The Ride — Orbital Launch Vehicles
Five companies in the world can put a payload in orbit on a Western rocket. Only two are publicly listed pure-plays.
Launch is the gate to space. SpaceX flies roughly nine out of every ten kilograms of payload that leave Earth — and it is private. ULA (Boeing/Lockheed) and Blue Origin are not separately listed. Among public pure-plays, Rocket Lab is the only company with a flight-proven, regularly cadenced orbital rocket (Electron, 21 launches in 2025 at 100% success), and it is building Neutron to compete in the SpaceX-vacated medium-lift gap. Firefly Aerospace IPO'd in August 2025 on the back of becoming the first commercial company in history to fully succeed at a Moon landing. There is essentially no Western "medium-lift" rocket between Falcon 9 and the heavy New Glenn / Vulcan class — that gap is the prize Rocket Lab and Firefly are racing to fill.
If you can't get to orbit, nothing else on this page works. With SpaceX still private, every dollar of public "space exposure" has been funneled into Rocket Lab — pushing valuations to extremes but with real revenue underneath.
2 names on the watchlist
Only public Western company that builds AND operates its own orbital rocket and its own satellites
Operates Electron (21 launches in 2025 at 100% success) and is in final integration of Neutron , an 8-ton-to-LEO medium-lift rocket targeting first flight Q4 2026. Q1 2026 revenue $200.3M (+63.5% YoY); backlog $2.2B; GAAP gross margin 38.2%. Signed largest-ever launch contract during Q1 (five Neutron flights for a confidential customer through 2029). Selected alongside Raytheon for Golden Dome's Space-Based Interceptor program; won a $190M MACH-TB 2.0 hypersonic block buy. Closed the Mynaric acquisition (laser inter-satellite links) Q1; signed definitive agreement for Motiv Space Systems (Mars-proven robotics). Liquidity exceeds $2B.
Only commercial company in history to fully soft-land on the Moon — plus a small rocket and a medium-lift in joint development
Operates the Alpha small launcher (return-to-flight cleared late 2025), the Blue Ghost lunar lander (Mission 1 completed all 17 objectives on the Moon, March 2, 2025 — first fully-successful US lunar landing since Apollo 17), and the Elytra orbital transfer vehicle. Developing the medium-lift Eclipse rocket with Northrop Grumman ($50M strategic investment). FY25 revenue $159.9M (+163% YoY); FY26 guidance $420–450M. Blue Ghost Mission 4 awarded by NASA July 2025 at $176.7M; backlog above $1.3B. Selected for Golden Dome SBI; closed the SciTec acquisition for missile-warning data processing.