By Simon Payne, SatNews
In Short:
- The space industry is splitting into two distinct cultural identities: commercial players utilizing meme-friendly branding versus a defense sector aggressively adopting lethal nomenclature.
- The Signal: The U.S. Space Force’s shift to aggressive naming conventions (Serpents, Reapers) is a deliberate doctrinal move to shed its support service reputation and operationalize the kill chain.
- As commercial and defense architectures integrate, the industry faces a jarring reality where playful commercial hardware must host or launch distinctively violent military payloads.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Shakespeare might have been right about roses, but he never had to brand a heavy-lift launch vehicle or a fire-control constellation. In the space industry of late 2025, names are no longer just labels; they are distinct signals of intent, culture, and capital.
So, here is the question for every satellite executive reading this: What will your next space product be called?
Will it be approachable, funny, and designed to disarm investors? Or will it be sharp, aggressive, and designed to warn adversaries? As 2025 closes, the naming conventions of Earth’s orbital domain have forked violently, revealing a deep cultural schism between the companies building the rockets and the guardians defending the high ground.
The Board Game vs. The War Room
The divergence was starkly illustrated this week by two headlines that, on the surface, seem to belong to different centuries.
First, Rocket Lab announced the qualification of a new fairing system for its Neutron heavy-lift vehicle. The mechanism, designed to encapsulate and release satellite payloads, operates by swallowing the stage whole. In a nod to the nostalgic, marble-eating board game, they named it the “Hungry Hippo.”
It is accessible. It is meme-ready. It frames complex aerospace engineering as a toy, signaling that access to space is becoming routine, safe, and open for business.
Contrast this with the rhetoric emerging from the SpacePower 2025 conference. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Chief of Space Operations, unveiled a new naming convention for the service’s weapon systems and units. Gone are the passive descriptors of the past. In their place are “Serpents”—silent, striking killers—and references to Norse mythology’s warriors of the apocalypse.
This is not a branding exercise; it is a signal of intent. As noted in recent strategic assessments regarding defense space proliferation, the DoD is actively moving from viewing space as a benign support domain to an active kill chain environment. By adopting names associated with lethality, the USSF is telling both adversaries and its own guardians that their job is no longer just to “provide GPS.”
“We needed a new category of Guardians… ready to deliver combat wins,” Saltzman said. You do not send a Hungry Hippo to secure a combat win; you send a Viper.
The Cultural Schism
This naming dichotomy offers a fascinating glimpse into the breakroom vibes of the two dominant sectors in space.
At Rocket Lab, and indeed at SpaceX, with its “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ships—the culture mimics the tech sector. The heavy lifting is masked by irony and approachability. The underlying message is: This is hard, but we are having fun.
At the Pentagon, the mood has shifted from administrative to martial. The naming conventions suggest a force that is reading Thor comics not for entertainment, but for tactical inspiration. They are deliberately crafting a warrior culture for a branch that has spent most of its existence staring at screens in windowless rooms.
The Inevitable Intersection
The irony, of course, is that these two worlds are not parallel lines; they are destined to intersect. The rise of hybrid architectures means that the fun commercial sector will inevitably be the bus driver for the lethal military one.
We are rapidly approaching a future where a Hungry Hippo fairing may be responsible for deploying a Serpent fire-control constellation. The commercial operator will be focused on “eating marbles” (collecting launch fees), while the payload operator is focused on closing the kill chain.
This creates a peculiar cognitive dissonance for the industry. How does the “vibe” of New Space (t-shirts, memes, and transparency) survive contact with the classified, hardened reality of the USSF’s new combat identity?
As a Star Trek (TNG & DS9) fan, I admit a certain bias. I prefer my space nomenclature to have the dignity of the Enterprise or the mystery of Voyager. But perhaps the Space Force is onto something. After all, even in Star Trek, the seemingly benign Voyager 6 eventually evolved into the menacing, galaxy-threatening entity known as V’Ger. Maybe the gap between the “Hungry Hippo” and the “Serpent” isn’t as wide as we think.
About the Author: Simon Payne works at the intersection of space events, news, and technology, building platforms and conferences that connect satellite companies with emerging innovators. He focuses on practical, forward-looking ideas that cut through hype and reflect how the industry actually works. An avid aviator and proud father, he is the “CFO” to four young “startups” (his kids) and the self-proclaimed (.*) of SatNews.