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Rocketlab acquires Iridium

investors.rocketlabcorp.com

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Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#261

Post by cjblomqvist »

ericmay wrote: post #147
athrowaway3z wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch figured out how to do collective dike maintenance a millennium ago without inventing mythical super government. Collective rules worked just fine. I encourage you to reflect on this bias. I suspect you're taking the American state as a template, and extrapolating its incompetence. The history is filled with different ideas - some of them far older than America itself. Hell, I'd call America a place so natur…

And how did the Dutch collect the toll and who received the tax benefits for it? I’m interested in understanding your comparison here and how it would be applicable to space and how you envision it working based on your comparison.

The EU is collecting CO2 taxes (indirectly by giving permits out). That's a good comparison. There're tolls in the making for imports.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#262

Post by Chu4eeno »

Teever wrote: post #241
stinkbeetle wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is regulations like these rarely "pay for externalities". They impose compliance costs or costs to skirt the regulations. CO2 emissions have not been solved despite all the regulations and taxes, quite the opposite they keep increasing and will continue to do so for a long time before even thinking about coming down. In large part because production was moved off shore to countries which have less regulat…

Maybe CO2 emissions haven't been regulated successfully because attempts to regulate the came far too late, and the attempts to regulate similar issues in space are coming right on time? It's a lot harder to stop a very, very large group of people from doing something that they've been doing for generations. It's much easier to stop a much smaller group of people from starting something new.

How would starting earlier have stopped industries from outsourcing CO2 emissions to other/exempt countries? If you look at graphs of global emissions it's like they didn't skip a beat once legislation and treaties in the west kicked in.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#263

Post by tomaskafka »

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.…

I asked Claude to visualize 1M proposed SpaceX satellites in the night sky: https://static.tomaskafka.com/prototypes/1m-starlinks/

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#264

Post by Dylan16807 »

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #100
Centigonal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

If you don't leave junk it won't cost you much. I really don't see this as gatekeeping.

> 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.

That's not accurate at all. They could always afford to pay it, and so can other companies. What changed is that they stopped counting as "online sales tax" so they didn't care about those laws anymore.

If they could get out of sale tax, they very much would still want to. If they could get rid of sales tax for everyone, they would be for it. Sales tax isn't benefiting them by acting as a gatekeeping force.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#265

Post by Dylan16807 »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #231
brookst wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t see how making people pay for their externalities is “gatekeeping”. If your business model relies on spewing litter everywhere, complaining about gatekeeping when someone makes you pay to clean it up isn’t even disingenuous, it’s transparently manipulative. The public is tired of privatized profits, socialized costs. Space seems like a great place to draw that line: if you can’t afford to clean up your…

The problem is regulations like these rarely "pay for externalities". They impose compliance costs or costs to skirt the regulations. CO2 emissions have not been solved despite all the regulations and taxes, quite the opposite they keep increasing and will continue to do so for a long time before even thinking about coming down. In large part because production was moved off shore to countries which have less regulat…

> CO2 emissions have not been solved despite all the regulations and taxes

All the?

We barely regulate CO2 at all.

If we started charging $100 per ton we'd see some massive changes.

And it's not hard to stop those loopholes.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#266

Post by treyd »

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #100
Centigonal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

Ugh. People already trying to find ways to gate keep radio by raising the financial barrier to entry before we've even been able to capitalize on cheap communication. I'm sure RCA and the 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.

(RCA is a bad swap-in in this example but I'm struggling to think of an apt analogy for this era.)

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#267

Post by Dylan16807 »

pavon wrote: post #38
xgbi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

I don't follow your math. Let's say we want to target a price to earnings ratio of 20-25. That requires 2.3-3 billion of profit. If they increased their revenue 10x, they'd have 5 billion revenue, which puts them not super far from the target.

So let's say they need to 20x or 30x revenue. That would mean their new size needs to be similar in size to the current space market as a whole. If they have a compelling price, that might require a 5x growth in the space market as a whole? Less than that if you think they're really good at pulling in the new customers? I don't understand where you got 100x.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#268

Post by Slartie »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #190

I highly recommend the book Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story by John Bloom. The story of how Iridium came to be and how difficult it was to keep Motorola from literally destroying the whole constellation (which they had originally built!) is quite fascinating. Tidbit: Author is also the real-life person behind the comedic persona Joe Bob Briggs. If you ever lived in Texas you know that name. And yes the guy can wr…

I second that recommendation. Hugely informative and entertaining book!

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#269

Post by panick21_ »

silisili wrote: post #251
panick21_ wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just got a Motorola phone and I love it. 3.5mm audio jack and cheap.

Not a knock against your phone, but different company. Lenovo now owns and makes the cell phone line. Motorola Solutions, the successor of the original Motorola, does the headsets/radios and such.

I know, I still wanted to mention it.

Re: Rocketlab acquires Iridium

#270

Post by panick21_ »

versteegen wrote: post #225
panick21_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before they ever launched a rocket they were a primarily American company. That literally just a fact. It was created by somebody from New Zealand and a lot of early operations was in New Zealand nobody is denying that.

That is false. They were a purely NZ operation launching sub-orbital rockets before they got into DARPA contracts. What you meant to say is "Before they ever launched Electron", and I'm pretty sure that is false too, they weren't "primarily" American, the majority of the workforce was in NZ until years after that.

I'm 99% sure that they went to the US venture to raise money to build Electron and that's when they made the US company that primary and the NZ company the subsidiary.
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