Rocket Lab JUST HUMILIATED SpaceX & Blue Origin COMPLETELY!
Rocket Lab JUST HUMILIATED SpaceX & Blue Origin COMPLETELY!
On Thursday, Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck provided an update on his startup's plans for its upcoming Neutron rocket, and those plans included plenty of references to SpaceX and its Starship without ever naming either.
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Rocket Lab revealed more about the larger, more powerful Neutron rocket it is developing.
“This is Neutron. It is an absolute beast,” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in a webcast presentation.
Rocket Lab already has one rocket called Electron, which the company has been launching to orbit since 2017. Electron is meant to carry relatively small satellites into low Earth orbit to capitalize on the small satellite revolution. But in March, Rocket Lab announced its intention to build another bigger rocket called Neutron, along with plans to go public via a SPAC merger. It was a big change for the company since Beck once vowed he’d “eat his hat” if he ever made a reusable rocket or a larger rocket. During the March announcement, he did, indeed, eat an actual hat from a blender.
Neutron is designed to be 131 feet tall and 23 feet in diameter, and it’s targeting a maximum payload capacity of 15,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit. For reusable launches, Neutron will be able to carry up to 8,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit. These are the first details given about the new rocket since the company announced it announced plans for it earlier in the year.
Beck, in an interview, said that Rocket Lab is still targeting to get Neutron on the launchpad by 2024, and hopes to launch a commercial customer on the rocket by 2025.
The launch marketplace is divided into three sections: small, medium, and heavy lift. Neutron will target that middle section, while Rocket Lab’s existing Electron rocket fits in the small segment.
While SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket can lift up to 22,800 kilograms to low Earth orbit, Neutron will compete to launch many of the same spacecraft that Elon Musk’s company is currently delivering to space.
Beck declined to comment on the price tag of a Neutron launch, but said the rocket “would be a pointless exercise” if Rocket Lab “didn’t think that we would be very cost-competitive with anything that’s currently in the market or being proposed.” For comparison, Rocket Lab’s small Electron rocket goes for about $7 million per launch, Firefly’s medium-sized Alpha rocket goes for $15 million per launch, and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is advertised at $62 million per launch.
Similar to Falcon 9, the first stage of Neutron is reusable — but that’s where most of the similarities end. While SpaceX occasionally lands its Falcon 9 boosters back near the launch site but typically lands on a drone ship in the ocean, Neutron is designed to return to the launch site for all its reusable missions.
Beck did not rule out “ever landing on a drone ship,” noting that there are “a bunch of cases where landing on a drone is advantageous,” but emphasized that returning to the launch site is “the most cost-effective” approach.
Instead of landing legs that unfold, Neutron will have a “static base” with no mechanisms in place. The rocket will have “shock absorbers” built into that base for the impact of landing, Beck said.
Rocket Lab is also developing a new engine for Neutron called Archimedes. Beck touted Archimedes’ design as “very simple,” with “all the things you want when you have to build an engine that can be reused over and over again.
Seven Archimedes engines power Neutron’s first stage to space, with an eighth one propelling the upper stage once in orbit.
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