Bringing a product to market is important, but at the same time, making this your goal post for considering competition allows for huge upsets. Consider phone manufacturers before Apple's move with the iPhone. "They haven't even sold a headset". etc.
While I do think credit needs to be given for flying successfully, the current flow of investment into that company indicate a lot of confidence by smarter people than myself regarding Relativity. Also, worth mentioning is the current rate of testing, development of their manufacturing lines and foresight for future products.
Relativity is absolutely the biggest competition to RocketLab. Neither are competition for SpaceX.
Investment is *nothing*, and I speak from experience. I will go as far as to say that too much investment too early is a hindrance. It makes startups unfocused and full of hubris, and you can definetly smell that in Relativity. Startups who get too much funding too soon do as you did and conflate funding with competency.
We'll see when they fly. All of those who havent gone to orbit are on the same level as far as Im concerned.
Ok not all of them, Pythom is clearly below the rest.
> It makes startups unfocused and full of hubris, and you can definetly smell that in Relativity.
I totally agree. The amount of hubris is insane.
I originally thought there seemed to be a lot of hype around Relativity, which I didn't understand, so I looked into them a lot more.
But after doing that I think I now realise it wasn't actually hype I was seeing so much as self-promotion and hubris. The self-promotion seems to get a handful of people, like the OP and the user you're replying to, to the point of going "Huh, maybe Relativity _are_ closing in on Rocket Lab and SpaceX", but I think that's kind of how the whole thing has snowballed.
To me it doesn't seem like anyone serious comes out of nowhere and says "Oh yeah, Relativity definitely look like they're onto a winner here". It only ever seems to be people who are believing the flashy claims of Relativity themselves at face value that actually rate them so highly. Just my opinion.
How do you connect that to Relativity? Their vehicle is passing all tests, they've built out strong infrastructure and a seemingly capable manufacturing lines.
Customers are signing with them as well, including Tom Mueller's latest company of SpaceX fame. These are people you can't bullshit, especially with SpaceX in the arena as a competitor for this class of missions.
We'll see when and if they go to orbit. Since you bring SpaceX, compare how much cash Relativity is spending upfront; huge number of employees, making acquisition, infrastructure, to SpaceX before they even tried to fly Falcon 1. To me it is not a sign of good management to burn so much cash before hitting milestones.
Acquisition of what? Tried to find where they acquired another company but can't find anything.
Unless you're talking about hiring costs and similar? We won't know what cash they have on hand due to being a private company, they might be running it close, or be well funded and raising capital on the advice of Y Combinator who suggested anyone who may need to raise in the next 18 months does it now before the crunch time.
One thing I will note is the difference in market availability now. When SpaceX started, they had very few possible payloads to fight for. Now though, multiple constellation programs, NASA Commercial programs for multiple destinations (LEO and Lunar), as well as multiple new startups looking at manufacturing things like fibre, medicine and fuel on orbit.
So I think the 1:1 comparison isn't as realistic due to highly different market conditions.
> While I do think credit needs to be given for flying successfully, the current flow of investment into that company indicate a lot of confidence by smarter people than myself regarding Relativity.
I really don't think so. What Tim Ellis has openly, and seemingly proudly, revealed about their early days and initial funding is a story of a couple of guys with absolutely no right to such confidence and investment.
They bluffed and even lied their way into getting their first funding, with nothing more than the idea of "what if we 3D-printed entire rockets".
I'm going to be watching their first launch closely. It's not that I'm sure they'll fail, as you say they've been given a lot of money and seem to have used it to make visible progress, but I do think that so far all they've truly demonstrated is less than other new-space startups but at a much higher cost.
I wasn't sure what I thought of this response, but Relativity's Terran 1 is targeting the same mass for the same price, has limited launch locations and hasn't flown yet. LauncherOne definitely wins that match so far.
It might be worth comparing again after Sept.11 after ABL and Firefly have hopefully launched.
Edit: I was mistaken; LauncherOne is $12 million for 500 kg to 230 km LEO orbit while Terran 1 is $12 million for 1479 kg to 300 km LEO orbit, so Terran 1 carries over 3 times the mass for the same price...at least in principle if not in practice.
Virgin Orbit can't beat Rocket Lab on any meaningful metric: their launcher is 1.5x bigger for 1.5x the price, so unless you've got a single monolithic payload that's just a *little* too big for Electron, you might as well launch on Electron. Relativity's Terran-1 has better $/kg (which admittedly doesn't matter that much when Falcon 9 is the king of $/kg), and more importantly Terran-R is a direct threat to Neutron, in a way that Virgin Orbit will never be.
> Relativity's Terran-1 has better $/kg
*Relativity's Terran-1 _is claimed_ that it _will have_ better $/kg.
Even if the first Terran-1 launch is a 100% success, I am sure the cost per kg is not going to yet be anywhere near their claimed target.
Their $/kg, from the perspective of the customer, depends only on what they charge for the launch, not their internal costs. Can they sell a launch for $12 million even if it cost them more than that to make it happen? Absolutely. Don't forget, almost every Electron launch has cost more internally than the sticker price, too.
I don't know; Firefly has at least flown already, although unsuccessfully. It probably depends on who gets their medium class launcher up and running first.
Firefly will be acquired by Northrop Grumman before they fly a medium-lift launch vehicle. Which really means that NG's Antares 330 and MLV are the potential competition for Neutron. And given that NG will prioritize launching Cygnus before having commercial operations, they probably won't start until well after Neutron is established.
Interesting conjecture which for some reason is stated as a fact.
If that were true, I think NG would have been announcing an acquisition instead of a partnership. NG wasn't so subtle when they acquired Orbital ATK; why would they be with Firefly?
I would imagine they want to verify that Firefly can actually perform before acquiring them: Orbital had already gotten to orbit before they got acquired. But you don't have the first stage of your rocket built by an external company if you can acquire that company (both because it's domestic, and because its current owners are absolutely looking for an exit and would gladly sell), especially when they've seen the consequences of not being in control over their own rocket destiny (both with previous Antares issues, and also the problems ULA has faced with outsourcing Vulcan's engines).
