Talent drawn from the America’s Cup has helped Rocket Lab create one of its newest ventures.
A production operation at its Mt Wellington headquarters is manufacturing reaction wheels - high-tech components that cost US$120,000 ($201,000) each. Put four together, one on each side, and they can control the orientation of a satellite or spacecraft.
The reaction wheel business, which has only just ramped up to full capacity, is “less sexy” than the rocket launches, as one staffer puts it, but is part of a space systems division that brings in twice as much revenue.
Rocket Lab principal manufacturing engineer Janelle Keeble explains that reaction wheels are used for attitude control. They can be spun in opposing directions to adjust fine orientation, once a satellite is in orbit. “For example, if there’s a sensor or a camera that you want to point down at the Earth, or to change the spacecraft so it’s orientated towards the sun to charge the solar panels.”
The Herald is allowed to pick up a reaction wheel. It’s remarkably heavy and its internal flywheel rotates with such force that you have to brace yourself to hold it still.
Rocket Lab has now taken over two of the buildings on either side of its headquarters. In one, a team led by machining and fabrication manager Scott Heslop creates the core components, using a mix of automated CNC (computer numerical control) 3D printers, lasers, and grunt work by humans bearing welding torches to create reaction wheel components.
While the kit he’s creating today will go into space, not the water, it’s familiar territory for Heslop, who was a CNC programmer and machinist for Larry Ellison’s Oracle Team USA between 2011 and 2013 as it successfully defended the America’s Cup (in between times, he’s done CNC work for Airbus).
It’s part of a broader Rocket Lab-yachting crossover. Earlier this week, Rocket Lab took over SailGP Technologies’ 6500sq m (70,000 sq ft) development and manufacturing complex in Warkworth - along with the 50 staff who work in the facility - as the Sir Russell Coutts and Larry Ellison-founded venture decamped for the UK.
The operation - which once made boats for Oracle Team USA - has more recently been doing most of its work for SailGP, but with a sideline supplying Rocket Lab with composites. Its autoclave vacuum ovens and CNC machinery will now be put to use full-time for Rocket Lab - in part for development work on its new, much larger Neutron rocket, due for its first flight late next year.
The reaction wheels are assembled and tested on a production line in Rocket Lab’s main building, now staffed by around 20, with more being recruited.
You probably know Rocket Lab for its Electron rocket launches, but the firm is forecasting it will earn twice as much revenue from “space systems” (US$44 million) than launches (US$22m) during its current quarter. Moving into satellite and spacecraft components - largely through a string of acquisitions - has been the core of the firm’s strategy to grow and diversify its income.
Rocket Lab’s NZ director of space systems, Leigh Foster, reels off some of the high-profile missions that have included components made by his firm, or those it has acquired it acquired with funds generated by its Nasdaq listing including SolAero (a New Mexico maker of spacecraft solar panels, bought for US$80m in early 2022), Planetary Systems Corporation (a Maryland maker of spacecraft separation systems, bought for US$42m in 2021) and Advanced Solutions (a Colorado-based maker of mission simulation, navigation and control solutions, picked up for US$40m, also in 2021): They include solar panels and subsystems for the James Webb Space Telescope, Nasa’s Inguinuity Mars Helicopter, India’s Chandrayan-3 lunar landing in August, and Nasa’s Psyche asteroid-hunting mission, launching October 12.
Rocket Lab got into the reaction wheel business when it bought Toronto-based Sinclair Interplanetary for an undisclosed sum in 2020.
Founder and CEO Peter Beck has observed that the low-Earth orbit satellite industry involved a lot of relatively small players. A satellite customer had to go to many different firms, none of whom had the scale for rapid manufacturing, for various components.
Beck’s idea is to make Rocket Lab a one-stop shop - for convenience, and speed.
Reaction wheels illustrate the benefits of vertical integration when it comes to manufacturing velocity. While Sinclair could produce “several hundred” per year, Rocket Lab’s new operation in Auckland can make 2000. When the Herald visited, reaction wheels were coming off the assembly line at the rate of one per hour.
Ultimately, “We want everything that can be put into space to have a Rocket Lab logo on it,” Foster says.
Rocket Lab won’t name individual customers for its reaction wheels, but does confirm they are part of the package of components it’s selling to its largest single customer: US communications satellite network operator Globalstar
Meanwhile in light industrial Mt Wellington pic.twitter.com/IbPkrbmVDU
— Chris Keall (@ChrisKeall) October 3, 2023
Apple recently invested US$450m in Globalstar, whose expanding network of low-Earth orbiting satellites is being used for the new iPhone SOS by Satellite service (recently used by two trampers stranded in Arthur’s Pass).
Globalstar, in turn, became Rocket Lab’s single-largest space systems customer as it awarded the Kiwi-American firm a US$143m contract, which will be filled over the coming years.
The past week has seen the Government and Opposition make aerospace pitches.
Infrastructure Minister Megan Woods said $5.4m in funding would go to supporting the laying of a one-kilometre sealed runway at the Tāwhaki aerospace facility on the Kaitōrete Spit near Christchurch - which will be good news for Dawn Aerospace, which is developing a pilot-less space plane to carry satellites into low-Earth orbit.
National said it would cut red tape, add a Space Minister and create two new aerospace testing zones in addition to Tāwhaki - but leader Christopher Luxon did not say where, or at what funding levels.
Beck offered a tacit endorsement of National’s aerospace policy by hosting Luxon’s announcement at Rocket Lab’s Mt Wellington HQ.
With its recently constructed second launchpad at Mahia, its new reaction wheel production and its takeover of SailGP’s manufacturing facility in Warkworth, Rocket Lab’s local operation - which now employs 730 (of a total 1650 worldwide) - is substantial and growing.
But much of the firm’s expansion is in the US these days. The Neutron rocket - which will cost US$50-$55m per flight, to the Electron’s US$7.5m, will launch exclusively from a new facility in Virginia which will also host most of the Neutron’s manufacturing and its mission control.
Earlier, Beck said New Zealand simply doesn’t produce enough liquid oxygen to fuel a Neutron launch. Moreover, major customers like Nasa and the US Air Force’s Space Force want launches from North America.
This week, Rocket Lab opened a new engine development centre in a building in Long Beach which, six months earlier, was the headquarters of a competing launch company, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit.
Rocket Lab picked up the 13,370sq m (144,000 sq ft) facility - and all of its manufacturing gear - for US$16m at a Bankruptcy Court-approved auction in May. Rocket Lab previously estimated the value of the facility and its contents at about US$100m.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
The industry faces challenges but hopes to bring newcomers and veterans together.