It is clear from Rocket Lab's purchases of space hardware companies that they are well aware of SpaceX's downward pressure on launch prices, and are diversifying and vertically integrating their business, to include satellite design and build, as well as selling satellite components off the shelf like star trackers and (momentum) reaction control wheels.
I'm fairly bullish about Rocket Lab's chances. They're rolling their own engines, doing great work, and Peter Beck literally ate his own hat when he was wrong.
They are an actual entrant in the space race, and compared to say Blue Origin, which I personally consider to be a vanity project, they are really making headway. But I don't see them improving on SpaceX just yet even when adjusting for the gigantic headstart SpaceX has and that is going to be the competition.
Still, they have some interesting tech and appear to be really driven to become a serious player and I wish them well.
That's terrifying, but compelling. To zoom in on one feature:
Back when I was a barely supervised teenage boy we tried that strategy of pulling a 20+ foot structure upright with a truck, and managed to limit injuries one participant getting a bad rope burn. It seemed sketchy even to us, I can't guess at the thought process that lead to a bunch of grown literal rocket scientists trying it.
To be honest I'm jealous that they're still at it. You think they're hiring?
Yes, same here. Just looking at the stresses on that front set of legs and the incredibly bad angle which they were pulling from (not to mention: the construction of that hoist) made me physically uncomfortable just watching it.
Also: afterwards the legs appear to have bent quite a bit, and you have to wonder about what kind of stresses that put on the attachment points.
At least they're lucky, you can't deny them that.
What gets me though: they can design and build a rocket motor but get a whole pile of very basic stuff utterly wrong. How is that even possible?
>Lasting about 2 minutes and 40 seconds, the video shows a number of instances in which Pythom employees appear to be handling the Eiger rocket and its hypergolic propellants (furfuryl alcohol and nitric acid) with less than industry-standard care.
That reminded our ROTC training on handling SCUD missiles which also had nitric acid as oxidizer - even for training without actual fuel/oxidizer we had to don the protection suits :) Anyway, looking at those guys i think i definitely can go ahead with my SpaceX competitor rocket project.
Believe me I have my share of problems with Blue and have made countless jokes but whether it is a vanity project or not.
They are launching humans to sub-orbital space. They have working Ox-rich engine and such an engine has never before been built in the US. They are not SpaceX level but such a project is quite a complex under-taking.
They are a contractor for ULA and the whole military is depending on them. This is pretty serious business.
Sure. But if you want to succeed in space the first thing you need is drive, and BO doesn't seem to have any. Whether it fails or succeeds it's not going to make any difference to Bezos and I think that the people who will win this kind of thing are the ones for whom it does make a difference.
Sub-orbital launches are simply not useful, and a new type of engine only makes sense if it gives you a shorter path to the finish or a capability that you otherwise would not have. As for the military depending on them: SpaceX has been awarded a whole pile of contracts and the only thing that BO has going for it is to be able to ride the gravy train without delivering anything so far except for some research that may one day be useful.
Instead of competing in the marketplace it seems BO is better at playing politics and competing in the courts, but the latter they've lost and the politicians will sooner or later want deliverables and without those the gravy train will sooner or later roll to a halt. Note that the engine program is now 4 years behind schedule and not a single BE-4 has flown. Even BO admits that the engine has problems, which makes me wonder if it will ever fly with the present design, and if they have to go back to the drawing board you can add a couple of years more worth of delays.
Meanwhile, SpaceX launches a payload to orbit on average every 8 days for 2022 (once every 12 days in 2021), the amount of experience they are gaining alone is going to add up to a sizeable barrier.
I recently saw some interesting speculation on reasons BO might be having such trouble with the BE4. To oversimplify, they're trying to do with one turbopump what the Raptor does with two, and it's hard to keep that one pump from taking damage from such extreme conditions.
> Blue Origin, which I personally consider to be a vanity project
I could see an argument for that given the time/resources invested compared to the results but ULA's future and a large fraction of Project Kupier's planned launches are tied to the success of the BE-4 so they do have immediate ambitions beyond suborbital tourist hops.
