We have a bright future full of endless "space-junk". As the price to orbit drops, people will inevitably send up more and more satellites that have questionable value. In 100 years will the sky at night just be a massive grid of dots moving across the sky?

Who will create the first advertisement in space using satellites as pixels to create their company logo? Maybe they can add some color and animations for kicks.

Edit: Another note on space junk is the effect on our atmosphere with all the "burning-up" of various materials. Apparently they don't just completely vaporize, but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time. People are studying this and hopefully raising appropriate alarms (Making the case for wood satellites).

• Centigonal

  today at 4:06 PM

  Hank Green did a video recently advocating for an "orbit value tax" -- like a Georgist Land Value Tax, but for orbits. This tax would, among other things, help fund orbital cleanup and internalize the externality of polluting orbital shells. It's an idea that deserves more discourse IMO.

  Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLjW6zuYmos

  • iamtheworstdev

    today at 5:33 PM

    Ugh. People already trying to find ways to gate keep space by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap space flights. I'm sure SpaceX and others will be against this until suddenly, they're not, when they realize they're one of the few that can even afford to pay it.

    Like when Amazon finally had warehouses in all fifty states and suddenly quit campaigning against online sales tax.

    • Centigonal

      today at 5:52 PM

      One of the arguments Hank makes in the video is that SpaceX is (via starlink) rapidly occupying large portions of useful LEO shells, which crowds out future competitors or users of that orbit (i.e. you can't put more satellites into the orbit without risking collisions, especially satellites that aren't part of the existing constellation), and that the natural consequence of not regulating orbital space in some way would be to lock in the first movers in an orbital shell as the only organizations that have access to that orbit.

      • lstodd

        today at 5:59 PM

        >that SpaceX is (via starlink) rapidly occupying large portions of

        Which is utter bullshit. Quite painful to hear too. LEO is not your average american homeless stolen mart cart. Can we please rise to some more insighful level of discourse?

        • Sanzig

          today at 6:22 PM

          Nobody is arguing that space isn't big. The argument is space is big but dynamic, and launching enough stuff up there means that over a sufficiently long time horizon, you will have a collision between uncontrolled objects. This is not a theoretical concern, it has already happened [1].

          Collision risk is significantly reduced by having maneuverable spacecraft with good conjunction prediction systems in place. But fundamentally, nothing is perfect and accidents can and do happen - you set a maneuver threshold based on an expected collision probability, but it's an engineering tradeoff: "spend the fuel to maneuver out of the way of everything, no matter how remote, or accept a small collision risk?"

          And of course, when you are launching thousands of satellites, you will have a few failures that will become unmaneuverable hazards. Just the way it goes, you can't realistically engineer your way to perfect reliability.

          So sorry, I have to reject your claims that it's "utter bullshit." Space debris risk is a well studied field, so much so that satellite insurance companies are starting to fold those calculations into insurance premiums. So yeah, it's real, and it deserves more than a pithy dismissal.

          [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision

        • jazzyjackson

          today at 6:12 PM

          Lead by example, my guy, I don’t know what side of the argument you’re even on

    • mschuster91

      today at 6:01 PM

      > People already trying to find ways to gate keep space by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap space flights.

      Space flight is a typical "tragedy of the commons" scenario. Like radio waves (especially on HF), space orbits are a finite resource... and not just problematic for other satellites, because ground-based space observation gets more and more impeded by satellites.

    • Sanzig

      today at 5:53 PM

      I mean, presumably, the tax would apply per-spacecraft with a price adjustment for orbit lifetime and how busy a particular orbit is, so a small constellation of 5-10 short lived microsatellites wouldn't have a huge entry barrier.

  • nba456_

    today at 4:35 PM

    And who does the tax get paid to? Some mythical Global Government that will totally work this time?

    • steveBK123

      today at 5:00 PM

      My new startup, SPECTRE.

      It's a new SaaS play - Satellites As A Service. That is, your satellite gets to stay in orbit as long as you pay me.

      Otherwise my satellite killer eats them.

      • glitchc

        today at 6:09 PM

        Extortion is my business

        -- Ernst Blofeld

    • LunaSea

      today at 4:43 PM

      Any company removing space debris from orbit. Like a carbon capture price to offset your launch.

      • nba456_

        today at 4:55 PM

        What you're describing is a global government, otherwise that can't be enforced.

