Hooray for Rocket Lab

The lack of an affordable small launcher has been a huge hindrance in development of small satellite and microsatellite capability.  While the 10cm CubeSats can be launched for as little as $100k thanks to companies like NanoRacks (which ships them to the International Space Station, where they are ejected overboard), larger microsats (defining those here as under 100kg) have fewer options, and almost always as a secondary payload. Secondaries launch when the primary payload is ready and go to a similar orbit. That's fine for basic experiments like radiation measurement, but it crimps the possible utility of satellites needing specific orbital altitudes and inclinations, and it prevents timely launch to add coverage for a natural disaster, a military crisis, etc.  Being the primary payload will often cost much more than the satellite: the innovative Pegasus, which in the 1990s gave us relatively affordable and very flexible aircraft-based launch, is still available, but rarely flies, in part because the Pegasus XL costs over $40M. Other small launchers have struggled: I think the count of failed proposals and ventures in the last two decades is likely to top 100. 
Now Electron, from Rocket Lab, has its first Defense Dept business, for $5.7M to launch three microsats. Hopefully this is a breakthrough. There is only room for a few of the many current ventures, and carrying U.S. military payloads successfully is a major mark of prestige and reliability for a new launcher. The Air Force, for the first time ever, requested money in the FY19 budget to fly payloads on small launchers. A recent attempt to build a small airlaunched vehicle by DARPA ended in disaster when the untried propellant exploded, but the agency has established the Small Launch Challenge, which will hopefully fly payloads on short notice this year.  (I never got the need for relying on a nasty new propellant: the Navy proved in 1958 you could do the same thing with solids.)
Whatever comes, the small launcher sector looks like it's finally on the way to being an established industry. Fingers crossed.