Thought the official 'boundary' was 100km (62 miles).

However, if it's a test flight, seems reasonable that they don't want anyone to watch. If the pre-production variant goes bang it'll scare off customers even when the cause can be cured before the production launches.

Regards,

Richard.

NZ space rocket?

If it's fly by wire, let's hope they unfasten the fenceposts first.

Neil

Don't think NZ plan on fitting a nuke to the end of their fireworks, though.

Regards,

Richard

Now I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall that there was at least one launching of a rocket by the Americans down in Canterbury (NZ) during the fifties or early sixties. Maybe there is some quibble about whether or not that one went into space or not, it certainly would not have put anything into orbit.

I don't think there is actually any particularly good reason to choose NZ for a launch site. If you want an equatorial orbit then near the equator is better.

John

They say they want to do polar orbits with spacecraft launched with this rocket. The only real factor in determining where to launch for polar orbits is a good fetch of water to the east. As the rocket goes up, it naturally tends to drift off to the east, so it's better if no-one is there if something goes wrong, and having a big bit of water in the way tends to ensure that.

Regards,

Richard.

The main reason for choosing NZ, is that it is a NZ company. Originally the wanted to use a site near Christchurch, but couldn't get resource consent from the local council, they did fire a test rocket from their proposed site at Lake Ellesmere. Quite a bit of the rocket is 3D printed, the rockets are being built in Auckland.

The satellites are about 100 mm cube.

Yes John the Americans, with the Canterbury Uni fired a number of rockets from the site where Rocket Lab fired their first test rocket. The earlier ones were for high altitude atmospheric research, up into the Ozone layer I think, prior to that the Americans did major research on the Ozone layer in the Antarctic during their pre WW2 expedition.

John, Motat better put in an order for a sample.

Ian S C

I think you'll find Sea Launch is not doing anything at the moment. It was formed by 4 companies; Norway, Russia, Ukraine, USA, and managed by Boeing. I think their last launch was in 2014.

Ian S C