Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim is ‘crazy’ to expand | Wilnesh News

Jason Kim just landed one of the most coveted but stressful executive jobs in the aerospace industry.

As the new CEO of rocket and spacecraft maker Firefly Aerospace, he is no longer affiliated with boeing company He became the umbrella company after resigning from his previous role leading satellite manufacturing subsidiary Millennium. He also joins a business operating in thin air — as one of only four U.S. companies with operating orbital rockets — with a growing line of spacecraft and lunar landers.

But now he is conquering a launch market dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Established player ULA and emerging challengers rocket lab Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has followed suit, increasing its investment in the market.

But Kim isn’t worried. He sees a gap in the launch market for Firefly’s Alpha rocket and the upcoming MLV rocket, which falls in the middle of the spectrum from small to heavy-lift launch vehicles.

“In the history of the world, we started with oceans, then railroads, roads, and finally airplanes. I think space is the next big area of ​​transportation. It’s a new category that Firefly will help create,” King told us since earlier this month He spoke on CNBC in his first interview since joining the company.

Last year, Millennium partnered with Firefly to launch the Space Force’s experimental Victus Nox mission, so Kim said he has witnessed firsthand the “unstoppable” attitude and “calculated risk-taking” of Firefly employees.

“I’m excited to be here … and I’m going to work like crazy to support this team so that we can achieve all of our vision,” King said.

Firefly’s former chief executive left the company in a shock move in July after less than two years on the job amid accusations of inappropriate employee relations. This is the latest Firefly has experienced. Over the past decade, it has formed, gone through bankruptcy, relaunched and gone through a federally mandated ownership swap.

All the while, Fireflies press forward. The 700-employee company, which builds and tests at its Rocket Ranch outside Austin, Texas, has launched Alpha rockets five times from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, two of which successfully reached orbit.

AE Industrial Partners, Firefly’s majority owner, moved quickly this summer to woo Kim away from Millennium after Kim said he got the call three days after Firefly’s previous leader left. Kim said serving as CEO of Firefly “was never on my road map,” but stressed he was excited for the new challenge.

“What I’ve learned by running multiple companies is that I think when you run a company, autonomy is extremely valuable and that autonomy helps you make the best decisions. You can do it in the best way possible. Use your capital to scale and create differentiators.

Firefly has three major product lines: rockets, Alpha and MLV; space tugs, called Elytra, and lunar lander, called Blue Ghosts. King said all of the company’s product lines are generating revenue, but he declined to say how much money those lines brought in, adding that the company had launched a funding round “with a new major investor.”

“We’ve seen tremendous demand (from investors) … there will be more demand soon, but this will help us achieve all the expansion we need to do,” King said.

Firefly aims to be an end-to-end space transportation company, with its rockets at the core.

Alpha is 95 feet tall and is designed to launch about 1,000 kilograms of payload into orbit at a cost of $15 million per launch.

The MLV (Medium Launch Vehicle) is 183 feet tall and is designed to launch up to 16,300 kilograms of payload into orbit. The MLV is the successor to Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket. The two companies are jointly developing the MLV and plan to launch it for the first time in 2026.

Both Alpha and MLV sit in the middle of the rocket market, between Rocket Lab’s “small” Electron and “heavy” rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

“The small-medium-large model is critical to supporting all the different needs of the market. … There is no one size fits all,” King said.

Kim believes Firefly has a key advantage – its Reaver engine that powers the Alpha rocket – “an engine that works.” For MLV, Kim said Firefly took “great engine technology” and expanded it to become Miranda, so you don’t have to “start from scratch” with a new engine.

“We’ve made tremendous progress in MLV,” Kim said. “We have conducted 50 Miranda engine tests.”

Ahead of the MLV’s debut, Firefly will also deliver part of a Northrop Antares 330 rocket in the third quarter of next year, with a first stage similar to the MLV.

Additionally, while Firefly’s Alpha may not be reusable, the company “purposely designed the MLV to be reusable.”

“We’re closer to SpaceX’s solution to the (rocket reuse) problem,” Kim said, referring to how SpaceX has increased the landing capabilities of its Falcon 9 rockets over time.

“We want to get some launches into orbit before we solve the ‘return to launch site’ part,” Kim added. “I do believe that reusability will help with the (launch) tempo of the MLV program, but for Alpha , we will achieve our numbers through pure rhythm alone.”

Firefly has built up Alpha’s launch backlog, signing deals for more than 50 launches. These include large orders from the following companies Lockheed Martin and L3 Harrisand three launches from startup True Anomaly, including one as part of the Space Force The latest responsive launch mission Victus Haze.

The company has focused on infrastructure expansion this year, more than doubling Rocket Ranch’s footprint to more than 200,000 square feet. Next year, Kim’s goal is to have Firefly fly four to six Alpha launches, then double that every year until Alpha flies twice a month, or 24 launches per year.

“We could have prioritized launching more alpha versions this year, but our priority was scaling for the future,” Kim said.