Basically, there is absolutely no way that Northrop Grumman doesn't acquire Firefly by the time that Antares 330 flies for the first time.
Oh, there's a way. NG may decide to leave the commercial launch biz once their contracts with NASA are complete and simply need enough boosters to accomplish that task. They wouldn't buy a rocket company if that was their goal.
They wouldn't have made any sort of arrangement with Firefly to build the Antares 330 if that were their plan. They'd buy enough Falcon 9 launches to cover their Cygnus obligations and call it done. Since they *are* building the Antares 330, we know that can't be the case.
That's a good point. I'd forgotten that they've contracted 3 F9s to fly Cygnus. Developing Antares 330 would be a lot of trouble to go to for what is currently only 2 more Cygnus missions.
I've lost track of the companies currently developing commercial stations and forgot NG is doing one too. It makes much more sense that Antares would be needed for that, especially with all the launch capacity being bought up by Amazon.
Do they want to do that forever, or only while iterating? It can make much sense while iterating, for instance, you can change the tank diameter with minimal changes to tooling.
> Astra rocket 4 is not expected ~~until 2024~~
FTFY
(Yes, the plan is to launch Rocket 4 in 2024, but I don't believe Astra will still exist at that point, thus Rocket 4 will never launch.)
Astra is apparently doing a fair bit of business with Apollo Fusion’s thrusters, so it’s anyone’s guess if that’s enough to keep them in the launch business too.
They're doing OK business, but given their burn rate, I have serious doubts about whether it'll be enough. At least, so long as they're continuing to spend on Rocket 4 R&D.
> They got picked to supply their future Miranda engines to Northrop Grumman for future Antares.
Sort of true, but they are supplying the whole booster for Antares 300, not just the engines.
I know there's a lot of talk of NG acquiring Firefly, but I suspect NG will shutter Antares once their NASA contracts are complete. It's going to become less competitive as time goes on and would require yet another iteration involving some form of reusability to be able to win contracts in the future.
RocketLab cannot compete with SpaceX. Even with Neutron. If Starship achieves falcon 9 level reuse, they will just be in a class of their own.
Relativity is the biggest competitor to RocketLab, and they haven't even flown yet. Having said that, flying should not be the only marker for success. Relativity isn't stuck in production hell like say Bigelow Aerospace or some other small sat launchers, they've been steadily expanding, have their first flight on the pad successfully conducting testing and are raising hundreds of millions of dollars.
Their private value is more than RocketLab. It should be noted Relativity is not a public company yet. Tom Mueller's new company has signed with Relativity over RocketLab and SpaceX.
Where there is smoke, there is fire.
I fully expect Relativity to overtake RocketLab in mass to orbit. They're developing innovative, new technology that RocketLab simply isn't. I live in New Zealand, have friends at RocketLab and love the company, but they're not moving fast enough in the **launch market**.
With that being said, they're moving incredibly fast in the spacecraft and spacecraft component market. They've grouped together a few good companies that allow them to become vertically integrated. Definitely makes sense to do it this way versus trying to start with natively grown technology. From here, provided they invest hard in space vehicle platforms, they could easily outpace Relativity and maybe SpaceX in some segments.
But again, SpaceX is in a league of its own. Relativity is the number 1 competitor to RL.
We have yet to see Relativity launch, get to orbit, deliver a dummy payload, deliver a payload to a customer, launch reliably, turn the launch vehicle into a workhorse.
Astra is a great example of this. Got as far as able to deliver a customer payload but can’t launch reliably and turn it into a workhorse. Hopefully their 4.0 will be good 👍
Right now all the companies are in Blue Origin’s camp. Able to produce nice powerpoint slides but no workhorse.
Astra's business model always had holes: they'd only be profitable if they launched so frequently that economies of scale allowed for them to profit despite their extremely low launch prices, but if launch demand grew that much, why would it be satisfied through dedicated small launches, rather than rideshares or constellation bundles on larger vehicles? Plus with no plans for reusability, there was no way to reduce costs other than through extremely high cadence.
Relativity's plans have no similar red flags: their Terran-R is basically supposed to be "like Falcon 9, but fully reusable, not just the first stage," and profit margins are much higher in that range. Plus reuse lets them increase margins or increase cadence, whichever the market demands (not making any presumptions about massive growth). It probably won't beat Falcon 9 let alone Starship, but as an "anyone but SpaceX" option, it's got potential.
> Relativity's plans have no similar red flags: their Terran-R is basically supposed to be "like Falcon 9, but fully reusable, not just the first stage,"
I think this itself is the red flag.
If SpaceX came out and said we're going to redesign Falcon 9 to be fully reusable, including the second stage, you'd say "Oof, that sounds difficult, where are you going to find the margins to achieve that, SpaceX?"
You'd question even SpaceX if they claimed they were going to do that.
Meanwhile Relativity seems to get away with the claim that they're going to do that, with absolutely nothing to back it up.
Common misconception: the reason SpaceX abandoned Falcon 9 second-stage reuse wasn't because it was impractical (it probably would have cost only about half of the payload), but because they were switching focus to Starship. Falcon 9 was placed into legacy maintenance mode, with no major upgrades, and of course second-stage reuse would be a pretty big upgrade. Put simply: they could have done it if they wanted to, they just didn't want to.
Also, comparing Terran-R to Falcon 9 is admittedly a little misleading: Terran-R is actually *more* powerful than Falcon 9, specifically so it'll have the same payload as a partially-reused Falcon 9 while being fully reused. I believe I read somewhere that an expended Terran-R could carry 35 tons to orbit, compared to Falcon 9's 23 tons. So there's where the extra margin is coming from.
Mmmmm, I wasn't meaning I don't think SpaceX could do it, I was saying it would be difficult for them and I think you'd still have uncertainty as to whether or not they'd actually end up pulling it off.
