NASA expected to finally certify Rocket Lab’s Virginia launchpad by end of year
It appears that after more than a year of delays, the NASA bureaucracy might finally approve launches at Rocket Lab’s new spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia by the end of the year.
The article at the link is mostly about Rocket Lab’s planned acquisition of another company that builds satellite deployment systems. However, its real story was in the last paragraph:
[T]he company is still waiting for NASA to complete certification of an autonomous flight termination system the company needs to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia. Delays in NASA’s certification of that system has, in turn, delayed the use of Launch Complex 2 there for Electron missions. “The current expectation is that it could be done as early as the end of the year,” [Adam Spice, Rocket Lab’s chief financial officer] said of that certification, “which would allow us to commence flight operations out of LC-2 and Wallops in the first half of 2022.”
The company got FAA approval for launches more than a year ago, and had hoped to launch shortly thereafter. NASA however has blocked that launch, refusing for more than a year to approve the flight termination system Rocket Lab uses to destroy rockets should something go wrong just after launch.
The delay is baffling. Rocket Lab has successfully proven that its system works in that it has used it several times to safely abort launches in New Zealand. This success apparently has not been good enough for NASA’s bureaucrats, and the result is that Rocket Lab’s ability to launch rockets has been seriously hampered in ’21.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It appears that after more than a year of delays, the NASA bureaucracy might finally approve launches at Rocket Lab’s new spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia by the end of the year.
The article at the link is mostly about Rocket Lab’s planned acquisition of another company that builds satellite deployment systems. However, its real story was in the last paragraph:
[T]he company is still waiting for NASA to complete certification of an autonomous flight termination system the company needs to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia. Delays in NASA’s certification of that system has, in turn, delayed the use of Launch Complex 2 there for Electron missions. “The current expectation is that it could be done as early as the end of the year,” [Adam Spice, Rocket Lab’s chief financial officer] said of that certification, “which would allow us to commence flight operations out of LC-2 and Wallops in the first half of 2022.”
The company got FAA approval for launches more than a year ago, and had hoped to launch shortly thereafter. NASA however has blocked that launch, refusing for more than a year to approve the flight termination system Rocket Lab uses to destroy rockets should something go wrong just after launch.
The delay is baffling. Rocket Lab has successfully proven that its system works in that it has used it several times to safely abort launches in New Zealand. This success apparently has not been good enough for NASA’s bureaucrats, and the result is that Rocket Lab’s ability to launch rockets has been seriously hampered in ’21.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
10% to the big guy.
Problems go away.
Good luck with that certification happening soon unless they make some major changes to their current plan. .CF in progress.