> but small satellites currently pay a lot of the bills at SpaceX

No, they really don't. SpaceX makes most of their money launching 3-ton+ geostationary satellites. The second-most important workload has been launching the Orbcomm and Iridium constellations. Iridium satellites won't fit on Electron. Orbcomm ones would, but the constellation is complete.

Of all their commercial launches, on only one would the Electron rocket have undeniably been better: The SmallSat Express was a kind of a clusterfuck because there were too many customers on one launch, each with their own problems and delays.

In any case, hypotheticals about SpaceX losing customers in the future always need to be answered with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IU41zpzWUE&t=75s

As of IAC2018, they had a $12B launch manifest. They can afford to lose a few smallsat payloads.

I am eagerly awaiting a future larger Electron. The principle of 3d-printing a rocket using only parts that are cheap to make is quite interesting, and might have room to move up to payloads larger than smallsats.

SpaceX has been launching the Falcon 9 for the past 6 years straight with only two launch failures and one partial failure out of 65 flights. Their older Falcon 1 didn't do great, only last flight survived out of five tries. However, SpaceX has had near consecutive launch success for the past 10 years. They threw themselves into the deep end with space. They do things the cheap and quick way and hope that it works. When it fails, they can quickly reconfigure and try again, their investment is low. This model helps you get really far really quick, so much so that they are now competing with ULA. ULA's tech has heritage all the way back to the Convair days when slapping a satellite onto an ICBM was a new idea. All of those small companies like Rocket Lab are just starting their success but this is literally where SpaceX was 10 years prior, launching small stuff with mixed results. If SpaceX can get off the ground with 20% success rate of their first design, I doubt Rocket Lab will have trouble with 80%.

Falcon 1 launched successfully on the last 2 flights (F1-4 & F1-5). But only F1-5 had a paying customer. F1-4 was a dummy test payload.

Despite a lot of small satellites going up on SpaceX rockets, they aren't the ones pulling in large amounts of money for SpaceX. Most of the small satellite launches (with the exception of the recent SSO-A mission) are secondary payloads on a larger launch.

There is a lot of demand for smaller launchers. With smaller launch vehicles you can get more flexibility in what orbit you want to go in to. On the larger launches, the small satellite manufacturers have to adapt somewhat to the launches that are available. There is demand from both the commercial and DoD [1].

[1] https://spacenews.com/pentagon-procurement-chief-ellen-lord-...

Since spaceX’s first commercial launch was in 2013, I’d say GP was not entirely wrong

Electron and Falcon 9 have have entirely different capabilities. Electron may be more flexible but it's unable to launch geosynchronous satellites, which are by far the most profitable in the launch industry.

An interesting part of the article says

"SpaceX’s existing business faces headwinds. It expects to see declines in launches of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket for 2019 and perhaps 2020. Global demand for launching commercial satellites, its core business, is stagnant, with some satellite manufacturers and customers looking to permanently exit the market segment."

Commercial satellites is broad - does the above mean that the market is stagnant for high orbit geosynchronous? If that's the case, then the advantage would be to Electron - but that assumes something about the profitability of low orbit.

A reference, where the WSJ got this information, would have been nice.

Otoh there are capabilities - and many distinctions between SpaceX and Electron. On the other though is the market and demand and you could have something great but if its market isn't likewise then you're going to be hampered not on the, shall we say, supply side of the rocket you offer, but rather the demand side.

Commercial GEO is declining. Cell networks are becoming good enough that they can beat out satellite network providers. Same with TV networks, why bother with a satellite uplink when you can stream 4K over the internet?

I was going to say something similar. I love Electron, they have an awesome rocket and have made it to orbit so they are winners in my book. That said, they are poking at a different market than SpaceX is, which is the small rocket, small payload to orbit. Yes it's a market, no it isn't particularly high margin (at this time, these tend to be cube sats with more modest budgets).

What is worse, they still throw away the rocket once they launch. A "gas only" Falcon 9 rocket (which is to say they have the means to launch and relaunch over 10 times) is ultimately going to be the most cost effective path to space. Not sure Electron can get there from here.

I don't know if a re-usable Electron will ever make sense, but it's an interesting engineering problem to think about.

As lithium-ion batteries improve the potential mass fraction for each Electron stage gets better: lighter batteries mean more propellant. In a decade (maybe sooner) it might become feasible for the first stage to retain enough propellant for a propulsive landing like the Falcon 9. And in this case I think there's a big pay-off with the electric pumps: there's no need for a hoverslam, since the engines should be able to deep throttle to an extreme degree that's not practical with conventional rocket engines.

In a shorter time-frame the Electron first stage, because it is so small, is probably air-recoverable using the same approach that ULA is considering for recovering Vulcan engines.

Along those lines I think the hypersonic parachute work is also a potential game changer. High strength, low mass, materials with high thermal coefficients (like graphene) might one day be able to spread enough of the re-entry energy across a large enough surface to make it something you could do to recover. The steerable parafoils that SpaceX is putting on the payload fairings for terminal guidance.

A fun engineering problem to be sure.

Electron is not reusable, each is expended.

Reusability will eventually give SpaceX such an edge that they'll be able to launch BFR at Electron-level prices. Same cost, an order of magnitude more capability.

This is quite a ways out, however, so Rocketlab will enjoy being the only dedicated provider at the $6M price point for quite a while.

More like four order of magnitude more payload...

Electric motor fuel pumps simply cannot scale any larger than they already are on the Electron craft. Rocket labs is not going to be taking any of SpaceX's profitable marketshare.

I wouldn't be surprised if they start working on an expander cycle engine while keeping the electrics as a starter/regulator.

Electron is a tiny rocket and the market for large launchers is already overstacked. Electron will stay in the microlaunch market for a long time.

Electron is roughly equivalent to SpaceX's Falcon 1. Falcon 1 flew its first (and only) commercial flight in 2009. That's ~10 years, by my math...

What if electron is already near its final form? That would put them near parity with Falcon 9 in terms of development, but without the proven track record yet. Just saying the goals are different and progress toward them has to be measured based on those goals.

Cessna doesn't compete with Boeing, and it's not clear Electron and SpaceX are playing the same game either.

In that case they are not competitors. Either they are 9+ years behind or they are not even in the same race.

That’s not a bad thing. Boeing for example is also a profitable aerospace company, but they don’t launch to GEO. You basicly pay a near constant rate per lb to orbit and most of the money is from the large side of thing.

Well they do kinda launch to geo in their partnership with LM in ULA.