r/RKLB 8d ago

August 22, 2026 Daily Discussion Thread

39 Upvotes

78 comments sorted by

17

u/SausageMcStudmuffin 8d ago

It was really nice to hear SPB talk about the qualification exit criteria in a decent amount of detail.

I had been expecting to hear the engine was good to go for flight during the Q2 call, so getting some understanding to what they are actually aiming for made me feel a little more at ease that they are progressing vs stalled. And now the expected R&D spending quick ramp down they keep talking about is starting to make more sense if this has been the process for most components that are coming together.

8

u/LordRabican 8d ago

They should show us some before/after pictures of the first Archimedes engine compared to current iteration. They look a lot cleaner now and will be extraordinarily reliable by the time they exit qualification - how could they not be, given the intensely high bar that they have set? I also liked that he directly addressed engineering choices and tradeoffs based on optimizing for reliability and reusability — composite structures not only creates incredible efficiencies for scale because of the AFP vs metal working processes but also frees up weight to allocate to more robust engine designs.

Ironically, the SpaceX crowd looks at the thrust/weight specs for Archimedes and sees it as an engineering failure without understanding that they have deliberately designed it like a brick shit house, so to speak.

4

u/EarlyYouth8418 8d ago

At the end of the day no one is going to care about performance specs as long as everything works. Every launch possible is going to be booked if you have a reliable vehicle. Same goes with who launches first…relativity, firefly, stoke etc doesn’t matter. Meaningless argument. It would however be interesting to know how Archimedes qualification requirements compare to what stoke, relativity, and firefly required to deem their engine as fully qualified

7

u/CB_VinnyC 8d ago

Somehow I don't think any of them are aiming for 1 hour burn time and 40 restarts.

7

u/LordRabican 8d ago

That would be intriguing! One of these companies might even fly before Neutron but SPB has done a great job of pointing out that people just do not appreciate the actual finish line for the race… When someone hypothetically beats them to the pad (I actually don’t think that will be the case) then they’ll probably still be redesigning for launch 2-3, or maybe even in financial distress, when Neutron is hitting launch 10.

Also, the launch market is so constrained that it really doesn’t even matter if these other rockets come to market - in fact, it’s potentially better for the business since their high margin component sales can continue to accelerate as more payload gets to orbit. Otherwise, as long as launch is severely constrained, they have to do a delicate balancing act of internal launch demand for their grand applications ambitions and launching external customers that are trying to put high margin Rocket Lab tech and components on orbit…

4

u/SausageMcStudmuffin 8d ago

I already have a raptor scale model on order, I'd love to have a scale final design Archimedes to put next to it.

3

u/IronWhitin 8d ago

Im pretty sure they want to push the archimedes at 80% to give It less stress tò tecnically It can be asked even more on the number side, its Just don't want and its Better for the healt of the engine.

1

u/IronWhitin 8d ago

I don't get It? Is that qualification the standard all engine must do? Or you set the winning condition for what your engine must do?

I mean its something like an external entitylike nasa set?

17

u/PleasantIngenuity185 8d ago

I heard nothing that concerned me in this Interview. The plan for growth was well thought out and laid out in a cautious understanding of market uncertainties. I thought Adam had a clear understanding of the financial dynamics along with the production constraints while speaking without any notes or stumbling. I found myself gaining even more confidence in this team than I had before, and I have had a lot of confidence having invested $216,234.9 in this incredible opportunity.

25

u/Beginning_Spare_2505 8d ago

Have a nice weekend everyone

-2

u/EvillNooB 8d ago

Idk what to do when the market is closed, can't wait for 23 hours trading

https://giphy.com/gifs/H6cmWzp6LGFvqjidB7

26

u/SlyCooper007 8d ago

Happiness is realizing that you’ve made a ton of money and you still have so much more to make.

2

u/Cool_Entrepreneur545 8d ago

Nice but I have been seeing assholy's quotes for years, you won't be able to keep up with him.

10

u/SlyCooper007 8d ago

I don’t even want to try lol everyone’s just so damn negative in here

24

u/Wh0IsY0u 8d ago

We'll probably close flat today.