        • Sanzig

          today at 6:07 PM

          Not at all, it can be handled via international treaty. Frequency allocations for civilian satellites are already handled this way, a UN body (the ITU Radiocommunication bureau in Geneva) acts as a neutral party that handles satellite spectrum coordination between UN member states.

          The ITU has no enforcement power, but fundamentally that doesn't really matter much, since enforcement is handled by the member states. Are there attempts by various member states to skirt around the rules or favour their own national interests? Of course, and sometimes these are successful - but nobody just outright ignores the rules, because they know it very quickly leads to a tragedy of the commons.

          Administering an orbital LVT is exactly the kind of thing that could slot cleanly into an expanded ITU mandate. Where the money goes would be up for debate, but I think the cleanest solution would be ITU rebates most of it back to the government of the country that applied for the orbital slot provided that they demonstrate it's going into a space sustainability fund.

          Is it perfect? No, but it's based on a rickety-but-mostly-works international model and it doesn't require global government conspiracy theories to come to fruition.

        • NDlurker

          today at 5:12 PM

          US could sanction countries/corporations/people who don't comply.

          • sakjur

            today at 5:48 PM

            Could the US effectively sanction BRICS these days?

        • jqbd

          today at 5:04 PM

          US can enforce US satellites, no?

          • swiftcoder

            today at 5:07 PM

            Provided they are launched in the US, on a US-owned carrier? Most likely

            Can't necessarily stop a multinational firing things to space on Russian/Chinese/ESA launch vehicles

          • rvnx

            today at 5:14 PM

            Maybe but if so, it would mean that US spontaneously would go against one of their main strategic interests for the planet ? Doesn't makes too much sense.

            It's like this bicycle meme where the person puts a stick in its wheels.

            It's for the same reason that petrol cars are encouraged in the US.

            Punishing SpaceX will lead to a bigger financial crisis, an upset Elon Musk who might refuse to fund the next democratic election and dozens of thousands of lost jobs (fortunately they already became millionaire, riding the right rocket) for a problem that most of the rich population doesn't care about.

            Because in the city, it's about your petrol car, big trucks, and nobody to see the stars and a bit more pollution doesn't change much at that scale from their eyes.

            CFCs (these gazes destroying ozone) were a notable exception, because it would lead to death of everyone (the same way that petrol with lead), except death, universally there was no advantage to defend.

            But a space filled with US satellites is a great advantage for the US, since they are the only ones with the capabilities to deploy thousands of them, and it's a big business for military intelligence.

            I can imagine the main reason they are going to regulate, is so that older satellite debris don't destroy the new shiny satellites, but beauty of the sky is going to be the very least important factor.

      • today at 4:53 PM

      • pantalaimon

        today at 5:16 PM

        In low earth orbit, space debris removes itself after a few years

        • Sanzig

          today at 5:55 PM

          Eh... no, not really. At low altitudes (<500 km), sure, but much above 600 km you are starting to look at decades for a passive deorbit depending on solar cycle and ballistic coefficient.

    • mukbangpervert

      today at 4:42 PM

      The video discusses this directly.

  • nradov

    today at 4:56 PM

    Do you think Russia will be willing to pay a tax on their new Rassvet constellation?

  • DarmokJalad1701

    today at 5:28 PM

    > orbit value tax

    How about No?

• QuiEgo

  today at 6:02 PM

  LEO satellites are the size of a car and are spaced apart by the size of a state. They also all are in slowly decaying orbits and will fall out of the sky on their own accord in 10 years or less (they are designed with intentional structural weak points to break apart and burn up on entry). The concerns you have are valid and very real, and shared by the people designing these things.

• cptaj

  today at 6:02 PM

  This is on a similar scale to complaining about there being too many tennis balls on the surface of the earth.

  Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

• Dig1t

  today at 6:22 PM

  >but instead leave behind micro particles that float around for a long time. People are studying this and hopefully raising appropriate alarms

  The number of satellites required to create a measurable number of particles in the planet's atmosphere would be impossibly large. How much mass to orbit do you think is required to create a 1 PPM increase in earth's atmosphere of these "micro particles"?

  I find it extremely disheartening how much anti-technology, anti-science, and anti-progress sentiment I read about lately.

• m4rtink

  today at 4:36 PM

  In practice the lower cost of access to space had made it viable to star requiring people to at least deorbit their upper stages, something that was long a no-go, with the excuse being that the extra fuel and redundancy would eat too much into the payload mass.

