On its latest launch Friday, Nov. 20, Rocket Lab successfully launched its 16th mission with 30 small satellites and recovered the first stage booster of its Electron rocket. On a call with journalists, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck outlined what the recovery means for the company.
mission 16 launch. Credit: Rocket Lab.
“What I am very pleased to report, is the test was a complete success. We achieved everything, in fact, probably more than we set out too with this particular mission. The stage splashdown completely intact. And you know, what it really proved to us is that, yep, this is a feasible approach,” said Beck.
It can be overstated how important this incremental and crucial step is towards rocket reusability for the company. While the company was founded in 2006, its first orbital test flight wasn’t until May 2017. Now, just over three years later the company has recovered a booster.
It should also be noted that Rocket Lab had previously decided that recovering the first stage was not something they would do. But after conducting a study in 2018, the company changed its mind. The decision was a wise one. The company now hopes that after several more test recovery attempts, they’ll be able to reuse a good portion of the first stage booster and eventually fly the whole recovered stage again.
At this points it’s important to understand that Rocket Lab is still in its infancy as a business. Every decision made must be calculated to maximize available resources. The decision to expend resources on recovery efforts may seem logical in hindsight, but timing the expenditure of resources is critical.
Recovering the booster and getting it qualified to fly again is very much an economic question. Does the process of requalifying it takes as long as producing a new booster? What’s the cost involved? Rocket Lab believes the economics will work. And the equation gets better if they can fly the used booster more than once. Importantly, and as Beck pointed out in the call, by requalifying used boosters they can increase the cadence of their launches.
The approach being taken by Rocket Lab is different than SpaceX. At the moment the company is using a parachute to ‘soft’ land the booster in the ocean. Eventually they’ll use a sling from a helicopter to snag the parachuting booster as it descends.
So what’s going to happen to the recovered stage now and what shape is the stage in? Beck said “all the recovery systems on the vehicle, work flawlessly,” and the first stage landed exactly where they expected it too. The sea state was a challenge during recovery with 2 metre swells going out to the recovery site but increased to 5 metres as they were coming in. Beck said “ironically the stage survived in really great condition after coming back from space, but it did take a bit of a beating out at sea.”
The recovered stage is back in the factory where it will get dissected. They’ll be doing material tests on the stage where it has thermal protection to see how the composite fared.
Beck said that they will be pulling some components off the stage to start the “process of requalifying flight components” with an end goal of flying them again.
The next recovery mission is planned for early next year and will be very similar to this past mission, though with some improved thermal protection.