This summer, diggers will break ground on a kilometre-long runway on the Kaitorete Spit, a 50-minute drive from the centre of Christchurch. The runway and an associated hangar will facilitate the launch of experimental aircraft, drones and rockets, part of a government-backed effort to maintain our toehold in the international aerospace industry.
Rocket Lab continues to be the only company in the world – other than Elon Musk’s SpaceX – launching satellites into space on a regular basis. It’s an incredible achievement for founder Peter Beck and his team. Rocket Lab’s innovation has also helped spawn a cluster of companies developing everything from satellite components to solar-powered gliders.
The runway at Tāwhaki, a joint venture between the Crown and local iwi groups Te Taumutu Rūnanga and Wairewa Rūnanga, will be particularly useful for Dawn Aerospace, a Christchurch company that has developed the Aurora spaceplane. Beck shook up the satellite industry with his Electron rocket allowing for cheaper and more frequent launches. Dawn hopes to fly Aurora into space to drop off satellites, return to the runway to refuel and fly again.
We are an unlikely player in cutting-edge aerospace, but who’d have thought we’d also become a centre of excellence for visual effects and Oscar-winning film-making? The film industry continues to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies every year to attract movie productions here, and the video games industry this year won a 20% tax rebate, which may help halt the exodus of developer talent to Australia where generous subsidies are on offer.
The Labour government contributed $16 million towards securing the land at Kaitorete for the aerospace site, and chipped in a further $5.4 million for the runway development. The National Party said last week it would create two additional aerospace test zones and appoint a Minister for Space if it forms the next government.
Such moves underscore the shift in balance we need to make towards the knowledge economy and away from commodity exports. Rocket engineers, visual-effects designers and game developers earn $100,000-plus salaries. These professions can improve the country’s fortunes, including for the Māori partners in Tāwhaki who are guardians of the Kaitorete area.
But they’ll also have to make some hard calls on what is permitted to take place on the land. Aerospace and the military are inextricably linked in most countries. Rocket Lab has entered into significant military contracts with the US government. It won’t launch weapons – our laws forbid that – but what about surveillance, guidance and tracking systems that assist the military?
This year, Musk discovered the moral complexities of working with the military. He had supplied his Starlink satellite broadband service to the Ukrainian army to help it co-ordinate its defence against the Russian invasion, but then the Ukrainians asked him to enable coverage for part of the Crimean coast to assist an attack on the Russian naval fleet. Worried that Starlink could help trigger a nuclear war by facilitating the offensive, Musk refused to enable access.
Given the borderless nature of space and the global reach satellites offer, it’s not a stretch to suggest our aerospace players may face their own moral dilemmas. “We’re putting a strong line in the sand there,” Tāwhaki chief executive Linda Falwasser told me in July.
The shareholders are taking a tikanga approach to governing activities, reflecting the values of the iwi groups involved. Falwasser has already turned down a potential client. “That didn’t need any more things to work through or frameworks to look at. It inherently didn’t sit well with the way we’ve been formed,” she said. “I could very quickly say, ‘You’re not for us.’”
