What will be the impact of Coronavirus on the small launcher sector?

[ringsider]

If this slowdown is like the last one venture funding will dry up and leave a bunch of those companie high and dry.

You would have to think those who have just completed a funding round are in reasonable shape to weather the storm, while those at the other end of the funding cycle are in a sticky situation.

Which ones are best equipped to survive and which ones are in a difficult situation?

Equally, which smallsat companies are going to face issues?

[Asteroza]

Like that REM song, "everbody hurts..."


But a global recession means a lot of pseudo-vanity commercial cubesats are now off the table as companies need to devote free cash elsewhere, plus many government/university projects will be paused or outright cancelled since their funds got diverted/drained for coronavirus response and won't be refilled/paid back. Anyone not tangibly close to launching is probably doomed if not mostly self funded, unless their anchor launch customer (constellations) backfill some investment into the launch startups themselves.


So the ones with flight hardware now will probably survive (RocketLabs, Virgin Orbit, Astra, some of those chinese ICBM derivative startups). Relativity will survive in some form though not necessarily as a rocket company. Everybody else...

[TrevorMonty]

Future for Astra and Virgin isn't necessary given both need that first successful flight.

I think you are right about Relativity, their future is likely to be in 3rd printing not launch. Which is why are good investment.

[Bananas_on_Mars]

I think you are right about Relativity, their future is likely to be in 3rd printing not launch. Which is why are good investment.

„Orbital rockets with zero human labor“ doesn‘t sound bad in a crisis like that.

They might be able to produce while teleworking...

[TrevorMonty]

I think you are right about Relativity, their future is likely to be in 3rd printing not launch. Which is why are good investment.

„Orbital rockets with zero human labor“ doesn‘t sound bad in a crisis like that.

They might be able to produce while teleworking...

Their laboir costs won't be much lower than RL who have invested lot money in lowering Electron build cost. Major part of labour is not in building tanks but in assembling vehicle, preparing for launch, ground crew, general admin. All competition are 3d printing engines.

See RL ROSIE video.

[freddo411]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

[brussell]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

"That's just like, your opinion, man" - The dude

[high road]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

Conversely, COVID might not have much of an impact, as most companies are vaporware or in perpetual hibernation, and those that don't have the funds to ride this out would not have succeeded anyway...

[freddo411]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

"That's just like, your opinion, man" - The dude

True.  It's worth what was paid for it.

[rakaydos]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

"That's just like, your opinion, man" - The dude

Didnt Gwynn Shotwell say that there is ultimately room for zero smallsat launch providers?
As president of a company offering price-per-seat undercutting RL's price-per-launch with ridestare programs, and who is looking to get a superheavy lift vehical with all-up launch costs in the same ballpark as many smallsat launchers's all up costs, she's in a good position to eat ALL their lunches. Even rocketlab's.

[Asteroza]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

"That's just like, your opinion, man" - The dude

Didnt Gwynn Shotwell say that there is ultimately room for zero smallsat launch providers?
As president of a company offering price-per-seat undercutting RL's price-per-launch with ridestare programs, and who is looking to get a superheavy lift vehical with all-up launch costs in the same ballpark as many smallsat launchers's all up costs, she's in a good position to eat ALL their lunches. Even rocketlab's.

Only if those tug service providers like Momentus get their act together to make rideshares more viable for sats needing to get to other orbits. Not everyone wants to build in OTV level capabilities into their bus chassis.

[TrevorMonty]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

Seems like RL's customers didn't get memo about this market being non existent.

[john smith 19]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

Conversely, COVID might not have much of an impact, as most companies are vaporware or in perpetual hibernation, and those that don't have the funds to ride this out would not have succeeded anyway...

That sounds like about as accurate a statement of this market and covid 19's impact on it as I've seen anywhere.

It costs peanuts to say "We're a new small ELV startup whose going to launch our first payload in <timeframe> months time. Whose looking for a ride?"

It costs a shedload more time, money and experience to deliver anything close to what you originally claimed.

As always time will tell the truly determined and capable from the posturing and the over confident. 

[ringsider]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

Conversely, COVID might not have much of an impact, as most companies are vaporware or in perpetual hibernation, and those that don't have the funds to ride this out would not have succeeded anyway...

