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"I don't buy IPOs": veteran investor names 3 profitable space stocks to own instead of SpaceX. Quick read. * Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are two of just three public companies running profitable space segments; LMT is up 18% year-to-date. * Sather refuses to buy SpaceX at IPO because roughly 911 million insider shares becoming eligible post-lockup could triple the public float. * Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks - and Lockheed Martin didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today. Andrew Sather, co-host of The Investing for Beginners Podcast, wants to own SpaceX, but he refuses to. On the episode AI, Space, and Defense: Separating Hype from True Moats, Sather ranked SpaceX last among the investment options discussed in the episode, and gave two blunt reasons: "One, I don't buy IPOs. Two, there's just too much unknown. We just got to let the price settle." Video Muted Why SpaceX is testing one investor's strictest rule. Sather's discipline is to avoid buying at IPO as a standing rule, wait for price discovery, and separate enthusiasm from logic. Coverage of SpaceX's lockup dynamics flagged roughly 911 million insider shares becoming eligible, substantially larger than the entire IPO, with the public float potentially tripling, and warnings from Robert Greifeld, CNBC's Morgan Brennan, and JonesTrading's Mike O'Rourke, who flagged the combined supply coming to the market of mega-cap listings such as SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. The bull case exists too. Bernstein's Doug Harned raised his SpaceX price target to $248 with an overweight rating on the orbital data center opportunity, and Jim Cramer has framed it as a long-term yes but a short-term wait. Cramer said on air that "the opening price, the closing price and everything in between are out of his hands" once shares hit the syndicate. As Andrew Sather put it, "People selling their shares, all that stuff, that always hits a stock really hard when it first IPOs." Only three public space companies are actually profitable. The host noted that only 3 publicly traded companies are actually running profitable space segments: Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC | NOC Price Prediction), Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), and L3Harris Technologies (NYSE:LHX). He ruled out Blue Origin because they aren't publicly traded today. The host also shared a personal regret about selling Northrop Grumman to chase growth elsewhere, calling it "a stupid mistake" because "that stock's done great and the growth that I thought I was buying into was not growth." Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman reported Q2 2026 Space Systems revenue of $2.753 billion, up 4% year-over-year, with a second-quarter Space Systems operating margin of 8.6%. Full-year guidance calls for about $11 billion in Space Systems sales at margins in the low 10% range. National security space backlog stands at over $16 billion. Shares are down 2.61% year-to-date. Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks - and Lockheed Martin didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today. Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin reported Q2 Space revenue of $3.496 billion, up 6% year-over-year, and now guides 2026 Space sales to between $13.85 billion and $14.05 billion. Full-year Space profit was trimmed to between $1.34 billion and $1.38 billion due to reduced ULA equity earnings tied to the Vulcan launch anomaly investigation. Programs include Orion, Next Generation Interceptor, and Fleet Ballistic Missile. Shares are up 17.9% year-to-date, with a trailing P/E of 21. L3Harris Technologies. L3Harris Technologies reported Space & Mission Systems revenue of about $3 billion, up 7%, with segment margin of 9.8%. Management raised Space & Mission Systems 2026 revenue guidance by $200 million to $11.7 billion on the AMDT-3 constellation win, and CEO Chris Kubasik said L3Harris is "the only company to be awarded all five contracts related to missile tracking" with a $9 billion pipeline over the next several years. Shares trade at a forward P/E of 23. Key takeaways. SpaceX may eventually become a great public company, but that does not guarantee it will be a great investment today. Sather's approach is to let the excitement fade and see where the stock trades when the dust settles. In the meantime, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and L3Harris offer investors immediate exposure to profitable space businesses without the uncertainty surrounding a blockbuster new listing. Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks - and Lockheed Martin didn't make the cut. Grab the names FREE today. Thomas Richmond is a financial writer and content strategist with 5+ years of experience covering stocks and financial markets. He has published over 250 articles focused on individual stock analysis, helping investors better understand business fundamentals, stock valuations, and long-term opportunities. Thomas previously served as a Content Lead at TIKR, a stock research platform, where he helped scale the company's blog to hundreds of articles per month and contributed to a weekly newsletter reaching more than 100,000 investors. He specializes in breaking down complex companies into clear, actionable insights for everyday investors, with a focus on fundamentals-driven research. His work has also been featured on platforms including Seeking Alpha and Sure Dividend. Outside of work, Thomas enjoys weight lifting and soccer.

