When Firefly Aerospace launches its Blue Ghost lander to the moon's surface later this year, it will do so on board a SpaceX rocket and with $112 million in funding from NASA.
But CEO Bill Weber sees a future in which the Texas-based firm goes it alone, completing fully commercial lunar missions on a medium-size rocket built in-house — with no funding from NASA.
"Commercial industry needs to be running that transit," Weber told Yahoo Finance in an interview. "And the government, instead of being the prime contract driver, will utilize that capacity. We’re at that point where we’re about to flip. There's most definitely enough demand on the commercial side."
Weber’s ambitions point to the rapid evolution of a new space economy that is increasingly being driven by commercial interests. Borrowing a playbook from SpaceX and its founder Elon Musk, firms like Firefly are moving quicker, building bigger, and slashing costs in the process, bringing a tech startup-like mentality to space exploration.
That push is expanding the reach of space companies beyond launch systems and satellites. The World Economic Forum forecast the space economy to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, growing at a rate of 9% annually. Five industries, including supply chain, retail, and consumer goods, are expected to generate more than 60% of that increase in the next 10 years as demand grows for applications such as satellite data and communications.
“The lower cost of entry to get things into orbit has really caused a shift in the industry and brought a lot of excited, ambitious folks in a very quick way,” said Matt Martinez, managing director and partner at BCG.
Launch, land, and orbit
Commercial demand stemming from increased access to space is supercharging Firefly’s expansion plans.
Founded in 2017, the company has billed itself as an end-to-end space transportation company, aiming to play in every step of the process required from launch to deployment of satellites.
The company's mission to "launch, land, and orbit" is displayed on banners that hang above its sprawling 200-acre Rocket Ranch, located an hour outside of Austin, Texas. Inside one complex, engineers manufacture Firefly’s smaller rocket known as Alpha, while the second building is dedicated to building its new medium launch vehicle (MLV), developed in partnership with Northrop Grumman (NOC). Outside, Firefly has six test stands, where employees conduct rocket engine tests almost every day.
“The thing that sets Firefly apart from others is how much is built in-house,” said Brigette Oakes, vice president of engineering. “Having an integration machine shop, composite manufacturing, engine testing, stage testing allows us to build these rockets at a pace as quickly as our customers want it essentially.”
Inside Firefly's facilities in Briggs, Texas. ·Firefly
In 2023, the company launched a satellite into orbit 27 hours after receiving orders from the US Space Force. That shattered a previous response time of 21 days.
That ability to move quickly and lower costs is expanding the limits of space exploration. Today, companies like Space X and Rocket Lab (RKLB) are launching every 34 hours, according to the Space Foundation, putting the globe on track for 259 launches this year.
While Firefly has only successfully launched three rockets into orbit, it doubled the size of its facilities to automate much of its production in anticipation of a ramp-up.
A newly automated fiber placement machine installed last year now allows the company to churn out the vehicle structure for its Alpha rocket in seven days and the MLV in 30 days. That’s nine times faster and seven times cheaper than the laser-guided process engineers previously relied on, according to Oakes.
Firefly aims to transport payloads to the lunar surface in the coming years. ·Firefly
Commercializing the moon
Growth within the commercial space economy has largely been limited to launch vehicles and satellites until now, but NASA is leaning on the private sector to take them even further.
Its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program has set aside $2.6 billion for more than a dozen companies to develop a low-cost transportation system to carry the agency’s research to the lunar surface along with payloads for commercial customers.
Firefly will launch its Blue Ghost lunar lander onboard a SpaceX rocket later this year, the third attempt by a commercial company to reach the moon's surface following limited success by Intuitive Machines (LUNR) and Astrobotic.
“What is happening is we are bringing business on the face of the Earth into space,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “We've got these small little startup companies that are providing landers for NASA experiments as we can survey the south pole of the moon before our astronauts ever get there.”
A single lander mission is expected to cost roughly $100 million for Firefly, a fraction of the $660 million NASA paid for similar lander missions in the 1960s when adjusted for inflation.
The path to profitability
The Blue Ghost launch later this year will be the first of two Firefly missions backed by NASA. The second mission, scheduled to reach the south pole of the moon in 2026, will launch on board the MLV, allowing the company to move forward without the help of SpaceX.
While both will carry NASA experiments to the lunar surface, Weber said the company now plans to conduct its own mission to the moon with "100% commercial payloads" to accommodate requests from customers unable to hitch "a ride" on the early missions.
The company has no plans to receive funding from NASA for its independent mission, though the agency could be a paying customer, Weber said.
Today, Firefly generates more than 60% of its revenue from launch systems. The other 40% is derived from its spacecraft business, which includes Blue Ghost and orbital vehicle Elytra. Weber said he expects to be profitable on the company’s lunar missions by the end of this decade.
“If your only business is lunar missions and landing on the moon, then you're going to have a really difficult time with a diversified revenue structure,” he said. “Because there are three different mechanisms there that we can serve customers with from the same engineering base, the same manufacturing base, and the same supply chain feeding all of that, we can do, at minimal profit, missions like this.”
