Small rockets take off

In mid-November, a company called Rocket Lab will attempt to send six small satellites in orbit around the Earth – a fairly mundane business, with the exception of the size of the launch rocket.

New York, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News, application – November 2, 2018): In mid-November, a company called Rocket Lab will attempt to send six small satellites into orbit around the Earth – a fairly mundane business, to except for the size of the launch rocket.

It is only 17 meters (56 feet) high and 1.2 meters (four feet) in diameter.

And if all goes well, the American company will send more than one of its Electron rockets every month in 2019.

Rocket Lab, created in 2006, made a successful test flight in January and is expected this month to be the first of a new generation of companies to declare themselves operational in the "small pitchers industry". The launch window will open on November 11th. Unless incident or delay after a month of technical delay, the rocket will take off from the world's first private orbital launch field in Mahia, New Zealand.

Like Rocket Lab, dozens of startups are developing rockets designed to send small micro or nanosatellites, weighing from a few kilos to a few hundred kilograms, in space.

This is a brand new chapter for the New Space Race, the last industry revolution that began about a decade ago and is based on private and non-public innovation, particularly in the United States.

The creation of Rocket Lab has a black carbon composite fuselage with "Electron" engraved on the side in white letters.

Its engine is produced by a Californian 3D printer, which has reduced costs, said the company's chief financial officer, Adam Spice, to AFP.

Taking off from New Zealand also has its advantages over traditional sites in Florida or California: there are not as many planes in the air.

"If you do not have air traffic to release, we have the opportunity to take off more frequently than any other place on the planet," noted Spice.

The company has six Electron rockets in production and plans 16 launches next year.

– "Much more flexibility" – Rocket Lab plans are not going to be cheap – relatively, its rocket is expensive per kilo.

But this suggests the possibility of frequent launches that would help to reduce the current backlog.

Nowadays, companies wishing to place a small satellite in the space are only offered space available in a rocket launched by SpaceX or Arianespace, which are mainly reserved for bigger and more expensive satellites.

The space-operated Falcon 9 operated by SpaceX of Elon Musk is 70 meters tall (more than four times larger than the Electron) and can carry 23 tons of freight in space (instead 250 kilos for the Electron).

But small rockets should help reduce launch waiting times from 18 to 24 months, or even longer, in larger companies to just six months.

Customers are willing to pay for this fast service: Rocket Lab's price is about $ 40,000 per kilo, compared to $ 3,000 per kilogram at SpaceX.

"What you have with small pitchers is that you get a lot more flexibility," said Rob Coneybeer, a Vector investor, one of Rocket Lab's competitors.

Virgin Orbit, Stratolaunch and Gilmour, Australia are among the other small rocket companies.

Chad Anderson, CEO of the investment network Space Angels, says there are about 180 companies working on small rockets.

But, he told AFP, there are only a dozen people in the world who actually own equipment. And even less have the necessary funding.

"Maybe half a dozen people are really believable right now," the investor said.

– Many applications – The success of this half dozen companies will help define the speed with which the new race to space takes place.

In 2009, when SpaceX launched its first satellite in orbit, there were about a dozen private space companies, according to Anderson.

Today, there are more than 375 companies of this type, which have mobilized more than 16 billion dollars.

The applications of this technology are numerous – first in telecommunications, then in Earth observation, according to participants at the Second Space Summit organized by The Economist in New York on Thursday.

Obtaining more accurate images of the Earth more often would be something that would be of interest to businesses across multiple sectors, from defense to agriculture, insurance, and finance.

Such satellites could help anything from pipeline repair to assessing flood damage, for example.

SpaceKnow already uses them to count parked cars at Disney World in Florida or the number of pools in Brazil, as well as to observe the activities of 6,000 factories in China.

Such data is retrieved by Wall Street customers, who use it as a new type of economic indicator.

In order for all these services to be supported, more satellites must be in orbit and, therefore, more rockets must be launched. Nearly ten years after the creation of SpaceX, the path to space is expanding.