  Nowadays it is generally frowned upon if you leave upper stages in orbit or if your satellite fragment spontaneously. There are of course exceptions (like some chinese launches leaving massive core stages in orbit that ten randomly fall back a couple months later) but AFAIK the situations seems to be actually improving due to the added robustness, that was only made possible by cheaper access to space.

• s0rce

  today at 3:58 PM

  There is a legitimate concern with space junk hitting useful stuff or even manned spacecraft but I think space is big and the sky won't appear bright soon. Not all satellites are that reflective and they need to reflect the sun, they don't just glow visibly.

  • TheJoeMan

    today at 4:14 PM

    At present, I don't believe there are industry standards / codes mandating minimization of reflectivity. My understanding is that SpaceX has engineered for this from their own internal requirements and "goodness of their hearts" (which may be related to avoidance of public pushback). As we anticipate a major scale-up of LEO in the future, it follows that "cost pressures" may (mal)incentivize players to skip this concern.

    • ralfd

      today at 4:50 PM

      > "goodness of their hearts" (which may be related to avoidance of public pushback)

      I hate this cynicism in everything. People didnt work there 10 years ago to be millionaires in a far away IPO, they worked there because they are Team Space.

      • swiftcoder

        today at 4:54 PM

        Nonetheless, the company didn't start the whole non-reflective paint thing until well after the complaints started streaming in, significantly less than 10 years ago (DarkSat launched in 2020)

      • birdsongs

        today at 5:45 PM

        I think the cynicism is warranted when the CEO was instrumental in the downfall of democracy in the US.

        Sure, some of the employees are team space. The money is funding a transition to autocracy though, so. I remain skeptical of their motives.

  • today at 4:11 PM

• Grosvenor

  today at 5:55 PM

  A major plot point in the Red Dwarf books is about Coca-Cola sending a fleet of space ships out to blow up stars so they can spell "Enjoy Coca-Cola" in the sky.

  One of those ships crashes and the boys from the Dwarf find the service mechanoid, which is how they get Kryten.

• Lendal

  today at 4:53 PM

  It's already a massive grid of moving dots. You can see it from the ground in certain dark-enough areas, but in order to see it in space you have to get outside LEO, like Artemis did. They don't have lights but they are shiny and they catch the sun, making them easily visible from certain angles, which the Artemis photos illustrated.

• nba456_

  today at 4:33 PM

  Oh great the NIMBYs are coming for space now.

• stuxnet79

  today at 4:44 PM

  On the positive side, clearing out all this space junk could end up being a meaningful contributor to global GDP. See also Planetes [1]

  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes

  • throw-the-towel

    today at 5:33 PM

    I wish clearing out all the CO2 from the atmosphere became a meaningful contributor to global GNP.

  • wuliwong

    today at 4:58 PM

    Thanks for reminding me, I started watching this and forgot about it!

• Matumio

  today at 4:34 PM

  Not a grid of dots, a ring! https://earthsky.org/human-world/kessler-syndrome-colliding-...

  It's a tragedy of the commons situation. And given how well we are able to regulate those kind of situations globally, I'm rooting for the ring.

• tonic_note

  today at 4:46 PM

  Satellite broadband stonks in shambles after the inevitable Kessler syndrome

• Dig1t

  today at 5:56 PM

  Junk yes, but think of the new science and industry it will enable as well. Microgravity experiments, new space stations, space tourism, new types of manufacturing in space, asteroid mining. Any technology is a double edged sword, but the benefits surely outweigh the drawbacks here.

• Mistletoe

  today at 5:14 PM

  Dark night skies will probably be one of the main selling points for the off world colonies. I can see the Bladerunner-esque ads now.

• taneq

  today at 4:24 PM

  It’s already starting to be like that. If you get far enough out into the bush away from light pollution and watch the stars for a bit, you can see the grid of satellites orbiting. It’s kind of cool but also kind of depressing.

  • bell-cot

    today at 4:43 PM

    "Unobstructed view of the stars" will soon be how space tourism companies upsell their customers to higher orbits.

• Rover222

  today at 5:53 PM

  Incredible how the first instinct is just to complain about progress these days. The degrowth mindset is really taking hold.

  There is a huge amount of "space" available even in low orbital shells. Which also naturally decay.

I think they saw how SpaceX was using Starlink as launch lever to provide SpaceX a baseline of regular launches at bare-minimum cost. As RocketLab starts to scale up, being able guarantee a minimum number of launches is a significant hedge against the dips in the global satellite market.

