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Rocketlab acquires Iridium

investors.rocketlabcorp.com

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Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#171

Post by panick21_ »

ElProlactin wrote: post #61
pavon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

> 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…

I'm really interested in the combination of carbon fiber and landing. Dealing with the heat seems challenging.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#173

Post by aaron695 »

proee wrote: post #41

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.…

[dead]

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#174

Post by baggachipz »

skissane wrote: post #137
fastball wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems unlikely now that both are separate public companies. Creative accounting acquisitions are somewhat more difficult in that context.

Alternative take: if a SPCX-TSLA merger proposal is publicly announced, that will create market enthusiasm (quite possibly irrational) about “unlocking synergies” which will temporarily pump both stocks, thereby making Musk (and all the other insiders) richer, even if only temporarily. Plus, the two firms already cooperate heavily, and Musk wants them to cooperate more, but being two separate public companies adds a…

They also want to continue to use Tesla as the piggy bank to offset the (vast) losses by the other companies. Once the "dump" phase is finished on the SpaceX pump-and-dump, Tesla will swoop in and buy SpaceX (or vice versa) in some all-stock deal and arbitrarily value it at $2 trillion.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#175

Post by harrall »

Centigonal wrote: post #108
iamtheworstdev wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 onlin…

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 w…

I 100% agree but Starlink is the only profitable space division of SpaceX.

The truth is diverting money to space exploration is not that popular.

We only got the moon because we were in a battle with the Soviet Union about capitalism vs. communism. It was never about space or science. The instant the Soviet Union collapsed, we reduced NASA’s projects and budgets.

So while I’m not a fan of the circumstances, I need some way for money to go to space exploration and I’m riding this like people rode the Cold War as an excuse to build a moon rocket.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#176

Post by Sanzig »

lstodd wrote: post #162
Sanzig wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VLEO addresses the risk, sure, but the new Starcloud space datacenter hype machine isn't going VLEO, it's going 600-850 km. Those altitudes are in the years to decades range for deorbit, and SpaceX has filed for 88,000 of them.

Risk is theoretical, that is; a) never demostrated, b) most probably overblown c) any methods of mitigation were never even given a chance to develop. All in all you people take the precautionary principle so far as to cripple your own progress in fundamental stuff like spaceflight but at the same time see no reason to apply it in social stuff like that survelliance camera affair or the net-id. And also fervently bel…

Okay buddy, that was a Gish gallop if I've ever seen one.

The risk is real. The math isn't complicated, you could stand up a basic debris simulation in a few hours with numpy from first principles. And we also know it's real because it's actually happened multiple times now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_collision

This is a real thing that satellite operators worry about all the time. Conjunction analysis and risk modeling leading to a go/no-go decision is something that real satellite operations centres do daily.

I don't know if an LVT is the answer, but we do need to figure out some way to make operators consider space sustainability efforts, especially if they are launching systems with such density that they make subsequent operation in those shells significantly riskier.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#177

Post by mcintyre1994 »

skissane wrote: post #137
fastball wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems unlikely now that both are separate public companies. Creative accounting acquisitions are somewhat more difficult in that context.

Alternative take: if a SPCX-TSLA merger proposal is publicly announced, that will create market enthusiasm (quite possibly irrational) about “unlocking synergies” which will temporarily pump both stocks, thereby making Musk (and all the other insiders) richer, even if only temporarily. Plus, the two firms already cooperate heavily, and Musk wants them to cooperate more, but being two separate public companies adds a…

I have a really dumb prediction that at some point he’ll name one of the public companies X, presumably either SpaceX or a merged company. The dumbest people in the world would say he’s turned Twitter into a $2tn company and he’d find that hilarious.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#178

Post by Joel_Mckay »

written-beyond wrote: post #122
pelorat wrote: post #40

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

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.

The market can't be timed (by honest players), as I remember buying into Ubiquiti Networks at around $12/share thinking I might see a 8% bump after the old legal event subsided. Then just sort of forgot about that tax-sheltered holding for a few years. I also don't do the 3 month portfolio shuffle dance 95% of stock investment people try to ride.

The heavy cost of putting stuff in space is still not solved, but broadband and space-LTE service businesses are proven cash flows. They just have to mimic the profitable parts of Starlink. =3

https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/06/29/rocket-lab-is-set-...

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#179

Post by hyperbrainer »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #151

As an ex-Motorolan (1998-2008), I sometimes look at what remains of the big mighty company and there is not much. Here in Europe it is even less, at least in the US you see the umpires (or somebody else, not sure as I fo not know baseball) with their half-headsets with the Motorola logo. It is a shame, I liked this company very much.

One of the best books I have read in recent years, somehow immensely relevant now: _Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story_ by John Bloom, that explores exactly what went wrong, the bankruptcy filing and so on. I wonder if you might find your experiences reflected there.
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