Watch Rocket Lab lift off from US for first time, put radio-sniffing sats into orbit

Rocket Lab this week successfully launched its first Electron rocket from American soil, and put three satellites into low Earth orbit. The flight began at 1800 EST (2300 UTC) on Tuesday, and sent a small payload into space for HawkEye 360, a US outfit that uses satellites to pinpoint the location of radio-frequency sources, …

[Neil Barnes]

NAFTU

Surely they could have come up with a way to call is 'SNAFU'?

[FIA]

Re: NAFTU

"Termination In Transit of Suspected Unresponsive Projectile" surely?

[Duncan Macdonald]

Little competition

Given the difference in lifting capacity between the Electron rocket and the Falcon 9 - LITTLE competition is correct.

The Electron rocket can lift 300kg to LEO whereas the Falcon 9 can lift 22,800kg to LEO. (Roughly the difference between a motorbike pizza delivery and a full UPS van.)

[Andy 73]

Re: Little competition

Surely the competition is more concerned with $ per kg than absolute gross weight?

Of course there are a few things we want up in space that weigh 22 tonnes (it's the weight of a decent sized tracked JCB, for reference), but a lot more that weigh significantly less...

[FeepingCreature]

Re: Little competition

"Sadly," SpaceX is also enormously cheaper per kg. Generally speaking, rockets scale with size, because fuel mass goes up with cube, whereas non-fuel mass goes up with ~square.

As things stand (Wikipedia), a RocketLab launch costs ~7m$ for 300kg or ~23k$/kg, whereas a SpaceX launch costs 67m$ for 17.4t or ~4k$/kg.

And SpaceX do offer rideshare missions.