WASHINGTON — Emerging launch providers argue there is plenty of demand for their vehicles, but are looking to the government to back up its rhetoric for assured access to space with contracts and funding.
During a panel at the Satellite 2025 conference here March 10, executives with several launch companies said they saw opportunities in the market despite, or even because of, the current dominance by SpaceX.
“There’s really one player that’s dominant right now, but as we talk to our government customers and our commercial customers, everybody wants to have their own assured access to space. They want multiple providers,” said Josh Brost, chief revenue officer of Relativity Space. “There’s plenty of business to go around.”
Others shared that view. “I think there’s room for competition,” said Aaron Prescott, senior director of global commercial sales at Firefly Aerospace. “There are risks that come with having a dominant provider.”
“From a national security space perspective, it’s really hard to be tactically responsive when you’re relying on one to two large launch providers,” said Scott Zweibel, vice president of government affairs at Stoke Space.
They said they were not deterred by what happened in the small end of the market, when dozens of companies pursued small launch vehicles, only for most of them to suffer technical or financial setbacks. The market for launching small satellites in the United States is dominated today by Rocket Lab’s Electron as well as SpaceX’s Transporter line of rideshare missions.
“There’s been some thinning of the market there,” acknowledged Prescott, but noted the demand for his company’s Alpha rocket far exceeds current capacity. “Our constraint is our own ability to keep up with our own backlog.”
“What you are seeing is that, while customers like to demonstrate things on Transporter missions, when it comes time to deploy operational constellations they tend to look for launches that take them where they want to go when they want to go,” said Brost, whose company shelved its smaller Terran 1 rocket after a single test flight that failed to reach orbit in 2023. He said even before the sole Terran 1 launch the company was seeing far greater demand for its larger Terran R.
A key customer for those new launch vehicles will be the U.S. government, particularly for national security applications. A near-term opportunity is the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 contract, which includes a “Lane 1” for new vehicles and a “Lane 2” for more established vehicles.
“Congress has done a very good job helping the Space Force stand up” that contract, Zweibel said. “Lane 1 really should be everyone’s path to getting a government mission.”
He suggested that Congress may need to intervene if the Space Force drags its heels in on-ramping companies like his to Lane 1. “It’s important that this year, and going forward, Lane 1 brings on new providers. Otherwise, Congress is going to have to step in.”
“Ensuring full and open competition is the primary objective of any opportunity,” said Prescott as the company develops its MLV medium-class rocket. “Lane 1 is going to be our ticket to begin that process. We’re definitely going to be on-ramping as soon as we’re able.”
Companies also want the Space Force to make a greater investment in new space mobility capabilities that go beyond launch. Erik Daehler, vice president of defense, satellites and spacecraft systems at Sierra Space, says his company sees opportunities to offer its Dream Chaser vehicle as a “space mobility and logistics platform” but wants the Space Force to back up its stated interest in those capabilities with funding.
“Congress can fund space mobility and logistics at a realistic, targeted position that shows there is a demand signal for not just the two or three NSSL providers, but for how you do last-mile logistics in space and convert a Lane 1 launch into a Lane 2-type of capability and reach those higher orbits,” he said.
He said current funding levels for space mobility of $25 million a year is “not a real commitment” to that effort. Asked to define what would be a realistic commitment, he said there needed to be sufficient funding for programs to demonstrate on-orbit refueling and mobility as well as reentry systems. “So, real programs of record with significant dollars.”
