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DeepSpace: Rocket Lab bucks the saying that ‘space is hard’ with 4th Electron success
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Rocket Lab continues to buck the adage that “space is hard” with its small but increasingly reliable Electron rocket. After a slight range hardware malfunction caused a launch abort just shy of orbit during Electron’s inaugural May 2017 launch attempt, Rocket Lab fixed the issue and returned to flight, successfully completing Electron’s first orbital launch in January 2018. On November 11th, 2018, the rocket completed its first truly commercial launch, placing seven various satellite into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), rapidly followed by Electron’s fourth successful launch on December 16th, barely one month later.
On March 29th, Rocket Lab completed yet another milestone launch for Electron, successfully placing its heaviest payload – an experimental ~150 kg DARPA spacecraft known as R3D2 – into an accurate orbit. Even relative to SpaceX’s barebones Falcon 1 launch campaign, which attempted five launches – two successfully – over a three year career, Rocket Lab’s Electron has progressed at an extraordinary pace, taking less than two years to complete its fifth launch and achieving its first launch success after just one attempt and eight months of flight operations.
Relentless progress
- To find a rocket with a comparable record of success less than two years after its first launch attempt, one must jump back more than half a century to the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Russia and the US were putting their industrial mights to the challenge of achieving spacefaring ‘firsts’. Almost all of those original vehicles – including Redstone, Atlas, Delta, Thor, Titan, and even Saturn V – were able to weather early failures and achieve extraordinary launch cadences just 12-24 months after their debuts.
- None, however, were developed as an entirely commercial rocket with almost exclusively private funds, although ESA’s Ariane 3 and 4 vehicles nearly fit the bill, with exemplary commercial track records and impressive acceleration from debut to high launch cadences.
- Incredibly, Rocket Lab has brought Electron from paper to its fourth successful launch in ~16 months on what can only be described as a shoestring budget relative to all past efforts, perhaps even Elon Musk and SpaceX.
- According to public investment records, the small US-based, New Zealand-operated company may have reached orbit for the first time with less than $100M, including ~$70M in equity investment and unspecified development funding from DARPA in the early 2010s.
- Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket is quite small, measuring 1.2 m (~4 ft) wide, 17 m (56 ft) tall, and 12,500 kg (27,600 lb) at liftoff, anywhere from a quarter to half the size of SpaceX’s Falcon 1, by most measures.
- Electron is capable of placing 150–225 kg (330–495 lb) into either a 550 km (340 mi) sun synchronous orbit (SSO) or a lower low Earth orbit (LEO).
- Electron is advertised with a commercial list price of around $6M.
- Aside from Electron’s industry-defying record of achievement, its R3D2 launch is impressive for another reason: the cost of the payload relative to the cost of launch. For a rocket on its fifth-ever launch, DARPA reportedly spent no less than $25M to fund the development of the experimental R3D2 smallsat, while – as mentioned above – the cost of Electron’s launch could have been as low as ~$6M from ink to orbit.
- In slightly different terms, Electron has now launched a payload that could be 4-5X more valuable than itself after just three prior launch successes and less than two years after beginning operations.
- While ~$30M would not be a huge loss for a military agency like DARPA (FY19 budget: $3.4B), DARPA’s trust in Electron demonstrates impressive confidence in not just Electron, but also Rocket Lab’s standards of manufacturing, operations, and mission assurance.
- Relative to a vehicle like Falcon 9 or Atlas V, Electron’s R3D2 mission would be comparable to launching spacecraft worth ~$250M to $500M after just five launches. Both larger rockets accomplished similar feats, but small launch vehicles are historically known for less than stellar reliability.
Go[ing] forth and conquer[ing]
- Put simply, Rocket Lab has managed to build what appears to be a shockingly reliable small launch vehicle with a budget that would make Old Space companies whimper, all while offering a potential cadence of dozens of annual launches at per-launch costs as low as $6M.
