I haven’t followed these guys nearly as closely as I do SpaceX, but they appear to be serious.
They’re currently waiting out the weather (specifically, avoiding any risk of “triboelectrification”, which is a fancy word for static electricity). But it seems like they’ll be launching any day now.
Rocket Lab took the SpaceX lesson of building a two-stage kerosene-oxygen rocket, which avoids the difficulties of exotic propellants while being performant enough to be useful. They also use virtually the same engine on the first and second stages, with the first stage just having more of them. It’s a small rocket, with only a 150 kg payload, so we’ll see if there’s enough of a market in this size class.
They have a couple key innovations:
full composite (carbon fiber) body
electric pumps for the engines
The latter in particular is completely unique as far as I know; typically, either the tank is pressurized, or the pumps are driven by a turbine that runs on the main fuel. Electric pumps won’t be as mass efficient, but seem to greatly simplify the design. High power gas turbines are hard.
I’m a little skeptical of their business model but I certainly wish them success.
I wonder if this is a secret plot by remote, isolate New Zealand to hide the fact that they’re really developing intercontinental launch capability? Modern delivery systems are capable of raining down Chinese gooseberries across thousands of kilometers of enemy soil.
You think the country that banned nuclear powered American ships (and ships that could carry nuclear weapons) from its waters and enshrined that policy into law is looking to build nuclear tipped ICBMs? That seems unlikely.
Nice! A little disappointing that they “did not quite reach orbit”, but it took SpaceX two flights before not quite reaching orbit, so this is a very impressive achievement for such a small team.
Wouldn’t a rocket launched from New Zealand (or Australia) require an exorbitant amount of fuel? I mean they have to blast all the way through the earth before going into space, what with being down under and all.
And if they put hair on the rocket like they do their fruit, it’s going to increase drag significantly.