Astrotech Corp. (ASTC)

[mas]

when it costs you more to produce a product or service than you get in revenue, that's pretty much a disaster

You are misunderstanding the GM of the payload business. The first million or so of cost is the fixed costs involved in running two big spaceports. Breakeven is around 2 missions, good profit is at 3 and loss is at 1. The GMs of the actual missions themselves are always quite high, ~50%.