The cofounder of the Vector rocket company, James Cantrell, said this week that he is 100 percent confident that his Vector-R vehicle will launch this year. This launch will occur from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska, carrying a payload of two PocketQube satellites and an Alba Orbital deployer.

"My confidence level is 100 percent," Cantrell said during a telephone interview with Ars on Thursday. "Not to pick on them, but we don't work on SpaceX schedules. We can't afford to run a business like that. We're not giving you schedules that we know we can't live with."

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The company's two-stage Vector-R launcher (the R stands for "rapid") uses three LP-1 engines to lift the rocket off the pad, and it can deploy a payload with a maximum of 66kg into orbit. A later variant, the Vector-H (heavy), will have the capacity to deploy up to 110kg into space.

Cantrell said the first three orbital launches will all be test flights, designed to improve the performance of the rocket, and they will start small on purpose. The PocketQube satellites each weigh less than 1kg, and only a handful of them have been launched into space before. This will be their first dedicated launch. "They're the smallest spacecraft going up on the smallest rocket," Cantrell said. "We thought that was a good place to start."

Vector has already filed its application for a launch license with the Federal Aviation Administration, Cantrell said, a process that normally takes about six months. The company is also taking delivery of parts from suppliers for the orbital version of the Vector-R and beginning to assemble the flight vehicle. Additionally, the company has begun working with the range in Alaska to ensure access later this year. The Kodiak-based facility is shared by the military and commercial operators.

The need to scale

Last August the company conducted a suborbital test of the rocket, and it plans another test to about 10,000 feet in late March or April in Mojave, California. That will serve to test the vehicle's thrust vector control, the payload fairing, and a new version of the flight computer software among other things, Cantrell said. After that, he believes Vector will be ready to attempt an orbital flight.

The small booster builder is entering the market at a busy time. Rocket Lab, a competitor with a larger vehicle, has already made two launches of its Electron booster. Virgin Orbit plans to begin operations later this year. And it seems as though a new competitor announces its plans to launch small satellites on inexpensive boosters about every other week.


Cantrell admits there is a lot of competition in the industry because market forces are responding to exploding demand for these micro- and nano-launch services. Execution will set apart the winners from the losers, he said. "The market is definitely there, that's why you see all of these vehicles popping up," Cantrell said. "We see this as a race of execution, can we get something that works, and can we scale?"

Vector clearly believes its answer is yes. The company has drawn up plans to build hundreds of Vector-R boosters and LP-1 engines. To succeed in this industry, Cantrell said, it will be necessary to launch often, which will help control per-flight costs and give customers the kind of reliability they want. But first, you have to launch the first one successfully. Doing so this year would send a strong signal to the industry.