- While the cost-per-kg of a $6M Electron launch is still extremely high relative to larger rockets and rideshare opportunities, what Rocket Lab has achieved is nothing short of spectacular in the commercial spaceflight industry.
- If there ever was an actual ‘space race’ to fill the small launch vehicle void created by the growth of small satellite launch demand, Rocket Lab has won that race beyond the shadow of a doubt. There is still plenty of room for competition and additional cost savings from a customer perspective, but Electron is so early to the party that future competition will remain almost entirely irrelevant for the better part of 2-3 more years.
- According to CEO Peter Beck, the company’s ambition is to sustain monthly Electron launches in the nine remaining months of 2019. Flight 6 hardware is likely already on its way to Rocket Lab’s Mahia, New Zealand Launch Complex 1 (LC-1).
Mission Updates
- The second launch of Falcon Heavy – the rocket’s commercial debut – is still scheduled to occur as early as April 7th, but a slip to April 9-10 is now expected. The massive rocket’s static fire – the first for a Block 5 Falcon Heavy – is set to occur as early as Wednesday, April 3rd.
- After Falcon Heavy, Cargo Dragon’s CRS-17 resupply mission is firmly scheduled for April (April 25th), while the first dedicated Starlink launch is now NET May 2019.
- In late May, SpaceX could launch Spacecom’s Amos-17 spacecraft, effectively free to the customer as part of a settlement following the tragic Amos-6 Falcon 9 anomaly that destroy the rocket, satellite, and large swaths of the LC-40 pad in September 2016.
Photo of the Week
Tesla is being accused of infringing robotics patents by a company called Perrone Robotics, which is based out of Charlottesville, Virginia.
The suit was filed in Alexandria, Virginia, and accuses Tesla of knowingly infringing upon five patents related to robotics systems for self-driving vehicles.
The company said its founder, Paul Perrone, developed general-purpose robotics operating systems for individual robots and automated devices.
Perrone Robotics claims that all Tesla vehicles utilizing the company’s Autopilot suite within the last six years infringe the five patents, according to a report from Reuters.
Tesla’s new Safety Report shows Autopilot is nine times safer than humans
One patent was something the company attempted to sell to Tesla back in 2017. The five patents cover a “General Purpose Operating System for Robotics,” otherwise known as GPROS.
The GPROS suite includes extensions for autonomous vehicle controls, path planning, and sensor fusion. One key patent, U.S. 10,331,136, was explicitly offered to Tesla by Perrone back in 2017, but the company rejected it.
The suit aims to halt any further infringements and seeks unspecified damages.
This is far from the first suit Tesla has been involved in, including one from his year with Perceptive Automata LLC, which accused Tesla of infringing on AI models to interpret pedestrian/cyclist intent via cameras without licensing. Tesla appeared in court in August, but its motion to dismiss was partially denied earlier this month.
Tesla also settled a suit with Arsus LLC, which accused Autopilot’s electronic stability features of infringing on rollover prevention tech. Tesla won via an inter partes review in September.
Most of these cases involve non-practicing entities or startups asserting broad autonomous vehicle patents against Tesla’s rapid iteration.
Tesla typically counters with those inter partes reviews, claiming invalidity. Tesla has successfully defended about 70 percent of the autonomous vehicle lawsuits it has been involved in since 2020, but settlements are common to avoid discovery costs.
The case is Perrone Robotics Inc v Tesla Inc, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, No. 25-02156. Tesla has not yet listed an attorney for the case, according to the report.
News
Tesla has passed a critical self-driving milestone Elon Musk listed in Master Plan Part Deux
Tesla China announced that the company’s Autopilot system has accumulated 10 billion kilometers of driving experience.
Tesla has passed a key milestone, and it was one that CEO Elon Musk initially mentioned more than nine years ago when he published Master Plan, Part Deux.
As per Tesla China in a post on its official Weibo account, the company’s Autopilot system has accumulated over 10 billion kilometers of real-world driving experience.
