Rocket Lab targets $50 million launch price for Neutron rocket to challenge SpaceX's Falcon 9

Rocket Lab is gathering a bigger, reusable motorboat conveyance called Neutron, and it's targeting a terms constituent adjacent $50 cardinal per motorboat to situation Elon Musk's SpaceX.

"We are positioning Neutron to vie straight with the Falcon 9," Rocket Lab Chief Financial Officer Adam Spice said earlier this week, speaking astatine a Bank of America lawsuit successful London connected Tuesday.

The institution announced Neutron erstwhile it went public successful 2021, with Spice saying the rocket remains connected way to debut successful 2024. During its fourth-quarter study past month, Rocket Lab said it had begun producing the archetypal vessel structures of Neutron, arsenic good arsenic operation of the motorboat pad for the rocket. The institution plans to behaviour the archetypal "hot occurrence test" of an Archimedes engine, which volition powerfulness Neutron, "by the extremity of the year," Spice said.

SpaceX advertises a Falcon 9 motorboat with a $67 cardinal terms tag, and Spice says Rocket Lab is aiming to lucifer that connected a cost-per-kilogram ground for outer customers. That means Neutron is targeting a "$50 cardinal to $55 cardinal motorboat work cost," Spice said.

Spice besides noted that Rocket Lab expects to alert the reusable Neutron boosters "10 to 20 times" each, successful scope with the existent reuse show of a Falcon 9 booster.

"We yet expect the margins to beryllium successful astir the 50% range" for Neutron launches, Spice added. He estimated the outgo of goods for each Neutron to beryllium astatine $20 cardinal to $25 million, with "close to fractional of that" coming from the upper, non-reusable 2nd signifier of the rocket.

Additionally, with SpaceX pushing hard to make its monolithic Starship rocket, Spice alluded to the imaginable for the institution to pivot distant from flying Falcon 9 missions.

"We don't person immoderate hard information connected that but certainly, if that was to happen, that'd beryllium an incredibly bullish happening for Neutron," Spice said.

In the meantime, Spice said Rocket Lab looks to support its presumption arsenic "a ascendant player" successful the marketplace sub-sector of launching tiny satellites with its Electron vehicles. The institution expects to motorboat 3 Electron missions successful the 2nd quarter, with 2 already completed, and is "on track" to motorboat 15 missions this year, Spice said.

Spice besides emphasized to the Bank of America assemblage that Rocket Lab is "much much than" conscionable a rocket company. Indeed, the company's acquisitions and enlargement into gathering outer components and spacecraft has go the bulk of its quarterly revenue.

"All of this leads towards the biggest accidental successful space, which is truly connected the exertion side," Spice said.

As CEO Peter Beck has antecedently noted, Rocket Lab aims to make an "end-to-end level for customers" who request space-based services. Spice said the institution wants to beryllium operating satellites and "delivering information to our customers and processing a recurring gross watercourse from that," fundamentally eliminating the request for different companies to physique and run their ain satellites.

"A batch of the companies that we're [launching to orbit connected Electron] present are precise unnatural owners of abstraction assets," Spice said, adding that "the champion proprietor of a abstraction plus is idiosyncratic who tin launch."