Aug 082019
 

Rocket Lab is, it seems, planning on recovering and reusing the first stage of their small Electron launch vehicle. The means of recovery is a lot lower tech than that of the Falcon 9… the Electron will pop a drogue ballute to stabilize, then open a parafoil to slow down and drift in the direction of a recovery ship. Before splashdown it will be air-snatched by a large helicopter then flown to the ship. Should be doable; the small size of the booster makes recovery of the entire first stage via this method practical, while Lockheeds Vulcan is, last I checked, only planning on recovering the engines and avionics.

This is of course no threat to SpaceX, which is going increasingly Bigger And Bigger. Still, it will be good to see yet more space launch systems working towards reusability and truly low cost.

On the other hand: no matter how capable Rocket lab gets with future boosters, their choice of launching from new Zealand will be a limiting factor. New Zealand has been since 1984 a “nuclear free zone,” excluding from its territorial waters any ship powered by nuclear reactors. While this would not necessarily seem to exclude nuclear powered spacecraft… why would  someone with such a payload risk it?

 Posted by at 3:29 am