Will Firefly Alpha be retired soon?

[PM3]

Since 2021 there have been six launch attempts of Firefly's Alpha rocket. Only two of them reached the desired orbit.

Alpha is an expendable 1-ton-class launcher. Firefly and Northrop Grumman are also developing the partially reusable 16-ton launcher "Eclipse", formerly known as MLV, which is envisioned to have its first launch in early 2026 (source).

Will Alpha stay in service on the long run, or will it be retired soon?

[Tywin]

They had like 30 mission with Lockheed, I think so, will still be operative in 2028...

[AmigaClone]

They had like 30 mission with Lockheed, I think so, will still be operative in 2028...

Depending on if Firefly can solve their issues with Firefly Alpha's reliability and what happens with Antares 330 and Firefly Eclipse it would not be impossible for Firefly to offer to exchange some of the Firefly Alpha missions for Eclipse missions.

[DeimosDream]

Firefly Alpha won. Terran-1 and RS1 were both cancelled leaving Firefly Alpha with no competition aside from the old-school overpriced Minotaur-C. Firefly Alpha isn't going to be retired until Stoke Nova achieves full rapid reuse... but I don't see that happening before 2028 at the earliest.

[sstli2]

Firefly Alpha won. Terran-1 and RS1 were both cancelled leaving Firefly Alpha with no competition aside from the old-school overpriced Minotaur-C. Firefly Alpha isn't going to be retired until Stoke Nova achieves full rapid reuse... but I don't see that happening before 2028 at the earliest.

Won the competition for what? Alpha has long been criticized for being in the "no-man's land" of payload class. Too big for cubesats, too small for real satellites.

It will be around, but only if a sponsor keeps it around, and it appears Lockheed will.

[sdsds]

They had like 30 mission with Lockheed, I think so, will still be operative in 2028...

Depending on if Firefly can solve their issues with Firefly Alpha's reliability and what happens with Antares 330 and Firefly Eclipse it would not be impossible for Firefly to offer to exchange some of the Firefly Alpha missions for Eclipse missions.

Right. It's not like SpaceX is still flying Falcon 1, and they never flew the promised Falcon 1e.

[Navier–Stokes]

Firefly Alpha won. Terran-1 and RS1 were both cancelled leaving Firefly Alpha with no competition aside from the old-school overpriced Minotaur-C. Firefly Alpha isn't going to be retired until Stoke Nova achieves full rapid reuse... but I don't see that happening before 2028 at the earliest.

Won the competition for what? Alpha has long been criticized for being in the "no-man's land" of payload class. Too big for cubesats, too small for real satellites.

It will be around, but only if a sponsor keeps it around, and it appears Lockheed will.

The predicted market didn't even notice emerge for the lower end of the segment (i.e., Electron). The cost savings of ride-sharing is hard to beat for most payloads.

[jongoff]

The predicted market didn't even notice emerge for the lower end of the segment (i.e., Electron). The cost savings of ride-sharing is hard to beat for most payloads.

And yet, isn't Rocketlab's Electron flying more orbital flights per year than every non-Falcon 9 US launch provider put together? And hasn't that been true for several years in a row?

Bringing it back to Firefly though, it's an open question of whether their low flight rate to-date is more driven by lack of payloads ready to launch, their reliability challenges with alpha, or whether there's genuinely not much market demand at the 1000kg to LEO size class.

For the record, although I'm a fan of Firefly and of the small launch market, I did vote that I think it's likely they'll retire Alpha in 2026 (or 2027) once Eclipse starts flying. It's just hard to get demand for a vehicle when it has only had two fully successful flights in its first 6. Once they have another vehicle, I think like SpaceX did, they'll refocus on that to restart the reliability clock back at 100%.

~Jon

[Navier–Stokes]

And yet, isn't Rocketlab's Electron flying more orbital flights per year than every non-Falcon 9 US launch provider put together? And hasn't that been true for several years in a row?

Correct but there were predictions of weekly launches while Electron was being developed. RL just doesn't have the cadence necessary to make money off of Electron launches, which is one of the reasons they have diversified into satellite platforms and medium launch.

[TrevorMonty]

And yet, isn't Rocketlab's Electron flying more orbital flights per year than every non-Falcon 9 US launch provider put together? And hasn't that been true for several years in a row?

Correct but there were predictions of weekly launches while Electron was being developed. RL just doesn't have the cadence necessary to make money off of Electron launches, which is one of the reasons they have diversified into satellite platforms and medium launch.

Electron is profitable, should be hitting 30-40% margins with 20 flights a year from three pads between 2 sites. Alpha probably needs 6-10 a year to be viable off single Wallops pad, with crew supporting Eclipse as well.

[TrevorMonty]

And yet, isn't Rocketlab's Electron flying more orbital flights per year than every non-Falcon 9 US launch provider put together? And hasn't that been true for several years in a row?

Correct but there were predictions of weekly launches while Electron was being developed. RL just doesn't have the cadence necessary to make money off of Electron launches, which is one of the reasons they have diversified into satellite platforms and medium launch.

Electron is profitable, should be hitting 30-40% margins with 20 flights a year from three pads between 2 sites. Alpha probably needs 6-10 a year to be viable off single Wallops pad, with crew supporting Eclipse as well. Production staff would make both vehicles helping to keep viable production rate for both LVs low.

