[apendleton]

The whole thing that differentiates this company from the dozen other seemingly-interchangeable new-space entrants is the novel technology they've developed to facilitate reuse. Even if it were the case that there isn't a market for five tons to LEO (and to be clear, Rocket Lab seems to be doing decent business launching a lot less) and all this was was a technology demonstrator, why would you build a technology demonstrator that doesn't show off the thing that makes your company interesting?

[panick21_]

RocketLab isn't doing decent buissness launching less. Launch is a small part of their revenue and the make low or negative profit.

They are developing an 8t to orbit rocket.

The market today cares about constellation. Its about launch rate and cost.

5 tons is more then enough for the types of sats that go into all the constellations.

[cubefox]

5 tons doesn't seem to be enough.

> Amazon Kuiper is positioning to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation but it would not rule out seeking launch services from its competitor given the tight deadline, Limp said. “We are open to talking to SpaceX. You’d be crazy not to, given their track record.”

> The Falcon 9 [22.8 tons to LEO], however, is not as large as Amazon would like it to be in order to get maximum bang for its launch buck, as Kuiper satellites are larger than Starlink’s.

> “I would say Falcon 9 is probably at the low end of the capacity that we need,” Limp said. Perhaps a better option would be Falcon Heavy or the much larger Starship, which is still in development. As Starship transitions to production readiness, “that becomes a very viable candidate for us as well.”

https://spacenews.com/as-clock-ticks-on-amazons-constellatio...

[panick21_]

> The Falcon 9 [22.8 tons to LEO], however, is not as large as Amazon would like it to be

At the end of the day its about price and launch rate. An individual sat isn't 5t.

I think this is more marketing speak to pretend they had technical reasons not to pick Falcon 9.

[cubefox]

Maybe, but they also say Starship would be the best option. There is no way Nova or any other rocket could compete here. Nova would only be good relative to Starship for launching individual smaller payloads into specific orbits, so not for satellite constellations.