5 ms·

Rocket Lab Reveals Secret Engine and “Kick Stage” for the Electron Rocket

59 points by curtis 9y ago

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Old article :(. I had hoped that by now, we'd have some details about the last stage - like, what are the engine's parameters and what fuel it uses exactly. Still, great to see this happening. Electron fills an important niche in the launch market.
- versteegen 9y ago
  I'm guessing you already know this, but speculation is that it's Rocket Lab's patented thixotropic monopropellant, VLM, developed when they were working on propulsion tech for missiles and sounding rockets, before they started Electron https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLab/comments/7sg0vn/rocket_lab_launch_also_tested_new_kick_stage/dt4jegj/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLab/comments/7sg0vn/rocket_la...
  - igravious 9y ago
    You know it'd be great if governments around the world started a patent pool of space-related tech in order to kick start the Space Age.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      I'm usually pretty supportive of government involvement, when it comes to fixing up the failures of the market. But for now, I think government should stay away from space industry. The market there isn't broken (yet). Nobody is preventing competition through holding critical pieces of technology; companies are innovating different ways to reduce launch costs and increase reliability. The overall atmosphere is that of friendly competition towards the same goal, not cut-throat business. Governments don't have much to fix there. (Some funding and less strings attached would be nice, though. For instance, NASA could be orders of magnitude more useful if the US Congress would stop micromanaging them and treating them as a large jobs program.) Space Age is happening by itself, it's almost at the critical mass now - I hope nobody tries to interrupt that.
      - simonh 9y ago
        It depends what you mean by 'stay away'. If you mean in the form of interfering by skewing the commercial incentives, yes ok, but we're nowhere near the point where current space technology development can survive without government support. I don't mean in the form of subsidies, those can be retired, but in the form of investment and contracts for commercial services. SpaceX launch manifest would collapse without NASA contracts and in fact the company wouldn't exist in anything like it's current form without them. The military contracts they're getting are very valuable too. There has been talk recently, in military and security circles, that reusable rocket technology could give the US a decade or more lead over their rivals, in terms of technology and space infrastructure. It's possible the military and security contracts SpaceX are starting to get are part of a deliberate effort to funnel funds into this new technology. You could view that as interference, but equally you could view it as a well funded client supporting a supplier, much in the way Apple funnels funds into suppliers to bootstrap new technology for their products.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Yeah, I meant heavy-handed skewing of incentives. Government contracts are absolutely crucial at this point, I agree.
  - discordance 9y ago
    'unspecified green stuff' probably means it's peroxide monopropellent
moh_maya 9y ago
so, if I understood this correctly, this would allow satellites to reduce weight by not carrying fuel required for orbit raising / changing maneuvers.., that would otherwise increase the weight & complexity of the satellite payload? Sort of like, instead of releasing the satellite in GTO, from where the satellite expends fuel / reaction mass to reach GSO, in this case, the rocket uses a tiny secondary engine to move the satellite to the GSO?
- olympus 9y ago
  I suspect that you can save some weight if you have multiple satellites going to the same orbit, or if you have a chain of satellites that can be dropped off into similar orbits as the kick stage can be stopped and started several times. But while each individual satellite doesn’t need an engine, you now have to launch an engine and fuel capable of moving a batch of satellites together, so it’s not like you’re eliminating the weight entirely.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    A serious satellite will still need an engine and some fuel for stationkeeping. But the extra stage would be useful for dropping various cubesats at different orbits, which is what I think is Electron's target market.
jernfrost 9y ago
Not sure I get the significance. Isn't this a part that satellites would contain themselves in other cases? So the benefits of this is satellite makers don't have to add a part themselves to move themselves into orbit. Instead Rocket Lab gives them a standard part which will take care of precise orbit placement?
- rst 9y ago
  A lot of the payloads RocketLab wants to launch are "cubesats" without significant propulsion systems of their own. When traveling as secondary payloads on another launch, these can only wind up in an orbit where its convenient for the launcher to drop them off.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Not all bus manufacturers make their own engines quite often they would offer different options based on the specific station keeping and in orbit maneuvering requirements of the client. There are also a few startups that develop solutions these days for extending the life of satellites in orbit by essentially grabbing it and using their own engine for station keeping. While I don’t know how much room there is in the market for more engines I would say that likely as long as you can have any usecase specific advantages you can probably find a customer.

