THE NEW SPACE RACE: Rocket Lab hitting its stride with high cadence, new venture for Electron.

With a total of nine launches last year and as many as 15 planned for 2023, Rocket Lab now flies more boosters than any other company in the world not named SpaceX. In recent years, Rocket Lab’s cadence has surpassed United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and other major players.

This year, Rocket Lab may even launch as many boosters as Russia does, something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

Clearly, Rocket Lab’s Electron vehicle is much smaller than others in the established launch industry. Electron’s capacity maxes out at 300 kg to low-Earth orbit. But that has not stopped Beck from being inventive about use cases for the small rocket. Last year, his company launched a small satellite to the Moon, and Beck is working on a Venus mission.

And there is something to be said for providing a product that a lot of customers want to fly on—and then delivering that product.

To that end, Rocket Lab recently announced a new venture—using Electron to serve as a testbed for hypersonic technologies. The rocket will use essentially the same first and second stages, but it has a modified kick stage that will allow Electron to deploy payloads with a mass of up to 600 kg into hypersonic trajectories five times greater than the speed of sound.

That could certainly provide an earth-shattering kaboom.