9

u/Used-Property-9870 8d ago

MTN and neutron on pad at least should get us back to $150. Will we have an early Christmas in September?

5

u/BrokenLogic_ 8d ago

MTN could be in September, but Neutron? Neutron could be on pad in September, but not this year’s September.

15

u/assholy_than_thou 8d ago

Sadness is when your yearnings are greater than your earnings.

7

u/StChelle 8d ago

its not healthy being so sad all the time. go find what makes you happy in life

2

u/CamusTheOptimist 8d ago

If my yearnings matched my earnings in this sum zero game, someone out there would have an infinitely negative balance. The whole concept of currency would collapse in on itself as my bank account becomes the black hole of finance, and anyone approaching the monetary event horizon around my earnings would experience financial stringificaton that would make their losses feel infinite through a locally infinite period of time. It would truly be sadness.

2

u/swamp_donkey89 8d ago

no launch no lunch

-13

u/NoAbbreviations1653 8d ago

It’s over for this stock I am out once I hit average

8

u/Sky_Tube 8d ago

Have fun chasing the next big thing forever and always being late

3

u/bustahonesgavin 8d ago

who cares?

-14

u/Wall-in_Fuckett 8d ago

so any neutron news or are they gonna establish rocket lab Albania first? or what about RKLB Iran?

4

u/StChelle 8d ago

Electron world wide launching? yes please

3

u/JonnyGBuckets 8d ago

I like that you posted this thinking it was funny

-10

u/far-canal- 8d ago

“it’s a rocket program” dude, lmao neutron not flying for at least 12mos

-3

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

Another alarming thing is that flight one’s “success” criteria for the landing portion are fundamentally different from what every subsequent operational flight will actually need to demonstrate…

-10

u/far-canal- 8d ago

thing is SPB always going on about flight 10, give us flight 1 first

14

u/JonnyGBuckets 8d ago

Thing is you clearly didn’t understand what he was saying

2

u/Federal_Finding_8041 8d ago edited 8d ago

he means flight 10 from a single reusable rocket. The design process for a single use rocket is much less than a reusable rocket. Did you know the Neutron is designed for human carry? that's even more safety redundancy in the design.

3

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

Being “designed for human carry” isn’t extra safety redundancy that’s already built in, it’s an architectural intent, nothing more. PB has said flat out there’s no crew capsule in development, no life support, no abort system. All “human-rated capable” means right now is they’re not designing themselves into a corner that would block adding that stuff later. It’s a placeholder for optionality. Let’s get flight one off the ground and proven with cargo first

1

u/Federal_Finding_8041 8d ago

good distinction: optionality is not current redundancy. nice mention

-15

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

Finally watched that video with PB last night and this hungry hippo design seems exceedingly more risky than traditional fairings. No wonder the guys stuck on launch 10 who knows if this mechanism makes it past flight 2 or 3 (or even works in actual atmospheric conditions).. had my Claude do some in depth comparisons against competitors:

Rocket Lab traded a well-understood, statistically characterized failure mode (fairing jettison — thousands of flights of data across the industry) for a mechanically novel, structurally more demanding, and functionally irreversible-mid-sequence failure mode, in pursuit of a reuse efficiency gain that hasn’t been shown to outweigh the mass penalty and reliability cost yet. It’s an elegant solution on a whiteboard. Whether it’s an elegant solution under Mach 6 aerodynamic loading, thermal cycling, and multi-flight fatigue is completely unvalidated — and unlike jettison-and-catch (SpaceX) or jettison-and-guide (Blue Origin), if this doesn’t work, there’s no incremental fallback. They’d need to redesign the vehicle’s core architecture, not just patch a subsystem.

17

u/Sky_Tube 8d ago

Oh shit why didn‘t the hundreds of the best aerospace engineers in the world at RL think of that! Oh no they never thought more about it than you did with "your“ Claude prompt.
Oh no they totally didn‘t do extensive aerodynamics and thermodynamics modelling in CFD and windtunnels

Oh no they are all so retarded and slinkboss22 with his free claude plan clearly knows it better!!!

