Firefly Aerospace, Inc., a leading provider of economical and dependable
launch vehicles, spacecraft, and in-space services, today announced the
launch of a new line of business dedicated to supplying rocket engines and
other spaceflight components to the emerging New Space industry.
“Our goal with this line of business is to become the Tier 1 supplier of
components to the New Space industry,” said Tom Markusic, CEO of Firefly
Aerospace. “Our component sales business model has inherent advantages over
businesses that focus on a single (e.g., rocket engines) or narrow range
(e.g., valves) of components.”
The development of this new line of business was born out of the
overwhelming interest in Firefly’s technology and the need, within the New
Space industry, to shorten the time to market and have a reliable and
consistent sourcing partner for the components necessary to develop
spaceflight vehicles.
Firefly is unique in that it not only builds and operates spaceflight
vehicles, such as its Alpha rocket, but will also become a premier sourcing
partner for other New Space companies to procure the components that are
used in those vehicles, helping to lower the barrier to entry in the New
Space market. Through the manufacture of their own vehicles, Firefly will
establish flight heritage for all components before supplying them to other
companies, providing customers with high confidence and low risk, as the
components will have been fully proven in spaceflight missions, not just
ground tests.
The component business plan also has the advantage that there is
automatically a core customer – Firefly’s spacecraft and launch vehicle
divisions. As the company adds external customers, it will allow them to
manufacture increasingly larger numbers of the same components, creating
economies of scale for production efficiency and cost reduction.
“We initially focused external sales on Firefly’s rocket engines, which we
believe provide the best cost/performance in the industry. Initial demand
has been strong, with external orders already exceeding the quantity of
engines that Firefly was building for use on its own launch vehicle, Alpha,”
said Eric Salwan, CRO of Firefly. He added “Firefly also has strong
expertise in the design and production of carbon fiber composite structures.
We are currently in active negotiations to supply composite components, such
as composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPV), to external customers.”
While Firefly is launching this line of business based on the components
developed in-house, it plans to expand its offerings to include a number of
components developed by their partners, creating a New Space component
marketplace with a complete line of products allowing companies to procure
and have components delivered from a single source.
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