A California company that has yet to even attempt a rocket launch has nonetheless inked a major deal with Lockheed Martin for dozens of missions over the next decade.

“If you compare us to other companies spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing launch vehicles, you should see how fundamentally differentiated our underlying approach must be to achieve that,” ABL CEO Harry O’Hanley told CNBC.

The first stage of ABL Space System’s RS1 rocket being readied at the company’s factory. That rocket will perform its first launch in the spring, carrying two satellites for L2 Aerospace.

Lockheed Martin has contracted ABL Space Systems, of El Segundo, California, a developer of low-cost launch vehicles and launch systems for the small satellite industry, to supply a rocket and associated launch services for the company’s first UK vertical satellite launch.