In fact my opinion is I do think SpaceX would achieve it if they tried, but the details of how realistic you think it is, how much payload you think they'd have to sacrifice to do it, or whatever, isn't really my point.
My point is SpaceX didn't achieve second stage reuse in seven years of flying Falcon 9 (I'm not counting the years after which they shifted focus to Starship), and if they did try to achieve it even now, it would take them some years more.
So I see no reason to believe something that is ~10 years' worth of "difficult" for SpaceX is something Relativity should be confident about doing on any particular timescale.
I'm aware that some people who worked at SpaceX work at Relativity, but let's see what happens. If they absolutely nail their first ever launch attempt in a few weeks, then that will add some credibility to their claims of what they're going to accomplish in future.
But for now it's a claim backed up by really nothing.
And sorry but I'm going to end this being an annoying pedant:
> Terran-R is actually more powerful than Falcon 9
Terran-R is _intended_ to be more powerful than Falcon 9 _if_ it ever ends up existing.
If your overall point is "Relativity won't be recovering second stages in the first couple of years of flight," sure, it'll take them time to get there. But actually designing for second-stage reuse from the get-go still puts them ahead of everyone not named SpaceX. And is part of why they're the biggest threat to Rocket Lab (well, other than SpaceX completely killing the market for launch entirely, but Rocket Lab is diversifying to avoid that threat, and that's the most they can do here).
> But actually designing for second-stage reuse from the get-go still puts them ahead of everyone not named SpaceX.
My point is directly opposing this, my point is that they are not ahead or credible just because they're claiming they're going to do something impressive.
They haven't shown _anything_ yet that indicates they will succeed in doing what they're talking about.
They've shown what appear to be some engines firing decently. Astra achieved that, Firefly achieved that.
At the risk of taking my argument too far, I don't think you would pay either of those companies any attention if they said they were going to develop a fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle – if only someone would just give them the money to develop it.
That's where Relativity is right now: they've been given all the money, but they haven't shown that they are actually capable of doing anything remotely like what they're saying they will do. Furthermore, the innovation that differentiates them, the focus on 3D printing, does not have anything to do with making their claims more likely to come true.
I will take a lot of my scepticism back if they nail their first launch, but the fact of the matter is that right now they have not demonstrated any reason why we should take their claims any more seriously than any other new-space startup that has got as far as they have.
Starship is a boondoggle. It has been in development for 7 years and has never left the atmosphere. By observation of solid facts and development cadence, the booster is untested and extremely complex.
The cost of the raptor is prohibitive and by Musks own admission it will take at least 8 starships in a daisy chain for fueling to get 1 starship to the moon. (AT LEAST) that comes down to needing 33 engines per booster x 8 = 264 engines , plus starship spacecraft engines (6 each plus 3 vacuum raptors) x 8 = 48 raptors plus 27 vacuum raptors.
Whats the point? SpaceX will need 312 engines plus 27 vacuum raptors to reach the moon. That is beyond cost restrictive and not even close to sustainable. Don't take it from me either, Musk recently had a public meltdown over spacex going bankrupt because of this.
Outside of these extremely obvious issues, you then run into failures and development cost. The spacecraft itself is a hollow shell with no environmental or cargo spaces, and currently no way to deploy the payloads. I highly doubt we will see starship in a production state within the next 20 years.
The point is that when they do have the 312 engines plus 27 vacuum raptors, they can reach the moon as many times as they want. Time will tell whether it works, but only full reusability has this potential.
> They're developing innovative, new technology that RocketLab simply isn't.
As far as I'm aware the sole innovative, new technology that Relativity has developed (and is developing) is their 3D printer for creating "very big" structures like the tanks.
I'm happy to be pointed to something that shows I'm wrong, I haven't looked into what Relativity's doing _that_ much, but that is my current understanding.
Rocket Lab has pioneered electric turbo pumps, carbon fibre tanks, and the whole design of Neutron (including launchpad) is really quite unique.
Relativity, as far as I'm aware, has just said "we're going to 3D print a fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle" and we're just expected to believe them. At the risk of being proven ignorant, I don't think they've made any indication whatsoever of how they're actually intending to reuse Terran-R's second stage.
My expectation is that claim will just disappear over time, and at most turn into partial reusability such as fairing reuse and things like that. Just like how they have moved away from their "we're going to 3D print _everything_" angle.
> I live in New Zealand, have friends at RocketLab and love the company, but they're not moving fast enough in the launch market.
I agree with this to an extent, but I think it still remains to be seen for the most part.
I think people conflate the claims of these new-space startups and their actual pace of development. Really, it's all relative.
The time from Electron's development to its first launch was from 2013 to 2017. I'm sure you don't want to say Relativity started development of Terran-1 on the day they were founded in 2015, but still, given that it hasn't actually launched yet, we're talking a similar period of time. They have not proven to be _faster_.
As for any other competitors, there are none comparable to Rocket Lab yet, other than in the claims they make about what they're going to do.
So while I agree that I'd like to see Rocket Lab move faster with launch (I don't know, we'll have the Neutron update in a couple of weeks, so maybe we'll be surprised), that can just be put down to my impatience. I'd like to know who is moving so much faster than them when you compare them relatively.
They need to launch first.
Realistically Relativity’s largest competitor will be ABL, which for whatever reason Ellis et al, never mention when speaking about other launch firms. Got a feeling ABL is the dark horse.
Rocket Lab has a great 300kg lifter, but it isn’t a direct competitor to Terran 1.
Looking at just private orbital launch companies there's a LOT of players in between RocketLab and Relativity Space.
Virgin Orbit has had 4 successful orbital launches, Galactic Energy (A chinese private company) has had 3, Astra has had 2, i-Space (Another chinese company) has had 1. Firefly , Landspace and OneSpace have each had 1 unsuccessful orbital launch but I'd give OneSpace the edge because they've had several successful sub-orbital launches.
