
Rocket Lab New Premesis Imagery, Auckland, 11 October 2018. [Image: William Booth / www.photosport.nz]
“For us, the first big step was getting to orbit,” said Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck. “We succeeded with that. The next big step is scaling facilities to meet demand. We’re not focusing on the next rocket. We’re focusing on the next 100 rockets.”

Rocket Lab New Premesis Imagery, Auckland, 11 October 2018. [Image: William Booth / www.photosport.nz]
Rocket Lab will continue to build its 3D printed Rutherford engines, as well as electronic guidance systems, at its main production facility in Southern California. The new Auckland facility will focus on building fuel tanks and rocket cores. Rockets launching from New Zealand will eventually be integrated at facilities there, and rockets launching from Virginia will be integrated there. Rocket Lab won’t be shipping entire Electron boosters across the ocean, but it will be sending components, and the two facilities combined will allow the company to build up to 52 Electron rockets per year, launching once per week.
Rocket Lab plans to invest about $20 million into the new facility at Wallops, which will be located at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. According to Beck, the company is looking at additional sites around the world as well.
The Electron rocket has a payload of 150kg to 225kg, and is boostable to a 500km sun-synchronous orbit. Rocket Lab faces stiff competition from a large number of other companies looking to deliver small payloads into outer space, but Beck believes that the company has an advantage from all that it has learned: that things like regulation, production facilities, and launch pads matter just as much if not more than the rocket itself.
“This is the thing,” he said. “It’s one thing to have a couple of hot fires and do a couple of suborbital launches and whatnot. For us, just going to orbit was a good milestone, but going to orbit once is just the start. The amount of effort that we’ve invested the last nine months, really, it’s been just extraordinary.”

Rocket Lab New Premises Imagery, Auckland, 11 October 2018. [Image: William Booth / www.photosport.nz]
Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter
Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.
You May Also Like
Spanish Clothing Company Mango Backs Ziknes 3D Printed Furniture Made with Recycled Materials
With its trendy and affordable designs that resonate globally—and €2.3 in annual revenues—Mango is boldly stepping into the realm of innovation and technology. Through its Mango StartUp Studio accelerator, the...
3D Printing News Briefs, November 25, 2023: Housing, Seed Funding, & More
We’re starting with additive construction news in this Thanksgiving weekend edition of 3D Printing News Briefs, and then moving on to seed funding and a Memorandum of Understanding. Finally, we’ll...
Dyndrite Advances 3D Printing Materials at Formnext 2023
Dyndrite has teamed up with Constellium, Elementum 3D, and Sandvik to launch the industry-led Materials Consortium for additive manufacturing (AM). This collaborative initiative is meant to democratize the landscape of...
1000Kelvin’s AI-Powered Autocorrect for 3D Printing Now Commercially Available
1000Kelvin, the US-Germany software as a service (SaaS) startup specializing in AI-powered solutions for additive manufacturing (AM), has announced the commercial launch of its signature AMAIZE platform at Formnext 2023...