Phantom Space Corp., founded by Jim Cantrell, one of SpaceX's first employees and previously an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, aims to build and launch hundreds of rockets to lift into orbit an expected flood of smaller satellites in need of quick and cheap access to space. 

At $4 million per launch, Phantom says its transport will cost anywhere from $500,000 to $6 million less than what larger payload delivery spacecraft now charge for small satellites.

Phantom plans to buy and license existing components as much as possible, a radical departure from existing space launch production in which companies such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Rocket Lab USA Inc. and Virgin Orbit LLC custom produce nearly all their parts in-house. In Cantrell's view, most rockets remain too bespoke in their largely handcrafted assembly and, thus, unnecessarily expensive.