Kiyosaki Letter's 'Launch Cheat Code' — The Under-$7 Space Stock Behind the SpaceX Shadow Pitch

The Hook

Robert Kiyosaki, the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” author who has spent the past year building a newsletter business, wants you to believe he has found SpaceX’s “secret” weakness. The promo lands in your inbox with an urgent pitch: a tiny company operating from a hangar at Kennedy Space Center, “literally in the shadow of the most powerful space company on earth,” has solved a problem that “every single rocket and space company on earth needs in order to ever be truly profitable.”

The mechanism is clever. Kiyosaki’s “Financial 007,” Garrett Baldwin, frames it as simple physics: “Every time a Falcon 9 leaves its concrete pad, SpaceX burns roughly $200,000 in fuel just to fight gravity from a dead stop.” This company, the argument goes, eliminates that “fuel snowball” by launching rockets from 45,000 feet at supersonic speed, already above most of the atmosphere, already moving at Mach 1.6. Their fuel cost: about $20,000 per mission. One-tenth of what SpaceX pays.

The promo deploys every classic direct-response technique: the countdown to a catalyst (first commercial launch by end of 2026), the comparison to a past winner (Rocket Lab at $4B before anyone on Wall Street knew its name), and the “get in before the institutions” scarcity trigger. The stock trades under $7 a share. At $149/year for the newsletter with a 30-day refund, it’s not the most expensive pitch we’ve seen, but the emotional hooks are polished.

The Big Claim

The central argument rests on three premises. First, that air-launching rockets from supersonic jets at 45,000 feet yields a genuine 10X fuel cost advantage over ground-based launches. Second, that the company’s unique commercial fleet of F-104 Starfighter jets (the only civilian-operated fleet capable of sustained supersonic flight at extreme altitudes) gives it an unassailable moat. Third, that the backlog of 38,000 satellites scheduled for launch over the next decade, coupled with 18-to-24-month waitlists on existing launch vehicles, creates an enormous market gap that this company can fill.

The comparison to Rocket Lab is the emotional centerpiece. “If you had described Rocket Lab to a hundred sophisticated investors in 2017, ninety-five of them would have said the same thing: ‘It is too early.’ Then Rocket Lab proved they could launch.” RKLB went from a $4 billion SPAC valuation to roughly $50 billion today. The implication is unmistakable: this is the next Rocket Lab, and you are hearing about it even earlier. It’s a comparison we already dissected in a Motley Fool promo that pitched Rocket Lab as the “next Nvidia.”

The promo also highlights that “the historical average valuation of U.S. launch companies at the moment they receive their FAA launch license has been approximately $1.7 billion.” For a company currently valued at roughly $180 million, the math suggests a potential 9X return just on reaching the FAA licensing milestone, before any commercial revenue materializes.

The Mechanism

The company behind the tease is Starfighters Space (FJET), a publicly traded micro-cap that went public in December 2025 at $3.59 per share. The asset base is unusual: seven F-104 Starfighter supersonic jets, built in the 1960s and 1970s, with airframes projected to remain operational through 2035. These are not rocket ships. They are Cold War-era interceptors that hold altitude and speed records and have been maintained for decades as a niche commercial fleet operating out of Kennedy Space Center.

The business plan has several layers. The headline act is “Starlaunch,” an under-wing rocket system designed to launch microsatellites weighing roughly 20 kilograms into low Earth orbit. The concept: the F-104 takes off, climbs to 45,000 feet at Mach 1.6, releases the rocket, and the rocket does the rest. The jet lands, refuels, and can fly again three times in a single day. In the meantime, the company generates contract revenue from hypersonic testing work for the Department of Defense, pilot training services, and a newly announced “wind tunnel in the sky” Mach 2 / zero-gravity testing platform.

Partners sound impressive on paper: Lockheed Martin, GE Aerospace, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, and the Defense Innovation Unit. The Pentagon has tripled its hypersonic research budget over five years, and every branch of the military has active budget lines for hypersonic testing infrastructure. FJET operates under a special agreement at Kennedy Space Center, a multi-billion-dollar federal facility it accesses for what the promo describes as “$500.”

The near-term catalyst is real: “Hardware is ordered. The drop test is next. The first commercial launch is targeted for the end of 2026.” GE Aerospace is the rocket design partner on Starlaunch 1, which recently cleared its critical design review. A drop test (proving the rocket can be safely released from the F-104 and ignited) is expected later this year.

The Real Pick

FJET trades on the NYSE American. Market cap is roughly $180 million. The company had about $15 million in cash at the end of Q1 2026 and has been burning approximately $5 million per quarter developing its testing platforms and launch system. That implies roughly nine months of runway before needing to raise additional capital, absent a meaningful increase in contract revenue.

FJET has been available at roughly this price for over two years; the December 2025 IPO at $3.59 was essentially the same price as the crowdfunding rounds that preceded it. This is not a stock that has been hidden from public markets. Anyone who wanted shares could have bought them at any point since the offering began in September 2024.

Does the Math Check Out?

The pitch leans on a few specific claims, and each one deserves a closer look.

The fuel cost claim. A Falcon 9 launch burns roughly $200,000 worth of RP-1 rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen. That is a real figure, and it represents the cost of lifting a 550-ton rocket from sea level to orbit. FJET claims its per-mission fuel cost is $20,000, using jet fuel for the F-104 first stage and a much smaller rocket for the remainder. On fuel alone, the 10X advantage holds. But fuel is a tiny fraction of total launch costs. SpaceX charges customers $67 million for a Falcon 9 launch, not $200,000. The real costs are in the hardware, the recovery operations, the pads, the personnel. FJET’s $20,000 fuel advantage does not translate to a 10X cheaper launch for customers.

