Rocket Labs Picks New Zealand For Its Launch Site 86
schwit1 writes: The small sat rocket company Rocket Labs has chosen a location in New Zealand as its future launch site. Bloomberg reports: "The company didn't specify how much it was investing in the site, which is due to be completed in the fourth quarter. New Zealand, which has been used in the past by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, is considered a prime location because rockets launched from that deep in the Southern hemisphere can reach a wide range of Earth orbits. Rocket Lab's remote site on the Kaitorete Spit in the Canterbury region also means it has less air and sea traffic, which translates into more frequent launches and economies of scale, the company said. It also will no longer compete for airspace with the U.S. government." Rocket Labs will have to actually launch something to really make the competition heat up. This announcement, however, illustrates that in the long run, the United States has some significant disadvantages as a spaceport location.
The Micronesian islands (Score:1)
If one really has to choose a place to launch their rocket the one closest to the Equator is the best
Furthermore, because of the direction of earth spin, rocket travelling from West to East makes much more sense than the one going the opposite direction
Finally, the location must have ample of empty space, such as an ocean, to the East of it, in case something happens to the during the rocket launch the rocket fragments can drop safely back to earth without hitting landmass
For the 3 reasons above, the Micron
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What about exploding sheeps? [youtube.com]
Not really a US company? (Score:4, Informative)
They were founded and incorporated in NZ and it only because a US company when they took VC money last year. Peter Beck is a kiwi and most of the work is still done there.
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The claimed advantages of launching "deep in the Southern Hemisphere" are bunk. Unless you're launching into retrograde orbits there are no advantages to launching far from the equator. It's more likely that someone is running out of money and has to move back in with his parents.
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Their rockets are not currently capable of orbital speeds. They only have launched a small 60kg rocket with a ceiling of 120km. The rocket they are proposing to build has some very experimental components to it from the hull to the engines.
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Are they aiming for the ISS?
It's not in an equatorial orbit and maybe Canterbury is around as far south as Baykonur (real spelling is in cyrillic) is north.
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Rocket labs will never launch anything to ISS. In the time it would take them to be big enough to be used to launch anything serious, ISS will be long gone.
Let's try technical instead of emotional (Score:2)
Given some other launch company you have no such feelings about, would Canterbury be a likely choice for rockets aimed at the ISS which is not in an equatorial? The class I took in orbital mechanics was well over twenty years ago and I've never seriously applied what I learned in it, but you sound so certain here that perhaps
Two corrections (Score:2)
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So? Electron is still a tiny launcher with little hope of upsizing like Space-X did from Falcon-1 to Falcon-9, no governmental support & no well paying objectives like ISS resupply. I see nothing stopping them from burning through their cash & then closing like so many others have done.
Did you even read my post? (Score:2)
Emotional rantings about the company aside, which I do not care about one way or another, does the location make any sense assuming the rest of the project is viable? Is the location far from the equator an aim for the ISS or do you not know enough about the topic to answer either way and are trying to avoid answering?
To head off an avoidance tactic (Score:2)
Does the location make sense to get to the ISS? If not is there enough stuff going into low inclined orbits for the location to make any sense at all?
I'm just trying to work out why N.Z. and not a Pacific island on the equator.
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Would you also like to argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pin & how that relates to launching sounding rockets to ISS? Because that's pretty much how it sounds.
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Aprés toi, Gaston...
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"did I read your post" That's rich coming from someone attempting to justify NZ as a launch site to ISS for a company making sounding rockets and now hoping to make the move up to a Falcon-1 sized launcher. You clearly have a lot emotionally invested in RL and/or NZ to the point that rational arguments explaining why RL will never launch to ISS are perceived as "emotional rantings". Sit down, imagine that RL was an Argentinian company & reread my posts. Without your emotional blinders on you might be ab
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Asking a question "why N.Z.?" pondering possibilities and asking if it makes sense is NOT "attempting to justify".
