SpaceX’s low launch prices have presented a challenge to the world’s launch services to find better efficiencies in order to reduce their own prices so that they can compete. SpaceX has provided inexpensive launches for smallsats with their ride-share launches, each launch taking dozens of small satellites into similar orbits. An alternative to low prices is to provide better service, such as taking smallsats to individual orbits that best suit the operators’ needs. This last part is a strength of Rocket Lab, which has also worked to keep launch prices low.

Robert Zimmerman has noted several times that there is a growing demand for launch services. There is a growing number of launch companies trying to fill this demand, as more companies are beginning to want to launch than the available launchers. This year, several non-U.S. launch companies are trying to break into the launch market. They are currently applying the lessons learned in their early attempts at launch, and many of them will soon succeed and help to satisfy the growing demand for their services.

NASA and government space are no longer the future of the American space effort. Commercial space is, and NASA’s role might be to facilitate the private use of space resources. NASA may be able to provide some of the more advanced explorations, but private commercial space will provide most of the benefits of using space to we earthlings, making profits as rewards for finding the best uses of those resources.

QPS-SAR-2 launched on the Transporter-1 mission, QPS-SAR-6 launched on the Transporter-8 mission, and QPS-SAR-7 launched on the Bandwagon-1 mission.

The Epsilon launch vehicle launching QPS-SAR-3 and QPS-SAR-4 failed causing these two satellites (as well as others) to be lost.

QPS-SAR-6 launched before QPS-SAR-5. This is because QPS-SAR-5 was originally booked on the Virgin Orbit LauncherOne. After Virgin Orbit filed for bankruptcy, iQPS signed a rapid launch contract with Rocket Lab. It ended up being that Rocket Lab could get their satellite to orbit when the other guys could not, so iQPS rewarded them with more business.

Or, as Robert might say, ain’t capitalism grand?

Willi Kusche: That’s a very revealing chronology. It shows how India and Japan started off as competitors, but have fallen away to SpaceX and Rocket Lab, with Rocket Lab eventually winning out because its Electron can place IPQS’s satellites in their correct orbit, as primary payload.

Or to put it more bluntly, American enterprise wins again.