Also, RocketLab builds their own sats and can add the Iridium constellation replacements to their order book. It's a win-win. A smart move by Peter Beck and his team.

• NetMageSCW

  today at 3:15 PM

  What does Tesla have to do with Starlink or launch services?

  • JanSolo

    today at 3:15 PM

    Derp; I meant SpaceX.

    • nonethewiser

      today at 4:59 PM

      Might be one-in-the-same soon enough

      • fastball

        today at 6:18 PM

        [delayed]

  • pulse7

    today at 3:27 PM

    This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster ?

"Rocket Lab acquires Iridium" sounds like a notification out of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri or Anno 2205.

Rocket lab used to be a New Zealand source of pride, having started there. From the press release, now it’s American. What happened?

• MyelinatedT

  today at 3:10 PM

  It was always an American company. In order to launch rockets from countries in the US sphere of influence (even from NZ), companies must obtain an FAA license.

  Rocket technology itself is so intensely regulated by US export control laws that it’s practically impossible to develop an orbital launch vehicle without being a US- or Europe-registered company.

  It is a real shame. It also looks like a lot of engineering work is shifting away from NZ — Auckland seems to be focusing more on operations and space systems, and the launch stuff is moving to the US with Neutron.

  • jackmott42

    today at 6:09 PM

    Why do people reply with this "it was always american" response? Do you feel like it is necessary to protect RocketLab or something?

    It was founded by a guy in new zealand with the first launch complex and first launches coming out of new zealand.

    to characterize that as "always american" is so silly it makes you seem like a non serious person.

    of course they would have had american resources and connections from the start.

• ortusdux

  today at 3:09 PM

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Lab#United_States_move_...

• khurs

  today at 4:04 PM

  SpaceX previously said that are not allowed to hire foreign nationals generally.

  So guess NASA told Rocket that if they want American contracts, they need to move?

  https://qz.com/794101/elon-musk-explains-why-he-doesnt-hire-...

• ericmay

  today at 3:09 PM

  Needs access to American capital markets, contracts, governance structures, and jurisdiction (applicable law).

• y0ssar1an

  today at 4:51 PM

  at least it's still got a bunch of Kiwi engineers building the Rutherford engine.

• bell-cot

  today at 4:47 PM

  It sure doesn't help that New Zealand's housing market is one of the most unaffordable in the world.

  • rr808

    today at 5:45 PM

    Compared to LA even NZ looks cheap

• elzbardico

  today at 3:10 PM

  Capital probably, market access. It is pretty hard to raise capital for high risk ventures like that everywhere in the world other than the US.

• micromacrofoot

  today at 4:22 PM

  same thing that always happens to companies, money

RocketLab gains spectrum + profitable satellite company

• espadrine

  today at 3:11 PM

  Iridum gains 23 launches per year with 100% success rate in the past 12 months, a satellite manufacturing pipeline with 6 satellites produced and launched, and a cost-to-orbit of $25K/kg operational (with an in-development design targetting $4K/kg).

  They are late compared to SpaceX, to be sure: 150 launches per year, 2400 satellites manufactured per year, $3K/kg operational with F9, target $200/kg in development with Starship.

  • panick21_

    today at 3:36 PM

    You act as if 'launch' is a thing. All Rocket Lab launches ever combined don't even fill a single SpaceX rocket. Those are not the same thing.

    Lets see their reliability when they have a bigger rocket and if they can land reliably. Because their rocket will be quite expensive to build.

    • schainks

      today at 3:54 PM

      I think that’s the point of their niche right? They are already plenty reliable. Also let’s them do stuff like this:

      https://rocketlabcorp.com/updates/victus-haze/

• davidpapermill

  today at 3:23 PM

  > Rocket Lab has secured commitments for a $3.6 billion bridge loan from Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo to fund the cash portion of the acquisition.

  Given the timing, this seems like a risky move as they'll be issuing debt in mid-2027 to refinance the bridge, at a time the market could be saturated / corrected.

  https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/rocket-lab-bu...

• wongarsu

  today at 3:18 PM

  And access to a customer base. A lot easier to sell them new services if they already have a big contract with you

• NetMageSCW

  today at 3:17 PM

  A profitable satellite company with a lot of debt and satellites that target the previous model of bespoke terminals when the market is moving to satellite service on regular phones.