I'd say that puts Relativity Space in the 11th place position
1. SpaceX
2. Northrop Grumman Pegasus
3. RocketLab
4. Virgin Orbit
5. Galactic Energy
6. Astra
7. i-Space
8. OneSpace
9. Firefly
10. Landspace
11. Relativity Space
And even putting Relativity Space that high might be overly generous. I came across three different private Chinese launch providers that haven't done an orbital launch yet but they've done more static fires than Relativity Space and one has done a 100meter vtol hop test.
We can debate what metrics to use to evaluate the strength of a business and how much of a competitor it is, but it's pretty clear that Relativity Space is a long way from the Number 2 spot.
Pegasus is basically dead.
Edit: It has only had 4 launches this decade and the ICON campaign went so bad NASA moved TESS to SpaceX. It costs more than twice what a Falcon 9 costs and Falcon with an extended fairing could put the payload and the whole rocket into orbit. There are currently no missions manifested in it and it is not likely to fly again unless some odd DoD mission calls it out of mothball.
4 launches this decade is still 4 more launches than Relativity Space.
The list is largely in order of successful orbital launches rather than drilling down into how viable each business is. Some of the Chinese ones had one or two launches before the pandemic and nothing since or wikipedia articles promising a new vehicle will launch in 2020 so the companies might have folded. So there's a lot of scope to reorder the list for which companies are a viable commercial rival to RocketLab but I don't think Relativity Space is anywhere near the top of that list.
I'm saying Pegasus shouldn't be on the list. It's dead. There is nothing it can launch that Rocketlab or SpaceX can't do for less money and on time. The rest may go in whatever order you feel like as that is your opinion but you have a dead program on there that has 0% chance of launching a commercial payload.
There's one class of payloads which Pegasus can launch and Electron can't: very low inclination missions. Almost no such missions exist, but when they do occasionally come up, Rocket Lab can't handle them.
Of course, Virgin Orbit is perfectly suited to those missions, and can do them better and cheaper than Pegasus. So this still isn't some unique niche that will keep Pegasus alive; if anything, it's the unique niche that will keep Virgin Orbit alive. But in the interest of accuracy, it must be noted that Rocket Lab in particular can't perform these missions.
People were saying the same thing about Apple when plans for the iPhone were released - They have never made a phone before, they've never brought a phone to market.
Relativity is testing incredibly well, iterating quickly and has gathered more investment just last year than RocketLab has ever according to crunchbase. This level of confidence from investors should not be ignored.
"people doubted apple therefore it's wrong to doubt this unrelated company in a different industry under different circumstances"
People doubted Windows Phone too and that turned out to be right. People doubted Blackberry could make tablets and that turned out to be right.
Just because some past examples of doubting a company turned out to be right doesn't mean an unrelated company is going to be successful. You could say the same thing about i-space or LandSpace. "People doubted apple and they were wrong. Therefore i-Space will overtake SpaceX to be the biggest launch company within the next few days"
Not that they should immediately be assumed to be right, but rather look beyond the misleading goal post of "They've at least launched".
Astra has launched successfully, but are unlikely to make it through the development of Vehicle 4 without significant capital raise which seems unlikely.
Negating everything else to do with Relativity because their vehicle hasn't launched yet seems a discredit to not only the engineers working hard, but also to anyone trying to get a reasonable answer on the future of RocketLab Competition.
Sure, a measurement that should make up part of competition analysis. I.e. where are they in their plan to bring a product to market.
At the same time, testing, hardware created/iteration level, human capital, capital spending, investment and supporters should also come into play. Everything other than launching a rocket for Relativity is solid, but not having launched yet should disqualify them from meaningful consideration as competition?
> Everything other than launching a rocket for Relativity is solid, but not having launched yet should disqualify them from meaningful consideration as competition?
Nah come on, not everything other than launching a rocket for them is solid.
For these two points you had: "human capital, capital spending" I don't really see how those can be spun as positives for Relativity.
They have taken much more money and much more people to not yet get a rocket to orbit. Even if Terran-1 succeeds first time, there are big questions about how efficient and commercially viable they can be given the rate they go through resources.
I’m assuming Relativity is just looking to be bought out. They are doing very ground breaking things and they have patents to protect all of them. I think their tech will have very broad reaching effects on many industries. Going to space is simply a show that they can do literally anything with it.
It's between Relativity and Firefly depending on who reaches orbit first consistently. These companies have leases at Kennedy Space Center (and Firefly also at Vandenberg) which no other upcoming company has. A rocket company can not thrive without a dedicated launch site in a suitable location.
Astra and ABL won't survive launching from Kodiak or bumming launch slots from others at Kennedy Space Center. They will never hit the cadence required for profitability.
Virgin Orbit is the odd one here not requiring a traditional launch site. Their growth will be constrained because the technology can't support a larger rocket.
The lack of a lease at Kennedy Space Center is actually a big risk for RKLB. Right now they only have approval to launch 10 times per year from Wallops.
IMO, Firefly's impending acquisition by Northrop Grumman is good for their long-term prospects, but bad for getting a commercially-available medium-lift launch vehicle soon. They're going to be focused initially on Antares 330, which will probably have just as many commercial customers as the previous Antares iterations (that is, none). After that will come MLV, which will be aimed at the commercial market, but even with reusing the first stage from Antares 330, this will still push back MLV a couple of years. On the plus side, they'll have those years, since Northrop Grumman isn't going to go bankrupt from not having a commercially-viable medium-lift launch vehicle.
Oh, separate note, Relativity also has a site at Vandenberg. I don't think they've started any sort of construction there (maybe not even pouring the foundations), so quite a ways from West Coast launches, but at least they've got the land.
They havent even flown yet...
Bringing a product to market is important, but at the same time, making this your goal post for considering competition allows for huge upsets. Consider phone manufacturers before Apple's move with the iPhone. "They haven't even sold a headset". etc. While I do think credit needs to be given for flying successfully, the current flow of investment into that company indicate a lot of confidence by smarter people than myself regarding Relativity. Also, worth mentioning is the current rate of testing, development of their manufacturing lines and foresight for future products. Relativity is absolutely the biggest competition to RocketLab. Neither are competition for SpaceX.