Please calm down and do something more practical than an emotional rant and attempting to pick a fight.
OK then, if they were an Argentinian company, sitting on a lot of cash for some reason, with a big rocket, let's say a Russian one proven to actually work, and you had n
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That's rich coming from someone attempting to justify NZ as a launch site
Asking a question "why N.Z.?" pondering possibilities and asking if it makes sense is NOT "attempting to justify".
Please calm down and do something more practical than an emotional rant and attempting to pick a fight.
Lol, I'm quite calm & even amused by your attempts to make where wherever Electron is launched the most important factor in determining if RL has a chance of launching to ISS. The thing is, it's a ridiculous & irrelevant position & you keep mistaking my popping your pie in the sky bubbles for ranting, completely flying over every argument I have made pointing out their irrelevance.
Sit down, imagine that RL was an Argentinian company
OK then, if they were an Argentinian company, sitting on a lot of cash for some reason, with a big rocket, let's say a Russian one proven to actually work, and you had no reason to pick a fight over them would launching from that far south make sense?
Well then:
Argentinia hasn't provided any funding to ISS so there's no incentive to giving them access to ISS, but yo
You brought up Argentina not me (Score:2)
As should be obvious by now I'm only on this thread to get some clarification of this statement:
You've given me nothing to support that. I didn't mention the RL's Electron - you did as an avoidance tactic.
Are you someone who is prepared to back up their statements or are you just a fool shouting into
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Considering that I don't give a shit either way about rocket labs and have barely heard of them there is clearly no mistake. Are you going to keep on attempting pathetic bullying or are you going to back up or abandon your words above? Let's hear something that actually justifies your rubbishing of my mostly forgotten classes in orbital mechanics. Are you going to answer or do I just file you under clueless windbag who knows fuckall abo
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Ah, so it's your honor as a Kiwi that I impugned? It's clearly not your knowledge of what's important to have a successful launch capability nor what would be needed for RL to actually launch to ISS before it deorbits.
I'll note that now that I've given you a detailed explanation why a NZ launch location is irrelevant to RL (exactly what you were asking for) that your complaint is that "you were mean to me". Grow up junior, when you blather nonsense on the internet, not everyone will correct you gently like
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To make money one goes where the market is. The lions share of the market in equatorial launches. High latitude launch locations like NZ are no help for this market & Electron, the only launcher planned to use NZ will never launch to ISS so there really are no advantages to launching from NZ. That The Russians HAVE to because they do not have control over a lower latitude launch location does not make it an advantage, it makes high latitude launch locations (& thus ISS orbital inclination) a necessa
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Trying the race card TWICE?
Clearly your "The claimed advantages of launching "deep in the Southern Hemisphere" are bunk" is bullshit because you have descended to aggression, name calling and playing the race card on someone merely asking you a question to avoid answering it.
I think I get it. I think you know so little about the topic that you didn't know about non-equatorial orbits and didn't know the ISS, the thing most rockets are going to recently, is i
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No you failed at that due to a series of assumptions that had nothing at all to do with my question - transparent avoidance tactics.
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Which then OBVIOUSLY means that if you are going to keep sending stuff to that location for years on end then there is a NEED for such launch sites. Did I use small enough words or should I try again? Which race card are you going to play next as a distraction to hide your lack of understandin
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Ah, because for you, NZ == RU. Small wonder that you use small words, given your lack of insight & knowledge your vocabulary must be similarly limited.
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Really? I await your detailed rebuttal with... no expectation that you are up to the challenge. Now run along to mummy child.
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So how about a detailed rebuttal, detailing why a NZ launch location is so important. Nah you don't have it in you.
You have failed (Score:2)
In terms of getting into those orbitals, yes.
It appears your statement of "The claimed advantages of launching deep in the Southern Hemisphere are bunk" is dependant on Russia giving up on space entirely leaving no options for other players to get stuff to the ISS or descendants. That's a very idiotic assumption in my opinion and explains why you've been growling and flailing about like a dying beast.
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Funny how you keep on going on about reality and defy it at every step.
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Learn something one dimensional boy (Score:2)
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Yes I have dumbed things down a lot with each post since you have had so much trouble working out what I have written.
I don't think I can dumb things down far enough for you one dimensional race card boy.
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So how about you answer my post [slashdot.org] where I explained in depth why Rocket Labs will never launch to ISS from NZ. Ah, I forgot, you're a twee kiwi twit incapable of reasoning.
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So how about you answer my post [slashdot.org] where I explained in depth why Rocket Labs will never launch to ISS from NZ. Ah, I forgot, you're a twee kiwi twit incapable of reasoning.
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So how about you answer my post [slashdot.org] where I explained in depth why Rocket Labs will never launch to ISS from NZ. Ah, I forgot, you're a twee kiwi twit incapable of reasoning.
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So how about you answer my post [slashdot.org] where I explained in depth why Rocket Labs will never launch to ISS from NZ. Ah, I forgot, you're a twee kiwi twit incapable of reasoning.
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Sorry I popped your rosy dreams with a dash of reality. History is littered with failed aerospace companies that ran out of money. Those that do not fail are the exceptions and have to prove themselves before their claims can be taken seriously.
Rocket Labs forecasts that Electron will be able to loft 125kg to 400Km (roughly ISS's orbit). 125 Kg is total payload. Subtract everything needed to keep active control over whatever they would be hoping to deliver to ISS. There is nothing that RL could possibly del
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Did you even read my post?
Let's have some reality then (Score:2)
As I repeatedly have been asking, since you've made a broad technical assertion lets have a broad technical answer without hiding behind likes, dislikes, nationalities or restricting to specific types of rockets a company (which I haven't even heard of before) has used in the past when neither of us have a clue what they are going to be using in the future. They may be completely and
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I'm having a hard time seeing their value launching from any latitude. For $5m you could easily tag along as a secondary payload on a much larger launch. OneWeb is going to be launching up to 36 satellites per launch for their worldwide sat internet coverage (Rocket Lab's claimed target market). You could launch as many as 80 150kg internet sats on one falcon 9 for less than $70m. That's $870k per sat vs $5m.
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Annex NZ as Territory (Score:2)
illustrates that in the long run, the United States has some significant disadvantages as a spaceport location.
We can fix that. Just make NZ a territory of the US and that is not an issue any more. Clears up the Kim Dotcom issue too.
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You won't do that, we don't have any oil.
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That shouldn't be too hard. The PR campaign is prepared:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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illustrates that in the long run, the United States has some significant disadvantages as a spaceport location.
We can fix that. Just make NZ a territory of the US and that is not an issue any more. Clears up the Kim Dotcom issue too.
Although I'm not a great fan of US imperialism, if it gets rid of Kit Dotcom I'd be prepared to make an exception.
National A something S something A something (Score:3)
which has been used in the past by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration,
I'm pretty sure we can all say NASA.
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Whoah there. I hope you spelt out that acronym in your head as you wrote it and didn't actually say THE WORD out loud.
I don't see the logic here (Score:4, Insightful)
A launch site at latitude L can launch into an orbit of inclination L *or higher*. You can launch into a polar orbit from anywhere on the planet. You can only launch into an equatorial orbit from the equator. Equatorial sites have the advantage, not high latitude sites. (Also, the hemisphere doesn't matter. Something launched into low Earth orbit from 45 degrees south will be at 45 degrees north in about 45 minutes time.)
Some technicalities:
Yes, you can launch into one orbit then change plane to a lower inclination later - but doing so in LEO is very expensive. (I think the cheapest way to do it is to put yourself into a high eccentricity orbit, do the plane change at max distance from Earth, then recircularize your orbit into LEO.) ('expense' = delta-v.)
