Small Rockets / Big Future: Room At The Bottom Of The Launch Market

Last week was grand for big rockets! SpaceX had a great success with the 4^th launch of their Super Heavy Booster + Starship stack. Boeing’s Starliner, crewed space capsule launched to the ISS on an Atlas V, a venerable rocket that has never failed to perform. Big space provided positive global headlines in the midst of an increasingly depressing domestic and international newsscape. These stories were all over TV in remote French Polynesia, where I have been spending some time scuba diving.

However, the media rarely looks into the exciting competition going on at the lower end of the New Space Race, where smaller launch vehicles and innovative payloads promise a revolution in space technology and operations. We are all familiar with the steady miniaturization of technology – look no further than the ubiquitous smartphone. Every two years, like clockwork, my phone gets thinner and more powerful. It gets more memory, insanely faster processors, longer lasting batteries, and new cameras that embarrass my trusty old Nikon DSLR. This is just one manifestation of a trend that works across the technology landscape. Similar forces are making satellites smaller, more powerful, and cheaper.

Despite the economies of scale that Starship will bring, it’s highly unlikely that the big rocket is going to exactly where every payload needs to go, when it needs to go there. Things are not much different with a Falcon 9 rideshare launch or a similar opportunity on a big rocket like the ULA Vulcan. Commercial aviation is a mature market that offers a parallel into this this phenomenon of scale. There is a reason that not every airline flight is operated with an A380. In fact, despite the economies of scale that double decker behemoth offered, the market could not fill its seats and Airbus stopped making it.

In the real world, midsized 737 / A230 class aircraft still do the yeomen’s work for commercial airlines. Even smaller commuter jets from Embraer and Bombardier fly thousands of routes every day, despite having higher per mile per seat fuel costs than a A380 or a 787. Airline customers are complex and they have tangible needs that go beyond the $/kg. In the long term the space launch industry will continue to see a variety of vehicles increasingly optimized to suit different payloads and customer mission requirements. All launch prices will fall as components and infrastructure are commoditized. Complex big vehicles like the Space Launch System and Starship demand loads of infrastructure and logistical planning that small launchers easily avoid.

Statista reports over 2,300 sub-500kg class satellites launched in 2022. Many of these went to very low orbits with planned operational lifetimes of just a few years. This short lifespan allows them to rely on off-the-shelf chips which are cheaper and higher performance than their rad hardened “space certified” peers. The continuous update model also drives a lot of replacement launch demand.

Orbit is not a single destination, and re-positioning of satellites launched in bulk from a very large launcher to their destination orbits is far from free and can generate significant costs. Small sats usually have very limited propulsion and most benefit immensely by being placed precisely into their optimal orbits. Costs of being in the wrong place at the wrong time include additional propulsion system complexity, propellant, and time. Lost time reduces the revenue opportunities and shortens the operational life of the satellite. There are promising space tugs in the works from companies like Impulse Space and Momentus for satellites needing serious relocation, but these options also consume time and money. We need tugs, but for many small sats operators that money might be best spent by just getting launched to the best orbit in the first place.

Consider that a SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter mission has a baseline price is around $6,000 per kg for satellites over 50 kg, and using Momentus’ Vigoride this jumps to around $15,000 per kg.

So given big rockets aren’t likely to be a one size fits all perfect solution for all of launch – where do small launchers fit in? Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, capable of putting around 300 kg of payload into low Earth orbit, is arguably the current market leading small launcher and its service is priced around $25,000 per kg. That’s more than the Falcon 9 but the US / New Zealand firm has not had trouble finding customers. Electron is well suited for dedicated launch of small (

This class of rocket is useful for deployment of constellations of the smallest satellites, and replenishment of constellations of satellites who might have initially been deployed on larger vehicles. (as Rocket Lab has done for Spire). Scheduling flexibility and responsiveness is valuable to Rocket Lab’s customers. Their satellites are launched promptly and properly, and they can generating revenue sooner. Responsive launch also provides obvious benefit for defence applications and for the replacement of abruptly failed satellites damaged by space debris or solar storms.