[Navier–Stokes]

And yet, isn't Rocketlab's Electron flying more orbital flights per year than every non-Falcon 9 US launch provider put together? And hasn't that been true for several years in a row?

Correct but there were predictions of weekly launches while Electron was being developed. RL just doesn't have the cadence necessary to make money off of Electron launches, which is one of the reasons they have diversified into satellite platforms and medium launch.

Electron is profitable, should be hitting 30-40% margins with 20 flights a year from three pads between 2 sites. Alpha probably needs 6-10 a year to be viable off single Wallops pad, with crew supporting Eclipse as well.

Good to know. They were losing money on Electron launches a few years ago.

[Skye]

Why retire a perfectly good SLLV in Alpha? It’ll still very likely be lower cost than Eclipse, so why not keep it. F1 was different as SX wanted reuse and NEEDED a MLLV, Firefly is different, they don’t require reuse for everything, and don’t necessarily want to fully abandon SL for ML ASAP

[sstli2]

And yet, isn't Rocketlab's Electron flying more orbital flights per year than every non-Falcon 9 US launch provider put together? And hasn't that been true for several years in a row?

I will continue to reiterate that comparing launch frequencies of rockets of different payload classes is not a great comparison. There is some fixed cost to running a launch business of course, but size always introduces manufacturing and operational complexity that works against cadence. RocketLab will find out soon enough when Neutron enters operation.

That said, the fixed cost is still relevant. It's no surprise to me that many small launch operators quickly scale to larger vehicles. Revenue and profitability improve and cadence cannot be scaled indefinitely.

The 14 launches RocketLab did last year, at a cost of 7.5 million, generated 105 million in revenue. That's only 2 Neutron launches. Sure, profit margins change the math a bit, but the overall point holds - that scaling with size is more practical than scaling with cadence.

Besides, if that hypothetical/magical $20m heavy-lift option materializes, then that may very well be the nail in the coffin.  But even if it doesn't - I used the word "magical" for a reason - competition still will drive down medium+ lift some amount. The lower-end will consequently get squeezed.

So bring it all back - I do not see Alpha tapping into some thriving open market for 700-1000kg payloads on its way to long-term viability. I see a sponsor - Lockheed in this case - seeing Alpha as a cost-effective path towards small-scale technology demonstrations that they can later scale up to the actual money-makers that get launched on medium and heavy lift launch vehicles.

Lockheed basically said as much:

“Our customers have told us they need rapid advancement of new mission capabilities,” said Bob Behnken, Director, Ignite Technology Acceleration at Lockheed Martin Space. “This agreement with Firefly further diversifies our access to space, allowing us to continue quickly flight demonstrating the cutting-edge technology we are developing for them, as well as enabling our continued exploration of tactical and responsive space solutions.”

[thespacecow]

LM's test satellites can easily fly on Transporter, they have no need for a dedicated smallsat launcher. They're only doing this because they hate SpaceX.

[Skye]

LM's test satellites can easily fly on Transporter, they have no need for a dedicated smallsat launcher. They're only doing this because they hate SpaceX.

Wrong. (as usual)

Oh, ţat’s a little bit mean

[thespacecow]

LM's test satellites can easily fly on Transporter, they have no need for a dedicated smallsat launcher. They're only doing this because they hate SpaceX.

Wrong. (as usual).

My predictions on this forum are so accurate my opponents have to do 10 pages long mental gymnastics to try to prove otherwise.

[thespacecow]

LM's test satellites can easily fly on Transporter, they have no need for a dedicated smallsat launcher. They're only doing this because they hate SpaceX.

Wrong. (as usual).

My predictions on this forum are so accurate my opponents have to do 10 pages long mental gymnastics to try to prove otherwise.

Seriously ? got a good laugh reading this.

Yes, and to be fair not everyone does mental gymnastics to avoid admitting they're wrong. Some of them have the grace to admit they were wrong and I was right, maybe try to learn from these good examples instead of posting useless one-liners all day long.

[AmigaClone]

Why retire a perfectly good SLLV in Alpha? It’ll still very likely be lower cost than Eclipse, so why not keep it. F1 was different as SX wanted reuse and NEEDED a MLLV, Firefky is different, they don’t require reuse for everything, and don’t necessarily want to fully abandon SL for ML ASAP

I would not call Alpha a good SLLV due to it's track record (one third of missions complete failure, one third partial success, and one third success.) It has the potential to become a good SLLV, but it would need to become much more reliable.

If Eclipse's first ten launches have a significantly better track record than Alpha might have at that point, I can see there at the very least being discussions of abandoning Alpha.

[Skye]

Why retire a perfectly good SLLV in Alpha? It’ll still very likely be lower cost than Eclipse, so why not keep it. F1 was different as SX wanted reuse and NEEDED a MLLV, Firefky is different, they don’t require reuse for everything, and don’t necessarily want to fully abandon SL for ML ASAP

I would not call Alpha a good SLLV due to it's track record (one third of missions complete failure, one third partial success, and one third success.) It has the potential to become a good SLLV, but it would need to become much more reliable.

If Eclipse's first ten launches have a significantly better track record than Alpha might have at that point, I can see there at the very least being discussions of abandoning Alpha.

Well, yes, it ain’t quite “great” yet, but it certainly can be fairly soon. Certainly will have the potential to keep up with electron if they put enough care into it