The cost-per-kilogram comparison. StockGumshoe pulled FJET’s own investor presentation, which estimates an eventual cost of $15,000 per kilogram for a Starlaunch mission. For comparison, a dedicated small-sat launcher like Rocket Lab’s Electron charges roughly $25,000-30,000 per kilogram. A SpaceX rideshare on a Transporter mission (where dozens of small satellites share a single Falcon 9) costs roughly $5,000-6,000 per kilogram. FJET is pitching itself as cheaper than a dedicated launch (which it is, on paper) but glosses over the fact that shared launches are already 60-70% cheaper than its aspirational pricing. And if Starship ever achieves its target of $100-200 per kilogram, the entire small-launch economics shift dramatically.

The Rocket Lab comparison. When Rocket Lab was at FJET’s stage in 2017, it had a working rocket. The Electron had completed test flights. The company had a dedicated launch site in New Zealand, paying customers with signed contracts, and real flight heritage. FJET has none of those things. It has a testing platform (Starlaunch 1) that is not designed to reach orbit, a production rocket (Starlaunch 2) that exists only in planning documents, and no revenue from commercial launches. The comparison flatters FJET, but it is not an apples-to-apples parallel. Rocket Lab’s actual story is worth understanding on its own terms, as we covered in our look at Rocket Lab’s Nasdaq listing.

The cash runway. At $15 million in cash and a $5 million quarterly burn rate, FJET has roughly three quarters before it needs fresh capital, assuming burn does not accelerate as testing ramps up. The company has raised roughly $80 million in total equity since 2024. Additional dilution is likely before any commercial revenue arrives.

What They Got Right

The hypersonic testing market is real. The Pentagon is genuinely spending heavily on hypersonic weapons development, and every major defense contractor needs testing infrastructure. FJET’s unique fleet of commercially operated supersonic jets does fill a niche that government-owned ranges cannot always match on speed and flexibility.

Air launch is a proven concept. Virgin Orbit successfully placed satellites in orbit using an air-launched rocket from a 747 before its bankruptcy. Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus has been air-launching payloads since 1990. The physics works. Launching from altitude and speed genuinely reduces the energy required to reach orbit, and FJET’s F-104 can reach speeds and altitudes that most air-launch platforms cannot match.

The small-satellite launch backlog is not imaginary. With over 38,000 satellites expected to be built and launched in the next decade, and waitlists stretching 18-24 months on popular launch vehicles, there is genuine demand for additional launch capacity. Even a niche player capturing a tiny slice of that market could build a viable business.

The founder brought real operational experience. Before the post-IPO leadership turmoil, the company was built by someone who spent decades in commercial space infrastructure. The GE Aerospace partnership for rocket development is a credible engineering arrangement, not a press-release placeholder.

What They Got Wrong

The “10X cheaper than SpaceX” framing is misleading. Fuel is roughly 0.3% of a Falcon 9’s total launch cost. Saving 90% on fuel does not make a launch 90% cheaper. The promo implies a cost advantage that does not exist at the level that matters to customers writing checks for satellite launches.

Starlaunch 1 cannot reach orbit. The current rocket under development is a testing platform designed to stay in the atmosphere. Orbital capability requires Starlaunch 2, which is described only as being “in planning and development.” The “first commercial launch by end of 2026” target applies to Starlaunch 1, which is a drop test, not an orbital mission. That is an important distinction that the promo blurs.

The governance red flags are significant. The CEO and his wife resigned shortly after the IPO and sued the company; the company counter-sued for financial mismanagement. This is not normal post-IPO turbulence. It suggests fundamental disagreements about the company’s direction and use of funds, and it happened immediately after the public was invited to invest.

The fleet is 60 years old. The F-104 Starfighter entered service in 1958. Even with excellent maintenance (and the company clearly takes pride in keeping these aircraft airworthy), operating seven 60-year-old fighter jets as the backbone of a commercial launch business is not a sustainable long-term strategy. The airframe life projection through 2035 assumes continued access to spare parts and maintenance expertise for an aircraft that has been out of production for nearly 50 years.

The Verdict

Starfighters Space is a fascinating idea attached to a difficult investment case. The hypersonic testing business is genuine and generates real contracts, but it is small, likely not enough to offset the company’s quarterly cash burn. The satellite launch ambition is bold, but the path from Starlaunch 1 (an atmospheric drop test) to Starlaunch 2 (an orbital-capable rocket) to FAA licensing to commercial operations is measured in years and tens of millions of dollars, not months.

At a $180 million market cap with no revenue and roughly three quarters of cash runway, FJET is priced more like an option on a future business than a business itself. That does not mean it cannot work. The space industry is full of companies that looked like long shots and turned into category-defining successes. But the combination of post-IPO leadership litigation, a pre-revenue business model, and a launch concept that still needs to prove it can reach orbit makes this a high-risk proposition.

If you are excited about small-satellite launch, Rocket Lab (RKLB) is a far more established company with proven orbital capability, real revenue, and a clear path to its larger Neutron rocket. It trades at a much higher valuation (roughly $50 billion), but you are paying for proven execution rather than a drop-test milestone.

For FJET, the upcoming August 19 earnings report should provide clarity on cash position, burn rate, and any progress on the Starlaunch timeline. That is the next data point worth watching.

This is not financial advice. NewsletterVetter has no position in any stock mentioned. The Kiyosaki Letter’s own disclaimer notes that past performance of comparable companies like Rocket Lab does not guarantee future results, and that investments in early-stage space companies carry a high risk of total loss.