$AST SpaceMobile, Inc.(ASTS)$ $Rocket Lab USA, Inc.(RKLB)$ So no -- these companies aren’t in competition. Rocket Lab is building the secure, modular, defense-aligned architecture to operate above the Earth. ASTS is embedding persistent connectivity into the same zone, for consumers, enterprises, and agencies alike. One is defining how we project power. The other is defining how we stay connected. They don’t overlap. They interlock.x
We’re finally in the post-launch phase of the space economy -- where the real value isn’t in who gets to orbit, but in who controls what happens once you’re there.
We still talk about launches the way we talked about dial-up modems in the early internet: who can get there fastest, cheapest, most frequently. But that playbook is already dead. Getting to orbit is no longer the bottleneck. The bottleneck is what happens after. Who controls the lanes, who owns the protocols, who embeds themselves so deeply into the system that removal becomes not just costly -- but impossible.
That’s where Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile come in. And yet, folks still frames them as cousins in the same vertical -- as if they’re gunning for the same TAM, the same contracts, the same prize. But what if they’re not even playing the same game?
Rocket Lab isn’t trying to win launch contracts. They’re building a vertically integrated orbital architecture calibrated for the next generation of conflict. Not the Cold War-era space race that obsessed over payload tonnage, but the modern one that centers around latency, optical communication, threat detection, and end-to-end tasking across constellations in contested LEO theaters. It’s not a coincidence they bought Geost. Or Mynaric. Or SolAero. Those weren’t expansion plays. They were positioning moves in a future where orbital presence isn’t enough -- you have to control the signal chain. From detection to transmission to response. And you have to do it without relying on foreign vendors or multi-contractor bottlenecks.
This is how you go from contractor to prime. You start by winning niche business -- small launch, payload integration, R&D missions -- and then you quietly build the stack. Secure the bandwidth. Harden the optics. Manufacture the critical components. And that’s the pivot Rocket Lab made. Every move they’ve made signals the same truth: this isn’t a space company anymore. It’s a space-native defense company, structured to meet the procurement needs of a U.S. government retooling its deterrence doctrine for an orbital age.
AST SpaceMobile, on the other hand, is solving something entirely different. And just as foundational. Because as warfighting moves to orbit, so does commerce. And the next leg of commercial infrastructure doesn’t look like towers, or satellites, or edge routers -- it looks like seamless extension of terrestrial coverage into sky. Not by replacing the carriers, but by finishing the map. The only reason we still tolerate dead zones is because we convinced ourselves they’re too expensive to solve. ASTS is proving they’re not. Not if you stop thinking like an infrastructure builder and start thinking like a backend integrator.
That’s the genius of ASTS. They’re not asking consumers to change behavior. They’re not trying to out-market Starlink or push terminals into rural sheds. They’re embedding into the existing telco stack with spectrum -- real, regulatory-validated spectrum -- and making the experience invisible. That handoff from tower to satellite isn’t a disruption. It’s a ghost protocol. Your phone doesn’t know. You don’t know. The bill stays the same. And yet, the coverage map just expanded by millions of square miles.
This isn’t some far-off sci-fi pitch. They’ve already proven it. Broadband calls. On unmodified phones. Across multiple continents. The only thing standing between ASTS and scale is cadence. And cadence is coming. With Block 2 hardware finalized, vertically integrated production underway, and a pipeline of government contracts already landed, the only question left is execution. But here’s the part people miss -- this isn’t a tech trial anymore. This is infrastructure rollout. And if it sticks, it doesn’t just add a feature to your phone. It rewires the entire capex model of global telecom.
So no -- these companies aren’t in competition. Rocket Lab is building the secure, modular, defense-aligned architecture to operate above the Earth. ASTS is embedding persistent connectivity into the same zone, for consumers, enterprises, and agencies alike. One is defining how we project power. The other is defining how we stay connected. They don’t overlap. They interlock.
That’s exactly why I own both in my small-cap portfolio.
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