  • amluto

    today at 3:58 PM

    > the market is moving to satellite service on regular phones.

    I don’t think there a unified “market” here. The fixed rooftop terminals and fixed-ish roaming terminals use high (tens of GHz) frequencies with correspondingly wide bandwidth, have excellent beamforming capabilities and some degree of MIMO to improve spectrum reuse, and consume an amount of power that would be outrageous for a phone. Phones don’t have reliably clear views of the sky and have much weaker RF capabilities.

    Oh, and phones are well served by existing 4G and 5G networks in dense areas, with better spectrum reuse than seems practical for a satellite constellation.

    I expect that we will actually see two separate markets that happen to share the same satellites and backhaul.

    • piltdownman

      today at 4:17 PM

      //I don’t think there a unified “market” here.

      You mean like the ASTS/Vodafone partnership that birthed the Satellite Connect Europe?

      https://www.vodafone.com/news/newsroom/technology/satellite-...

      https://www.vodafone.com/news/newsroom/technology/vodafone-a...

      Or like the US JV where they provide the infra for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

      https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513491108/en/AST...

      //Phones don’t have reliably clear views of the sky and have much weaker RF capabilities.

      And they appear to have circumvented that, although ease of scaling remains to be seen.

      https://www.reddit.com/r/ASTSpaceMobile/comments/1k6whtf/rak...

      • lxgr

        today at 5:25 PM

        They didn't circumvent phone antennas being largely omnidirectional (unlike VSAT or phased arrays, which are highly directional) and as a result having much lower gain, they just work with it, just like Iridium, Globalstar, Inmarsat, Thuraya, and all the other early players in what's now called "direct to device".

        The market is as bimodal as ever on the device side: On one side, you have small, battery-powered, (mostly) omnidirectional device antenna, portable devices that mainly operate in the L-band, which works much better in these conditions; on the other side, you have highly sophisticated, steered, high power (dozens of watts) antenna arrays operating in the Ku or Ka band.

        On the satellite side, both can be served by the same satellites, as has been the case for e.g. Inmarsat's I-6 series and Starlink's direct-to-cell capable satellites (I believe these all include Ku-band coverage as well).

      • amluto

        today at 4:43 PM

        My claim is that these are not the same market as the traditional Starlink service.

  • lxgr

    today at 5:14 PM

    Iridium is launching 5G standards-based direct-to-device capabilities this year: https://www.iridium.com/services/iridium-ntn-direct

  • hobonation

    today at 3:34 PM

    Iridium terminals can be very power-efficient. Consumer ones are the size of a deck of cards and can last for days.

    • Scoundreller

      today at 5:25 PM

      I wonder how much of the power-efficiency is due to being much slower.

      Don’t need to blast and beam-steer if you can deal with poor SNR by taking your time to differentiate the 0s and 1s?

      Which is more power efficient per megabyte?

      (But I get it: sometimes a few bits is all you need)

      • lxgr

        today at 5:37 PM

        All of it. You can't really get around physics.

        Iridium has historically targeted low-power, omnidirectional terminals (antennas can be larger at lower frequencies without requiring steering than at higher frequencies).

        They recently had some forays into steered, high-bandwidth antennas with their Certus line and their second-generation satellites that now allow native packet switching (the first gen was circuit-switched at 2.4 kbps only), but that brings you into the bandwidth-limited regime, and is honestly just a waste of scarce L-band spectrum and much better served by all the Ku- and Ka-band LEO competitors.

        It's going to be interesting to see if Rocketlab start also serving that market, like some of their main competitors already are.

• Symmetry

  today at 3:13 PM

  The spectrum is the big thing. If they wanted a revenue stream they could just buy bonds.

I like RocketLab. Looking forward to Neutron etc. But this is a bad investment, no other way to put it.

• written-beyond

  today at 6:15 PM

  I can't believe I bought a few shares of IRDM with a few hundred bucks in my trading account. Primarily because it was a RKLB adjacent company with decent fundamentals whos stock price wasn't scraping the sky.

  I don't know how to feel about this acquisition though. Never thought IRDM would've been a bad investment.

• petesergeant

  today at 4:37 PM

  > But this is a bad investment

  Brother, share with us a sentence or two of why you think so

• Joel_Mckay

  today at 4:12 PM

  Uncertain what Iridium global RF band allocation holdings were worth.