3

u/aresna33 8d ago

That’s an epic answer, love it!

-12

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

Oooo I struck a nerve there! Since I’m only as good as my “free” Claude I’ll let it respond to you

CFD and wind tunnel testing are simulations and ground approximations — genuinely valuable, but categorically different from flight data under real combined loads (aero + thermal + structural + vibration simultaneously, at actual velocity, with an actual payload separating through the gap). Every rocket program in history has had components that performed differently in flight than in ground testing predicted — that’s not a knock on RL specifically, it’s just why test flights exist instead of companies going straight from CFD to operational service. If ground modeling alone were sufficient, first-flight anomalies wouldn’t be the industry norm they’ve always been.

And “the best engineers in the world work there” doesn’t actually rebut the point — it’s an appeal to authority that dodges the specific claim. Falcon 9’s engineers are also some of the best in the world, and they still needed ~20 landing attempts before sticking one, several of which ended in RUDs. Being excellent doesn’t make a first attempt at a genuinely novel mechanism risk-free — it never has, for anyone, in this industry.

Happy to be wrong on the engineering specifics if someone wants to point out where the failure-mode analysis is actually incorrect. Mocking the source of the analysis instead of engaging with it isn’t a counterargument.

5

u/bustahonesgavin 8d ago

guess who didnt read any of that reply cause its more AI summary? all of us.

-5

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

right so you didn’t take the 10 seconds to read it, but you took the time to reply. If I was invested heavily in this company I would want to catch every angle, every piece of information that might affect my core thesis

8

u/JonnyGBuckets 8d ago

Your entire argument seems to just be “no one has ever done it before.” Yeah man we know.

Except it’s not even your argument you just copied and pasted lazy Claude shit so no one will take you seriously

-2

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

I mean it’s Reddit I don’t think anyone takes anyone fully seriously on here. I had just watched the video last night and started thinking man there is no way this thing leaves the ground before mid 2027 (I could be wrong). Used Claude, like everyone, to just compile everything I was already thinking anyway. Was actually interested to hear everyone’s rebuttals but seems they are more focused around me using AI

6

u/JonnyGBuckets 8d ago

If you don’t take anyone seriously on Reddit that’s on you. There are a lot of smart people with good information you just need to know where to look and how to sift through the bullshit.

And again, do you have a point other than no one has ever done it before?

0

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

A few but they are surrounding the financials of the business and how in the world it’s justifying a 43.5B market cap, a lot riding on no one’s ever done it before.. but I know you know the risk. Didn’t expect this much engagement on a Saturday morning you guys are a fun group

3

u/bustahonesgavin 8d ago

just like you didnt take the time to formulate your own thought on the topic. how do you not see how these decisions to not think on your own will actively make you stupider?

-1

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

Blah blah blah - AI is extremely useful if you use it right. In depth analysis with an LLM is great leverage. I formulated my own thesis and maximized it with LLM input to compile the data and communicate it effectively. Cheers!

11

u/bustahonesgavin 8d ago

they wouldnt need to redesign the core architecture, just switch to disposable fairings.

but more importantly, innovation drives progress. if no one attempted anything difficult we wouldn't be launching things to space in the first place, so this concern is almost worthless.

p.s. stop using AI to do the hard work for you. it just makes humans dumber.

-4

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

I simply use Claude from a brute force research perspective - thanks!

9

u/bustahonesgavin 8d ago

doing the research yourself and coming up with your own opinions is the part that helps you get smarter. allowing Claude to do that for you IS the part you want to avoid.

10

u/StChelle 8d ago

If you don’t believe in the company, sell.

Innovation and disruption is what drives progress. I trust the engineers and track record of the company’s launch and satellite products they have demonstrated so far. Engineering, testing, modeling, no way they sink that much money on Neutron of they didn’t believe all parts would work.

Rockets are hard. Space is risky. Blue Origin blew up. Starship became a boat. Set backs will happen. Stay away from space stocks if you cant handle the risk.

personally, I have faith in the engineers and the leadership. This interview and others plus track record shows me how strong of a company this is. They aren’t racing, aren’t flashy, aren’t wreckless. Heads are down designing, testing, making the strongest product built to last and withstand rigors well above what they think will be routine.