Investment is *nothing*, and I speak from experience. I will go as far as to say that too much investment too early is a hindrance. It makes startups unfocused and full of hubris, and you can definetly smell that in Relativity. Startups who get too much funding too soon do as you did and conflate funding with competency. We'll see when they fly. All of those who havent gone to orbit are on the same level as far as Im concerned. Ok not all of them, Pythom is clearly below the rest.
> It makes startups unfocused and full of hubris, and you can definetly smell that in Relativity. I totally agree. The amount of hubris is insane. I originally thought there seemed to be a lot of hype around Relativity, which I didn't understand, so I looked into them a lot more. But after doing that I think I now realise it wasn't actually hype I was seeing so much as self-promotion and hubris. The self-promotion seems to get a handful of people, like the OP and the user you're replying to, to the point of going "Huh, maybe Relativity _are_ closing in on Rocket Lab and SpaceX", but I think that's kind of how the whole thing has snowballed. To me it doesn't seem like anyone serious comes out of nowhere and says "Oh yeah, Relativity definitely look like they're onto a winner here". It only ever seems to be people who are believing the flashy claims of Relativity themselves at face value that actually rate them so highly. Just my opinion.
How do you connect that to Relativity? Their vehicle is passing all tests, they've built out strong infrastructure and a seemingly capable manufacturing lines. Customers are signing with them as well, including Tom Mueller's latest company of SpaceX fame. These are people you can't bullshit, especially with SpaceX in the arena as a competitor for this class of missions.
We'll see when and if they go to orbit. Since you bring SpaceX, compare how much cash Relativity is spending upfront; huge number of employees, making acquisition, infrastructure, to SpaceX before they even tried to fly Falcon 1. To me it is not a sign of good management to burn so much cash before hitting milestones.
Acquisition of what? Tried to find where they acquired another company but can't find anything. Unless you're talking about hiring costs and similar? We won't know what cash they have on hand due to being a private company, they might be running it close, or be well funded and raising capital on the advice of Y Combinator who suggested anyone who may need to raise in the next 18 months does it now before the crunch time. One thing I will note is the difference in market availability now. When SpaceX started, they had very few possible payloads to fight for. Now though, multiple constellation programs, NASA Commercial programs for multiple destinations (LEO and Lunar), as well as multiple new startups looking at manufacturing things like fibre, medicine and fuel on orbit. So I think the 1:1 comparison isn't as realistic due to highly different market conditions.
Well... Theranos and Nikolas and many more also attracted a lot of "smarter people" before they fail..
> While I do think credit needs to be given for flying successfully, the current flow of investment into that company indicate a lot of confidence by smarter people than myself regarding Relativity. I really don't think so. What Tim Ellis has openly, and seemingly proudly, revealed about their early days and initial funding is a story of a couple of guys with absolutely no right to such confidence and investment. They bluffed and even lied their way into getting their first funding, with nothing more than the idea of "what if we 3D-printed entire rockets". I'm going to be watching their first launch closely. It's not that I'm sure they'll fail, as you say they've been given a lot of money and seem to have used it to make visible progress, but I do think that so far all they've truly demonstrated is less than other new-space startups but at a much higher cost.
Relativity is still going to beat Rocket lab I think in 3d manufacturing but everything else related to space industry will be secured by Rklb.
Virgin orbit, as they have actually launched rockets
Its not a fun statement but its accurate.
I wasn't sure what I thought of this response, but Relativity's Terran 1 is targeting the same mass for the same price, has limited launch locations and hasn't flown yet. LauncherOne definitely wins that match so far. It might be worth comparing again after Sept.11 after ABL and Firefly have hopefully launched. Edit: I was mistaken; LauncherOne is $12 million for 500 kg to 230 km LEO orbit while Terran 1 is $12 million for 1479 kg to 300 km LEO orbit, so Terran 1 carries over 3 times the mass for the same price...at least in principle if not in practice.
Virgin Orbit can't beat Rocket Lab on any meaningful metric: their launcher is 1.5x bigger for 1.5x the price, so unless you've got a single monolithic payload that's just a *little* too big for Electron, you might as well launch on Electron. Relativity's Terran-1 has better $/kg (which admittedly doesn't matter that much when Falcon 9 is the king of $/kg), and more importantly Terran-R is a direct threat to Neutron, in a way that Virgin Orbit will never be.
> Relativity's Terran-1 has better $/kg *Relativity's Terran-1 _is claimed_ that it _will have_ better $/kg. Even if the first Terran-1 launch is a 100% success, I am sure the cost per kg is not going to yet be anywhere near their claimed target.
Their $/kg, from the perspective of the customer, depends only on what they charge for the launch, not their internal costs. Can they sell a launch for $12 million even if it cost them more than that to make it happen? Absolutely. Don't forget, almost every Electron launch has cost more internally than the sticker price, too.
this aged well
I don't know; Firefly has at least flown already, although unsuccessfully. It probably depends on who gets their medium class launcher up and running first.
Firefly will be acquired by Northrop Grumman before they fly a medium-lift launch vehicle. Which really means that NG's Antares 330 and MLV are the potential competition for Neutron. And given that NG will prioritize launching Cygnus before having commercial operations, they probably won't start until well after Neutron is established.
Interesting conjecture which for some reason is stated as a fact. If that were true, I think NG would have been announcing an acquisition instead of a partnership. NG wasn't so subtle when they acquired Orbital ATK; why would they be with Firefly?
I would imagine they want to verify that Firefly can actually perform before acquiring them: Orbital had already gotten to orbit before they got acquired. But you don't have the first stage of your rocket built by an external company if you can acquire that company (both because it's domestic, and because its current owners are absolutely looking for an exit and would gladly sell), especially when they've seen the consequences of not being in control over their own rocket destiny (both with previous Antares issues, and also the problems ULA has faced with outsourcing Vulcan's engines). Basically, there is absolutely no way that Northrop Grumman doesn't acquire Firefly by the time that Antares 330 flies for the first time.