That sounds like about as accurate a statement of this market and covid 19's impact on it as I've seen anywhere.

It costs peanuts to say "We're a new small ELV startup whose going to launch our first payload in <timeframe> months time. Whose looking for a ride?"

It costs a shedload more time, money and experience to deliver anything close to what you originally claimed.

As always time will tell the truly determined and capable from the posturing and the over confident. 

The paradox / irony is that the vaporware firms with nothing more than a website and a some bold claims will survive, while those doing genuine work may not. If you take Astra as an exmaple, you could suspect that the reason they broke cover in January was to get more funding. Thus

1) losing the DARPA prize money when they weren't in competition against anyone else;
2) having another "anomaly" on the launcher (which has yet again demonstrated that, as Adam London said, they are giving up reliability to get costs down*);
and
3) the chilling effect of the coronavirus on capital markets

will almost certainly have some impact on their situation.

It might also hurt Virgin Orbit, as Branson is pulling in his horns and OneWeb are looking a bit shaky.

* “We’re actually not shooting for 100 percent reliability,” London said. Instead, Astra is willing to trade a small amount of reliability for a big cost savings. Ars Technica, 2/6/2020

[TartanPump]

They will all die (except Rocketlab).

Not because of COVID, but because there never was the market to launch very expensive tiny payloads.

Conversely, COVID might not have much of an impact, as most companies are vaporware or in perpetual hibernation, and those that don't have the funds to ride this out would not have succeeded anyway...

That sounds like about as accurate a statement of this market and covid 19's impact on it as I've seen anywhere.

It costs peanuts to say "We're a new small ELV startup whose going to launch our first payload in <timeframe> months time. Whose looking for a ride?"

It costs a shedload more time, money and experience to deliver anything close to what you originally claimed.

As always time will tell the truly determined and capable from the posturing and the over confident. 

The paradox / irony is that the vaporware firms with nothing more than a website and a some bold claims will survive, while those doing genuine work may not. If you take Astra as an exmaple, you could suspect that the reason they broke cover in January was to get more funding. Thus

1) losing the DARPA prize money when they weren't in competition against anyone else;
2) having another "anomaly" on the launcher (which has yet again demonstrated that, as Adam London said, they are giving up reliability to get costs down*);
and
3) the chilling effect of the coronavirus on capital markets

will almost certainly have some impact on their situation.

It might also hurt Virgin Orbit, as Branson is pulling in his horns and OneWeb are looking a bit shaky.

* “We’re actually not shooting for 100 percent reliability,” London said. Instead, Astra is willing to trade a small amount of reliability for a big cost savings. Ars Technica, 2/6/2020

I've been saying for a while that there's a launch bubble that will burst soon. But I'd always assumed that it'd happen when there was enough successful launchers to meet small-sat demand, and the funding for these vaporware (love that name) companies dries up.

Never thought a virus might be responsible for losing some of the most promising. It's already killed LEO Aerospace (but I'd have classified them more as Vaporware than anything else).

[TrevorMonty]

OneWeb maybe first victim of corona virus recession but it won't be last. The future is bleak for current startups if they don't have money in bank to see them through to first customer paid launch.

Lot of future payloads for these small LV companies are also likely to dissappear as new space startups fold due to lack of fimancing.

[ringsider]

OneWeb maybe first victim of corona virus recession but it won't be last. The future is bleak for current startups if they don't have money in bank to see them through to first customer paid launch.

Lot of future payloads for these small LV companies are also likely to dissappear as new space startups fold due to lack of fimancing.

I agree with the general point here but it needs to be more specific i.e. it needs to differentiate between those actually deploying resources to build a real vehicle, and the fantasy rockets; and then it needs to look at the specifics of each company.

For fantasy launchers, survival is trivial. It costs $100 a year to maintain a website and put out something on Twitter, which is what Carlos Niederstrasser ridiculously uses as his criteria of activity ("Some indication through a web site, social media,  traditional media, conference paper, press release, etc. that the effort has been active in the past two years.") So people with a simple SquareSpace website, some CAD diagrams and a free-of-charge Twitter account will "survive", and still be counted as players, which is like counting fantasy baseball teams alongside real ones.