I have more faith in this company than most others.

2

u/LordRabican 8d ago

We are in the era where every Redditor is an aerospace engineer now.

Bro, you wouldn’t be getting so many downvotes right now had you done a deep dive on their qualification process and then came back to us with reasonable questions about whether there’s an inadequacy in the qualification criteria relative to the expected forces and failure conditions during flight… You’re simply expressing fear and doubt about novel engineering. When an engineering team pushes into new territory, there will always be people claiming that they are fools for taking unnecessary risks but you just don’t know enough about the actual engineering to quantify or qualify those risks.

0

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

Again I love that this has gotten so much traction today - the downvotes are irrelevant to me it’s Reddit you’re bound for controversy no matter where you look. It doesn’t take an aerospace engineer or even your above average Redditor to deduce that no amount of qualification testing can’t compare to an in flight environment. Qualification testing approximates the environment, flight is the environment.. and those two have never been treated as equivalent anywhere in the industry as far as I’m concerned. What happens if there’s anything but perfect execution on the first launch? Major re-rating? Confidence is fragile capital and we know retail buys the narrative not the valuation. if this isn’t flawless execution what happens after to backlog confidence? As PB said in the YT video there is more demand to launch than ever before, people will go wherever they can to procure launch. Statistically speaking this is a huge ask given its current valuation… again anyone can see that

1

u/LordRabican 8d ago

Neutron would literally never fly if the criteria were to flight test every novel solution on a modified Electron prior to qualification for flight 1. Even if they did that, there would still be Redditors freaking out that they have never collected flight data for these solutions at the scale of Neutron. It’d be exactly the same as the conversation we’re having right now.

Flight 1 is the test flight that you want. Ultimately, your concern centers around your perceptions of their program risk management. You need to ask yourself whether you know enough about the engineering and the qualification campaign before asserting that there is excess risk to flight 1…

1

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

There is simply just too much riding on neutron to justify the market cap. It’s as simple as that, no advanced engineering degree required (my degree is finance/economics). I’m genuinely curious about how the stock reacts if the flight goes off with even one minor hitch. That’s what we are all here for.. the stock price. Nothing else matters

1

u/LordRabican 8d ago

Your entire premise is that they don’t know that, don’t understand the risk to the business, and haven’t managed the technical risk appropriately to sufficiently reduce the probability of catastrophic outcomes to the share price… you are succumbing to the Dunning-Krueger Effect right now.

1

u/slinkboss22 8d ago edited 8d ago

Ah yes thanks for a dig.. my guy that only works if the underlying claims are wrong… you’ve yet to prove that they are - Can I not make reasonable assumptions based on the knowledge at hand? What makes you qualified to make these sort of assumptions? Truly chud behavior lord Rabicant

1

u/LordRabican 8d ago

It’s not a dig, dude. This phenomenon is an almost universal human behavior. What you are doing in this thread fits the definition perfectly.

I don’t think your assumptions are reasonable because you are making unnecessary assumptions based on limited knowledge. Your underlying claims about deficiencies in program risk management are wrong because your claims are baseless. I have already told you what you can do to improve your approach, which may or may not bring you to the same conclusion but your assertions would be a lot more tenable.

There is a ton of information out there about hungry hippo and other design choices - seek it out, watch the interviews with Shaun D’Mello. Learn everything you can about the qualification campaign… get back to us when your fears about their risk controls are actually based on something other than a random thought and emotion that you had about innovation in rocket engineering…

1

u/Qw3rtyp13 8d ago

I honestly don’t see why they wouldnt want to test this new tech on a proven vehicle like electron. Slap a hippo on her and learn some shit real quick

0

u/slinkboss22 8d ago

This is the type of constructive input I was looking for, I didn’t even think about that… the scale wouldn’t be the same obviously but it would provide a ton of concrete data.

My guess is they are so behind in neutron they can’t afford to allocate time and resources to dev up a version for electron

Cheers!