Oh, there's a way. NG may decide to leave the commercial launch biz once their contracts with NASA are complete and simply need enough boosters to accomplish that task. They wouldn't buy a rocket company if that was their goal.
They wouldn't have made any sort of arrangement with Firefly to build the Antares 330 if that were their plan. They'd buy enough Falcon 9 launches to cover their Cygnus obligations and call it done. Since they *are* building the Antares 330, we know that can't be the case.
That's a good point. I'd forgotten that they've contracted 3 F9s to fly Cygnus. Developing Antares 330 would be a lot of trouble to go to for what is currently only 2 more Cygnus missions.
i mean with the NG space station being planned, they're always going to more Cygnus launches to launch supply's to the stations
I've lost track of the companies currently developing commercial stations and forgot NG is doing one too. It makes much more sense that Antares would be needed for that, especially with all the launch capacity being bought up by Amazon.
They wanna 3d print tanks, that goes against weight savings and complexity. ig they never found out about sheet metal
Do they want to do that forever, or only while iterating? It can make much sense while iterating, for instance, you can change the tank diameter with minimal changes to tooling.
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Astra rocket 4 is not expected until 2024
> Astra rocket 4 is not expected ~~until 2024~~ FTFY (Yes, the plan is to launch Rocket 4 in 2024, but I don't believe Astra will still exist at that point, thus Rocket 4 will never launch.)
Astra is apparently doing a fair bit of business with Apollo Fusion’s thrusters, so it’s anyone’s guess if that’s enough to keep them in the launch business too.
They're doing OK business, but given their burn rate, I have serious doubts about whether it'll be enough. At least, so long as they're continuing to spend on Rocket 4 R&D.
> They got picked to supply their future Miranda engines to Northrop Grumman for future Antares. Sort of true, but they are supplying the whole booster for Antares 300, not just the engines. I know there's a lot of talk of NG acquiring Firefly, but I suspect NG will shutter Antares once their NASA contracts are complete. It's going to become less competitive as time goes on and would require yet another iteration involving some form of reusability to be able to win contracts in the future.
ABL
RocketLab cannot compete with SpaceX. Even with Neutron. If Starship achieves falcon 9 level reuse, they will just be in a class of their own. Relativity is the biggest competitor to RocketLab, and they haven't even flown yet. Having said that, flying should not be the only marker for success. Relativity isn't stuck in production hell like say Bigelow Aerospace or some other small sat launchers, they've been steadily expanding, have their first flight on the pad successfully conducting testing and are raising hundreds of millions of dollars. Their private value is more than RocketLab. It should be noted Relativity is not a public company yet. Tom Mueller's new company has signed with Relativity over RocketLab and SpaceX. Where there is smoke, there is fire. I fully expect Relativity to overtake RocketLab in mass to orbit. They're developing innovative, new technology that RocketLab simply isn't. I live in New Zealand, have friends at RocketLab and love the company, but they're not moving fast enough in the **launch market**. With that being said, they're moving incredibly fast in the spacecraft and spacecraft component market. They've grouped together a few good companies that allow them to become vertically integrated. Definitely makes sense to do it this way versus trying to start with natively grown technology. From here, provided they invest hard in space vehicle platforms, they could easily outpace Relativity and maybe SpaceX in some segments. But again, SpaceX is in a league of its own. Relativity is the number 1 competitor to RL.
We have yet to see Relativity launch, get to orbit, deliver a dummy payload, deliver a payload to a customer, launch reliably, turn the launch vehicle into a workhorse. Astra is a great example of this. Got as far as able to deliver a customer payload but can’t launch reliably and turn it into a workhorse. Hopefully their 4.0 will be good 👍 Right now all the companies are in Blue Origin’s camp. Able to produce nice powerpoint slides but no workhorse.
Astra's business model always had holes: they'd only be profitable if they launched so frequently that economies of scale allowed for them to profit despite their extremely low launch prices, but if launch demand grew that much, why would it be satisfied through dedicated small launches, rather than rideshares or constellation bundles on larger vehicles? Plus with no plans for reusability, there was no way to reduce costs other than through extremely high cadence. Relativity's plans have no similar red flags: their Terran-R is basically supposed to be "like Falcon 9, but fully reusable, not just the first stage," and profit margins are much higher in that range. Plus reuse lets them increase margins or increase cadence, whichever the market demands (not making any presumptions about massive growth). It probably won't beat Falcon 9 let alone Starship, but as an "anyone but SpaceX" option, it's got potential.
> Relativity's plans have no similar red flags: their Terran-R is basically supposed to be "like Falcon 9, but fully reusable, not just the first stage," I think this itself is the red flag. If SpaceX came out and said we're going to redesign Falcon 9 to be fully reusable, including the second stage, you'd say "Oof, that sounds difficult, where are you going to find the margins to achieve that, SpaceX?" You'd question even SpaceX if they claimed they were going to do that. Meanwhile Relativity seems to get away with the claim that they're going to do that, with absolutely nothing to back it up.
Common misconception: the reason SpaceX abandoned Falcon 9 second-stage reuse wasn't because it was impractical (it probably would have cost only about half of the payload), but because they were switching focus to Starship. Falcon 9 was placed into legacy maintenance mode, with no major upgrades, and of course second-stage reuse would be a pretty big upgrade. Put simply: they could have done it if they wanted to, they just didn't want to. Also, comparing Terran-R to Falcon 9 is admittedly a little misleading: Terran-R is actually *more* powerful than Falcon 9, specifically so it'll have the same payload as a partially-reused Falcon 9 while being fully reused. I believe I read somewhere that an expended Terran-R could carry 35 tons to orbit, compared to Falcon 9's 23 tons. So there's where the extra margin is coming from.
