shooter. The orange and red lines show the upper limit to a possible X-ray component for a supersoft ultraluminous (SSUL) and hard ultraluminous (HUL) type SEDs, respectively. The dashed lines show the ground state photoionization cross sections for H, He, and He+. For SS 433 to look like an ULX for the face-on observer, its X-ray spectrum must be significantly hard, since soft X-ray photons break the H/He/He+ ionization balance in the optical bullets.