Like Elon Musk, Peter Beck – the founder of Rocket Lab – doesn’t have the academic pedigree one would expect. But their feat will still impress you once you meet the man who made it happen. Okay so they took 12 years, not the fastest. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin ( BORGN) is still sub-orbital. This only shaves about 7 miles off the rocket’s needed altitude climb. Their system is antiquated they fly a 747 as high as they can and basically shoot the rocket off the plane. Virgin Orbit ( VORB), which is not to be confused with Virgin Galactic, did so in 13 years. Their approach has drawbacks which I’ll discuss in a moment.

While there are many so-called space companies providing or aspiring to provide launch services, there are very few who reach orbit.Īstra Space ( ASTR) has reached orbit twice now and was actually the fastest company to ever do so. Yes, the definition of space is a total scam. Virgin Galactic’s weightlessness is caused by the aircraft’s the rapid descent, similar to Boeing’s ( BA) so-called Vomit-Comet, which is essentially a run-of-the-mill narrow-body airliner that does rapid descents, so the occupants can train for space (it’s also used for making movies). That altitude is far too low to orbit satellites, as the atmosphere is too thick.Īntigravity you ask? Nope. It wasn’t really based on any scientific metric. He then goes on to describe how, correctly so, that arbitrary point was chosen so X-15 test pilots from the 1960s could get their astronaut wings. It’s 100 times harder to get to orbit than to get to what you’d call, in quotes, 'space.' Which is, say, the Karman line at 100 kilometers, which is an arbitrary point at which the atmosphere is fairly thin. One of the toughest things that’s really hard to explain to people is orbit versus space. More specifically, I’m talking about getting to 'space' vs. Technically true, but it fails to distinguish their profound differences.

Saying that Rocket Lab ( NASDAQ: RKLB) and Virgin Galactic ( SPCE) are both space companies is like saying a Lamborghini and a Model T are both cars.

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