The CEO of the rocket startup in difficulty is launching a hue to the competition

It is not a secret for anyone that there are many large egos in the space flight industry. Although the main players generally refrain from roasting their rivals in public, this was not the case at this year’s Berkeley Space Symposium. At least, not for the CEO of Astra, Chris Kemp.

During a conference he gave during the event on September 5, Kemp launched a serious shade in SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly and Rocket Lab, reports Ars Technica. While some of his remarks spoke to legitimate shortcomings among his competitors, they came out hard, in particular given the history of Astra’s financial disorders and its rocky launch record.

Kemp co -founded Astra in 2016 alongside CTO Adam London. Five of the company’s seven operational launches between September 2020 and June 2022 led to a failure. Astra withdrew his “Rocket 3” in August 2022 and, in March 2024, the company’s assessment increased from $ 2.6 billion to around $ 11.25 million, Reuters reported. Kemp and London took the private company 50 cents per share to avoid bankruptcy.

Now Astra focuses on the development of Rocket 4, targeting the summer of 2026 for its inaugural launch. It is possible that this new chapter can help Astra to rejuvenate its reputation and its capital, but the recent remarks of Kemp could create more problems for society in difficulty. Here is what he had to say about four of his greatest competitors.

Gizmodo contacted each of them to comment but did not receive an answer at the time of publication. You can look at Kemp’s full conversation here.

Spacex

In his fence remarks, Kemp tried to call on potential trainees by arguing that Astra provides a better working environment than the starry base of SpaceX in southern Texas.

“It’s more fun than SpaceX, because we are not on the Mexico border where they cut your head if you accidentally turn left,” he said. “And you don’t have to live in a trailer. And we don’t make you work six and a half days a week, 12 hours a day. It’s appreciated if you do, but not necessary.”

Yikes. Until this moment, Kemp generally spoke of SpaceX respectfully, making fair comparisons between the approach of Elon Musk and his. To end on this sour note, looked like a useless blow. Needless to say, no internship spacex has never been beheaded.

Blue

At the start of his speech, Kemp described two approaches to innovation in today’s space industry: the fascinated iterative design method and more traditional long -term development in a single rocket.

“I call it the Blue Origin and Nasa approach, where you spend tens of billions of dollars, and in 20 or 30 years, you build a rocket and it works the first time,” he said. “It’s super important if what you are trying to optimize is (that) it works the first time. And for a program managed by a nation state or a billionaire that does not want to explode a rocket, it’s cautious. But it takes decades and costs tens of billions of dollars for you to do the analysis and tests.”

Astra, like SpaceX, uses iterative design. While Kemp is right to say that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin, has adopted the most traditional approach, neither the new shepherd nor the new Glenn cost “tens of billions” in dollars. In addition, the Rocket 3 launch record of Astra is compared to New Shepherd’s.

Firefly Aerospace

In 2021, Astra signed an agreement with Rival Firefly to buy its reaver engines. None of the two companies never recognized the agreement publicly, but when Kemp’s conversation, it was impatient to discuss it.

“We have a new rocket engine. There is a company called Firefly. They have become public,” he said with mocking laugh. “We bought the engine from them, and it was garbage. We could literally not get the same engine twice. And none of them corresponded to the CAD. And if you are in engineering, you know that it simply does not work. So we have essentially had to start from zero with this engine.”

In response to Kemp’s comments, a spokesperson for Firefly told Ars: “The reaver engines built by Firefly propelled our Alpha launch vehicle on several occasions and performed perfectly.

Firefly did not immediately respond to the request for comments from Gizmodo.

Rocket

At the end of the 2010s, while Astra developed Rocket 3, Rocket Lab ran to build Electron, a rival rocket in Petit-Lift. This prepared the field for fierce competition that persists today, but compared to Kemp’s remark for Rocket Lab was soft at the Berkeley event.

Kemp admitted that Rocket 3 and Electron were not large enough to serve the booming market of satellites. “This little rocket is too small,” he said about Rocket 3. “And the electron too.”

This can be true, but Electron’s launch record far exceeds that of Rocket 3, and it continues to generate important income for Rocket Lab.

Between his sarcastic remarks, Kemp’s speech offered a precious overview of the past, the present and the future of Astra. It remains to be seen if its bark will resist its bite with the upcoming beginnings of Rocket 4.