Main Engine Cut Off - T+87: Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

Rocket Lab announced that they’re in the final selection stage of their search for a US launch site. I break down the options they have, and discuss why I think they’ll pick Wallops Island. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 37 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Brian, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Barbara, Stan, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, and seven anonymous—and 173 other supporters on Patreon. Rocket Lab to expand launch capability with US launch site | Rocket Lab Rocket Lab selects four finalists for U.S. launch site - SpaceNews.com Space Access from MARS Next space station resupply launch scheduled May 20 at Wallops Island | Virginia | roanoke.com Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Buy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off Shop Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Welcome to the Main Engine Cutoff, I'm Anthony Colangelo. We've got some Rocket Lab news to break down today. They announced an announcement of an announcement a couple of weeks back, I guess actually just a week ago. They announced that they're looking to add Launch Complex 2. They have Launch Complex 1 down in New Zealand. They're looking to add Launch Complex 2 here in the U.S. somewhere. And this was posted on their website as kind of their press release. And they've basically shortlisted the four U.S. spaceports that you would name off the top of your head cape canaveral wallops island pacific spaceport in alaska and vandenberg air force base the announcement says that they're

looking to make final selection by august so just about a month to do all this selection and there's a couple of the notable bits from their announcement here rocketlabusa.com they say that they're going to serve both commercial and u.s government missions here from the u.s launch site that they would be looking to offer launches about once a month from this location um and they're going to begin construction immediately once they determine where they're going to be building with the first mission slated for Q2 of 2019. So very, very quick turnaround here. You presume that at this point, they've got all of what they need worked out down at Launch Complex 1. They know what they need to build. They've got the

bugs worked out of the system. And they could just get there and execute, you know, to have a construction timeline and to go from breaking ground to launching within one year, even less than one year. That's a pretty optimistic timeline, so they have to have worked out all of the issues that they had down at Launch Complex 1 to be comfortable to even say that. Now, you know me, if you've listened for a little while, I rarely talk about announcements of announcements, and I rarely talk about things that are, you know, very preemptive like this. But this one I think is interesting enough to warrant a little discussion, because I think it sheds light on both Rocket Lab's priorities, but also this whole spaceport race that we've got going now. You know, we've got a couple of operating spaceports out there that are regularly launching

satellites and sounding rockets and all that. And we've got all these other ones that are in the works or haven't really started yet. Just this week, we heard about a UK spaceport that they finally have chosen a location for. So we're in this era of, you know, spaceport, a spaceport boom, I guess. So this story kind of touches on both of those things that I think are worth digesting a little bit. So to start, they have Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, and that is licensed for a launch every 72 hours. They obviously are nowhere close to that launch rate yet. Uh,

and that is at a long latitude of 39 degrees South. So from that location, they can hit higher inclination orbits. They can hit sun synchronous, which is going to be the most heavily used of these small sat, uh, orbits. That's the one that's usually used for imaging satellites and things like that.

They can also get to, they really can get anywhere there. They have a very wide range of azimuths available to them down on the remote part of New Zealand where they launch from. But essentially, that is a higher inclination launch zone. Just because they are so far south, away from the equator, it's not very feasible to launch there and go to a geosynchronous orbit or something that is very low inclination. It just costs a lot to launch from that far away from the equator and go to a very low inclination. That's why you see things like, you know, Karoo, which is only five degrees away from the equator. That is a very, very good spot for launching to geosynchronous geostationary orbit. Higher up is not as useful, and that's why you see in the US the launches go from Canaveral

and different considerations like that. So down there, they can cover a lot of their commercial use case. They have a pretty available range for their use. They have had some weather problems down in New Zealand, but they're obviously looking for some different things out of their next launch site, specifically one here in the US. Very obviously, there are some Department of Defense payloads that they are looking to capture and fly that need to fly from the US or else they wouldn't really be adding that capability. So it's pretty clear that that is their intention here is to capture some of that military market that has been talking up

