RocketLab gains spectrum + profitable satellite company

davidpapermill 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Rocket Lab has secured commitments for a $3.6 billion bridge loan from Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo to fund the cash portion of the acquisition.

Given the timing, this seems like a risky move as they'll be issuing debt in mid-2027 to refinance the bridge, at a time the market could be saturated / corrected.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/rocket-lab-bu...

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espadrine 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Iridum gains 23 launches per year with 100% success rate in the past 12 months, a satellite manufacturing pipeline with 6 satellites produced and launched, and a cost-to-orbit of $25K/kg operational (with an in-development design targetting $4K/kg).

They are late compared to SpaceX, to be sure: 150 launches per year, 2400 satellites manufactured per year, $3K/kg operational with F9, target $200/kg in development with Starship.

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panick21_ 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You act as if 'launch' is a thing. All Rocket Lab launches ever combined don't even fill a single SpaceX rocket. Those are not the same thing.

Lets see their reliability when they have a bigger rocket and if they can land reliably. Because their rocket will be quite expensive to build.

	▲	schainks an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think that’s the point of their niche right? They are already plenty reliable. Also let’s them do stuff like this: https://rocketlabcorp.com/updates/victus-haze/

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wongarsu 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And access to a customer base. A lot easier to sell them new services if they already have a big contract with you

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NetMageSCW 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A profitable satellite company with a lot of debt and satellites that target the previous model of bespoke terminals when the market is moving to satellite service on regular phones.

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amluto an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> the market is moving to satellite service on regular phones.

I don’t think there a unified “market” here. The fixed rooftop terminals and fixed-ish roaming terminals use high (tens of GHz) frequencies with correspondingly wide bandwidth, have excellent beamforming capabilities and some degree of MIMO to improve spectrum reuse, and consume an amount of power that would be outrageous for a phone. Phones don’t have reliably clear views of the sky and have much weaker RF capabilities.

Oh, and phones are well served by existing 4G and 5G networks in dense areas, with better spectrum reuse than seems practical for a satellite constellation.

I expect that we will actually see two separate markets that happen to share the same satellites and backhaul.

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piltdownman an hour ago | parent [-]

//I don’t think there a unified “market” here.

You mean like the ASTS/Vodafone partnership that birthed the Satellite Connect Europe?

https://www.vodafone.com/news/newsroom/technology/satellite-...

https://www.vodafone.com/news/newsroom/technology/vodafone-a...

Or like the US JV where they provide the infra for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513491108/en/AST...

//Phones don’t have reliably clear views of the sky and have much weaker RF capabilities.

And they appear to have circumvented that, although ease of scaling remains to be seen.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ASTSpaceMobile/comments/1k6whtf/rak...

	▲	amluto 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		My claim is that these are not the same market as the traditional Starlink service.

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hobonation 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Iridium terminals can be very power-efficient. Consumer ones are the size of a deck of cards and can last for days.

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Symmetry 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The spectrum is the big thing. If they wanted a revenue stream they could just buy bonds.