“Electron’s 225 kg payload’

Incorrect..

Electron’s max payload to LEO is 300kg

But your conclusion that the deal is based on capacity is likely. But another possibility is that Firefly is a little wider and has the expanded fairing option.

Correct.

”It tried twice in 2022…”

Incorrect. ABL’s one and only orbital launch attempt was on 10 Jan 2023. It ended in failure 11 seconds after launch.

”…even though its Alpha rocket has only had two launches (in 2022 and 2023), both of which put the payloads in orbit but failed to place them in the correct orbit.”

Incorrect. Alpha has had four orbital launch attempts, one of which was completely successful. The first attempt lost an engine at liftoff and never even got supersonic. The second put its cubesat payloads into a low elliptical orbit when its second stage failed to correctly perform its circularization burn. The third launch attempt was completely successful. The fourth attempt was a repeat of the second, probably because they failed to perform a proper anomaly investigation after the first time it happened.

”That Lockheed Martin did not give this contract to Rocket Lab, which is flying, could be because Lockheed is trying to encourage the development of multiple small satellite launchers, in order to provide its main satellite-making business a variety of good options.”

Or it could be because Electron’s 225 kg payload is too small for the satellites Lockheed needs to launch. Alpha has a payload to LEO of 1030 kg and ABL’s RS-1 has a payload to LEO of 1350 kg.