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The years I spent in New Zealand painted a vivid picture of a society of doers. I think there’s something to the idea that this comes in part from being a landmass the size of Colorado, with not much more than 4 million people, with the freedom and requirements to maintain the infrastructure of being a sovereign nation.
Seeing a NZ rocket launch condures an image of a small group of doers dreaming big. Way to go NZ!
Wait, isn't Rocket Lab an american company, and they're just locating the rocket in NZ?
Founders were Kiwis but HQ is in California...
Sweet as!
It's unfortunate that the doers leave NZ as soon as possible to do stuff elsewhere most of the time.
I really wish Ireland could embrace the same attitude of NZ.
So why did you leave? (Asking because I have an opportunity to move there.)
I was about to say that launching so far from the equator sounds very fuel-inefficient, but it turns out that their launchpad's latitude (39 degrees south) is nearer the equator than Russia's primary launch site, the Baikonur Cosmodrome (45 degrees north). For reference, Cape Canaveral is 28 degrees north.
TBF Baikonur is known to be a fairly bad location from an efficiency perspective if you're trying for GTO/GEO: using pretty much the same rocket, you can send 6~7t to GTO from Baikonur while you can send 10 from Kourou (on 5N).
That's why as time went on, China kept building their new launch facilities more and more southernly (Jiuquan was built on 40N in the 50s, the recently opened Wenchang sits on 19N).
If you're launching into sun-synchronous and highly inclined or polar orbits, you want to be as far north or south as possible. They're not going for low inclination orbits, but rather the opposite, if you look at the ground track of an Iridium satellite, that's a perfect example of a polar orbit.
Spire is one of their customers, that's earth observation, perfect use case example for polar orbit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_orbit
To avoid dropping the first stage on a populated area if you're launching into a polar orbit, you also need a very empty area of land or an ocean under your flightpath. For example Israel has a domestic satellite launch capability (they're one of the few countries that launches LEO stuff westbound, to retrograde orbits) because they both can't drop first stages on the eastern neigbours, and can't launch heading north or south.
For what it's worth, this specific launch was polar, I believe. But yes, for equatorial launches, it will take a lot more dV to flatten it out.
I do like their little kick stage on top that finalizes payload delivery, though. That will be useful for this sort of thing.
This has always bothered me especially given their plans to send a rover to the moon. Launching from Tokelau, Niue or the Cook Islands would make more longterm sense.
If you think about it, the added starting velocity from launching on the equator is nice but is still only ~6% of the total velocity required to get into low Earth orbit. (0.0625 = 1.5 / 24 given orbital period in LEO is ~90 minutes and rotation period is 24 hours). Even at 45 degrees latitude you're only losing 0.707*6=4.4% of your target velocity.
So there's an interesting context here. This isn't the first time there were a bunch of small rocket companies around. It'll be interesting to see if RL can cross the chasm.
In the past these companies have failed because they focused on providing a launch platform. They said, "Build it and they will come". But no one did, so good vehicles died.
But timing is (probably) different now. There are many more launches per year. And not only that, but there's a few paradigm shifts that could help RL out. Small sats are becoming much more common. Electronics got smaller and thus did the satellites. But also, we've been finding that you can use off the shelf electronics if you stay in LEO. Granted, you should use ECC CPUs and memory (but don't have to), but that's a lot cheaper than silicon on sapphire.
This makes things a little different. Before there was little pressure to push down the cost of a launch. If your satellite cost $250m, what's the difference in a few million per launch? And why would you risk that on a newer company? (Why Musk sent up his Tesla) BUT if your satellites are only a few hundred thousand dollars, then there's A LOT of pressure to push down launch costs. You can take more risks on these smaller companies that don't have a good (or any!) track record.
There's a lot more going on too. But I think these small companies have a much better chance of succeeding than their ancestors.
The most impressive thing about their rockets are the motors they use.
All modern liquid rocket motors use turbo pumps to pressurize liquid fuel and drive it into the combustion chamber. All other rockets use some fuel to run a turbine that powers the pumps, with the variations being how that entire system is piped together.
The Rocket Lab motor, Rutherford, uses a lithium ion battery and electric motor to power the pumps. This reduces the amount of fuel required to lift cargo into space by about 10% compared to SpaceX’s already impressive Merlin 1D motors.