59 points by curtis 9y ago

Old article :(. I had hoped that by now, we'd have some details about the last stage - like, what are the engine's parameters and what fuel it uses exactly. Still, great to see this happening. Electron fills an important niche in the launch market.

versteegen 9y ago
I'm guessing you already know this, but speculation is that it's Rocket Lab's patented thixotropic monopropellant, VLM, developed when they were working on propulsion tech for missiles and sounding rockets, before they started Electron https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLab/comments/7sg0vn/rocket_lab_launch_also_tested_new_kick_stage/dt4jegj/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLab/comments/7sg0vn/rocket_la...
- igravious 9y ago
  You know it'd be great if governments around the world started a patent pool of space-related tech in order to kick start the Space Age.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I'm usually pretty supportive of government involvement, when it comes to fixing up the failures of the market. But for now, I think government should stay away from space industry. The market there isn't broken (yet). Nobody is preventing competition through holding critical pieces of technology; companies are innovating different ways to reduce launch costs and increase reliability. The overall atmosphere is that of friendly competition towards the same goal, not cut-throat business. Governments don't have much to fix there. (Some funding and less strings attached would be nice, though. For instance, NASA could be orders of magnitude more useful if the US Congress would stop micromanaging them and treating them as a large jobs program.) Space Age is happening by itself, it's almost at the critical mass now - I hope nobody tries to interrupt that.
    - simonh 9y ago
      It depends what you mean by 'stay away'. If you mean in the form of interfering by skewing the commercial incentives, yes ok, but we're nowhere near the point where current space technology development can survive without government support. I don't mean in the form of subsidies, those can be retired, but in the form of investment and contracts for commercial services. SpaceX launch manifest would collapse without NASA contracts and in fact the company wouldn't exist in anything like it's current form without them. The military contracts they're getting are very valuable too. There has been talk recently, in military and security circles, that reusable rocket technology could give the US a decade or more lead over their rivals, in terms of technology and space infrastructure. It's possible the military and security contracts SpaceX are starting to get are part of a deliberate effort to funnel funds into this new technology. You could view that as interference, but equally you could view it as a well funded client supporting a supplier, much in the way Apple funnels funds into suppliers to bootstrap new technology for their products.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Yeah, I meant heavy-handed skewing of incentives. Government contracts are absolutely crucial at this point, I agree.
- discordance 9y ago
  'unspecified green stuff' probably means it's peroxide monopropellent

moh_maya 9y ago

so, if I understood this correctly, this would allow satellites to reduce weight by not carrying fuel required for orbit raising / changing maneuvers.., that would otherwise increase the weight & complexity of the satellite payload? Sort of like, instead of releasing the satellite in GTO, from where the satellite expends fuel / reaction mass to reach GSO, in this case, the rocket uses a tiny secondary engine to move the satellite to the GSO?

olympus 9y ago
I suspect that you can save some weight if you have multiple satellites going to the same orbit, or if you have a chain of satellites that can be dropped off into similar orbits as the kick stage can be stopped and started several times. But while each individual satellite doesn’t need an engine, you now have to launch an engine and fuel capable of moving a batch of satellites together, so it’s not like you’re eliminating the weight entirely.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  A serious satellite will still need an engine and some fuel for stationkeeping. But the extra stage would be useful for dropping various cubesats at different orbits, which is what I think is Electron's target market.

jernfrost 9y ago

Not sure I get the significance. Isn't this a part that satellites would contain themselves in other cases? So the benefits of this is satellite makers don't have to add a part themselves to move themselves into orbit. Instead Rocket Lab gives them a standard part which will take care of precise orbit placement?

rst 9y ago
A lot of the payloads RocketLab wants to launch are "cubesats" without significant propulsion systems of their own. When traveling as secondary payloads on another launch, these can only wind up in an orbit where its convenient for the launcher to drop them off.
dogma1138 9y ago
Not all bus manufacturers make their own engines quite often they would offer different options based on the specific station keeping and in orbit maneuvering requirements of the client. There are also a few startups that develop solutions these days for extending the life of satellites in orbit by essentially grabbing it and using their own engine for station keeping. While I don’t know how much room there is in the market for more engines I would say that likely as long as you can have any usecase specific advantages you can probably find a customer.