  If it is still pole-to-pole global monolithic coverage, than hardware/legacy-protocols are of secondary interest. Modern SDR transceivers with proper RF beam-steering front-ends could retrofit the business while slowly phasing out legacy hardware.

  But I do agree, Iridium was too pricey for most consumer product markets, and there were several other satellite broadband services.

  Additionally, Starlink Direct to Cell (VoLTE) service now leverages global cellphone client infrastructure. It would be extremely foolish to compete with something proprietary. =3

“Rocket Lab” not “RocketLab”. Although I think the latter is better.

Good to see the competition making moves, SpaceX's huge lead isn't ideal.

• Joel_Mckay

  today at 4:15 PM

  Starlink Direct to Cell (VoLTE) service now leverages global cellphone client infrastructure. It would be extremely foolish to compete with something proprietary. =3

I dunno. I would be surprised if a 30 year old telecommunications network is going to be technically competitive with a SpaceX's LEO network that is still launching satellites as we speak.

How much market is there for people that just want low speed connectivity from the middle of nowhere?

• denotes

  today at 4:14 PM

  Sailors may be a small and dwindling community, but this is our core use case. When you are sailing offshore you need to download weather predictions so that you can chart your course to catch favorable winds. My experience with Iridium is that you open a targeted set of ports for the modem to feed your phone via, and then you don't have to think about it again. 100+ nautical miles offshore and it just works.

• ttul

  today at 4:10 PM

  It’s not about Iridium. It’s about Iridium’s customers and partnerships. RocketLab hopes to launch their own satellites presumably and then can sell significantly improved services to them, without having to build a customer base from scratch.

• lxgr

  today at 5:43 PM

  > How much market is there for people that just want low speed connectivity from the middle of nowhere?

  Militaries generally find this capability pretty relevant, among others, and they have deep pockets. They were the ones to bail out Iridium the first time around, after all.

• m4rtink

  today at 4:42 PM

  AFAIK Iridium is part of some important airliner navigation systems and standards - while a niche, it can still be very lucrative business. and I would not be surprised if it was embedded like this into various other systems that are less cost sensitive.

  • lxgr

    today at 5:46 PM

    Yep, it's one of only two satellite communications systems certified for both GMDSS/SOLAS and aviation operation and safety (ATC) use cases, and the only global one at that (the other one being Inmarsat/Viasat, which does not work near the poles due to being GEO based).

    It took Iridium over a decade to get that certification; availability and political concerns are probably much larger in that segment than for e.g. home or passenger entertainment Internet use.

    In the medium and long term, I can see the high-throughput LEO players eat Iridium's lunch for aviation, though; small antenna size (and the lower drag that goes with it) used to be their main advantage over Ku and Ka band offerings, but now most airlines want passenger connectivity anyway, and once you have that, the pressure to just get that certified for safety (with HF as backup, which you need anyway as far as I know) is going to be significant. The case for shipping is probably similar and even stronger.

  • cozzyd

    today at 5:29 PM

    yes, for example it's used on high altitude balloons.

• kilroy123

  today at 4:20 PM

  You realize they have a new network of satellites, right? It works much better than the old version with the 90s tech.

  A lot of remote IOT devices use Iridium, as well as the US government or DoD.

Who? is buying who?

I guess good for them and for the folks who just got paid.

Crazy. I didn't know you could acquire things worth 20x more than you.

• pnw

  today at 3:06 PM

  RocketLab market cap is 57b.

  Iridium market cap was 5.5b and this transaction values it at 8b.

  • xgbi

    today at 3:20 PM

    How is Rocketlab valued 57B? They made $500M of revenue in 2025. This is 100x their entire balance sheet.

    • pavon

      today at 3:45 PM

      Yeah, that seems grossly unrealistic. They are growing. Neutron is almost complete, and I'd expect significant growth in their launch revenue from that, and their space services are also doing well. So I could easily see their revenue increasing 5x over the next 5 years, maybe 10x. But that market cap can only be justified by the space market as a whole growing 100x, and RL maintaining a significant portion of it with strong competition from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and others.

      • ElProlactin

        today at 4:27 PM

        > Neutron is almost complete...

        I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars from my early investments in RKLB but this isn't true if by "complete" you mean they have a proven launch vehicle. The company is now targeting late 2026 for Neutron's inaugural flight.

        Neutron was announced in 2021. There were hopes for a 2024 first flight. Then it was mid-to-late 2025. Now it's Q4 2026 after a failure related to the stage 1 tank earlier this year.

