Vector Space Systems Investment by Sequoia Capital Could Pay off Big
Vector Space Systems – Small Rockets, Small Satellites and Possibly a Big Payday, SpaceQ (Story and Podcast)
“In 2016 Jim Cantrell and group of veteran space professionals started Vector Space Systems. Their goal? Nothing less than than building a small satellite launch company capable of launching upwards of 100 small satellites a year from at least three spaceports.”
Note: Vector received some initial grant money from NASA.
Related: $30 Billion Market Value for Small Satellites Over Coming Decade, Euroconsult
“According to Euroconsult’s latest report, Prospects for the Small Satellite Market, significant expansion in terms of capabilities and demand is underway in the smallsat market. Over 6,200 smallsats are expected to be launched over the next ten years, a substantial augmentation over that of the previous decade (several mega constellations are now included within the scope of this report). The smallsat market from 2017-2026 will be driven by the roll-out of multiple constellations accounting for more than 70% of this total, mainly for commercial operators.”
“The total market value of these smallsats could reach $30.1 billion in the next ten years, up from $8.9 billion over the previous decade.”
The vast majority of the small satellites are part of large fleets and thus more economically launched in sets by conventional launch vehicles. Companies have been looking for a market for small launch vehicles for many years without much success.
This is partially true. OneWeb and SpaceX account for several thousand. However even today there are small satellites looking for a ride and can’t find it. There’s also a timing issue. While rideshare is good, sometimes you have to wait years, still, for that ride to happen. In a more business oriented market that’s not acceptable. Over the next 10 years there are several thousands small satellites not affiliated with big constellations looking for a ride. Sequoia was impressed enough to back then. I think that says something. Given the choice of a dedicated flight at $1.5m – $3m (possibly shared) and launching within months or a rideshare on a larger launch vehicle and waiting 1 – 3 years, what would you take? Many of these new satellites will be for business, not scientific. They can’t afford to sit and wait.
What would be an example of the sort of business these small sats would be doing? Aside from communication – mostly large birds in high energy orbits – and smaller scientific sats, what business opportunities do you see for fleets of smaller sats?
Some communications, such as high rate to mobile devices, require low orbits. That’s not just people’s cell phones, but also things like internet connections on airplanes. Given the low horizon from LEO, that implies lots of small satellites for global coverage.
Repeated passes can also be an issue. A single satellite in LEO might only pass over the same spot once every few days. If you want remote sensing to track something dynamic (e.g. a forest fire), you might want several overflights per day. If you can get adequate observations from a small satellite, then flying lots of small satellites is a viable approach.
The underlying assumptions that there’s a gold mine in space if we only had better/cheaper access to LEO need to be regularly challenged because the answer to the question is non-obvious.
Every week it seems there’s a new small-sat company that dreams of $1Million access to space for the 50Kg± load. What is the market that these operators are seeing? Aside from science, and communications?
Personally I agree. Most of the cubesats can be orbited more cheaply in larger clusters. I have been really impressed at the incredibly short proposal-to-launch cycle Nanoracks has managed with the regular ISS logistical flights by standardizing requirements and accomodations. Launching cubesats from the ISS has more potential to lower cost than requiring a separate launch for each small group.
It depends on how big the small satellites are. It looks like their target is a 50 kg payload to Low Earth orbit. Counting the deployers, that’s about 20U of CubeSats. Call it seven 3U satellites. So that could be launching small satellites in sets. But I do agree, the viability of their business plan is really sensitive to the types of constellations (or swarms) people want to fly.