Rocket Lab can launch booster recovery, aiming to reuse SpaceX

The next mission for the leader of the small launch, Rocket Lab, will present the second attempt to recover an Electron missile booster after takeoff, splashing it in the ocean.

The company is working to reuse its missiles – just like Elon Musk’s SpaceX is now.

“Where we’re trying to get to is the point where we can literally capture this and then repeat it,” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck told CNBC. “Launch, catch, repeat.”

The next mission, the 20th so far, is scheduled to be launched in May from the New Zealand company’s private unit. The main goal of the mission is to deploy two satellites in orbit for BlackSky.

Beck’s company wants to come backcover boosters, so they can launch more often, while reducing the cost of each mission.

But Rocket Lab’s approach to retrieving its rappels is different from SpaceX, which uses rocket engines to slow down during re-entry and spreads wide legs to land on large plates.

Rocket Lab, on the other hand, is testing a technology that Beck calls an “aero thermal decelerator” – using the atmosphere to slow down the rocket. Once in space, the computer on board Rocket Lab guides the amplifier through re-entry – where it travels up to eight times the speed of sound and is subjected to a heat of over 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Then a parachute unfolds from the top of the booster to slow it down and, like its first recovery in November, will splash into the Pacific Ocean.

The splash is expected to occur approximately 400 miles from the launch site, where a Rocket Lab ship will then take it out of the water. Beck said this is the second of three planned recoveries before the company moves on to its full reuse plan: Removing the parachute booster from the sky with a helicopter.

Rocket Lab is in the process of merging with Vector Acquisition, a special purpose procurement company (SPAC), in a business that values ​​the space company at $ 4.1 billion. The merger is expected to close in the second quarter, when Rocket Lab will list on the Nasdaq, and SPAC shares, which are currently traded under the VACQ ticker, will be transformed into RKLB as a combined company.

A SPAC is a shell company that is set up to raise money through an initial public offering to merge with an existing private company and make it public.

Beck said the Electron amplifier for the next mission will have an “improved heat shield” because the heat shield from the previous recovery mission “took a real beating” during the intense re-entry.

In general, the rocket rapper “was in remarkable shape”, and now the company “understands better the load” on the heat shield, he added.

Beck said there will be another major upgrade before the third recovery mission.

External changes are minimal, he noted, with most updates affecting the “subtleties of thermal load control and management” on the recall.

The goal of Rocket Lab is to “make the minimum amount of reconditioning possible” with the amplifiers it recovers so that it can quickly turn them between launches. The company is reusing parts from the first recovered Electron recall, which is now “severely disassembled,” Beck said.

While the rappelling did “a quick beating in salt water for a few hours”, he said that Rocket Lab has not yet found any lasting problems with the parts it intends to requalify and launch on other missiles.

Once the company completes all three splashdown tests this year, it will move on to air recovery attempts.

Rocket Lab has shown that it can catch a helicopter booster in a test last year, which Beck noted they did on the first try.

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket has carried more than 100 small satellites into orbit in the past two years. The company has also built a spacecraft production business.

Beck’s company has launch facilities in New Zealand and Virginia. The first launch of Rocket Lab in the US has been delayed by the revision of regulations and is not expected to be completed by the end of this year.

The additional launch facility will be essential as Rocket Lab said last year that it has 26 missions reserved for 2021. With both facilities, the company offers up to 132 launch opportunities per year.

In November last year, Beck said Rocket Lab was building electron boosters in less than 30 days and told CNBC that the company had now dropped to 26 days – with the goal of getting production at a rocket rate. every 18 days.

Rocket Lab has also revealed plans for a second larger rocket called the Neutron to lift more payloads than its current Electron rocket. The launch market is divided into three sections: small, medium and heavy lift. The neutron will target that middle section.

The neutron, which is expected to be launched in 2024 for the first time, will be 131 feet high and will be able to carry up to 8,000 kilograms into Earth’s low orbit. Rocket Lab has not revealed how much the Neutron is expected to cost per launch.

The company expects Neutron to cost about $ 200 million. Its first launch will come from NASA’s Wallops flight facility in Virginia. Rocket Lab intends to build a neutron-specific plant in the region.

The neutron will also have a reusable booster, but the new rocket will “land on an ocean platform” using a propulsive landing. The electron “has always been designed to be truly, truly manufacturable, rather than truly, truly reusable,” Beck said.

Shortly after Rocket Lab revealed its plan for Neutron, Musk commented that the rocket “looks familiar,” but it is “still the right move.” SpaceX conducted several short prototype flight tests as it perfected the landing of the Falcon 9 rocket, a route Beck is not sure Rocket Lab will take.

“Whether or not we see the need for hop testing is really to be determined, but our current basic type doesn’t make us do that,” Beck said.