Rocket Lab’s new Neutron rocket faces red tape delays at Wallops
Proposed dredged channel. Click for original.
We’re here to help you! Rocket Lab appears to be having regulatory problems getting approvals to transport hardware for its new Neutron rocket to its new launchpad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island in Virginia, delays that might prevent it from launching as planned later this year.
It appears the company needs to dredge a deeper channel to ship the heavier Neutron hardware into Wallops, but it has not been able to begin work because of approval delays by the federal government.
The dredging project was approved by VMRC [Virginia Marine Resources Commission] in May, but the company has yet to start digging because it’s still awaiting federal sign-off from the Army Corps of Engineers.
Lacking this approval and unable to get the channel ready for this year’s launch, the company is seeking permission to use a stop-gap different approach to transport the hardware through these shallow waters.
Kedging, a little-known nautical method, is used to ensure the barges can safely navigate the existing shallow channel. Workers would use a series of anchors and lines to steer the barge through the shallow waters. The company is seeking permission to use this method through the end of June 2026 or until the dredging work is complete, whichever comes first.
Lacking an okay to do even this alternative approach, Rocket Lab will be forced to transport the hardware using “ramps and cranes,” an approach that is impractical in the long run for achieving a profitable launch pace. It also would likely result in not meeting its targeted launch date before the end of 2025 for the first Neutron launch.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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
Proposed dredged channel. Click for original.
We’re here to help you! Rocket Lab appears to be having regulatory problems getting approvals to transport hardware for its new Neutron rocket to its new launchpad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island in Virginia, delays that might prevent it from launching as planned later this year.
It appears the company needs to dredge a deeper channel to ship the heavier Neutron hardware into Wallops, but it has not been able to begin work because of approval delays by the federal government.
The dredging project was approved by VMRC [Virginia Marine Resources Commission] in May, but the company has yet to start digging because it’s still awaiting federal sign-off from the Army Corps of Engineers.
Lacking this approval and unable to get the channel ready for this year’s launch, the company is seeking permission to use a stop-gap different approach to transport the hardware through these shallow waters.
Kedging, a little-known nautical method, is used to ensure the barges can safely navigate the existing shallow channel. Workers would use a series of anchors and lines to steer the barge through the shallow waters. The company is seeking permission to use this method through the end of June 2026 or until the dredging work is complete, whichever comes first.
Lacking an okay to do even this alternative approach, Rocket Lab will be forced to transport the hardware using “ramps and cranes,” an approach that is impractical in the long run for achieving a profitable launch pace. It also would likely result in not meeting its targeted launch date before the end of 2025 for the first Neutron launch.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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
More nonsense from Greens.
Jeff Wright,
Pretty much. Dredging an extant channel a bit deeper should be a no-brainer in any rational universe but that is not, sadly, the one in which we live.
In pre-EPA times, my hometown put a dredge at the then-lakeshore to work for about a year to create about a square mile of new land for a municipal park and a bathing beach. The new land was at a lower elevation than the natural land so there was a 50% grade connecting them that turned out to be ideal for sledding and tobogganing during snow season. We child daredevils would ride our bikes down the slope the rest of the year. There were some long angled sidewalks connecting the higher and lower ground that made excellent high-speed skateboard runs.
Had the EPA existed back then, I have no doubt my hometown city government would not even have been able to afford to do the paperwork associated with such a project, nor fend off the inevitable nuisance lawsuits, never mind actually carrying it out. My childhood would have been appreciably less enjoyable.
I wonder, sometimes, just how many comparable projects have been stillborn over the last half-century-plus of federal Karen-ism writ large. I also wonder whether or not this may have something to do with what strikes me as the generally greater crankiness of youngsters these days compared to the norms of my long-fled youth.
I am familiar with these waters and likewise familiar professionally in the past working with the Corps, e.g. dredging and the Clean Water Act in the midAtlantic. I am a little surprised RocketLab had not worked this earlier from the start, given the Corps.’ CWA. authoritarianism. Dredging that channel will/ would be a highly scrutinized project. Recently just a few miles up Chincoteague Bay a contractor “kedged” his equipment into a sedimented marina, with laborious success. But that does offset (legally and environmentally) any contrary bureaucratic opposition.
I do wonder how large the rocket’s components. RocketLab owns the huge MartinMarietta Plant 2 in Baltimore, I assume for some assembly. It is adjacent to the Glenn L Martin airfield with mucho runway. Likewise Wallops airfield is closebyo the launch island. An AF decommisioned C5? or Anatov 122??
Gotta go right now, but please pursue.
As a practical matter, can Governor Youngkin ask the Trump Administration for some help with this? John S. does have a point, though.
This snag was entirely foreseeable on Rocket Lab’s part. Someone wasn’t doing their due diligence.