Rocket Lab's Success Shows Small Satellite Industry Is on the Rise

Rocket Labs has launched its Electron small launch vehicle over 60 times over the past seven years, and CEO Peter Beck has been talking up its viability as a direct competitor for the likes of SpaceX in the small satellite space. He claims that while other companies with larger rockets might offer competitive “rideshare” arrangements, he’s keen for the small satellite launch industry to be seen as its own market that can drive real profit for younger aerospace ventures like Rocket Labs. Not the European alternatives, though, he says. Those are doomed to fail.
In the wake of NASA’s explosive costs for the Space Launch System, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine putting Soyuz launches in flux, and Elon Musk’s cozying up to the new Republican administration, it’s easy to see SpaceX as the only game in town. It has the reusable Falcon 9 for payloads up to 50,000 pounds into LEO at a relatively affordable $75 million per launch. But for companies and governments wanting to launch something smaller than that, Beck believes there are very real reasons to choose a dedicated small satellite launch company like his rather than merely ridesharing aboard a larger rocket.
“Dedicated small launch is a real market,” he said. “It’s totally different […] We have a lot of customers that will go and fly on a Transporter, and then they’ll come back and they’ll go book their whole constellation on us.”
The problem with tagging along on someone else’s launch, he said, is that you are beholden to their schedule and orbital trajectory. With Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, if you want to throw up to half a tonne of payload into LEO, you can do it for $7.5 million and do it on your own schedule. Buyers can control when the launch happens and what orbit it inserts the payload to.
“The business plan, the product, and the actual engineering all has to line up perfectly,” he said in his chat with SpaceNews. “When we look across the folks that have failed, it’s extremely obvious to us that one of those three things was not going to line up.”
However, when pressed on whether this burgeoning small satellite industry had room for others, he was less bullish. Touting the trusted 59 successful launches of the Electron rocket, he mocked the idea of companies launching with some of his competitors.
“Even if someone comes in and they’re a million dollars cheaper on an $8 million sticker price, are you really going to risk all of your payload and your business on something slightly cheaper?”
When quizzed specifically about Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket, which crashed in its latest test launch just a few weeks ago, he was doubly skeptical. He suggested that their target of a one-tonne launch payload was sitting between the potential markets. Too big to be a dedicated rocket for smaller satellites, but too small to allow for multiple payloads on a single launch.
Despite such claims, Beck went on to talk about the larger Neutron rocket his company is working on. When operational, it will launch around 28,000 pounds into LEO with a partially reusable design, costing around $50 million per launch.
Considering SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has been flown over 400 times successfully, I can’t help but echo Beck’s words back at him: “Are you really going to risk all of your payload and your business on something slightly cheaper?”
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