From startups to aerospace giant Boeing Co., entrepreneurs and for-profit companies are working to shake up a $6 billion commercial launch business whose crowded schedules may require years-long waits to loft $200 million communications satellites.

Instead of heavy boosters fired from conventional pads, the new rocketeers envision smaller spacecraft taking off from venues as varied as the remote South Pacific and a giant plane dwarfing Howard Hughes's famed "Spruce Goose." Cut-rate rides will let them loft the latest miniature satellites, which are being built for as little as $10,000 and deployed in swarms to monitor crops, create Web hotspots and track weather systems.

"Any time you start shaving zeroes off the cost of doing something, people will start trying something they never tried before," said A.J. Piplica, chief operating officer of Generation Orbit Launch Services Inc., which is designing a lightweight rocket fired from a Gulfstream business jet.