        If anyone can pull off using carbon composite for a launch vehicle of this size, it's RKLB. But nobody has done it before and I think the retail investor base is taking for granted something that is not at all guaranteed. There's much more risk than a lot of people think.

        In some ways, RKLB is more like pre-clinical biotech stocks, which usually produce binary outcomes (a drug succeeds or it fails, and the company's fate is based on that). If Neutron works, RKLB gets to execute its grand vision. If it fails, it doesn't. The vision (and valuation) doesn't work without Neutron.

      • boredatoms

        today at 4:35 PM

        A rocket being nearly complete just means they haven’t started the multi year testing delays when the first couple of launches inevitably fail

    • wateralien

      today at 3:22 PM

      This is a good question for SpaceX too.

    • saberience

      today at 3:29 PM

      Why was Uber valued in billions for years while making zero profit?

      Why was Amazon valued at billions while making zero profit?

      The stock market prices companies by many factors, revenue and profit are factors but so is growth.

      Utilities companies make lots of profits but they are valued badly because they don’t grow at all!

      Markets are forward looking and space is seen as a huge growth driver for the future, also RocketLab has been growing their top line revenue massively over the last few years.

      • wongarsu

        today at 3:58 PM

        Uber and Amazon made zero profit, but a lot of revenue. That's very different from losing money on fairly little revenue

        But RocketLab did have five years of strong revenue growth. And they have a lower PS ratio than SpaceX. So at least compared to industry-rivals the valuation is justified

    • moralestapia

      today at 4:09 PM

      Exactly my point.

      Iridium's revenue is larger, and I wouldn't think they'd be losing money.

      But apparently you can buy things with promises (if you're in the right club, of course).

      • bmacho

        today at 5:25 PM

        > But apparently you can buy things with promises

        Even better: if you buy things that don't lose their value overtime (mostly anything apart from food, car, electronics, services) and you buy them at price, they're free. You give money for them but you receive equal amount of wealth. I repeat: you buy the thing and your wealth stays the same, doesn't grow or shrink. That's how companies can buy each others with promises.

        (If you're a bank that can lend me $4.7T I think buying nvidia could benefit us both. Contact me at nick @ gmail . com)

  • sspiff

    today at 3:10 PM

    I'm guessing they acquired it mostly exchanging stocks. Which I guess is an indication that their stock is overvalued right now if they're willing to overpay by that much.

• kps

  today at 5:14 PM

  Remember when NeXT acquired Apple for negative 400 million?

• brookst

  today at 3:01 PM

  Look at GameStop’s quixotic attempt to acquire eBay. Which is actually not impossible.

  • zie

    today at 3:21 PM

    It's an interesting way to apply for the eBay CEO job for sure.

    • iamacyborg

      today at 3:35 PM

      Someone's been reading Money Stuff.

  • ortusdux

    today at 3:10 PM

    5x the market cap!

  • moralestapia

    today at 3:03 PM

    Did GameStop acquire eBay?

    • sspiff

      today at 3:09 PM

      They are trying.

• PierceJoy

  today at 3:05 PM

  Rocket Lab's market cap is 57B and are buying Iridium for 8B. I'm assuming you're implying some other measure of worth, but it's not that crazy based on stock price.

  • ericmay

    today at 3:07 PM

    Also folks acquire things "worth" more than them all the time. That's in part why debt exists.

    There are a lot of folks out there that are overly cynical and so they'll just write things like the OP from time to time which just don't make much sense or have much to do with how the real world works. What's more interesting is looking at or trying to understand strategically why Rocket Lab is making this move, especially if you are an investor.

• malfist

  today at 3:08 PM

  Dell bought EMC for 67b when they were worth 24b

• bitwize

  today at 3:06 PM

  This is one of those times you actually get to use "leverage" as a verb without sounding turbo cringe: a leveraged buyout is an acquisition with borrowed money; the hope is that you will be able to pay back the debt with the money you make off the acquired assets. Doesn't always pan out but sometimes it does.

• elzbardico

  today at 3:14 PM

  That's this thing called credit.

  People do this all the time, that's how they buy their first house (or at least used to...). Your net worth is basically zero beyond what you saved for the down payment, but the bank advances you the money to buy the house because it believes your future income streams will allow you to pay the principal plus an interest.

  • dylan604

    today at 4:00 PM

    being able to foreclose on the house/property is a pretty decent protection for the bank that doesn't exist for a business though