If you are actually building something serious and real, it will be a lot harder, and case specific. For example, if you are Virgin Orbit, you would have to wonder what the future will bring. Your anchor customer just died - while the $43m law suit was still ongoing and in pre-trial - and did so without listing you as a creditor in the bankruptcy papers, possibly as a final [edit/gongora: you know the forum rules on language.] What will come of that OneWeb process? No idea, but Airbus and Arianespace hold the cards so it's unlikely to be good for Virgin Orbit.

Relativity justed completed a $140m VC round, and should be in a reasonably good position if they can make real progress instead of hyping Tim and Jordan's egos.

If you are Firefly, you would have to think that the status there might be constrained at a critical moment as it is all personal money, which is probably not a great comfort in this kind of crisis, and the R&D is partially happening in Ukraine, which will be locked down. But they could also be they are swimming in cash, it's hard to tell. Meanwhile Polyakov is the very definition of "mercurial", and Tom Markusic is not what I would call a bad-times CEO, which coudl give you pause for thought.

If they were in a fundraising cycle, Astra is probably going to have a rough time - and I suspect that is the case since all this unusual PR was probably to help them raise the beans. Ironically they came out of dark mode at exactly the wrong moment, and then proceeded to miss on all their objectives and destroy the benefits of all that secrecy over the past 2-3 years. That needs some fancy footwork to give investors confidence in this environment.

Spinlaunch just raised $35M so thay will survive the crisis, even if their tech is under scrutiny.

In Europe several small launch firms are looking for money e.g. Rocket Factory Augburg announced to the world that they are trying to raise $65m in January, as OHB cut them loose. PLD Space is probably on the hunt for money after those engine issues last year, and a hunt like that will be negatively impacted by these circumstances one way or another. Orbex are a dark horse as they are always slow to announce money and reveal technology e.g. they got some funding last year, but have kept it mostly quiet, unless you were watching closely.

Asia and Australia will have issues raising new money, which could impact the earlier stage firms like Gilmour and Interstellar.

Several will not survive. But annoyingly it is more likely the fantasy ones are those that will come through, and not the more genuine efforts, who need cold hard cash to keep the shop open.

[ChrisWilson68]

For example, if you are Virgin Orbit, you would have to wonder what the future will bring. Your anchor customer just died - while the $43m law suit was still ongoing and in pre-trial - and did so without listing you as a creditor in the bankruptcy papers, possibly as a final "fuck you". What will come of that OneWeb process? No idea, but Airbus and Arianespace hold the cards so it's unlikely to be good for Virgin Orbit.

Virgin Orbit also has the bad fortune that their parent and main backer, the Virgin Group, is concentrated in travel, which is among the sectors hardest-hit by this crisis.  Their latest venture is Virgin Voyages, a cruise ship line.  They ordered three ships and the first was delivered in February.

Virgin Group is going to be using whatever money they have to keep their core assets from failing.  They'll have nothing to support Virgin Orbit.

[ringsider]

As predicted above, Astra hits some turbulent weather:-

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/05/rocket-startup-astra-trims-staff-to-survive-pandemic-until-next-year.html

--

San Francisco-area rocket builder Astra cut its overall headcount to about 120 employees from about 150, a person familiar told CNBC.

Given Astra’s financial position, the person said the company’s leadership expects it has enough cash to last until the first quarter of next year.

The company also recently lost one of its rockets in a fire during testing, the person said, with Astra not expecting to attempt another launch for a few months.

--

That is a very worrying report on several levels.

[edzieba]

As predicted above, Astra hits some turbulent weather:-

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/05/rocket-startup-astra-trims-staff-to-survive-pandemic-until-next-year.html

--

San Francisco-area rocket builder Astra cut its overall headcount to about 120 employees from about 150, a person familiar told CNBC.

Given Astra’s financial position, the person said the company’s leadership expects it has enough cash to last until the first quarter of next year.

The company also recently lost one of its rockets in a fire during testing, the person said, with Astra not expecting to attempt another launch for a few months.

--

That is a very worrying report on several levels.

After missing the DARPA challenge deadline, losing a vehicle, and being hit with a pandemic halting operations? A mere 30-person (20%) headcount reduction and a few months delay is sing-it-from-the-rooftops good news.