With global competition accelerating and space becoming a contested operational domain, the industry must embrace a new paradigm characterized by faster cycles, resilient architectures and large-scale manufacturing. Speed is the primary transformation reshaping the industry, driven largely by the realities of contested space.
Read our top four takeaways from our conversation with Peter Krauss, President and CEO of Terran Orbital, or listen to the full episode.
Takeaway 1: Speed is the defining metric of space power
Global competition and contested orbits have transformed the traditional timeline for satellite development. Instead of decade-long cycles, governments and commercial customers are demanding rapid design, build and launch timelines and mission expectations are shifting to match.
“Space has become hotly contested. We’re either playing catch-up or trying to stay ahead,” Krauss said. “When you’re dealing in a contested space where space has become effectively a war zone, speed is critical.”
But speed cannot come at the expense of performance. Terran Orbital rejects the industry trend toward “80% capability at 60% cost,” emphasizing instead a focus on different mission types, shorter lifecycles, and more frequent replenishment.
“I don’t subscribe to this notion where you have to have less just because you’re paying less,” he said. “It’s about different capability and different mission lifecycle expectations.”
Takeaway 2: Vertical integration is an advantage in a stretched supply chain
With thousands of satellites needed across government programs and commercial constellations, the industrial base is under immense strain. Krauss emphasized that scaling production requires not just factories and engineering talent, but a more robust and forward-leaning supply chain.
“This is one of those questions that keeps me up at night,” he said. “The never-before-seen demand… how is the supply chain going to keep pace?”
Terran Orbital has taken a vertical approach, manufacturing roughly 80% of its components in-house, including machining its own parts. This reduces exposure to chokepoints and gives the company more control over speed and quality.
“We’re not just an integrator,” Krauss said. “We’re an actual manufacturer. That’s a real advantage.”
Still, he stressed that the entire ecosystem must evolve:
“My call to industry is: do more. Invest more in the infrastructure, invest more in the capability, invest more in the capacity so we can keep pace with this demand.”
Takeaway 3: Experience and flight heritage matter
In an era when startups are proliferating across the space sector, Krauss said flight heritage and proven performance are becoming essential differentiators, especially as customers demand higher reliability and faster turnaround.
“Space is really hard. Experience matters, heritage matters,” he said. “Industry was leaning a little too heavily into ‘new is cool.’ But who can really perform here? Who can execute?”
Terran Orbital’s decade-plus experience has enabled it to strike a balance between startup agility and disciplined engineering rigor.
“We joke that we’re an 11-year-old startup, but over the years we’ve developed rigor and discipline not typically associated with startups,” Krauss said.
This heritage underpins the company’s efforts to build satellites resilient to the realities of today’s orbital environment, which is congested, contested and expanding beyond LEO.
Takeaway 4: Industrialization is the key to resilience
As space becomes an operational theater, the industry is shifting from exquisite, single-asset systems toward large, distributed constellations that can be replenished quickly if attacked or degraded.
“Space is now a war domain,” Krauss said. “These are not disposable satellites, but they are more easily replenished satellites.”
Large-scale industrialization, modeled after high-capacity automotive factories, is necessary to meet this demand, he said.
“What we’re building is going to look a lot like a very high-capacity, industrialized automotive facility,” he said. “Cut and paste, rinse and repeat. Hundreds of vehicles a year.”
This production volume enables new levels of orbital resilience:
“If one or two satellites fail or are interfered with, there’s a whole army of them to take their place,” Krauss said. “Redundancy like we’ve never seen before.”
He also highlighted the importance of expanding into GEO and cislunar space, which he called “a highly contested space” where the U.S. must accelerate investment.
For more on the industrialization of space, listen to the full episode.
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