small distributed launch for a long time now. And we see them paying, you know, quite a lot for Minotaurs every now and then. If Rocket Lab can capture some of that, that's a pretty good business model for them. And obviously, there was going to be other people that might use that as well, but primarily this would be Department of Defense payloads. So with those couple of things in mind, I figure we can walk through these different options and talk about pros and cons and what maybe shed some light on what their priorities would be if they were to choose any given launch complex. if they were to choose any given launch complex. But before we go through all of those different options, actually, I want to mention something about the announcement of the announcement here. The only reason to do that, to announce that you're going to make an announcement and you're going to make a selection, is to kind of shake out all the different offers that you might get from these different state corporations that tend to try to drive business towards their own spaceports. You know, this is something very similar to what Amazon is

doing now where they're looking for headquarters too. So they make it a very public thing to have all these different cities offer them the best economic incentives to move there. Rocket Lab is sort of doing the same thing here. They're going to make this announcement with these four down selected. It's very obviously these four because look at their timeline. They need to launch by Q2 2019. So they need to choose one of these four operable spaceports. They can't choose something like a Camden spaceport or a landlocked spaceport that hasn't figured out its licensing yet. They need to have one that they can launch within a year. And each one of these has their own state corporation that helps with development and

might offer incentives so in at wallops island there is virginia space and down in florida there's space florida up in alaska there's alaska aerospace i forget they just made a new subsidiary that's going to promote the economic development of the spaceport there but there are all these state corporations that will offer money for development. And we've seen that with SpaceX and Blue Origin down in Florida. We've seen that in while ups with Orbital ATK and the Antares launches. Obviously, that had a whole political hot button issue attached to it once there was major damage to that pad infrastructure.

attached to it once there was major damage to that pad infrastructure. But essentially, Rocket Lab is trying to shake out whatever support they can from these different spaceports. And I'm sure that after this announcement, they got contacted by all these different state entities if they did not reach out directly and say, hey, we're thinking about coming. What can you do for us? So I think that's what the strategy here is from Rocket Lab. So let's walk through these different spaceports and talk about why they might want to go there, why they might not. We'll start on the West Coast out at Vandenberg. Vandenberg Air Force Base used primarily for sun-synchronous or retrograde orbits,

you know, for something like a synthetic aperture radar satellite. That would be useful if they think that they're only ever going to fly sun-synchronous, polar, slightly retrograde missions from the U.S. site. If they think that they're going to get once a month and it's only ever going to be polar or close to polar, then Vandenberg could be a good fit. Problem at Vandenberg is it's very heavily military run. fit. Problem at Vandenberg is it's very heavily military run. There have historically been some problems with range conflicts, notably the Falcon 1 issue that happened where the Falcon 1 was ready to launch, but there was a Titan 4 sitting on the pad, and that delayed Falcon 1 months and months and months and eventually forced them to go out to the Marshall Islands and launch from there. So there's historically problems with

these smaller commercial providers flying out of Vandenberg, but there does seem to be less congestion there than in other places. Atlas 5 chose to launch from there to fly in-site to Mars because of the less congestion than there is over on the East Coast. So that's a benefit there, but it is somewhat limiting to what they could do from some of these other sites. Pacific Spaceport is kind of similar in that they have very limited azimuths from there. It's a very high latitude location.

It's very remote, which, you know, maybe they're trying to get away from that. Instead of flying out of New Zealand, they're going to try to fly from somewhere a little less remote. But that would kind of be an issue up at Pacific Spaceport. They really just say that their only priority is a U.S. site to launch from to launch military missions. Those two could be in the running. If their priorities are open up the launches to a U.S. site, but also open up other inclinations, then I think these other two options would be a much better fit. So Cape Canaveral, that would be kind of everyone's default assumption. If

you're looking for a launch site, you're probably looking at Cape Canaveral. It's lower latitude, so they could feasibly get to those low inclination orbits. There is now this polar corridor that's possible from Cape Canaveral, though I think that would be too significant of a performance hit for them to really make use of. And there's a lot of congestion down at Cape Canaveral. Obviously, once a month, that's not too bad of a cadence for Rocket Lab. So they could probably slot in once a month, especially if they have autonomous flight termination systems, which helps the turnaround time of the range. But overall, the congestion down there is getting to a point where it's

