Did the re-rating reach launch and propulsion pricing?
The question for the launch chain is whether the space chain's re-rating, having passed through satellite operators and the data layer, reached launch and propulsion pricing, or whether SpaceX's pricing power absorbed the propagation. Across the five launch-and-propulsion nodes (the companies this wiki tracks), Firefly, Voyager, Sidus, Moog and Avio, the returns point both ways. The propagation through the data layer was traced separately in The anchor tenant of Earth observation.
The propagation arrived: compounding in components and propulsion
Moog has risen four straight years since 2023: +66.6%, then +36.8%, +24.5% and +69.5%. F-35 actuation, Boeing flight controls, satellite propulsion, launch-vehicle TVC: wherever programs grow, Moog collects a little. That the steepest year of the four came last matters. A record 12-month backlog (+20%) with European rearmament demand stacked on top produced the late acceleration typical of a components-layer compounder. Avio posted +98.4% in 2024 and +117% in 2025, the propulsion-side counterpart to the European sovereignty theme that lifted Eutelsat and SES, as Vega C's return, Ariane 6 booster production and rearmament-driven solid-motor orders stacked up.
Capital markets reopened too. Firefly (August 2025, $868M raised) and Voyager (June 2025, $383M) have settled in at +14.7% and +22% in 2026 since listing. Unlike the 2021 SPAC boom that ended in collapse, this cohort stands on substance: a Moon landing track record and NASA anchor contracts. Rocket Lab, listed years earlier, had already passed through its own re-rating at +360.6% in 2024 and +173.9% in 2025, so the new cohort started out on a valuation yardstick the market had already tested.
But the paradox: even rocket companies are SpaceX customers
Firefly achieved the first fully successful commercial Moon landing. Its Blue Ghost lander, though, flies not on its own Alpha rocket but on a SpaceX Falcon 9, for Mission 1 and Mission 2 alike, because Alpha is too small for the Moon and the Eclipse medium launcher, backed by Northrop Grumman's $50M investment, is still in development. After all five satcom nodes and three EO nodes, SpaceX turns up as a cost counterparty even inside the launch tier. Open any layer of the space chain and the owner of the launch bottleneck is the same. That bottleneck acquired a ticker with the June 2026 Nasdaq listing (SPCX), and the fact that Starlink supplies 61% of its $18.7 billion 2025 revenue means the launch monopoly runs on the cash of a communications business.
Europe declared that bottleneck a sovereignty problem and assigned the answer to Avio: from 2025 Vega commercialization moved from Arianespace to Avio, consolidating Europe's own small-launch channel into one company. Avio's two-year rally reflects that position.
Avio's next expansion is defense propulsion. Leonardo is its largest shareholder at 19.30% (diluted from 28.75% through the 2025 capital raise), and RTX's Raytheon signed a solid rocket motor development agreement with Avio in July 2024, followed by a US production-facility MoU in November 2025. A roughly $500 million SRM plant in Virginia targets operation in 2028, on top of FY2025 revenue of EUR 541.7M (+22.7%) and a record EUR 2,166M backlog. With European rearmament and US missile production knocking on the same solid-motor bottleneck, a launch company is widening its revenue base into defense propulsion. The -3% print in 2026 reads as a breather after the two-year rally.
The exception is equally clear: micro-caps trade on survival
Sidus Space fell four straight years, from -91.9% in 2023 to -26.4% in 2026, the only space name that never rose while satcom, EO and propulsion re-rated. The reason is capital structure: $3.4M of revenue, a $29.5M net loss, and dilution from repeated raises. The losses did narrow every year (-91.9%, -44.4%, -35.9%, -26.4%), which owes more to a shrunken base than to recovery.
Verification conclusion
The space chain's re-rating ran through operators, data and propulsion/components, terminating in the quiet compounding of tier-1 suppliers like Moog. The launch bottleneck, meanwhile, still converges on SpaceX, whose customers include the launch companies themselves. The next checkpoint is the prime tier (RTX, Northrop, L3Harris, Boeing, Airbus). When Boeing (the missing counterpart at Moog, SES and Viasat), Airbus (Voyager, Eutelsat), L3Harris (Firefly, Intuitive Machines) and Northrop (Firefly's investor) join the map, the US and European prime layer of the space graph closes. That verification continues in The prime runs on a budget clock.