New Zealand startup successfully launches rocket

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-22/new-zealand-successfully-launches-first-rocket-into-space/9347886

by RachelF • 9 years ago

223 102 9 years ago

abc.net.au

kirrent• 9 years ago

The electron is a really cool rocket. It's constructed using carbon composite tanks and uses Rocketlab's Rutherford engine. The engine is constructed using a large amount of 3d printing and uses battery powered electrically driven fuel pumps.

bmiranda• 9 years ago

It's worth mentioning that while electric turbopumps are a lot better that pressure-fed designs, for larger engines they aren't as effective as using pre-burners (due to the weight of the batteries).

It does make the design much simpler, though.

inamberclad• 9 years ago

The weight is an issue here too. It's something like 200kg of battery in the first stage. The second stage is designed to use its batteries one by one, and them drop them as they're expended.

syedkarim3• 9 years ago

I met Peter Beck (CEO/founder) at SmallSat 2014. Hat-tip for doing what he set out to do. He told me that a Ferrari was not much more than a bunch of carbon fiber, software, and fuel--and only costs $500,000. So there is no reason that a small rocket, which is also carbon fiber, software, and fuel, can't also be $500,000. Now that his launch vehicle is orbital, I'm looking forward to it someday being a half-million-dollar launch vehicle.

Minor quibble: The company is over ten years old; I don't think it's quite a startup anymore.

cptaj• 9 years ago

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.

Some industries have longer incubation periods =)

mappu• 9 years ago

I think this launch was commercial - it put three satellites from two private companies (Planet Labs / Spire Global) into orbit.

cryptoz2• 9 years ago

The company is over ten years old; I don't think it's quite a startup anymore.

The age of a company has nothing to do with it being a startup. There's a good description of 'startup' in PG's essay here: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

Startups are businesses that are designed to grow quickly. Rocket Lab is. Just because it's been 10 years doesn't mean it's not a startup.

Also, both SpaceX and Tesla are startups. Tesla recently pivoted from being a car company to an energy company, and is only about 1% or so of their way along to their goals. SpaceX has not even begun with their goals of colonizing Mars yet.

These are all startups because they are designed to grow quickly and are nowhere near their goals yet.

marktangotango• 9 years ago

Though the launch was only a test, Rocket Lab managed to launch three satellites into orbit for tracking shipping, weather and imaging.

Orbital class rocket, not bad. Also, made it to orbit on the second attempt, beat Spacex by two launches :P The Rutherford engine sea level Isp of 303 on RP1/LOX is damn impressive.

JshWright2• 9 years ago

Isp is awesome, TWR... not so much. The electric turbopumps are a big propellant efficiency win, but aren't without other costs.

igni• 9 years ago

I was surprised to hear they were using LION packs, dropped mid second-stage. I'm not sure why but I expected super-capacitors or maybe flywheels arranged gyroscopically within the stages. Batteries are heavy - but must be the best fit for now.

Symmetry• 9 years ago

I'd mostly worry about mass ratio, though they do drop off some of the batteries half way on the second stage.

cryptoz2• 9 years ago

beat Spacex by two launches

Cute, yes, but they were also not sued by their competitors and forced at the last minute to relocate to a salty small island that caused epic issues for those launches, as SpaceX was by ULA.

toomanybeersies4• 9 years ago

It's interesting seeing the difference between the publicity that SpaceX gets, and the publicity of other rocket companies like RocketLab get.

It shows how effective the PR machine for SpaceX is. RocketLabs launch is pretty significant, considering it's the first orbital launch of a rocket designed and built in a small nation.

This has barely hit the news. I guess part of the reason is that it's not in the USA, and that New Zealand isn't capable of putting nuclear warheads on top of one, unlike North Korea.

jimjimjim• 9 years ago

yep, it's quite amazing how little reporting of this there has been from US sites. news sites from other countries had much more coverage.

Denzel• 9 years ago

Seems par for the course don't you think, SpaceX didn't receive much coverage for their grasshopper tests or Falcon 1 flights either? In fact, most of their coverage has just come in the last couple of years after working diligently for ~13 years prior to that.

Ironically I was led to watch RocketLabs launch by r/SpaceX.

bacon_waffle• 9 years ago

Beyond not having nuclear weapons to put on a rocket - we're quite disinterested in having anything to do with them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_nuclear-free_zone

lostlogin5• 9 years ago

Disinterested with a touch of virulent hatred for them.

boznz• 9 years ago

I'm sure it will get plenty of coverage here tonight. I think the news channels are over the PM getting pregnant and there are no rugby matches on :-)

lostlogin5• 9 years ago

Careful where you go for that news as talkback radio will be (more) deadly for the next year or two. Overheard at a grey power cuppa yesterday, ‘She was pregnant when negotiating to be Prime Minister did you know? It’s unbelieveable’.

adventured• 9 years ago

Isn't Rocket Lab a US start-up, funded almost entirely by US money, operated by US executives, with headquarters in Huntington Beach CA and a New Zealand subsidiary?

syedkarim3• 9 years ago

American money paying for New Zealand operations.