Also, they 3D print them in 24 hours, all in one part (sans electronics I suppose). Which is incredibly impressive.
A fuel burning turbine is much more mass efficient than a lithium battery powered one. And hence also makes the whole vehicle more fuel efficient.
But a turbine is much harder to develop and manufacture. Especially at small scale, the turbine is also inefficient so it has less advantage to a battery there.
It wouldn't make sense to run the Falcon 9 pumps with batteries.
3D printing them in 24 hours is impressive. I've had some toys barely bigger than my arm that take longer than that to print.
Obviously these rocket engines are using a totally different technology, but it's still really impressive that they are able to build them so quickly.
My favorite thing about Rocket Lab is the rocket engine they use[1]. By replacing the turbopump with a electric motor they were able to remove one of the single most complicated and expensive parts of a rocket engine. As battery densities keep increasing we should see electrically fed engines being used on bigger and bigger rockets.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_(rocket_engine)
Electric turbopumps are an answer to the question: "how small can you make a commercially viable orbital rocket?"
Atmospheric drag effects rocket performance less and less the larger a rocket gets (square-cube law), so that a rocket like the Space Shuttle can effectively ignore the atmosphere. Conversely, the smaller a rocket gets, the harder and harder launch gets. This is the problem Rocket Lab has decided to attack.
A decade ago, SpaceX launched the very similar Falcon 1. Falcon 1 was designed a decade ago, and you can see a large amount of the tech advancements in the last decade in Rocket Lab's design:
1. Cheap, lightweight Lithium Polymer (LiPo) batteries.
2. Cheap and performant brushless motor controllers.
3. Additive manufacturing for cheaply making complex parts without significant labor costs.
4. Advances in composites to enable the first orbital-class composite-bodied rocket.
Without any one of these advances, Rocket Lab would not be viable. It still may end up not being viable. Rocket Lab can never compete on bulk orbital cargo pricing. However, Rocket Lab's vision of applying recent tech advancements to bring down the smallest possible launcher size is extremely commendable.
As I recall, it remains the case that rocket engines get worse performance with an electric fuel pump.
Electric has two issues. First of all, the energy density (after controlling for efficiency of electric motors / turbo pumps) is lower than that of rocket fuel. Second of all, an empty battery weighs as much as a full one, whereas used fuel no longer weighs down the rocket.
Super interesting! I wonder if there is an orbital limit to this technology. From what I remember, Rocket labs is mainly focusing on low orbital launches. As great as batteries are, they are no where near the energy density of the propellants out there. Though the advancement of electrical pumps for rockets is super exciting!
Yeh, they also let drop batteries from the 2nd stage to reduce weight.
From http://www.nanosats.eu (Oct 2018 stats)
Nanosats launched: 966
CubeSats launched: 878
Countries with nanosats: 58
Companies in database: 323
Forecast: over 3000 nanosats to launch in 6 years
> A SysML compliant and tool-independent CubeSat template model that provides building blocks that can be specialized to support MBSE CubeSat design will lower the cost of development ... start-up and mature satellite development organizations can benefit from ... common model structure and framework to support increased production without jeopardizing successful deployment and operation.
> Many of these organizations are university programs that combine aerospace engineering instruction with fundamental research while developing, launching, and operating a spacecraft. With a planned turnover of most of the engineering staff within a short period of time ... need a common engineering framework and knowledge base that stores the institutional knowledge acquired by previous space missions, so that incoming personnel can quickly contribute
I’m pretty sure “It’s Business Time” refers to a Flight of the Conchords song:
Yup - that's what I assumed when I saw the name and that it's in NZ. It got a pretty good chuckle out of me.
Confirmed.
For those asking if there is demand for small rockets that can be sent up often.
"Australian start-up Fleet Space Technologies sent up two satellites ... Fleet has spent all year waiting to hitch rides on rockets from SpaceX and the Indian government ... About six weeks ago, it found out there was room on the Rocket Lab rocket. Typically, it takes months or years to get satellites ready, installed and certified for launch, but in this new era of cheap, fast space, Fleet got its hardware on board in record time."
Good to see Fleet Space launching. They are Adelaide based.
