/sci/ - Science & Math

okay bros, place your bets on which smallsat launch companies will survive

rocket labs - I think they will do fine, they have a pretty good position and they are diversifying a lot out of pure smallsat launch services
astra - not looking great, which is a shame because they have a pretty cool concept if they could just manage to stop fucking up

straolaunch/virgin orbit - I'm not real big on air launch, I can see it being useful in a few cases (like if they could sell it to israel, but I think jews would rather have a domestic system even without ITAR and all that shit), but I don't see it becoming a big thing. Virgin orbit at least has branson to pay the bills until he gets bored with it, but I don't think things are looking good for stratolaunch.

firefly - kinda interesting, but they still haven't managed to get anything flying and I don't see anything particularly compelling about their system. They are at least trying to get into lunar landers and shit too, but not sure how far along they are on that. I'd give them a maybe, overall they seem like off-brand rocket lab and further behind but they could conceivably pull through.

aevum - I can't find a whole lot about them, but they seem to be going for the airlaunch meme but with their own drone carrying the rocket instead of a 747 or something. It looks cool at least, and I think autonomous carriers would improve the airlaunch concept a bit, but the development costs and effort are going to be a lot higher than a regular launch. I don't know enough about their funding and resources to make a good judgement, but it does have a whiff of vaporware to me.

orbex - some interesting stuff from them and PROPALOX, they seem to be coming along fairly well but like firefly I don't see anything super special from them. I would rate them about the same as firefly, they don't have any projects other than the launch vehicle afaik but it looks less retarded than the firefly rocket