Source: Me; I was almost a customer.

toomanybeersies4• 9 years ago

It was started in New Zealand, and got its initial investment from New Zealand, but the majority of funding now comes from America and the majority of ownership is American.

However, most of the R&D, operations, and manufacturing are done in New Zealand. I almost applied for a job there, but it would've required relocating to Auckland, which I wasn't willing to do.

andars• 9 years ago

I'm pretty sure they recently restructured by creating Rocket Lab US and making the existing Rocket Lab NZ a subsidiary to get more flexibility regarding some arms restrictions.

erdle• 9 years ago

If you're curious about the PR machine associated with SpaceX... see Tesla's stock price and news versus the very real and known issues with their debt/liabilities and production.

virgilp• 9 years ago

Do remember that there may be interested parties painting a bleaker "production issues"/ "liabilities" picture than the truth. See e.g. this review [1].

[1] http://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/17280/tesla-model-3-the-fir...

ioquatix2• 9 years ago

New Zealand isn't capable of putting nuclear warheads on top of one

I'm pretty sure we could if we actually wanted to. But we have a staunch anti-Nuclear policy :)

universenz• 9 years ago

..and we also know that it's not how big your button is, but how you use it. We'd rather use ours to push human kind forward.

hyperpallium• 9 years ago

reusability; spaceships landing upright like they were always supposed to; mars

mikeash2• 9 years ago

You don’t generally make the news for doing things others have done before you. Don’t get me wrong, this company is cool and their success is super exciting, but I see no reason for them to get any press coverage outside of specialty media.

SpaceX was pretty quiet too when they were first starting out, and when they’re all over the news now it’s generally because they’re doing something new.

I doubt nukes have anything to do with it. The Falcon 9 would be an atrociously bad ICBM.

zik2• 9 years ago

RocketLab's doing incredibly innovative things. They're using an entirely new kind of rocket engine power cycle. This is the first new power cycle invented since the Full Flow Staged Combustion Cycle in the 1960s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_pump-fed_engine

They're using entirely 3d printed rocket engines and also full carbon composite rocket bodies - another first for a rocket of this scale.

Where it comes to "doing things others haven't done before you" they're doing an amazing job. SpaceX is doing great but nothing close to this.

toomanybeersies4• 9 years ago

It's a new country launching a rocket though. That seems like reasonably big news to me.

Not front page, stop the press news, but still news.

lostlogin5• 9 years ago

Im trying to imagine what would happen if nuclear capable launches were proposed in NZ. It wouldn’t be insurrection, but some something in that ballpark would happen.

dalbasal2• 9 years ago

With SpaceX, I find it hard to fault them for this.

Public interest in spacetech is inevitably tied to futurism, idealism, idealism, big ideas and such.

SpaceX is building the biggest ever rockets, declaring mars as a goal, landing rockets on rafts like a sci-fi flick... Build the future stuff. They also launch geostationary satelites and supply the ICC, in fact that's what they do as a business.

Whether you want to call this PR, vision, culture or whatever... SpaceX calls satelites and ICC transport "routine" work. It's how they do what they do, not what they do. What they do is the stuff that sounds like breakthroughs, breaking through the limitations keeping us stuck on earth.

It's hard to rate psace companies on a coolness scale. Any space company is already way up on the scale. SpaceX... is like the hollywood version.

In any case, huge congratulations toRocket Lab. A rocket company with weekly scheduled flights on a shoestring is a feat.

ccozan• 9 years ago

minor nitpick: I think you meant ISS [0] not ICC.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

juanmirocks• 9 years ago

This is this company's first launch and as such the company is not known for the general public. Moreover, no Elon Musk-like legend has showed up for RocketLab yet. Therefore, it is pretty comprehensible that this launch has received less coverage.

t-brown• 9 years ago

It was their second launch with the Electron. Wired (https://www.wired.com/story/rocket-lab-still-testing/), has an article about them.

JshWright2• 9 years ago

New Zealand isn't capable of putting nuclear warheads on top of one, unlike North Korea.

North Korea couldn't put a warhead on top of this one either. The nominal payload of the Electron is 150kg. While there are nuclear warheads that small (the W80 is in that range), it's very unlikely North Korea has achieved anything close to that level of miniaturization.

snrplfth3• 9 years ago

Also this is a cryogenic rocket which has to be kept cold and launched soon after fueling. Not terribly good for nuclear launches.

LeifCarrotson• 9 years ago

As always, Scott Manley is an excellent source of commentary:

https://youtu.be/U5k1mlu6A7I

No transcript, but it's a short video.

igravious• 9 years ago

Thanks for the link. Super informative commentary. That might have to become a goto YouTube channel of mine seeing as how the frequency of rocket launches is ramping up.

sundvor• 9 years ago

Brilliant video, thanks! Scott Manley's videos are most excellent - this includes but is not limited to his Elite Dangerous and Kerbal Space Program ones.

bmcusick2• 9 years ago

What they’ve accomplished is amazing engineering. I’m sort of scratching my head at the economics though. Their cost to orbit is about $15,000/kg. That’s more expensive than the Space Shuttle was. And the CEO has said they’re not working on reusability.

