Rocket Lab: Manufacturing Space Solutions

Founded in 2006, Rocket Lab [RKLB] has emerged as one of the top players in the ongoing commercial space race. Based in Long Beach, California, to date the company has overseen over 1,700 missions globally. 

Rocket Lab caters to both public and private clients from its manufacturing and mission operations centers in Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Maryland, Toronto and New Zealand.

Founder and CEO Peter Beck is a man of many talents. Even before starting his career as a precision engineer at global appliance manufacturer Fisher & Paykel [FSPKF], Beck had experimented with building rockets, gradually increasing their size and complexity. Later, he worked at a government lab developing advanced composite structures and materials for technologies such as wind turbines and superconductors. 

He has received a number of accolades in his native New Zealand, including a knighthood, and was instrumental in setting up the company’s Launch Complex 1, in Mahia, New Zealand, which required an international treaty and legislation to enable Rocket Lab to use US space technology on foreign soil. 

Indeed, the company is supporting a multinational vision with recent restructurings. On May 8, the company announced a holding company reorganization that allows Rocket Lab to expand into other countries while still aligning with US government security requirements.

“We have a New Zealand entity, we have a Canadian entity and hopefully… we’ll have a German entity,” Beck says. “It just enables us to have those kind of wholly-owned subsidiaries under a corporate structure in a much tidier way.”

An End-to-end Space Company

“We’re one of the few — if not the only — truly end-to-end space companies,” Beck explains.

“Often the rocket steals the show because it’s a big hot stick roaring in the sky,” he jokes, but Rocket Lab’s services are manifold. “We build satellite components, satellites and rockets, and then operate them all.”

This model — vertical integration — is where Rocket Lab excels. If the space industry is, as Beck describes it, “a collection of extremely unique capabilities in shops… the one thing that Rocket Lab has the ability to do, and do very well, is produce things that are very, very technically difficult and very bespoke, at scale.”

The company has worked with a wide range of clients, from the US Department of Defense to telecoms providers and science missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope. Plus, Beck adds, “we’re no stranger to national security work.”

Many of Rocket Lab’s projects are driven by a gap in the market. Flatellite, a new model of satellite announced in February 2024, was designed to be produced in high volumes to operate in large constellations. 

“Why customers care about that is it ultimately means we get more spacecraft per rocket, which in turn drives down the cost of putting their constellation in orbit.”

Space solar arrays are another product designed to meet the needs of the market. Debuted in April 2025, Rocket Lab’s STARRAY combines the company’s advanced solar cells in groupings that can be attached to the wings of a satellite. The product addresses a “real pain point” in the space market, Beck says, creating a “generic kind of singular array that can be multiplied many times to achieve different powers and different requirements”.

All of these capabilities, in the end, allow Rocket Lab to fill a unique market niche. “Vertical integration strategy for us is not a religion,” Beck says. “And you can argue it’s not even a strategy. It’s just a necessity.”

Another added benefit of Rocket Lab’s vertical integration is increased resilience in the face of macroeconomic volatility. Speaking on the effect of tariffs, Beck explained that Rocket Lab is “largely unaffected. We are by far majority US-centric manufacturing, and, because we’re so vertically integrated, the supply chain aspects remain for us pretty unaffected.”

Big Payloads, Bigger Paydays

This comprehensive approach is paying off. Despite Rocket Lab’s relatively small size, with an $11bn market cap, the company is “the second most frequently launched US rocket right now, third most frequently in the world.”

In early 2025, the company became one of five launch companies selected to compete for missions under the National Security Space Launch program. According to Beck, the selection is “a real testament and vote of confidence, not only in the vehicle, but in the company”.

That said, demand — and thus revenue — is driven more by customer orders than Rocket Lab’s own operations. “Our cadence is driven by customers turning up on time,” Beck explains. “We just integrate the spacecraft on the rocket and go on flight.”

While the company has a factory capable of building over 50 rockets annually, demand for 2025 stands at 20 launches — although whether those launches happen is often up to the client. 

Still, Rocket Lab’s business is booming. “Every component business has grown significantly year over year… we run our acquisitions as pseudo-separate companies, but I make it very, very clear that they are treated exactly like a start-up. There’s no resting on your laurels. We expect growth, and that means new products.”

With such a range of products and strong demand, the sky is the limit for Rocket Lab’s potential growth. This is, in part, the result of the scale of the projects space companies, by definition, handle. “It’s not uncommon to have a billion-dollar spacecraft on the top of your rocket at all times.”

Perhaps the biggest indicator of Rocket Lab’s growth is how the company has adapted to this scale. 

“It’s funny how the business grows,” Beck admits. “We used to press release a $50m contract or those kinds of things. These days it just gets washed into the mix. It’s not a company-stopping event.”