The floodgates are open after another Chinese company lands a reusable rocket. "We will put the booster back into service for another flight as soon as possible." It has been a little more than a month since China recovered an orbital-class rocket booster for the first time. A second launch operator accomplished a similar feat Tuesday in another sign of China's growing launch capability. It took 10 years for a second US launch company, Blue Origin, to propulsively land an orbital-class booster after SpaceX did it with the Falcon 9 rocket in 2015. SpaceX has since added a second reusable rocket to its fleet with Starship and its Super Heavy booster. Perhaps a third American company will join SpaceX and Blue Origin's club in 2027. Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Relativity Space, and Firefly Aerospace - working in partnership with Northrop Grumman - are working on reusable rockets that could make their first flights in the next couple of years. A similar number of launch companies are working on reusable rockets in China. Some of them operate under the auspices of the sprawling state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). Others are more commercial in nature, driven by capital investment from private industry. After years of development, these Chinese launch companies made their first attempts to land their new rocket boosters last December. A company named LandSpace was first when it launched the first test flight of its new Zhuque-3 rocket. The rocket successfully reached orbit but missed its landing. Later that month, CASC's Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology launched a new rocket named the Long March 12A with similar results. Then, a third rocket, the Long March 10B from another CASC division, became the first to achieve a successful booster recovery July 10. The Long March 10B's first stage was caught by a net recovery mechanism on an offshore platform in the South China Sea. Now, 40 days later, LandSpace's Zhuque-3 has flown again, this time on a flight punctuated by a picture-perfect landing of its first-stage booster in northwestern China. Landing from space. The Zhuque-3, or ZQ-3, rocket lifted off from a commercial launch zone at China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 7:35 pm EDT (23:35 UTC) Tuesday, about an hour after sunrise Wednesday at the spaceport in the Gobi Desert. Nine methane-fueled engines powered the 216-foot-tall (66-meter) rocket on a course southeast from Jiuquan, then the rocket's upper stage took over the task of placing a single satellite into orbit. The rocket's first stage, made of stainless steel, soared to the edge of space, then maneuvered toward a prepared landing zone some 240 miles (390 kilometers) downrange, settling to a propulsive touchdown on four extendable landing legs. LandSpace, founded in 2015, declared the mission a total success. MISSION SUCCESS | ZhuQue-3 Y2 Reusable Launch Vehicle Achieved Full Success in Orbital Insertion and First-Stage Recovery "This mission marks China's first-ever successful recovery attempt of the first stage of an orbital-class launch vehicle using landing legs, and China's first successful booster recovery on land," LandSpace said in a statement. "It is a pivotal flight test for Zhuque-3 as it transitions from the technological demonstration and verification phase toward the engineering application phase of reusability." LandSpace's engineers made several changes to the rocket after the crash landing of the first Zhuque-3 booster in December. The updates included using just a single engine for the final phase of landing and modifications to the rocket's heat shield for protection from reentry conditions. "This mission lays a solid foundation for subsequent stages, including post-recovery inspection and maintenance, reuse flights, and commercial applications," LandSpace said. "The first stage underwent high-altitude gliding, followed by ignition for deceleration upon re-entry, aerodynamic glide control, and finally, a landing burn to slow down," Dai Zheng, head of the Zhuque-3 project at LandSpace, told Chinese state television. "That final braking maneuver was executed beautifully, achieving a soft landing and realizing our original design goal of a 'one-shot reverse-parking' maneuver while moving at high speed. "Our team will immediately begin inspecting the recovered first-stage booster," Dai said. "We will collect status data and perform maintenance and overhauls. Once that work is complete, we will put the booster back into service for another flight as soon as possible." The Zhuque-3's basic design can place a payload of more than 17,600 pounds (8 metric tons) into low-Earth orbit after accounting for the fuel reserves required for booster recovery. LandSpace eventually plans to debut an upgraded Zhuque-3 carrying more propellant and using more powerful engines, raising its payload capacity to more than 40,000 pounds (18.3 metric tons) in reusable mode or a few tons more with an expendable booster. The Zhuque-3 builds on LandSpace's earlier work on a smaller rocket named the Zhuque-2, which became the world's first methane-fueled launcher to reach orbit in 2023. Second mover. China's rocket companies still have some