New Zealand startup successfully launches rocket
abc.net.au
abc.net.au
Minor quibble: The company is over ten years old; I don't think it's quite a startup anymore.
Some industries have longer incubation periods =)
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.
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.
Ironically I was led to watch RocketLabs launch by r/SpaceX.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
Even though... launching war criminals to an off-world prison would be a great addition to Musk's comic book character persona. ..c Can you imagine the prison break edition!
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.
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.
>SpaceX is doing great but nothing close to this.
This isn't just false, it's unnecessary. It takes nothing away from RocketLab to acknowledge that SpaceX has also done "incredibly innovative things," such as propulsive first stage landings.
Yes, battery pump engines aware new for this scale of a rocket. No, it’s not the first new cycle since the 1960s.
Not front page, stop the press news, but still news.
Edit: Also, as far as I can tell, agriculture including meats is only 8% of New Zealand's economy. Hardly the "main industry". Like most high-income industrialized economies, most of the economy is in services.
As for your edit about NZ's economy being mainly "services", if you subtract industries owned/controlled by Australia/US/UK (e.g banks, TV content), re-apportion industries servicing the Ag/Meat/Milk/Wool/Forestry/Fisheries industry as being part of that industry, and do similar for industries servicing "Human Arrivals" (e.g. house construction being part of Immigration/International Ed), then you end up with the two big drivers of New Zealand's economy: Human Arrivals and Primary Production. They don't fit into the official categories in the govt's accounting system, but they're the real engines of NZ's economy. The rest are just hangers-on.
And the rest of your statement makes no sense. Some tertiary industries service primary industries, but most don't. Some housebuilding and education services immigrants, but the vast majority isn't, and regardless of that fact, it still counts as part of the local GDP. Services are no less "real" than resource industries.
There's an excellent reason to not have nuclear energy in New Zealand, which is that we don't need it. We already have 80% renewable electricity production, and we could realistically bridge that gap with cheaper methods than a nuclear power plant. However, just being "anti-nuclear" for the sake of being "anti-nuclear" isn't one of them.
This is absolutely false.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/nuclear-free-new-zealand/...
>Labour campaigned against nuclear propulsion and weapons
>Labour announced its decision to ban ships that were either nuclear-powered or -armed.
>party activists were unwilling to draw distinctions between nuclear propulsion and nuclear weapons. The mood of the nation was also turning against such political manoeuvring.
>Following confidential discussions over the selection of an acceptable ship, in late 1984 the United States requested that the ageing guided-missile destroyer USS Buchanan visit New Zealand. The Americans hoped that a perception that it was not nuclear-armed would be enough for it to slip under the political radar, and believed they had Lange’s agreement. But on 4 February 1985 the government said no. ‘Near-uncertainty was not now enough for us,’ Lange later explained. ‘Whatever the truth of its armaments, its arrival in New Zealand would be seen as a surrender by the government.’ In response, Washington severed visible intelligence and military ties with New Zealand and downgraded political and diplomatic exchanges. George Shultz confirmed that the United States would no longer maintain its security guarantee to New Zealand, although the ANZUS treaty structure remained in place.
In any case, even if your claim was true (and it quite clearly isn't), rejecting the alliance with our strongest and one of one of our closest allies over the issue isn't a good move, no matter what way you look at it.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/sound/oxford-union-debate
https://publicaddress.net/great-new-zealand-argument/nuclear...
This is a really interesting point. I'm no social scientist, but my naive viewpoint is that not being armed hopefully makes us a less interesting target. Whether or not that matters is hopefully something that would never be put into practice.
In theory it could be fairly cheap, but no country has pulled it off. France for example provided over 2 billion euros / year in direct subsides along side many indirect subsidies.
I'm pretty sure we could if we actually wanted to. But we have a staunch anti-Nuclear policy :)
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.
If I do go back to New Zealand, it would be to Christchurch, where I went to university. The lifestyle in Christchurch is a lot more laid back, more outdoor activities (great skiing and hunting), and rent is a lot cheaper.
Unfortunately the market for Ruby developers is practically non-existent in New Zealand, so I don't think it would be practical for me to move back to NZ for the next 5 years or so.
If you'd like to talk about making those plans a reality, please get in touch! I think that the SMC visa requires me to only work for certain companies that are allowed to sponsor immigrants, though, and that would prevent me from working for an exciting startup like Rocket Lab.
And the shipping cost of moving things to New Zealand by boat to put on a rocket is obviously a rounding error compared to that of moving those things to orbit.
Source: Me; I was almost a customer.
I'm not entirely sure what they expect Winnie to get up to in six weeks.
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.
[1] http://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/17280/tesla-model-3-the-fir...
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.
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.
Could be a successful business niche, but it doesn’t seem likely to revolutionize anything.
Specifically, RL is ideal for a series of small satellites launched at a regular cadence to perform e.g. atmospheric studies. For this niche, booking ride shares requires booking a seat years in advance through a launch broker and then accepting whatever delays eventuate for the entire payload.
If a company or government wants to get a small satellite into space quickly or with tighter constraints on launch windows, RL will be the launcher of preference since their aim is to reduce the time from launch booking to orbital deployment. Being the only payload and customer means using the same payload adaptor each launch, which means lower integration costs. Reducing time from booking to orbit means satellites aren’t sitting in a clean room for years waiting for launch.
Launch costs measured in terms of $/kg are only part of the feasibility of a particular launch platform. It is a (very roughly) similar scenario to commuters using private vehicles rather than public transport.
Probably, a launcher of preference. There are companies that target similar niche, e.g. http://www.maritimelaunch.com/
Do you know of projections for RL future market share? I conjecture less than 5% of total satellite launch market.
So for example rather than spending $50M launching 1 x $150M satellite to slowly gather outer atmospheric studies over a period of decades, launch 50 x $3M satellites with $1M launch costs to gather more data over a shorter period of time.
Since SpaceX is late to fulfill orders, having more options for smaller payloads is probably a pretty good idea even if the market is smaller.
It does make the design much simpler, though.
Which makes me wonder if electric pumps might make sense for larger rockets even though their performance is lower. You'd need a larger first stage, question then is how much bigger vs cost savings from a simpler design. I don't have an out of my keister answer for that though.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/83804825/360kg-motor-assem...
No transcript, but it's a short video.
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.
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.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/12/01/567267573/plan...
Edit: Punctuation
I say this as an Australian.
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?
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, .....