That lack of immediate ambition is exactly the problem and why I don't think they'll make it. You either go all in on something like this or you might as well not play.
They have working rockets, started small, and are working their way up to the big guns. I think they have a great shot at being another player, especially outside the US.
I also really enjoy their design sense, really cool to see a carbon-fiber rocket with a sense of style.
Their launch rate hasn't been increasing nearly as fast as one would have expected if they are going to make it to profitability. I wonder how much of that is due to SpaceX's rideshare offering, one would think it must have stolen a good bit of business from RL.
In terms of lack of launch on demand side. One thing that would solve this almost immediately is to re-purpose money from legacy science / launch efforts.
For example, take 4B/year from SLS. You could fund just an incredible amount of activity with that.
Correct. The math is actually about 500 electron launches.
That is to replace the cost of launching one SLS. If you include development costs cancelling out SLS now would easily save $4B per launch + 10B+ of dev costs.
I think the proposal would be to open up funding for both additional launches AND additional science missions. For the let's say $6B/year or so, you could do a huge amount.
F9 Heavy can do a lot of good science missions, and many payload sizes are coming down. I'd personally include the Ariane stuff as well, James Webb launched on a Ariane 5 (around $200M per launch - so can get 20 launches on that or 10 launches + 10 new $200M science missions for one SLS).
This ignores the DEVELOPMENT cost of SLS which is mind bogglingly large as well as some of the ongoing just sustainment costs (also insane).
Never heard of this company -- SpaceX seems to have sucked the publicity oxygen out of the room.
> There’s gonna be a lot of launch vehicles sitting on a pad waiting for payloads in the next few years.
It wasn't clear if that was because the demand pipeline was "done" or it was a chicken and egg scenario of businesses not having that locked in to develop on, which raises an interesting question of how much business there is for satellites even if launching was cheap and trivial.
It's because a large number of new entrants, all started within a similar time window having seen the same market opportunity, are going to start flying soon. While demand for small launch may be growing, payloads are not multiplying at the same rate as launchers. And this is not a surprise; everyone knows there's no way the market supports 100 small launch companies. They just hope to be one of the several who will survive.
I'm looking forward to ~5 years from now when hopefully a lot of these small launch companies have gone under. They suck up insane amounts of venture capital and engineering talent. A few companies will certainly rise to the top, Rocket Lab likely being one of them.
My company (non-aerospace) just had a couple engineers leave for a different small launcher. I wish them success, but also wish their talent could be applied elsewhere. I say this as someone who just left the space industry.
There are billions going into extremely boring software startups all the time. The amounts raised by these "New Space" startups is relatively modest in comparison.
Sure, there is no way that the launch market will need Rocketlab, Astra, Firefly, Relativity and Blue Origin on top of ULA and SpaceX. Especially if Starship is successful ( a big Starship rideshare + in-orbit shutteling services will be almost impossible to beat if that rocket ends up being actually reusable).
It will definitely put a downward pressure on prices.
And even if they go under, the know how and the talent will still be useful.
In any case, building an orbital rocket is certainly a lot more interesting than building the umpteenth webapp or SasS.
That's a strange take, since I personally see space tech as a useful endeavour, versus ... ad-tech, building yet another chat app, social network apps, another financial service, another way to sell eyeballs, another way to scam people with NFTs.
I work at a clean energy startup, which is an industry that desperately needs the talent that aerospace often grabs. I wholeheartedly agree that space is a useful endeavor.
Another recent interview with Peter Beck, as a podcast
https://www.wemartians.com/podcasts/118-planetary-exploratio...
It is clear from Rocket Lab's purchases of space hardware companies that they are well aware of SpaceX's downward pressure on launch prices, and are diversifying and vertically integrating their business, to include satellite design and build, as well as selling satellite components off the shelf like star trackers and (momentum) reaction control wheels.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/18/rocket-lab-acquires-solaer...
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/15/rocket-lab-acquires-planet...
https://spacenews.com/rocket-lab-acquires-software-company-a...
https://www.rocketlabusa.com/space-systems/satellite-compone...