Rocket Lab Plans To Reuse Its Rockets By Catching Them With A Helicopter

It seems that the plan to reuse rockets to deliver payload will not be a Space X's unique anymore as Rocket Lab has recently introduced plans on recovering the 1^st stage of the company’s Electron vehicle. In the first phase of the strategy, Rocket Lab will recover and then refurbish the stage of one Electron rocket from the ocean, the place where they now are dropped after being launched. The second phase of the strategy is said to be probably more audacious.

In Rocket Lab’s plans, the stage will be “captured mid-air” by an aircraft along with the helicopter which hooks on to the parachute array of the rocket during the rocket’s descent. When compared to the rocket landings of SpaceX, it will not be that elegant. However, if it works like the plan, it’ll be efficient.

The motivation for this plan is pretty clear, which is leading to lower costs and more launches. The company could make vessels reusable as well as reduce the turnaround time from weeks to days instead of building rockets from the beginning for each of launch. Therefore, Rocket Lab may not need to produce so many rockets like before at the beginning.

According to Peter Beck – the company chief, with even one single rocket that can be reusable, the rate of effective production would be doubled. At the Small Satellite Conference held at Utah State University on Tuesday, the CEO said:

However, the audience might need to wait for Rocket Lab’s real recovery for a while. The company has begun to include instrumentation on the missions to "inform future recovery efforts." However, there will not be any significant changes to Electron rockets until 3 next launches, which does not mean that it will endeavor a recovery. The company is only making a promise about a bid at a time in the "coming year." If this is proved to be successful, these reusable Electron rockets might become extremely commonplace.