Rocket Lab reported its first quarterly revenue of $100 million, up 71% from the same quarter last year. It was just one of the shining achievements executives showed investors on Thursday, and a good sign for the space company’s ambitious mid-term plans.
Executives have repeatedly hinted at plans for a constellation of satellites owned and operated by Rocket Lab, part of what founder and CEO Peter Beck has described as an aspiration to become an “end-to-end space company.” The company is clearly trying to do something similar to what SpaceX is doing with its Starlink constellation: own the launch vehicles and beat out competitors with a very vertically integrated supply chain that allows for rapid manufacturing.
“By owning the launch vehicle and the spacecraft, we have a distinct advantage in building our own space capabilities or constellations,” Beck said on an earnings call Thursday. “We can build and launch our own spacecraft at cost and not have to queue up for limited launch capacity. We can completely avoid the pain points that most constellation operators face: relying on suppliers for cost and schedule, often causing significant disruption, and bringing capabilities online at scale.”
Beck declined to say specifically what capabilities they are seeking, but said acquisitions will continue to play a key role in the company's strategy.
But to make the constellation plan a reality, the company must first get its medium-lift Neutron rocket online. Rocket Lab plans to launch Neutron for the first time in mid-2025, which is an aggressive schedule. The company admits that if it can confirm that date, it will be the fastest commercially developed vehicle to market from a clean-sheet design for its size and weight.
The rocket is powered by nine completely new engines called Archimedes, which completed critical testing this month. In a “hot fire” test at the company’s test complex at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Archimedes fired above full power for the first time on a test stand. Engineers can now move on to a full qualification campaign and manufacturing the next batch of engines.
Rocket Lab says the entire Neutron, minus the engine, is now in production and qualification. There’s still a lot of work to be done, including building the launch infrastructure (including a test pad) and integrating the rocket itself into the system, but Beck confirmed the company is still on track to launch sometime in the middle of next year.
Neutron will have a payload of 13,000 kilograms, putting it in direct competition with the leading launch vehicle in operation today, SpaceX’s Falcon 9. When asked how Neutron would compete with what he called a “virtual monopoly” in medium-lift launches, Beck said there is growing demand for launch capability, particularly among large constellation planners.
“Neutron is perfectly positioned to be the rocket that breaks this monopoly,” he said. “We have a proven track record of building and launching reliable vehicles that have become market leaders. That experience has allowed us to work very closely with our customers to design a new rocket that meets their needs, resulting in a customer-centric design that puts us on track to get to market on a very rapid schedule.”
Beck took the opportunity to point out a common misconception about the company: that it is merely a launch provider. In fact, launches are only one part of the business, while the “space systems” that include satellites, software, and components are another.
In addition to the $106 million in revenue in the second quarter, of which $29.4 million came from launches and $77 million from space systems, the company expects roughly the same amount of revenue in the next quarter. Rocket Lab ended the quarter with $547 million in cash.
