Smallsat Boom Giving Rise to Ballooning but Uncertain Small-Rocket Industry
With big expectations for small satellites in coming years, the launch industry is ramping up, as are uncertainties about the market for smaller rockets designed specifically for payloads of small satellites, experts said at a Transportation Research Board conference Wednesday. Inspired partly by SpaceX's success, the launch industry is "definitely in a 'launch fever' environment," said Carlos Niederstrasser, Northrop Grumman master systems engineer. There's "a bottleneck" now, which could explain small-rocket launch companies mushrooming, said Euroconsult USA Managing Director Sima Fishman. Three FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation speakers scheduled for panels didn't attend due to the partial federal shutdown.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Niederstrasser is aware of 112 announced small-rocket launch companies, with 39 developing launch vehicles. The market won't support 100-plus launchers and the number of companies that fail will accelerate in coming years, he said. He said within the past couple years investment in small launchers branched out from governments and space agencies to now attracting venture capital and angel investors. "Real money is pouring into these projects," he said. There are six small launch vehicles -- two from Northrop Grumman, one from Rocket Lab and three from Chinese operators, Niederstrasser said. He said it's unclear how much Chinese vehicles will have a leg up as they enter commercial markets, given how often they are backed by government resources.
Niederstrasser said small launch vehicle aspirants almost universally are focusing on convenience for satellite operators, rather than pricing. He said aspirants are projecting $10,000-$60,000 costs per kilogram for launch, while a rideshare on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket typically is $3,000-$5,000 per kilogram.
The smallsat boom contrasts with a suffering geostationary orbit satellite industry, with manufacturers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin downsizing and SSL talking about divesting its GEO business, Fishman said. She said earth observation accounts for the bulk of smallsats going up, though satcom is expected to surpass those numbers in coming years, especially due to planned mega constellations like SpaceX and OneWeb. Compared with 1,100-plus smallsats launched between 2008 and 2017, Euroconsult anticipates more than 7,000 launched between now and 2027, with most manufacturing and launch demand from North America.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Tactical Technology Office Program Manager Todd Master said launches for DARPA's space launch challenge, with up to $12 million in prize money intended to help rev up such capabilities, are expected to come late this year. He said the contest is patterned after DARPA's similar autonomous car challenge and "sending a demand signal" of the need for launchers that can operate from any launch range and put up any payload into any low earth orbit on short notice. DARPA is incentivizing those capabilities for DOD need, but they will benefit the commercial market first and foremost, with Defense following, he said. He said 18 teams are working to obtain FAA licensing and on their launch vehicles. The goal is to have a final list of competitors announced in March, he said.