Looking forward to Neutron launches from nearby.

I wonder which one of these start-up rocket companies is going to hit it big.

I haven't been paying really close attention but have seen quite a few companies in my online reading pop up. I had no idea there were so many.

Rocketlab has the advantage right now in terms of experience

Astra seems to be middling around, their main rocket has been an abysmal flop, its launch failure rate is high in terms of 1960's launches, never mind the 2000's

Firefly has had a 1:1 fail success so far

Relativity has good vision and a good goal with a functional vehicle ready to go.

The rest are still stuck in a perpetual state of testing engines, making test articles and asking for funding

Worth noting that firefly have contracts with Northrop Grumman and Astra for supplying engines, plus a CLPS contract, so aren't entirely dependent on their launches for revenue

Like Astra can pay for many engines if they don't sell launches.

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Rocket Lab already has another Electron vehicle being prepared in their Wallops facility now. Then around May, they'll launch another Electron with the TROPICS mission to study tropical systems.

The Neutron structure is also in place near the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport. Rocket Lab is growing fast. I wish them success.

Depends what you mean by make it big. Some will likely succeed and even thrive as launch companies. However launch is a particularly difficult part of the industry to succeed in. The overwhelming majority of the revenue in space is made from providing satellite services not launching them. There is a reason SpaceX is trying to break into that market. Launch is incredibly competitive and is likely to become more so as reusable rockets increase the development required to be competitive while lowering the expected revenue per launch. All of these problems are exacerbated by the sheer number of small sat providers entering the market. There just isn’t the market demand to sustain all of these providers. 1-2 maybe but there are several dozen. And almost 10 with real hardware/potential to be operational in the next year or so. From the outside it looks like that whole segment of the industry is bubble that is about to pop, and the only ones that will survive long term will be the ones that can progress beyond small launch to the medium/heavy lift as both relativity and Rocketlab are working towards.

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If SpaceX gets Starship to the same frequency and reliability as Falcon 9, the market for other launch providers is almost gone. 60 Starship launches a year would outclass all other launch providers combined by an order of magnitude, at a lower combined cost.

I wouldn't exactly call rocket lab a start up anymore. They have been operating successfully for years but only just started launching from the US now which will attract more customers.

I suppose that's why I hadn't heard about them until fairly recently.

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List of launches.

They are finally getting close to the launch cadence that they said they were aiming for. Neutron is gonna be amazing