How long do you think small launch will remain viable? They’re already struggling to keep up with Transporter missions, what happens when Starship comes online?
What SpaceX rideshares are enabling in the smallsat industry is pretty incredible. It doesn’t really bother me that too many people invested in rockets that they shouldn’t have. Launch is flashy, but they made bad investments.
For launch companies who don’t have any differentiation, what’s the point? Phantom, Vaya, Astra… even ABL and Relativity don’t make much sense to me, but they’re well funded. European companies like Isar, RFA, Skyrora, Orbex, Maia, and PLD want to be the new strategic domestic launch providers, but there are too many of them.
Rocket Lab is diversifying well. Firefly has a bit more than launch going on. Stoke has a crazy reuse idea.
Many more will follow Virgin Orbit into bankruptcy. I’m surprised they haven’t already.
Absolutely! Just as the article states, small launch is increasingly for niche services. Rideshare is the same simple economies of scale as cargo ships, for example. So it makes sense that more companies are trying to transition to that model.
One thing mentioned was that there is a feeling that transporter missions are actively trying to kill off competition, rather than it happening “naturally”. I haven’t seen indication that SpaceX is flying them at a loss, so I would be very interested to see documentation whether or not they’re engaging in monopolistic practices.
There are pictures of some of the Transporter payload stacks online (7, 8, 9…). Estimating mass is tough, but ballparking it, my guess is that they’re at least breaking even on most of these.
I found an old version of the RPUG online. They allow 450ish kg for ESPA and 825ish kg for ESPA Grande. That’s $2.7m and $4.95m. Granted, I’m sure nobody is maxing out that mass, but even if you halve those prices and start counting sats by size on the Transporter stacks, you can get past $25m pretty quickly on most.
Even if they lose money on some, I’d argue that they’re investing in expanding the market.
