alt Hacker NewsRocket lab used to be a New Zealand source of pride, having started there. From the press release, now it’s American. What happened?
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It was always an American company. In order to launch rockets from countries in the US sphere of influence (even from NZ), companies must obtain an FAA license.
Rocket technology itself is so intensely regulated by US export control laws that it’s practically impossible to develop an orbital launch vehicle without being a US- or Europe-registered company.
It is a real shame. It also looks like a lot of engineering work is shifting away from NZ — Auckland seems to be focusing more on operations and space systems, and the launch stuff is moving to the US with Neutron.
They still have significant NZ design, manufacturing, and launch operations.
For regulatory and capital raising reasons the parent company has been US based for quite a few years now. They've also been on a multi-year acquisitions spree and picked up quite a large US workforce through that.
> What happened?
ITAR. (From what I remember, Beck really tried to avoid it. But there isn’t a competitive solution for a New Zealand-based aerospace company.)
Needs access to American capital markets, contracts, governance structures, and jurisdiction (applicable law).
SpaceX previously said that are not allowed to hire foreign nationals generally.
So guess NASA told Rocket that if they want American contracts, they need to move?
https://qz.com/794101/elon-musk-explains-why-he-doesnt-hire-...
at least it's still got a bunch of Kiwi engineers building the Rutherford engine.
Capital probably, market access. It is pretty hard to raise capital for high risk ventures like that everywhere in the world other than the US.
same thing that always happens to companies, money
It sure doesn't help that New Zealand's housing market is one of the most unaffordable in the world.
They do not like to talk about it too much in public these days, but Rocket Lab had somewhat shady beginnings. Once they moved past the semi-amateur phase, their first real project was weapons development on a DARPA contract. They were working on a paste-like semi-solid fuel for throttleable engines for munitions, and other similar things.
That pushed their main NZ investor away, and they somehow hooked up with the US intelligence community, which facilitated a rather unique series of inter-government arrangements for launching US reconnaissance satellites from NZ. That was probably always the appeal -- to launch over China with very little warning. A cheap, rapidly launchable vehicle was always a dream of the US agencies -- in 2003 this was FALCON program (Force Application and Launch from CONUS) run by DARPA and the Air Force, and today it is the Space Force's "Victus".
So, although the bulk of work was done in NZ, Rocket Lab functioned rather intimately with the US spooks from the very early on, including getting some funding from In-Q-Tel. Then in 2013, for the bulk of investment they just had to become a Delaware Corporation, for all the usual reasons. Very soon they moved engine manufacturing to a facility in California. More recently, with the large rocket (Neutron), their main manufacturing operations are in LA and the launch facility in Wallops. All in all, they are an international outfit.