When Firefly Aerospace launches its Blue Ghost lander to the moon’s surface later this year, it will do so aboard a SpaceX rocket and with $112 million in funding from NASA.
But CEO Bill Weber sees a future where the Texas-based company goes it alone, completing fully commercial moon missions on a mid-sized rocket built in-house – without funding from NASA.
“The commercial sector needs to provide that transit,” Weber told Yahoo Finance in an interview. “And the government will leverage that capacity, rather than being the main driver of contracts. We’re at the point where we’re about to pivot. There’s certainly enough demand on the commercial side.”
Weber’s ambitions point to the rapid evolution of a new space economy increasingly driven by commercial interests. Borrowing a playbook from SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk, companies like Firefly are moving faster, building bigger and lowering costs in the process, creating a technology startup-like mentality in space exploration.
That boost expands the reach of space companies beyond launch systems and satellites. The World Economic Forum predicts that the space economy will reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, growing at 9% per year. Five industries, including supply chain, retail and consumer goods, are expected to generate more than 60% of that increase over the next decade as demand for applications such as satellite data and communications grows.
“The lower cost of entry to get things into orbit has really shifted the industry and brought in a lot of excited, ambitious people in a very fast way,” said Matt Martinez, managing director and partner at BCG.
Launch, land and orbit
Commercial demand resulting from increased access to space is driving Firefly’s expansion plans.
Founded in 2017, the company has positioned itself as an end-to-end space transportation company, aiming to play a role in every step of the process, from launch to satellite deployment.
The company’s mission to “launch, land and orbit” is displayed on banners hanging above the sprawling 200-acre Rocket Ranch, an hour outside Austin, Texas. In one complex, engineers manufacture Firefly’s smaller rocket, known as Alpha, while the second building is dedicated to building the new medium launch vehicle (MLV), developed in collaboration with Northrop Grumman (NOC). Firefly has six test setups outside, where employees carry out rocket motor tests almost every day.
“What sets Firefly apart from others is how much is built in-house,” said Brigette Oakes, vice president of engineering. “Having a machine shop for integration, composite production, engine testing and phase testing allows us to build these rockets as quickly as our customers essentially want.”
In 2023, the company launched a satellite into orbit 27 hours after receiving orders from the US Space Force. This broke a previous response time of 21 days.
That ability to move quickly and reduce costs expands the boundaries of space exploration. Today, companies like Space
Although Firefly has only successfully launched three rockets into orbit, it has doubled the size of its facilities to automate much of its production in anticipation of further expansion.
A new automated fiber placement machine installed last year now allows the company to produce the vehicle structure for its Alpha rocket in seven days and the MLV in 30 days. That’s nine times faster and seven times cheaper than the laser-guided process engineers previously relied on, Oakes said.
Commercialization of the moon
Growth within the commercial space economy has thus far been largely limited to launch vehicles and satellites, but NASA is leaning on the private sector to take it even further.
The Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program has set aside $2.6 billion for more than a dozen companies to develop a low-cost transportation system to bring the agency’s research to the lunar surface, along with payloads for commercial customers.
Firefly will launch its Blue Ghost lunar lander aboard a SpaceX rocket later this year, marking the third attempt by a commercial company to reach the lunar surface after limited success from Intuitive Machines (LUNR) and Astrobotic.
“What’s happening is we’re bringing things on Earth into space,” says NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We have small start-up companies providing landers for NASA experiments because we can explore the south pole of the moon before our astronauts ever get there.”
A single lander mission is expected to cost Firefly about $100 million, a fraction of the $660 million NASA paid for similar lander missions in the 1960s, adjusted for inflation.
The road to profitability
The Blue Ghost launch later this year will be the first of two Firefly missions supported by NASA. The second mission, which will reach the moon’s south pole in 2026, will launch aboard the MLV, allowing the company to proceed without SpaceX’s help.
Although both will take NASA experiments to the lunar surface, Weber said the company now plans to conduct its own mission to the moon with “100% commercial payloads” to meet requests from customers who were unable to to “piggyback” on the first missions.
The company has no plans to receive funding from NASA for its independent mission, although the agency could be a paying customer, Weber said.
Today, Firefly generates more than 60% of its revenue from launch systems. The remaining 40% comes from space activities, including Blue Ghost and the Elytra orbital vehicle. Weber said he expects to be profitable on the company’s moon missions by the end of this decade.
“If your only business is lunar missions and landing on the moon, you’re going to have a very hard time with a diversified revenue structure,” he said. “Because there are three different mechanisms where we can serve customers from the same technical base, the same manufacturing base and the same supply chain that feeds all of that, we can execute these types of missions with minimal profit.”
Click here for the latest technology news that will impact the stock market.
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance