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New Zealand Joins Space Race With Successful Launch Of Lightweight 'Electron' Rocket (nzherald.co.nz)
"Rocket Lab: We have lift-off!" wrote long-time Slashdot reader ClarkMills on Wednesday. "History made as Electron launches successfully from Mahia." The New Zealand Herald reports:
Rocket Lab engineers have started analyzing data from yesterday's historic launch from the Mahia Peninsula that took the company to space but not able to complete its orbital mission. Lift-off at 4.20 pm was the first orbital-class rocket launched from a private launch site in the world. New Zealand became the 11th country with potential to launch cargo into space, joining superpowers and tech heavyweights. The Government hailed the lift-off as a major milestone for the country's space industry...
"We didn't quite reach orbit and we'll be investigating why, however reaching space in our first test puts us in an incredibly strong position to accelerate the commercial phase of our program," said founder and chief executive Peter Beck.
Beck added they'd developed their rocket "from scratch" in under four years, and the company's official Twitter feed is now proudly tweeting photos and videos from the launch.
"We didn't quite reach orbit and we'll be investigating why, however reaching space in our first test puts us in an incredibly strong position to accelerate the commercial phase of our program," said founder and chief executive Peter Beck.
Beck added they'd developed their rocket "from scratch" in under four years, and the company's official Twitter feed is now proudly tweeting photos and videos from the launch.
That's a proud feat for such a small country. Welcome to the club.
www.gaiageek.com
Putting stuff in space is still useful, and they are building modern rockets of their own design rather than copying 60 year old designs, so I wouldn't say they are 60 years late. IF BMW design a new car, you wouldn't call them "late" either. Also, designing and manufacturing rockets is still bloody hard, so yeah I'd say it's something to be proud of. As for how useful this is vs. buying launch slots elsewhere, I don't know. If they can do it cheaper, great. If they can find clients willing to pay for launches, great. If they learn something in the process that they can apply elsewhere, swell. If they come up with innovations that advances the field of spaceflight for everyone, even better.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Obviously their problem was that they didn't have any Nazis to help them, you know, like the US did.
https://xkcd.com/984/