work to do to demonstrate booster turnaround and reuse. The Long March 10B booster recovered last month is supposed to fly again before the end of the year, according to CASC. LandSpace did not immediately say when it might reuse the Zhuque-3 booster, but the company previously said it plans to fly each booster at least 20 times. With the benefits of reuse, LandSpace says its medium-lift rocket will be optimized for deploying Chinese satellite mega-constellations, such as those for broadband connectivity. Chinese officials project the country's two largest constellations, Guowang and Qianfan, will require 700 to 800 rocket launches over the next seven to 10 years. Several more Chinese rockets with reusable boosters could fly in the next few months. Next in line might be the second flight and landing attempt of the Long March 12A. Others include the Long March 12B backed by the Chinese government, the Pallas-1 from Galactic Energy, the Hyperbola-3 from iSpace, and Space Pioneer's Tianlong-3, which failed on its first test launch earlier this year. It would not be surprising if one or more of these Chinese rockets launch and land before one of the next crop of American rockets does so. The US rocket industry has long been dominant in the two most important metrics: number of orbital launches and payload mass to orbit. This is almost entirely thanks to the growth of SpaceX and its pioneering reusable Falcon 9 rocket. For the past few years, Falcon 9s have flown an average of three times per week, usually on fully loaded missions to deliver more capacity to SpaceX's Starlink Internet network. But SpaceX is looking to wind down the Falcon 9 rocket soon and could stop offering the workhorse launch vehicle to commercial customers after 2028. The replacement is Starship, a massive rocket with at least five times the payload capacity of the Falcon 9. It is designed for full reuse to support a more rapid launch cadence than the Falcon 9, which has likely already had its busiest year. Starship remains experimental, with many milestones to go before it can fully replace the Falcon 9. Starship also has a history of delays, so further schedule slips may cause SpaceX to reconsider the retirement of its workhorse. China is working on a Starship-like rocket called the Long March 9, but it won't fly until sometime after 2030. The payload envelope for Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket falls in between Falcon 9 and Starship. New Glenn appeared poised for a breakout year after the first reflight of a recovered first-stage booster, but the rocket is now grounded after an explosion on the launch pad in Florida in May. The other major US launch provider, United Launch Alliance, has no near-term plans for a reusable architecture. Nobody else is close, either. This all leaves companies like Rocket Lab, Stoke, Relativity, and others with a potential opening in the market for their medium- to heavy-class rockets once Falcon 9 is off the stage. China, meanwhile, has a bench that is arguably just as deep as the US launch industry. None of China's space companies - even the colossal state-owned CASC - can come close to matching SpaceX's rapid-fire launch schedule. Collectively, they only launch about half as often as SpaceX. But that is with a fleet of entirely expendable rockets. China's foray into the realm of reusable rockets could change that. Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world's space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

Northrop Grumman to help build NASA's Moon Base. Lunar infrastructure demo missions to mature essential technology needed to survive the lunar night using HALO derived systems. Published August 19, 2026 Northrop Grumman Corp. is developing a series of Lunar Infrastructure Demo (LID) missions to help NASA rapidly mature the power and data backbone for a Moon Base, including technology capable of surviving the lunar night and supporting a sustained human presence at the moon's South Pole. To help NASA move faster, Northrop Grumman is reusing hardware and technologies derived from the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) program. HALO's power, data and mechanical interfaces will enable NASA to move with speed and begin gathering real lunar surface performance data sooner. The LID-1, LID-2, and LID-3 missions are designed to prove and scale the infrastructure that Artemis crews and robotic explorers will depend on. By demonstrating how key surface assets can remain powered, protected and connected through lunar night and shadow, these missions will give NASA critical data to shape Artemis surface campaigns and long-duration lunar operations. "As America embarks on the next chapter in human space exploration, our Lunar Infrastructure Demos will help turn the moon into a place where astronauts can stay, work and make discoveries that benefit humanity," said David Schiller, vice president, civil space and sciences, Northrop Grumman. "Our ready-to-fly, reliable HALO technologies allow NASA to move faster, putting in place robust infrastructure that can endure the lunar night and establish a strong blueprint for a future Moon Base." Get curated news on YOUR industry. Enter your email to receive its newsletters.