Rocket Lab launch streak goes up in smoke with 41st mission It's back to zero days without incident at Rocket Lab, whose 41st launch ended in failure this morning, breaking a streak that had been going since 2021. It's not entirely clear what happened from the launch livestream nor a press release confirming the failure, but we know when it happened: around two and a half minutes into …
Probably because RL is a US company. They have a launch site in Virginia. While they can launch from NZ, most of the business is via the US, so they are tightly tied into the US regulatory system.
It just makes economic sense. It is rocket science after all! It's bloody hard, and what RL have done to date is amazing. So too, BTW, is what SpaceX is doing, but Peter Beck seems to be of the methodical sort, taking his time, paying attention to detail. Whereas Mr Musk takes the software approach to development -- build something, light it and see what happens. Then debug the problem and correct it, and light the next one. Either way no one else is doing what RL and SpaceX are doing, which is throwing up rockets regularly.
Fingers crossed RL can sort this quickly. It appears to be a second stage problem.
"While we've been staring goggle-eyed at the conflagrations coming out of Elon Musk's SpaceX,Rocket Lab has been quietly becoming arguably the second biggest player in the private space industry with a minimum of explosive fanfare."
Yes because the first launch attempt of an experimental record breaking rocket design is apparently not expected to fail according to the author.
In the mean time (Falcon 9 and Falcon heavy):
Launch
#19 in flight failure 28 June 2015
#XX pre-launch failure 3 September 2016 (between launches 28 and 29),
227 successful launches in a row, knock on wood. Record number of launches by a US booster in a year, 64 and looking for a possible 100 launches this year. It all seems so routine now but I still love watching the boosters land, especially the dual Falcon Heavy landings.
Musk lost me with the beyond stupid "pedo" incident. Still a big fan of SpaceX. So looking forward to the next Starship attempt, go Starship!
Also a big fan of Rocket Lab. Looking forward to them getting this problem resolved and launching rockets again.
I see no indication that the author thinks the way you assert they do.
Conflagrations coming out of SpaceX... yes, that's how they get rockets flying.
Explosive fanfare... that's just a pun, indicating that RL are just quietly getting on with it whereas SpaceX drive the PR wagon hard.
to be fair, Elon Musk is a lot less of a "drag factor" than the US Federal Government and NASA has been, which is what the US launch program has had to deal with. Until SpaceX, it wasn't important that NASA rockets fly, it was important that they be built in as many congressional districts as possible.
Disclosure: I'm "eh" on Musk himself. I have great respect for the things he (or his money) has accomplished, not too fond of many of the ways he has done it, but I'm not sure they can be separated. I'm totally wowed by what SpaceX has accomplished, though perhaps they are just doing what the shuttle promised us -- 100% falsely -- in the 1970s. I'm completely torn on Tesla -- I'm impressed that they moved EVs from a decades-long unfulfilled promise to far beyond anything I expected possible, but other than brute-force performance, I'm not actually impressed with the cars themselves. I own an EV (among several cars), I hope to continue to be a (non-exclusive) EV owner, but really have no desire for that EV to be a Tesla, but I recognize that if not for Tesla, I'm not sure my (boring, but cute) EV would exist.
...apart from the the excitement of a launch, especially a night one, is that the wonderfully darkened mission control room had no signs of illuminated scrolling text on the desk jockeys in front of their screens. Eat that, Hollywood! This is real mission control rocket science/engineering, not some wannbee hoodie-hacker :-)
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