3 Space Stocks That Could Double When SpaceX Starts Trading

The market is likely to misprice the SpaceX halo as a pure sentiment event, but the bigger second-order effect is valuation compression across the “picks-and-shovels” layer of the orbital economy. That tends to favor the public names with the cleanest backlog visibility and the most obvious operating leverage to a higher sector multiple. RDW should benefit most immediately on a relative basis because its value proposition is less binary than launch success and more tied to budgeted programs, while ASTS has the most torque because any incremental confidence in satellite broadband monetization can re-rate the equity far more than fundamentals alone justify today.

The key risk is timing mismatch: SpaceX’s public debut can pull forward enthusiasm before the market has enough operating data to discriminate winners from story stocks. That usually creates a sharp, tradable move in the first days to weeks, followed by a slower, more painful phase where execution gaps dominate. For RKLB and RDW, the downside is not the SpaceX IPO itself but investor comparison risk if quarter-to-quarter metrics fail to keep up with the new benchmark for “space” relevance.

Contrarianly, the most underappreciated beneficiary may be not the direct competitors, but adjacent infrastructure vendors and defense-linked suppliers with less headline risk and better financing optionality. If capital rotates into the theme, the market may temporarily overpay for pure-play narratives like ASTS while still underappreciating names with real revenue today and lower customer concentration. The upside is strongest over a 3-12 month window if the IPO catalyzes sustained sector inflows; the setup breaks if the IPO is priced too richly and the after-market trade becomes a one-day sentiment event rather than a regime shift.