May 19, 2026 · 44 min · 15 segments
Neel Kunjur, Co-Founder and CTO of K2 Space, joins me to talk about their hardware in space today, how their vision and plans have evolved over the past few years, and how industry changes like the…
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I mean, it, it still feels that way to me, and, and honestly, sometimes I wonder if, uh, the, the troubles that SpaceX had through 2025, like if, if that at all syncs them up with the rest of the industry's timeline, that might be good because they're gonna phase out Falcon 9 before anyone really put cost pressure on Falcon 9.
Like, that isn't healthy when I'm looking at the industry as a, you know, unbiased observer.
Y- We all want that other bit of pressure and, and, you know, that's for your part of the business seg- segment.
That is really important because if Starship flies and they're selling it for the same price Falcon 9 is, then that doesn't really change anything on the economic scale, and they're not g- there's no reason for them to do that unless others in the industry step up.
So you're right in that, like, your business model isn't dependent on that, but it is made better if the other competitors do better too.
if you're all directionally correct and the, uh, rest of the industry follows as well, and, and the Starship and K2 just tend to be a model of, like, rocket payload, but there's other people that wanna serve that, that makes your thing even better.
And I think, I think there's a massive demand signal as well, right? So you have this incredible demand signal from the industry for more launch capacity, and you know, we know from, from, from a physics and engineering perspective, it's possible, right? SpaceX has proved that.
Um, and so I think it's been harder for some of those other providers to, to really catch up, but we're starting to see some of them get closer and closer, right, every year.
And I think, uh, the more launch capacity there is, the, the, the better for us.
But right now, you know, when we build out the business, especially when we forecast out, like, what would we use Starship for when we get to that stage where it's operational, we're actually assuming no price reduction, right? We're, we're not necessarily assuming that SpaceX is going to massively price Starship differently than Falcon 9.
And I think if you can show that you have a viable business and, and an excellent business in a world where they, they don't reduce the cost of Starship necessarily, uh, y- you're gonna be in, in a great spot, right? If you're dependent on them to, you know, go orders of magnitude lower on cost, then yeah, you're not only waiting on the timeline of Starship, but you're waiting on the timeline of the next best competitor as well.
We wanted to focus on Falcon 9 today, and then building a business that when Starship is available, all we're relying at it on is not necessarily cost, but to change the types of spacecraft that we can put inside of the volume of the fairing.
I mean, it, it still feels that way to me, and, and honestly, sometimes I wonder if, uh, the, the troubles that SpaceX had through 2025, like if, if that at all syncs them up with the rest of the industry's timeline, that might be good because they're gonna phase out Falcon 9 before anyone really put cost pressure on Falcon 9.
Like, that isn't healthy when I'm looking at the industry as a, you know, unbiased observer.
Y- We all want that other bit of pressure and, and, you know, that's for your part of the business seg- segment.
That is really important because if Starship flies and they're selling it for the same price Falcon 9 is, then that doesn't really change anything on the economic scale, and they're not g- there's no reason for them to do that unless others in the industry step up.
So you're right in that, like, your business model isn't dependent on that, but it is made better if the other competitors do better too.
if you're all directionally correct and the, uh, rest of the industry follows as well, and, and the Starship and K2 just tend to be a model of, like, rocket payload, but there's other people that wanna serve that, that makes your thing even better.
And I think, I think there's a massive demand signal as well, right? So you have this incredible demand signal from the industry for more launch capacity, and you know, we know from, from, from a physics and engineering perspective, it's possible, right? SpaceX has proved that.
Um, and so I think it's been harder for some of those other providers to, to really catch up, but we're starting to see some of them get closer and closer, right, every year.
And I think, uh, the more launch capacity there is, the, the, the better for us.
But right now, you know, when we build out the business, especially when we forecast out, like, what would we use Starship for when we get to that stage where it's operational, we're actually assuming no price reduction, right? We're, we're not necessarily assuming that SpaceX is going to massively price Starship differently than Falcon 9.
And I think if you can show that you have a viable business and, and an excellent business in a world where they, they don't reduce the cost of Starship necessarily, uh, y- you're gonna be in, in a great spot, right? If you're dependent on them to, you know, go orders of magnitude lower on cost, then yeah, you're not only waiting on the timeline of Starship, but you're waiting on the timeline of the next best competitor as well.
We wanted to focus on Falcon 9 today, and then building a business that when Starship is available, all we're relying at it on is not necessarily cost, but to change the types of spacecraft that we can put inside of the volume of the fairing.
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