Their goal of rapid manufacturing and frequent launches seems laudable in an expendable launch vehicle world. I’m not sure how they plan to survive when SpaceX and Blue Origin achieve rapid reusability though.

mwilcox• 9 years ago

Purely scale / number of launches. They're certified to launch up to 120 times per year.

syedkarim3• 9 years ago

Their differentiation is the ticket price: $5M, for now. A SpaceX F9 is $60M. The cost per kg may be an order of magnitude greater, but so is the ticket price.

jessriedel4• 9 years ago

This is only really useful if you want to put a tiny satellite in an unusual orbit. For frequently trafficked orbits, you can just hitch a ride on a larger launch.

Could be a successful business niche, but it doesn’t seem likely to revolutionize anything.

paulsutter• 9 years ago

Much faster time to launch is the value proposition. It can take years waiting to piggyback on a larger launch, especially given how often the large launches are delayed.

How long are our careers, really? Random years-long delays are a real problem. It's easier to make a satellite really light than to wait for the cheapest price per kg.

bmcusick2• 9 years ago

Once Blue Origin and SpaceX have rapid-turnaround, their rockets will be able to fly, land, refuel, and fly again within a day or two. It's not just a cost thing. Rapid reusability also increases the launch cadence.

DrScump• 9 years ago

Is there no adverse environmental impact from dumping battery packs into the atmosphere to burn up?

lostlogin5• 9 years ago

It caused grumbling. Not sure where it all go to though as I can’t find any conclusion as it seems they calculated an amount of waste that exceeds that launched. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&o...

smnrchrds• 9 years ago

Planet Money recently did a series on the satellite market. Rocket Lab was one of the companies they interviewed. Pretty fascinating stuff.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/12/01/567267573/plan...

chrismorgan• 9 years ago

I was surprised at how weird it felt to have AU/NZ accents on the mission control (or whatever you call it) channel in the video at the end of that page.

I say this as an Australian.

bspn• 9 years ago

My favorite part of the aborted Friday (EST) launch was when the Kiwi controller was asking the American launch director whether he wanted any pre-determined halts in the launch sequence. It took them 3 goes for the American to understand what he was asking :)

askvictor• 9 years ago

The trajectory of the first stage seems very vertical compared to other launches; anyone have any explanations?

Taniwha• 9 years ago

I think they were launching due south, directly away from the camera

Also most launches are essentially go straight up to get out of the atmospheric drag asap, then hang a turn into orbit - the optimal parameters for when you make that turn is going to be a trade off of a bunch of things - drag, the orbit you want, air pressure that day, .....

WillReplyfFood• 9 years ago

Is there any startup currently investigating cheaper alternatives to reuseable fireworks?

twic• 9 years ago

is "fireworks" literal or figurative there?

sapphire_tomb2• 9 years ago

Does anyone have a decent "Explain like I'm five" explanation for their choice of launch site? My (admittedly layman) understanding of rocket launching was the being near the equator was good, because you pick up a tonne of free velocity that way, and this launch site seems very far south to me.

Edit: Punctuation

arctor_bob• 9 years ago

A)being close to equator helps but not dramatically, logistics are still more important B)few satellites are actually launched to an equatorial orbit, most of the time you want an inclined or a polar one. If you want your orbit to have around 40 degree inclination NZ is perfect.

sapphire_tomb2• 9 years ago

Thank you, clearly I need to read up on this a bit more!

sspiff• 9 years ago

"Instead of paying hundreds of millions for a very big satellite in geostationary orbit, we now have new constellations of smaller — what we call nano satellites — in low earth orbit at much lower cost," he said.

So, what about earth orbit congestion/pollution caused by these "nano satellites"? Tracking a few thousand big objects is easier than tracking a few million small objects, I would suspect.

And if the cheaper launchers mean that smaller businesses or wealthy individuals will be able to launch their own nano-fleets, there's an increased risk of operator error or just malevolent operators as well.

Won't this just lead to more quickly exhausting the capacity of earth-orbiting space?

Gravityloss• 9 years ago

Yes, it's a real problem. Satellites should either be shot to a low enough orbit so they decay soon (5 years or so for small satellites), or then they should have a deorbit mechanism.

twtw• 9 years ago

At least for the planet labs Dove satellites, the orbits are low enough that they decay within a year or two.

pseudolus• 9 years ago

They have what has to be one of the most beautiful launch sites I've ever seen. Does anyone know if they offer any onsite tours?

nyokodo• 9 years ago

Not at the moment unfortunately. I checked recently.

New Zealand startup successfully launches rocket

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