[ad_1]
Rocket Lab, the New Zealand rocket company that seeks to further amplify the commercial space spree, launches its first fully paid payload at the top of an Electron rocket tonight – technically tomorrow morning at launch site. If it succeeds, it will mark a significant new development in the highly competitive world of commercial launches.
Takeoff is scheduled for 2:10 am local time in New Zealand, or 7:10 am Pacific time in the United States. the live stream will start about 20 minutes before that.
The Electron rocket is much smaller than the Falcon 9s we see so often in recent times, with a payload rating of 150 kilograms, just a fraction of the many tons we see sent by SpaceX. But that's all that the founder, CEO and chief engineer of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck, told me recently.
"You can go buy a spot on a big launcher, but they are not very common, with a small rocket you can choose your orbit and choose your schedule," he said. "That's what we're doing here: regular and reliable access to space."
An Electron rocket launched during a previous test.
Just as all cars on the road do not necessarily have to be equipped with a large rig, not all rockets need be Saturn V. 150 kilos are more than enough for paying customers and cover the launch costs . And Beck told me that there is no shortage of paying customers.
"The most important part of the mission is the moment we manifested it," he explained (manifesting the sense of adding a payload to the manifesto). "We went from nothing to a full payload in about 12 weeks."
By way of comparison, some missions or payloads will literally wait for years before they have the opportunity to reach the orbit they need. Loading a few weeks in advance is unusual, it is the least that one can say.
Today's launch will feature Spire, Tyvak / GeoOptics satellites, students at UC Irvine, and high performance space structure systems; you can see the details of these on the manifest (PDF). This is not the first time that an Electron has taken a payload in orbit, but that is the first fully marketed launch.
Rocket Lab does not have ambitions for interplanetary travel, sending people into space, or anything like that. He simply wants to put 150 kilograms into orbit as often as he can, as inexpensively as possible.
"We are not interested in building a larger rocket, we are interested in building more of it," Beck said. "The vehicle is fully composed, we started from the first day with this vehicle designed from a production approach.We are fully vertically integrated, we have no contractors, we do everything in-house. We have significantly intensified the factories. "
"We are looking for a pace of one month this year, then next year once every two weeks," he continued. "Frequency is the key – it's the point of throttling in space right now."
In the end, the plan is to remove a rocket every few days. And if you think this will be enough to meet the demand, wait a few years.
Source link
