From a launch perspective, Rocket Lab USA Inc. has always been focused on execution.

Brian Rogers, the senior director of global launch services at the Long Beach space launch company, said that means it is going to do exactly what it says it is going to do. 

“While there are a lot of companies out there that talk about launching, we have always been doing it,” Rogers said. “That motivated approach has served us well.”  

The philosophy of the company’s attitude toward launches has been the same since the company was founded in 2006 by Peter Beck: An identified need for dedicated small launches, and that was the niche that its Electron rocket filled, Rogers said, adding, “It serves very well to this day.”

The Electron rocket is the second most-frequently launched space vehicle in the U.S. It comes behind the Falcon 9, the workhorse rocket built by Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, based in Hawthorne.

The Electron is scheduled to launch 20 times this year, or double the number of launches the rocket was part of last year, Rogers said.

Additionally, the sub-orbital variant of Electron, called Haste, will launch three to four times this year, he said.

Rocket Lab has the capability of doing a launch every two weeks, he continued. Those launches take place from either Launch Complex 1, located in Mahia, New Zealand, or from Launch Complex 2, a dedicated pad for the Electron rocket located at Virginia Spaceport Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. 

“Twenty four (launches) has always sort of been a mark for Electron productivity in the company,” Rogers said. “We have been scaling our infrastructure for 24 (launches) in the runup to this for a number of years.”

In addition to the launch services, Rocket Lab also has a space systems division, which develops and manufactures satellites and other space components and software. 

A medium-lift vehicle

Rocket Lab is also developing Neutron, its medium-lift vehicle. 

The avionics and engines for both Electron and Neutron are built in Long Beach. The carbon fiber tanks for Neutron are being built in Virginia, while the tanks and final assembly for Electron are based in New Zealand.

“Moving forward, we continue to see demand in the medium-lift market, so that is Neutron,” Rogers said.

Neutron is being developed as a reusable rocket. 

“Reusability is key to Neutron’s development and included in every aspect of the rocket’s design,” the company said.

The Neutron’s first stage, the payload fairing and the nine Archimedes engines will all be reusable.

“Archimedes employs an oxidizer-rich closed cycle that allows the engine to operate at lower temperatures and pressures when compared to gas generator engines – improving engine life and reusability,” Rocket Lab said. 

In a YouTube video posted in December 2021 about the Neutron, Beck said that the Archimedes engines are powered by methane and liquid oxygen. 

“What we need for a reusable launch vehicle is an engine that can be run over and over again at very low stress and very high margins,” Beck said. “That’s what’s important.” 

The first Archimedes engine build is nearing completion in preparation for its initial hot-fire test.

The Neutron is following the pattern of Electron in its ability to move quickly to market and to address the commercial space market, Rogers said.

“But then to be able to bring our capabilities to support national security and civil launch in the U.S.,” Rogers added. “So that is things like the (national security space launch) program.”

The national security space launch program is overseen by the U.S. Space Force to assure access to space for the Department of Defense and government payloads.

When it comes to competing with SpaceX, Rogers said that Rocket Lab does, and doesn’t.

“Electron is in a different size category in comparison to anything that SpaceX offers,” he said. “They do dedicated missions on a large vehicle, the Falcon 9. They do rideshare missions. Electron is much smaller.”  

Rocket Lab does more of a taxi service, where it takes individual customer payloads to specific orbits, Rogers said.

The Neutron rocket is meant to compete against SpaceX and its Falcon 9.

“We are picking our niche in the market, working on reusability, sizing our vehicle appropriately, and that is how we will compete,” Rogers said.

Consolidation in space

The macroeconomic environment is one that is challenging for some startups that have been created in the last five years and are struggling to raise additional venture capital to keep going, Rogers said. 

“Whereas Rocket Lab is in the market, producing revenue, seeing how hard it is to raise money for these companies, it will be an interesting time over the next couple of years as we continue to see consolidation in the launch market,” he said.

Among those startups are Relativity Space in Long Beach and ABL Space Systems in El Segundo. ABL performed its first launch of its rocket, the RS1, in January of last year, but it crashed shortly after liftoff. And in March of last year, Relativity launched its Terran 1 rocket, which reached space but did not make it to orbit due to a problem with second stage ignition. Neither company has yet to attempt a second launch. 

Alex Krutz, founder and chief executive of Patriot Industrial Partners Inc., an aerospace and defense advisory firm in Laguna Beach, stressed that for a company to be a consolidation target it needs some enterprise value; it needs sales and employees and contracts.

In the Southern California space market, companies are either too big – like a SpaceX – or too small, due to being in startup mode, Krutz said. 

“What I am talking about is companies that grew up with space in mind,” he added.  

If one is talking about those pure-play space companies, they are going to have a harder time because it is a slower cycle, versus a company that gets into space with a diversified book of business and will probably be more successful, Krutz continued.

“They are applying their technology from other segments, like commercial aerospace and defense applications, into the space realm,” he said.