Maritime Launch Services is now public on the NEO Exchange

In riding the startup “roller coaster,” Maritime Launch Services Inc. (MLSI) has reached a milestone says Steve Matier, the co-founder and CEO of the space launch infrastructure company looking to build a commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia.

Ahead of the company being public on the NEO Exchange today under symbol MAXQ, SpaceQ had a chance to speak with Matier.

On what this means for MLSI, Matier said “Well, it’s totally a milestone for us. We, you know, we’ve been, moving down this path for … (since) 2016. And, you know, there have been some serious roller coasters, and certainly the last 12 months, and so are our raise in May, additional raise here at the end of the year, and in January, our efforts to get to this point with a publicly listed company that will continue to get interest … by the market now as well. And the investor network, I think is really important for us.”

MLSI won’t be going public as a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) has had been planned early this year, and that it turns out is a good thing. The markets are skittish right now, and SPAC’s aren’t fairing so well as many space oriented SPAC’s are seeing their stick prices fall by half, if they’re lucky.

MLSI opening stock price is going to be low, around $0.17. That doesn’t bother Matier. The “roller coaster” of the last six years, which includes the pandemic and now a war in Ukraine, has forced the company to rethink its business plan, timeline and adapt to circumstances. In doing so it’s laying what it hopes will be a stable foundation for incremental growth.

Over its first six years as a company, MLSI has worked with governments at all levels to prepare for the fact that Canada will become launching state.

The plan now, still in phase 1, is to get the regulatory environment set, along with incrementally building infrastructure. The phase 1 infrastructure plan now includes getting what’s needed in place to support a suborbital launch next year followed by an orbital launch attempt by as yet unnamed launch small satellite launch provider. News on the 2023 demonstration suborbital launch attempt and the launch company is expected next week. Phase 1 also includes generating revenue as early as late 2023 according to Matier with an orbital launch by a small launch provider.

Matier spoke of the first phase saying “the plan really now is to execute on the funding that we have available to get to that phase one suborbital launch. You know, we want to do that in May 2023. We’re fully funded for that we want to move forward with the progress on the medium class launch facility. So roads and grounds, concrete pads, you know, regulatory piece, working with Transport Canada, getting all that stuff in place to be able to do that suborbital launch in the middle of next year. That’s our mission with what we’ve got going right now.”

The plan to get the medium-lift launch vehicle infrastructure built is still part of the plan, but it’s part of phase 2 now. That launch infrastructure will be vehicle agnostic, however the plan still includes using the Ukrainian built Cyclone 4M launch vehicle. Matier said work in the Ukraine is still ongoing despite the war.

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