We used to have one of the biggest missile/rocket ranges in the world once. Kistler were thinking of bringing the range back in the 00s but didn't survive. As NZ picks up the baton and charges forward it is good to see we still have a role to play with payloads.
Do these nano satellites turn into some form of space junk, when will the orbit deteriorate / will they burn up?
As long as cubesat launch providers stick to ~500km orbits, they will typically deorbit within a few years (depending on their ballistic coefficient). The ITU guideline is a max lifetime of 25 years. They burn up in the atmosphere on re-entry.
More info here: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/space/workshops/2015-prague-sma...
Actually part of the payload for this flight was a technology demonstrator called NABEO, which is a sort of sail meant to more rapidly de-orbit small spacecraft using atmospheric drag.
As launching satellites into space becomes cheaper, I'd imagine we will get increasing issues of satellite collisions and interference. Do we need a regulatory framework to address this?
I understand space is becoming increasingly militarized. I wonder what a war will of shooting at satellites will look like. What would happen if all the satellites were taken out?
There is the Space Liability Convention[1], but it's not a solution, just a 'we promise not to harm the space environment intentionally and be cooperative' kind of thing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention
The Combined Space Operations Center (part of the US military) tracks space objects (satellites, debris) and their risk of collision (called conjunctions). They send satellite operators conjunction warnings, so that they can take action if need be.
I am approaching my 40's and wonder am I just a bit too old that by the space flight is for the common person I will have missed my chance. I really hope I can make it to space one day.
I’m a little older, I’m banking my hopes on an option in 30 years. Just visited my grandpa yesterday for his 90th birthday, his body is slowing down but his mind is as sharp as ever.
I’m not counting it out just yet.
> SpaceX can take far more cargo to space, but Rocket Lab is pitching its nimbleness and low-cost as ways to give new customers access to space and to do so on a more convenient schedule.
Weren't small low-cost launches the original goal of SpaceX? I recall Elon saying there wasn't actually that much demand, which is why they were forced to scale up in the first place. Has the market changed recently for small low-cost launches?
Yes, the smallsat market has grown immensely over the last decade.[0] The propagation of larger CubeSat standards and the advent of rideshare in particular have driven growth. Many companies (Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, Vector, Relativity...) are now betting that demand is sufficient to support at least a handful of dedicated smallsat launchers to avoid the hassles & delays that come from rideshare.
[0] http://www.scielo.br/img/revistas/jatm/v9n3//2175-9146-jatm-..., via http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2175...
Fleet.space (a company local to me in Adelaide) had 2 satellites as they payload. They only found out about the launch 6 weeks ago and had to build the satellites in that time.
I can't help but wonder if there are some interesting applications for electrically pumped rocket engines beyond just the small satellite market. For example, could you attach 3 or 4 Electron-derived boosters to an Atlas V first stage and use them to land it like a Falcon 9?
Very cool, but is there really a future for tiny expendable rockets in a world of big reusable ones?
I'm really excited about space flight and wish we could make it to Mars already, build space colonies etc. At the same time I'm also very excited about electric vehicle and hope we can replace all combustion engines with clean, sustainable, electric drives. Of course this goes had in hand with green energy sources.
So at times I try to consolidate these views and struggle with it. What's going to be the carbon impact of ordinary people going to space? Or worse what's the carbon impact of following Musk's vision of using BFR for super quick international travel? I can only imagine it to be catastrophic.
Look up JAXAs SS-520-5. 10m height, 0.5m diam, got a cubesat to orbit year ago. Smallest orbital rocket by far.
Very cool! Are these reusable?
While this is fantastic news on one hand, it is concerning that cheap launches will lead to so much debris in low earth orbit that future generations will find it difficult to orbit without significant risk of micrometeorite strikes.
I wish I could put software in one of those shoebox satellites.
I'm still chuckling that they called the rocket "It's Business Time".
I'm guessing partly a hat tip to SpaceX and the naming of their drone ships, but more so named after a song by the Flight of the Conchords.
> The rocket dubbed “It’s Business Time” took off just before 5 p.m.
We've advanced to the point of giving jokey pop culture names to space vehicles. And if they wanted to promote New Zealand's prominence in the world, they couldn't have made a better choice.