Launching from latitude L also can't launch into retrograde orbits closer than L to 180 degrees. E.g. from latitude +/- 30 degrees, you can launch directly into orbits with inclination between 30 and 150 degrees.
If you specifically want a 45 degree inclination orbit, I don't know whether launching due east from a 45 degree latitude is cheaper or more expensive than launching either NE or SE from an equatorial site. I suspect there is no difference.
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Geek Tourism Opportunity (Score:1)
Can someone please explain (Score:2)
New Zealand, which has been used in the past by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, is considered a prime location because rockets launched from that deep in the Southern hemisphere can reach a wide range of Earth orbits
OK New Zealand is 35 to 45 degrees south of the equator [mapsofworld.com], while the USA (contiguous states) range from 25 to 47 degrees north [mapsofworld.com].
Equitorial orbits are certainly best attained from launching near the equator. I'm not sure but I think that even non-equatorial orbits are best attained from a near equator launch to take advantage of the earth's rotational velocity [northwestern.edu] then change the orbital plane. Even if some orbits are easier to attain when launched away from the equator, don't non-equitorial orbits swing as far N
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You are almost correct. You cannot reach an orbital plane that is inclined less than your launch site's latitude. So you can reach any orbit from the Equator.
Once launched you cannot "change the orbital plane", that would take almost as much energy as the initial launch. In theory it's possible but the rockets we have are nowhere near light and powerful enough
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That's not quite correct. Essentially every geostationary satellite has to make such a correction (though not all geosynchronous satellites are geostationary). The orbital mechanics involved make it easier do do for higher altitude destination orbits, though...and starting further away from the equator certainly isn't a benefit.
It would also be prohibitively costly to make a plane change for a satellite in low Earth orbit directly with rocket thrust, but such orbits precess around Earth's axis with time. If
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I think given Rocketlab's focus on small low-cost orbital launch vehicles, they are not particularly interested in geostationery orbits or equitorial orbits. It's stated right in the article summary, that the major advantage is the wider and more frequent launch windows due to less air traffic.
If your goal is to test launch vehicles rather than to place things into geostationery orbits, then it doesn't matter if your launch location is bad for geostationery orbits. What matters is getting in as many launche
Is Mr Rocket still involved in the company? (Score:2)
I haven't seen any mention of Rocket Lab co-founder, Mark Stevens (who legally changed his name to Mark Rocket), is he still involved? Many years ago he was a neighbour of ours in Christchurch.
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A bit of Googling reveals that he left in 2011: http://www.stuff.co.nz/nationa... [stuff.co.nz]
Oh, and it's Rocket Lab, not Rocket Labs.
have I missed something? (Score:2)
It costs far less in delta-v to lauinch from a site closer to the equator for an equatorial orbit (ie LEO, GSO). Point: Canaveral, being at 28N. NZ is at 42S.
There's a bit of a physics cheat being closer to the equator and launching prograde to rotation. At the equator, this amounts to 1,000mph, the advantage diminishing as you go toward either pole. Winner: Canaveral.
This advantage negates any advantage launching from closer to the pole for a polar orbit. Winner: Canaveral.
someone want to tell me how launc
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Yes, you have: most launches are not equatorial. Polar sun-synchronous orbits are very popular, especially for small satellites.
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And they're cheaper to launch from the equator too.
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No they aren't.. SSOs need a retrograde inclination [wikipedia.org], meaning you have to take out whatever Earth rotation contribution your launch site gives you. Less Earth rotation contribution is better for retrograde orbits.
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If you're a non-US company (shockingly, there are such people!) then that may be a sufficient reason already. Before you even get into politics.
I see elsewhere that Rocket Labs have "recently become a US company, for VC reasons" (paraphrasing). Shrug. That'll make them harder to deal with for some customers. Say - an Indian telecomms company wanting to put up a series of satelli
Safe from trolls (Score:2)
I know I'd like my rocket to be safe from trolls.
sumary is wrong (Score:1)