Tesla China’s subtle, but huge announcement
In its Weibo post, Tesla China announced that the company’s Autopilot system has accumulated 10 billion kilometers of driving experience. “In this respect, Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot technology can be considered to have the world’s most experienced and seasoned driver.”
Tesla AI’s handle on Weibo also highlighted a key advantage of the company’s self-driving system. “It will never drive under the influence of alcohol, be distracted, or be fatigued,” the team wrote. “We believe that advancements in Autopilot technology will save more lives.”
Tesla China did not clarify exactly what it meant by “Autopilot” in its Weibo post, though the company’s intense focus on FSD over the past years suggests that the term includes miles that were driven by FSD (Beta) and Full Self-Driving (Supervised). Either way, 10 billion cumulative miles of real-world data is something that few, if any, competitors could compete with.
Elon Musk’s 10-billion-km estimate, way back in 2016
When Elon Musk published Master Plan Part Deux, he outlined his vision for the company’s autonomous driving system. At the time, Autopilot was still very new, though Musk was already envisioning how the system could get regulatory approval worldwide. He estimated that worldwide regulatory approval will probably require around 10 billion miles of real-world driving data, which was an impossible-sounding amount at the time.
“Even once the software is highly refined and far better than the average human driver, there will still be a significant time gap, varying widely by jurisdiction, before true self-driving is approved by regulators. We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day,” Musk wrote.
It’s quite interesting but Tesla is indeed getting regulatory approval for FSD (Supervised) at a steady pace today, at a time when 10 billion miles of data has been achieved. The system has been active in the United States and has since been rolled out to other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, China, and, more recently, South Korea. Expectations are high that Tesla could secure FSD approval in Europe sometime next year as well.
Elon Musk
SpaceX maintains unbelievable Starship target despite Booster 18 incident
It appears that it will take more than an anomaly to stop SpaceX’s march towards Starship V3’s refinement.
SpaceX recently shared an incredibly ambitious and bold update about Starship V3’s 12th test flight.
Despite the anomaly that damaged Booster 18, SpaceX maintained that it was still following its plans for the upgraded spacecraft and booster for the coming months. Needless to say, it appears that it will take more than an anomaly to stop SpaceX’s march towards Starship V3’s refinement.
Starship V3 is still on a rapid development path
SpaceX’s update was posted through the private space company’s official account on social media platform X. As per the company, “the Starbase team plans to have the next Super Heavy booster stacked in December, which puts it on pace with the test schedule planned for the first Starship V3 vehicle and associated ground systems.”
SpaceX then announced that Starship V3’s maiden flight is still expected to happen early next year. “Starship’s twelfth flight test remains targeted for the first quarter of 2026,” the company wrote in its post on X.
Elon Musk mentioned a similar timeline on X earlier this year. In the lead up to Starshp Flight 11, which proved flawless, Musk stated that “Starship V3 is a massive upgrade from the current V2 and should be through production and testing by end of year, with heavy flight activity next year.” Musk has also mentioned that Starship V3 should be good enough to use for initial Mars missions.
Booster 18 failure not slowing Starship V3’s schedule
SpaceX’s bold update came after Booster 18 experienced a major anomaly during gas system pressure testing at SpaceX’s Massey facility in Starbase, Texas. SpaceX confirmed in a post on X that no propellant was loaded, no engines were installed, and personnel were positioned at a safe distance when the booster’s lower section crumpled, resulting in no injuries.
Still, livestream footage showed significant damage around the liquid oxygen tank area of Booster 18, leading observers to speculate that the booster was a total loss. Booster 18 was among the earliest vehicles in the Starship V3 series, making the failure notable. Despite the setback, Starship V3’s development plans appear unchanged, with SpaceX pushing ahead of its Q1 2026 test flight target.
Tesla accused of infringing robotics patents in new lawsuit
Tesla has passed a critical self-driving milestone Elon Musk listed in Master Plan Part Deux