really onerous. SpaceX and Blue Origin are working on construction down there is getting to a point where it's really onerous. SpaceX and Blue Origin are working on construction down there, and they're having a lot of problems because when there's certain days where somebody's running a test or somebody's rolling out a rocket or doing whatever, there are all these restrictions about what you can and can't do on those days. And I think it was Blue Origin who said that there were certain times of the year when they could only work about half the days of a month because there was just all this time that was not available to work out at their site. So if it's even congested enough where construction is a pain, that could really be an issue, especially when they're looking at such a tight timeline to go from groundbreaking to launch in less than a year. So Canaro might work for them. Like I said, if their priority is open up a US site for government missions and open up additional inclinations available to them, Canaveral could work. The downside there is that

the polar corridor is very onerous to get to. It's a significant performance hit. And with the payload capability of Electron being so small, I don't know that they can always warrant such a hit. Flying from 28 degrees north and doing such a dogleg where you have to thread the needle right past Miami and a lot of restrictions around where you can fly, when you can fly, that could be kind of tricky to deal with. So my vote here, which might be a surprise to some of you can fly, when you can fly, that could be kind of tricky to deal with. So my vote here, which might be a surprise to some of you out there, is that Wallops Island is the right fit

for Rocket Lab. And I want to dive into all the reasons that I've thought through about why it would be a good fit. But before I do that, I do need to say a very, very big thank you to all of the supporters of Main Engine Cutoff over at patreon.com slash Miko. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by 37 executive producers, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Brian, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Barbara, Stan, Mike, David, Mintz, Eunice, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you so much for all of your support. You make this show possible every single week, every single month. You help me keep the blog rolling, keep the podcast rolling,

and keep this thing growing. I could not do it without all your support and everybody else over at patreon.com slash Miko. Head over there, check out some of the perks like the headline show I do every single Friday, $3 or more a month. You get access to a little special RSS feed where you get some headlines in your feed every Friday. Go check it out. Help support the show. Thank you so much. All right, so Wallops. Wallops is really interesting here for Rocket Lab. To start, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, as it's called, sits at 38 degrees north, just a little less than 38. Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 sits at a little more than 39 degrees south. So performance-wise, this is nearly identical latitude-wise, which

gives them nearly identical performance to different inclinations, which is kind of interesting, you know, that they could fly from very similar latitudes, both north and south, and hit very similar payload metrics. That is pretty interesting. Now, the one curveball here is how you get to sun-synchronous orbit. Virginia Space, that state corporation I talked about, has on their site listed the launch azimuths that they can fly out of Wallops. And they say the coastline of Wallops Island is oriented such that a launch azimuth of 135 degrees is perpendicular to the shoreline. So that means you're looking essentially southeast, which is a benefit over Cape Canaveral, which is looking northeast. In general, launch azimuths between

90 and 160 degrees can be achieved depending on impact ranges. For most orbital vehicles, this translates to orbital inclinations between 38 and 60 degrees. Trajectory options outside of these launch azimuths, including polar and sun-synchronous orbits, can be achieved by in-flight azimuth maneuvers. That's a dogleg. After you launch, get downrange a bit, you can turn inland, you know, once you're on a good trajectory. They have a little map here that shows how you could get to these orbits. And essentially what you do, you fly out of wallops. I guess you fly off the coast far enough to be outside of the North Carolina coastline range, and then start hooking on south to fly just past the coast of Florida and over Cuba. But at that point, you're so high and so downrange that it's not much of a problem.

Now, this obviously comes with its own performance hit to do this kind of dogleg maneuver. But because of the orientation of the coastline, because of the distance you are north of all the Caribbean islands that you would have to dodge out of Cape Canaveral, it is a little bit easier of a route. So if it's a small enough payload hit that would be acceptable on most of their Department of Defense missions, right? If their Department of Defense missions aren't going to be packed to the gills where they need every last drop of propellant to get them into the orbit they need to, they have a little margin. They could plausibly fly this route a lot easier than the one out of Cape Canaveral. And the benefit there is that they have then opened themselves up to all these different inclinations. They have a range that is almost never used, so they have total access to scheduling. And it's a pretty good fit overall on the launch details side of the equation there. There are some other things that factor into it as well. You're close to DC, so you do get a