Still, it is clear that there’s room for cost improvement in small launch. SpaceX has established a general industry consensus that cost reduction will inevitably depend on vehicle reusability and investors now demand that. Vehicle reusability obviously reduces the cost of rockets by eliminating some or all of the high cost of manufacturing, assembling, and qualifying rockets for flight. It also enables higher launch cadences, driving down fixed costs at the launch site.

There is also an important eco-angle to rocket reuse. Most of the environmental impact of a rocket is generated during its manufacture. Emissions and waste are generated during extractive, manufacturing, and transportation processes across an entire supply chain that underlies the construction of these complex machines. Consequently, reusability dramatically reduces the footprint of every launch and is likely to be governmentally mandated at some point.

Rocket Lab didn’t start out pursuing reusability, but the firm has reacted to this trend and is making efforts to reuse the booster stage of Electron. Full vehicle reusability is not in the cards for Electron since a much bigger booster would be required to accommodate an upper stage capable of surviving re-entry.

However, there are a few new companies betting on fully reusable small launchers and they are baking that into their designs from the get-go. These include US based Stoke Space, as well as Astron Systems, a UK-based startup (a firm I have advised). These firms are offering disruptive designs that could bring about dramatically more affordable, responsive, and sustainable orbital launch of small satellites, which is what the market truly desires.

Stoke Space’s “Nova” rocket is a fully reusable small launcher with a propulsively landed upper stage. Nova features an innovative engine design and a radical active metallic heatshield for the upper stage that is actually provided by its engines. This enables the upper stage to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere end-on. It comes in ready to land and be reused. If successful, this ambitious little rocket will be one of the most impressive feats of engineering in modern space engineering.

Stoke’s first stage burns Methane – a popular fuel choice for reusable boosters because it burns cleaner than the RP1 kerosene used by Falcon 9 and Electron. The firms uses more powerful hydrogen for its remarkable upper stage. Managing two cryogenic fuels, along with the required liquid oxygen, complicates the logistics and infrastructure of launch. Further, hydrogen (H2), comes in a very small molecule and has proven to be particularly difficult to handle. When done right, this is a very powerful combination and is the same configuration that United Launch Alliance selected for their high energy Vulcan rocket (which I had the pleasure of watching successfully launch on its very first attempt, this January).

Propulsive landing also poses challenges. SpaceX does that all the time and I love watching Falcon boosters come back and feeling the sonic boom that follows their dramatic landings. Still, SpaceX offers a disposable launch option because landing demands propellant reserves, which reduces payload capacity and launch performance. Landing also limits viable launch locations and can necessitate the operation of an expensive landing barge system.

Astron Systems, on the other hand, has totally optimized for simplicity and cost savings with the design of their “Aurora” small launcher. Aurora features a Starship-like, side-on re-entry with a passive thermal protection system. Taking advantage of Aurora’s small size, they are opting for parachutes in the final descent of both stages, with a helicopter capture, similar to Rocket Lab’s approach for Electron booster reuse. This enables offshore recovery of rocket stages with minimum operating cost, especially important for operation from UK/European spaceports. It also enables regular flights with minimal disruption to surrounding inhabitants. Each Aurora rocket stage is sized to each fit within a 45-foot shipping container for easy transport and will utilize a common Methane/LOX engine to use common for both stages. The engines are designed for reuse without any maintenance. Astron Systems asserts that their vehicle will have the lowest operating cost of any small launcher, costing less per kg for a dedicated small satellite launch than current Falcon 9 rideshare pricing. That’s a bold assertion for a small startup that is much earlier in its development than Stoke, but it is exactly the sort of thinking that will revolutionize the space industry.

It will be exhilarating to watch these young firms compete. I’ll be covering some additional small launch firms here in the near future and have addressed it in my new book, Red Moon Rising. The New Space race will not be limited to mega rockets. As Richard Feynman suggested in a famous lecture that launched the nano-revolution, “there’s plenty of room at bottom.”