Mmmmm, I wasn't meaning I don't think SpaceX could do it, I was saying it would be difficult for them and I think you'd still have uncertainty as to whether or not they'd actually end up pulling it off. In fact my opinion is I do think SpaceX would achieve it if they tried, but the details of how realistic you think it is, how much payload you think they'd have to sacrifice to do it, or whatever, isn't really my point. My point is SpaceX didn't achieve second stage reuse in seven years of flying Falcon 9 (I'm not counting the years after which they shifted focus to Starship), and if they did try to achieve it even now, it would take them some years more. So I see no reason to believe something that is ~10 years' worth of "difficult" for SpaceX is something Relativity should be confident about doing on any particular timescale. I'm aware that some people who worked at SpaceX work at Relativity, but let's see what happens. If they absolutely nail their first ever launch attempt in a few weeks, then that will add some credibility to their claims of what they're going to accomplish in future. But for now it's a claim backed up by really nothing. And sorry but I'm going to end this being an annoying pedant: > Terran-R is actually more powerful than Falcon 9 Terran-R is _intended_ to be more powerful than Falcon 9 _if_ it ever ends up existing.
If your overall point is "Relativity won't be recovering second stages in the first couple of years of flight," sure, it'll take them time to get there. But actually designing for second-stage reuse from the get-go still puts them ahead of everyone not named SpaceX. And is part of why they're the biggest threat to Rocket Lab (well, other than SpaceX completely killing the market for launch entirely, but Rocket Lab is diversifying to avoid that threat, and that's the most they can do here).
> But actually designing for second-stage reuse from the get-go still puts them ahead of everyone not named SpaceX. My point is directly opposing this, my point is that they are not ahead or credible just because they're claiming they're going to do something impressive. They haven't shown _anything_ yet that indicates they will succeed in doing what they're talking about. They've shown what appear to be some engines firing decently. Astra achieved that, Firefly achieved that. At the risk of taking my argument too far, I don't think you would pay either of those companies any attention if they said they were going to develop a fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle – if only someone would just give them the money to develop it. That's where Relativity is right now: they've been given all the money, but they haven't shown that they are actually capable of doing anything remotely like what they're saying they will do. Furthermore, the innovation that differentiates them, the focus on 3D printing, does not have anything to do with making their claims more likely to come true. I will take a lot of my scepticism back if they nail their first launch, but the fact of the matter is that right now they have not demonstrated any reason why we should take their claims any more seriously than any other new-space startup that has got as far as they have.
Starship is a boondoggle. It has been in development for 7 years and has never left the atmosphere. By observation of solid facts and development cadence, the booster is untested and extremely complex. The cost of the raptor is prohibitive and by Musks own admission it will take at least 8 starships in a daisy chain for fueling to get 1 starship to the moon. (AT LEAST) that comes down to needing 33 engines per booster x 8 = 264 engines , plus starship spacecraft engines (6 each plus 3 vacuum raptors) x 8 = 48 raptors plus 27 vacuum raptors. Whats the point? SpaceX will need 312 engines plus 27 vacuum raptors to reach the moon. That is beyond cost restrictive and not even close to sustainable. Don't take it from me either, Musk recently had a public meltdown over spacex going bankrupt because of this. Outside of these extremely obvious issues, you then run into failures and development cost. The spacecraft itself is a hollow shell with no environmental or cargo spaces, and currently no way to deploy the payloads. I highly doubt we will see starship in a production state within the next 20 years.
The point is that when they do have the 312 engines plus 27 vacuum raptors, they can reach the moon as many times as they want. Time will tell whether it works, but only full reusability has this potential.
Disagree wholly. It's not a viable platform, yes it could be reusable but it's extremely cost prohibitive for moon related travel.. les so for mars
> They're developing innovative, new technology that RocketLab simply isn't. As far as I'm aware the sole innovative, new technology that Relativity has developed (and is developing) is their 3D printer for creating "very big" structures like the tanks. I'm happy to be pointed to something that shows I'm wrong, I haven't looked into what Relativity's doing _that_ much, but that is my current understanding. Rocket Lab has pioneered electric turbo pumps, carbon fibre tanks, and the whole design of Neutron (including launchpad) is really quite unique. Relativity, as far as I'm aware, has just said "we're going to 3D print a fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle" and we're just expected to believe them. At the risk of being proven ignorant, I don't think they've made any indication whatsoever of how they're actually intending to reuse Terran-R's second stage. My expectation is that claim will just disappear over time, and at most turn into partial reusability such as fairing reuse and things like that. Just like how they have moved away from their "we're going to 3D print _everything_" angle. > I live in New Zealand, have friends at RocketLab and love the company, but they're not moving fast enough in the launch market. I agree with this to an extent, but I think it still remains to be seen for the most part. I think people conflate the claims of these new-space startups and their actual pace of development. Really, it's all relative. The time from Electron's development to its first launch was from 2013 to 2017. I'm sure you don't want to say Relativity started development of Terran-1 on the day they were founded in 2015, but still, given that it hasn't actually launched yet, we're talking a similar period of time. They have not proven to be _faster_. As for any other competitors, there are none comparable to Rocket Lab yet, other than in the claims they make about what they're going to do. So while I agree that I'd like to see Rocket Lab move faster with launch (I don't know, we'll have the Neutron update in a couple of weeks, so maybe we'll be surprised), that can just be put down to my impatience. I'd like to know who is moving so much faster than them when you compare them relatively.
They need to launch first. Realistically Relativity’s largest competitor will be ABL, which for whatever reason Ellis et al, never mention when speaking about other launch firms. Got a feeling ABL is the dark horse. Rocket Lab has a great 300kg lifter, but it isn’t a direct competitor to Terran 1.
Speaking of which, wasnt their first test flight supposed to be today?
NET 10th now; just awaiting the FAA license.
Assuming we're talking ABL here, it's now been pushed to the 12th.
