SpaceX to grow: a competitor of Elon Musk’s company, which will send rockets to the Moon, Venus and Mars

The space industry is now going through an incredibly active stage of development. Space has not attracted so much attention to itself since the middle of the 20th century, including the first flight into space, spacewalk and manned flight to the moon. In the 21st century, the development of the space industry began to actively develop thanks to private business, now about a dozen companies are actively working in this area, both in logistics and in tourism. Someone is just starting, and someone has been successfully working for a long time.

The latter includes one successful company that develops its own rockets, hires engineers, launches dozens of satellites into orbit, and plans expeditions to the Moon, Mars and Venus. But this is not SpaceX, as one might think. The name of the company is Rocket Lab USA.

What is this company?

The active stage of development began in 2017 – it was then that the mass launches of the company’s own missiles and the launch of satellites into low-earth orbit began. Rocket Lab has customers – both commercial companies and government organizations.

As far as we know, its leader, Peter Beck, is as much a person passionate about space as Elon Musk. At the same time, Beck did not launch startups, he wanted to deal with missiles from childhood and achieved his dream. He did not receive an education at the university, he studied everything that was needed on his own. And this did not prevent him, after the start of the company, from taking the position of professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Auckland – by that time he already had more knowledge and experience in aerospace than professors who had received fundamental education.

Date of foundation

Beck registered Rocket Lab USA in 2006 and spent three years actively developing rockets that could be launched into space for cargo delivery and research purposes. Three years later, the company successfully launched its first rocket, which was named Atea-1. Its capabilities were not very impressive – it could take a payload weighing up to 2 kg and lift it to an altitude of 150 km. Nevertheless, it was this rocket that successfully entered space. By the way, she herself weighed only 60 kg.

Just a year later, the Pentagon signed a contract with this company – the military needed a rocket to launch the CubeSat satellites. It was a fairly easy vehicle, since these satellites themselves are small. After a contract with such a serious organization, other partners also wanted to work with Rocket Lab. One of them is Lockheed Martin. She is hardly less known than the Pentagon.

Collaborates with Rocket Lab and NASA. Thus, the agency entrusted a partner with the implementation of such missions as Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorer. True, these are projects that will be implemented in the future, and not right now, their cost is still unknown.

Basic working tool

It’s about the rocket, of course. The company has gone a long way since developing its first rocket with a two-kilogram payload. Now at the disposal of Rocket Lab is an Electron rocket, which is capable of launching about 300 kg of cargo into Earth’s orbit. True, this is a low orbit, which is quite suitable for the tasks of most of Rocket Lab’s client companies. The cost of launching a rocket compares favorably with competitors – only $ 5.7 million instead of tens of millions.

Currently, an additional stage is being developed, which will allow launching cargo much further than low orbit – for example, to the Moon or even Mars. The rocket’s engines, Rutherford, run on oxygen and kerosene. Most of the main engine components are 3D printed. Rutherford is a jet engine with an electric fuel pump. It uses electric motors to turn turbines.

In the future, there are several more systems that will expand the company’s business. So, in 2020, the company announced the start of development of the Rocket Lab interorbital tug “Photon” (Photon). It is designed to launch microsatellites beyond low orbit, as well as to deploy spacecraft in different orbits.

In 2021, the company announced the start of development of its medium rocket, which was named Neutron. Its carrying capacity will be much higher than that of the Electron. So, the rocket will be able to deliver 8 tons of payload to the low orbit of the Earth, 2 tons to the Moon, and 1.5 tons to Mars and Vienna. A reentry stage is being developed for this rocket, which can be used both for delivering cargo and for sending people into space. This rocket will not appear soon – around 2024, if all the company’s plans are implemented as planned.

Nevertheless, the company has already learned how to make returnable steps. So, for the first time, a test sample was returned to Earth and restored in 2020. First, the stage successfully splashed down, and then a new test was carried out, and also successfully – with the help of a helicopter, the mock-up of the first stage was caught.

Moon, Venus and Mars

For the near future, the company has prepared a huge number of plans, including the sending of spacecraft to the natural satellite of the Earth – the Moon, as well as Venus and Mars.

A small satellite is planned to be sent as a test later this year. And in 2023, it is planned to send the same satellite to Venus. All this is just a test of the pen. If everything goes well, then the projects will be more serious, i.e. the company will send larger and more sophisticated vehicles to Earth’s neighbors.


A little about failure

They are available for any company, and even more so for those of them who are engaged in such complex projects as creating rockets and sending them into space.

Rocket Lab has few of them – only three. For the first time, a failure befell the company when launching the first rocket – then it suddenly stopped transmitting signals and the object had to be destroyed. The second launch was already quite successful.


Trouble happened and this year, with the anniversary, 20th launch. The rocket, due to problems with the operation of the engines of one of the stages, could not launch the satellites into the specified orbit. There were two satellites – these are surveillance systems from the BlackSky company, which cooperates with civilians and the defense industry.

Another accident occurred in 2020 – then there was a problem with the contacts of the electrical system – as it turned out, this is a defect that was made during manufacture.

But the company did a study of the problem, and it seems they were able to solve it. In any case, failures happen to many space companies, the main thing is to learn to find the cause of the problem and prevent it from reoccurring.

Finance – everything is fine with them

The fact that the company is doing well, despite some problems, is also evidenced by the financial statistics. Thus, last year the company’s revenue amounted to almost 40 million US dollars. This year, most likely, it will already exceed $ 69 million. According to a number of experts, in a few years the company’s revenue will be in the billions.

Already now, the capitalization of Rocket Lab is estimated at $ 6.7 billion – while quite recently this figure was about $ 1.4 billion. In general, the company’s future looks quite good, despite the fact that it is already competing with SpaceX. True, both organizations have so many clients that this does not affect their business in any way.

Well, we expect the company’s soonest news – dispatch of payloads to other objects of the solar system, active use of a satellite tug, etc.

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