Prediction: Rocket Lab Gets New Neighbor in SpaceX | The Motley Fool

Five years ago – and before the IPO – a small rocket company and rival to SpaceX Rocket Lab USA (Part of RKLB 12.58%) there was an announcement.

Despite its name, Rocket Lab was a New Zealand company at the time. Its founder lived there. It launched its rockets to leave There. As a result, its only starting point was there. But having just launched its 10th successful rocket launch, Rocket Lab was set to compete with America’s most famous rocket company, SpaceX, in an attempt to win more space contracts. starting from US customers.

This can be difficult, of course, because SpaceX has had the opportunity to win US government and US commercial launch contracts. In particular, SpaceX was in the US — next to most of its customers — lowering their costs of delivering payloads to SpaceX for assembly and launch.

How could Rocket Lab level the playing field with SpaceX? It probably won’t have much luck convincing US customers to move to New Zealand. So Rocket Lab decided to build a launch pad on Wallops Island, Virginia.

But it turns out that two can play the game. As we recently learned, SpaceX may be planning to enter Rocket Lab in the yard, too.

Happy day spacemate!

As Reuters reported last week, SpaceX is seeking permission to land a Starship rocket off the coast of Australia, and this could be “the first step to a larger presence for Elon Musk’s company in the region.”

The request follows the fourth successful flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster, in June, where the Starship made a “water landing” in the Indian Ocean, somewhere northwest of Australia. Therefore, logically, the request of SpaceX is probably related to the next test flight that follows the same route as that used in Test Flight 4 (to reduce the differences between the tests). Once again, the goal would be to get close to Australia (this time by glider). The rocket would be taken to Australia for testing, then possibly returned to America.

Reuters notes that the project could be the first step in creating a point-to-point system for using Starship to quickly transport goods and passengers around the world. Normally, we think of rockets as moving to leave The world to somewhere other than Earth. But in the age of reusable rockets starting to take off and return to Earth, there’s no reason they can’t be used for point-to-point transportation like airplanes already are. In fact, Elon Musk has been thinking about such a project for almost a decade. And in 2021, the US Air Force supported the plan with an initial budget of $ 47.9 million for a feasibility study.

But I think Musk’s plans could be bigger than that.

Will Starbase go global?

Imagine that, right now, all SpaceX stars launch from the same place: SpaceX’s “Starbase” in Boca Chica, Texas. But there’s good reason to think that SpaceX might want to build a spaceport in Australia where it will launch and recover rockets — and possibly even a factory to build Starships on site. Rocket Lab’s success has already shown that Australia (or at least its little neighbor) is a good place to launch rockets, with a nice big ocean to the east where any rockets don’t. work well they can fall.

Also, for the same reasons that Rocket Lab may want to set up shop in the US (to be closer to US customers and to reduce their transportation costs), SpaceX may find it more attractive to set up an Australian Starbase alongside In other parts of the globe, it is better to win business from Asian customers.

What this could mean for Rocket Lab investors

Suffice it to say that this may not be good news for Rocket Lab, whose biggest customer is in Asia (Japan, to be exact), and who may not be happy. increased competition. In the Asian market, Rocket Lab now has to contend with low-cost leader ISRO in India, which pays three or four times Rocket Lab’s price to launch payloads that cost 10 times more.

On the bright side, however, Rocket Lab is developing its own reusable Neutron rocket to compete with Starship — and Neutron boasts more payload than ISRO’s PSLV rocket — at least this will be a two horse race, if and when. SpaceX is setting up a launch pad in Australia.