They haven't made their first commercial launch yet. They've certainly received money for scheduled launches in the future, but I'd say they're definitely just getting started.
They are not that different from other space startups.
> "We succeeded in launching the rocket," Zhang told the media. "The experience we gained from evaluating the rocket's flight conditions will help us remodel the rocket as well as advance new rocket research and development."
It's really not common for an organization to make it to orbit on their first try. SpaceX may make it look easy, but it took them 4 tries to finally pull it off on their first rocket.
Astra does seem to have had more than their fair share though.
Landing their first stage was huge, but what other firsts have they had? All the others seem to be of the form "first private X" which excludes government only by definition.
Market for commercial launches existed since early 1990-s. Cubesats were invented at about the same time as SpaceX was incorporated. SpaceX definitely used a lot of existing opportunities.
It is for commercial spaceflight. Commitment-wise, private companies are on the level of early 60's NASA. This is the next phase for human space travel, and the first step in that should be celebrated as an achievement.
The first private manned suborbital flight occurred in 2004 with SpaceShipOne. It is 17 years later at this point and only now do we have paying customers for sub-orbital flight.
They have quite an ambitious space program, several successful satellite missions, and 2 astronauts (so far). Their Mars orbiter is launching next month.
You asserted they had been profitable since 2008, and this article was almost a decade later (and forward-looking). They are not profitable (enough) with launches.
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