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Comment by MyelinatedT | Hacker News Reader

It was always an American company. In order to launch rockets from countries in the US sphere of influence (even from NZ), companies must obtain an FAA license.

Rocket technology itself is so intensely regulated by US export control laws that it’s practically impossible to develop an orbital launch vehicle without being a US- or Europe-registered company.

It is a real shame. It also looks like a lot of engineering work is shifting away from NZ — Auckland seems to be focusing more on operations and space systems, and the launch stuff is moving to the US with Neutron.

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Why do people reply with this "it was always american" response? Do you feel like it is necessary to protect RocketLab or something?

It was founded by a guy in new zealand with the first launch complex and first launches coming out of new zealand.

to characterize that as "always american" is so silly it makes you seem like a non serious person.

of course they would have had american resources and connections from the start.

Before they ever launched a rocket they were a primarily American company. That literally just a fact.

It was created by somebody from New Zealand and a lot of early operations was in New Zealand nobody is denying that.

That is false. They were a purely NZ operation launching sub-orbital rockets before they got into DARPA contracts. What you meant to say is "Before they ever launched Electron", and I'm pretty sure that is false too, they weren't "primarily" American, the majority of the workforce was in NZ until years after that.

SpaceX has most staff in California.

It's a Texas company.

Plenty of ”American” financial entities are registered to a holding company abroad. Does that make the company not American because a holding company abroad exists?

I'm 99% sure that they went to the US venture to raise money to build Electron and that's when they made the US company that primary and the NZ company the subsidiary.

Yes you are correct. That's one meaning of primary. I just think it's misleading by the more colloquial meaning to say "primarily a US company" when AFAIK basically all the engineering happened in the NZ subsidiary of what was initially more-or-less a USA shell company. Engine manufacture was the first thing they moved to the USA that I know of, after one or two launches IIRC.

Aside, Peter Beck has said (probably at a talk I was at in 2014) that they initially designed and built Electron in NZ so that they would be importing restricted technology into the USA, to minimise ITAR problems, which only covers exports.

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