I'm surprised no one is talking about this here. Within

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>>8930521
It's a fine thing. More spaceships is better. Congratulations to Brian and the rest of the Kiwis...

>>8930521
So did it work?

>>8930521
I'm particularly interested in the electric pumps. From what I understand, turbopumps are a major portion of the cost and design effort involved in building a launch vehicle. so if electric pumps work out then they could be a neat alternative for small launchers and upper stages.

Is there going to be a stream of the launch?

>>8930571
no because it their first test and they don't want bad publicity if they fail. Also there is nothing but sheep in the vicinity so bandwidth is poor. I'm also told New Zealand media is space-unfriendly so no local networks plan to cover it.

>* Has the potential to take over the cubesat launch market

Unfortunately such a market doesn't actually exist
And SpaceX will take over the "launch batches of small sats" market

>>8930553
but how is it going to work out when you need batteries to supply the power, and batteries have a small fraction of the energy density as kerosene/oxygen or w/e they are using

>>8930816
Thats kinda fitting, considering the kiwi being a flightless bird and all that

>>8930901
I don't think cubesats are going to be the big money maker for them. 99 times out of a hundred it will be cheaper to piggyback on a Falcon-9 or other launch vehicle for payloads that small. Electron is better suited for larger payloads of a couple hundred pounds or so. Things that would be wasteful to put on a Falcon-9 but are also on the larger end of what you can easily piggyback.

>>8930521
Delayed. Again.

>>8931496
depends how fast SpaceX takes off
Thats the only thing that allows a "market" to exist for this, not enough launches happening

>>8931690
Funny that a rocket named Electron is delayed by risk of static buildup. One of the weaknesses of carbon fiber?

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>150kg for $4.9 million
That's NASA tier "throw money in the dumpster" spending

>>8931860
Sometimes that's all you need, and you just want to keep the cost of that launch to a minimum. I'm pretty sure that's a cheaper launch than anything anyone is currently offering on a vehicle that has ever flown before.

Vector's rocket is only supposed to launch 50 kg to LEO, and they're talking $2-3 million (haven't done a real orbital launch though).