little bit of that DC presence, which might help politically. And interestingly, Virginia Space is in the process right now of building a brand new payload processing facility that they've invested $20 million into. The Department of Defense has invested a little bit more. There's a great picture of this over at Roanoke.com, Roanoke Times. This is... And you can see this payload processing facility sitting a little bit north on the shoreline you'll see you see uh you know the antares pad in the background and all

that uh this is going to be a brand new state-of-the-art payload processing facility that is set specifically there for department of defense payload The DOD is investing in this processing facility itself. So Wallops would be able to handle national security launches. Now, Virginia Space is investing $20 million in this. So they want somebody to come there and use it. So they were going to be pushing very hard for Rocket Lab to choose Wallops Island so that somebody is there to use this processing facility and that their investment is in a waste, you know, really when it comes down to it. So they're going to invest a little heavier in Rocket Lab than somebody like

Canaveral is who, you know, really they've got plenty of business down there. This means a lot more to the people at Wallops than it does to the people at Canaveral, especially when it's only, you know, 12 launches a year and people at Canaveral are talking about launching 50 rockets out of there every single year. So this combination of things seems very attractive. They get access to inclinations that are attractive to them. They have wide open range use. They are close to the DC area, so they get a little extra political sway. They have a state corporation investing in flying Department of Defense payloads out of the same spaceport. And that means that they're going to have a state corporation that is very invested in them coming there and giving them support to build their launch site on

Wallops Island. All these things are very, very good indication that Rocket Lab is going to end up at Wallops Island. And I think really, quite honestly, it's Wallops to lose at this point. It has all these benefits going for it that the others might have one or two of, but not the whole package the same way that Wallops does. Now, in the past, you might have heard me criticize the usage of Antares because of its launch site at Wallops, but really that is more of a criticism about Antares than it is about Wallops itself. Antares is a weird fit for just about any market out there right now. They're obviously having tons of problems selling it to anybody but NASA for an

ISS launch. It's a weird fit across the board. You can go listen to my Antares episodes if you want more on that. But Wallops Island itself could be useful if put into use by Rocket Lab in this way. And I think it's a really good fit for them. And I would not be surprised to hear in August that they are starting construction at Wallops Island in the fall. And by the next fall, I might be driving down a couple hours south

to go see a Rocket Lab launch from here in the US, which would be pretty, pretty cool. So that's my take on this. I figured it was worth talking about. One last little thing that I thought is worth mentioning. I've been, in general, skeptical about all these different spaceports that are opening up. I'm not exactly sure why, other than I think that a lot of times spaceports are popped up with zero consideration about what they would be used for. Typically, the ones out in New Mexico are like that, although they do have some interesting use. But in general, the state has dumped a lot of money into that

that I don't see coming back just yet. But when considering things like this and seeing how congested Canaveral is, it does make me hopeful for these other sites to launch up. You know, UK is an interesting one. Camden Spaceport is having some problems with the state in general. Just, you know, getting that whole project started, working through the political issues that exist there. But in general, you are starting to see this move away from Canaveral only and Vandenberg only and moving out into Pacific Spaceport and Wallops Island and things like that. So it is an interesting trend to watch that there are people that are, you know, interested in

alternative spaceports. And it's following a few years on the heel of the spaceport boom, but I think they are coming around to, you know to be helpful to each other at this point. And this might just be one of the first times that we see a very, very new commercial provider embracing one of these alternative space ports wholeheartedly. And I think it would be a really good move for both Rocket Lab and Virginia Space to make sure that this deal gets signed to bring Rocket Lab to the Mid-Atlantic region. And that's not my slight homerism coming into play. So we'll see what happens. I guess I'll update this in a month once we hear the official pick. And that'll be interesting to hear about. But for now, that is all I've got for you this week. Thank you so much for your support. Thanks for listening. And

sorry for the slight delay in getting this episode out. There were some unexpected things that popped up, but Miko is back and hopefully the news cycle is as well. But that's it for this week. Thank you so much again for listening and I'll talk to you next week.