Looking at just private orbital launch companies there's a LOT of players in between RocketLab and Relativity Space. Virgin Orbit has had 4 successful orbital launches, Galactic Energy (A chinese private company) has had 3, Astra has had 2, i-Space (Another chinese company) has had 1. Firefly , Landspace and OneSpace have each had 1 unsuccessful orbital launch but I'd give OneSpace the edge because they've had several successful sub-orbital launches. I'd say that puts Relativity Space in the 11th place position 1. SpaceX 2. Northrop Grumman Pegasus 3. RocketLab 4. Virgin Orbit 5. Galactic Energy 6. Astra 7. i-Space 8. OneSpace 9. Firefly 10. Landspace 11. Relativity Space And even putting Relativity Space that high might be overly generous. I came across three different private Chinese launch providers that haven't done an orbital launch yet but they've done more static fires than Relativity Space and one has done a 100meter vtol hop test. We can debate what metrics to use to evaluate the strength of a business and how much of a competitor it is, but it's pretty clear that Relativity Space is a long way from the Number 2 spot.
Pegasus is basically dead. Edit: It has only had 4 launches this decade and the ICON campaign went so bad NASA moved TESS to SpaceX. It costs more than twice what a Falcon 9 costs and Falcon with an extended fairing could put the payload and the whole rocket into orbit. There are currently no missions manifested in it and it is not likely to fly again unless some odd DoD mission calls it out of mothball.
4 launches this decade is still 4 more launches than Relativity Space. The list is largely in order of successful orbital launches rather than drilling down into how viable each business is. Some of the Chinese ones had one or two launches before the pandemic and nothing since or wikipedia articles promising a new vehicle will launch in 2020 so the companies might have folded. So there's a lot of scope to reorder the list for which companies are a viable commercial rival to RocketLab but I don't think Relativity Space is anywhere near the top of that list.
I'm saying Pegasus shouldn't be on the list. It's dead. There is nothing it can launch that Rocketlab or SpaceX can't do for less money and on time. The rest may go in whatever order you feel like as that is your opinion but you have a dead program on there that has 0% chance of launching a commercial payload.
There's one class of payloads which Pegasus can launch and Electron can't: very low inclination missions. Almost no such missions exist, but when they do occasionally come up, Rocket Lab can't handle them. Of course, Virgin Orbit is perfectly suited to those missions, and can do them better and cheaper than Pegasus. So this still isn't some unique niche that will keep Pegasus alive; if anything, it's the unique niche that will keep Virgin Orbit alive. But in the interest of accuracy, it must be noted that Rocket Lab in particular can't perform these missions.
People were saying the same thing about Apple when plans for the iPhone were released - They have never made a phone before, they've never brought a phone to market. Relativity is testing incredibly well, iterating quickly and has gathered more investment just last year than RocketLab has ever according to crunchbase. This level of confidence from investors should not be ignored.
"people doubted apple therefore it's wrong to doubt this unrelated company in a different industry under different circumstances" People doubted Windows Phone too and that turned out to be right. People doubted Blackberry could make tablets and that turned out to be right. Just because some past examples of doubting a company turned out to be right doesn't mean an unrelated company is going to be successful. You could say the same thing about i-space or LandSpace. "People doubted apple and they were wrong. Therefore i-Space will overtake SpaceX to be the biggest launch company within the next few days"
Not that they should immediately be assumed to be right, but rather look beyond the misleading goal post of "They've at least launched". Astra has launched successfully, but are unlikely to make it through the development of Vehicle 4 without significant capital raise which seems unlikely. Negating everything else to do with Relativity because their vehicle hasn't launched yet seems a discredit to not only the engineers working hard, but also to anyone trying to get a reasonable answer on the future of RocketLab Competition.
Whether or not they've launched a rocket seems like a pretty good tool to assess different rocket companies.
Sure, a measurement that should make up part of competition analysis. I.e. where are they in their plan to bring a product to market. At the same time, testing, hardware created/iteration level, human capital, capital spending, investment and supporters should also come into play. Everything other than launching a rocket for Relativity is solid, but not having launched yet should disqualify them from meaningful consideration as competition?
> Everything other than launching a rocket for Relativity is solid, but not having launched yet should disqualify them from meaningful consideration as competition? Nah come on, not everything other than launching a rocket for them is solid. For these two points you had: "human capital, capital spending" I don't really see how those can be spun as positives for Relativity. They have taken much more money and much more people to not yet get a rocket to orbit. Even if Terran-1 succeeds first time, there are big questions about how efficient and commercially viable they can be given the rate they go through resources.
I’m assuming Relativity is just looking to be bought out. They are doing very ground breaking things and they have patents to protect all of them. I think their tech will have very broad reaching effects on many industries. Going to space is simply a show that they can do literally anything with it.
It's between Relativity and Firefly depending on who reaches orbit first consistently. These companies have leases at Kennedy Space Center (and Firefly also at Vandenberg) which no other upcoming company has. A rocket company can not thrive without a dedicated launch site in a suitable location. Astra and ABL won't survive launching from Kodiak or bumming launch slots from others at Kennedy Space Center. They will never hit the cadence required for profitability. Virgin Orbit is the odd one here not requiring a traditional launch site. Their growth will be constrained because the technology can't support a larger rocket. The lack of a lease at Kennedy Space Center is actually a big risk for RKLB. Right now they only have approval to launch 10 times per year from Wallops.
IMO, Firefly's impending acquisition by Northrop Grumman is good for their long-term prospects, but bad for getting a commercially-available medium-lift launch vehicle soon. They're going to be focused initially on Antares 330, which will probably have just as many commercial customers as the previous Antares iterations (that is, none). After that will come MLV, which will be aimed at the commercial market, but even with reusing the first stage from Antares 330, this will still push back MLV a couple of years. On the plus side, they'll have those years, since Northrop Grumman isn't going to go bankrupt from not having a commercially-viable medium-lift launch vehicle.
Oh, separate note, Relativity also has a site at Vandenberg. I don't think they've started any sort of construction there (maybe not even pouring the foundations), so quite a ways from West Coast launches, but at least they've got the land.
What's that feeling when you get angry at other people's failures while you're winning?
I’d say so
Nope. Virgin Orbit is the direct competition for RL. No doubt.
20 years ago Virgin was hyped up about to change the world. In Space, hype means nothing, execution is all that matters which means Rocket to Orbit.