How Rocket Lab will make Electron reusable with a Ballute!

Video from the channel Overlook Horizon about Electron, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 6:45. Language: English. Video type: News.

Rocket Lab has decided to make the first stage of its Electron launcher reusable, something its CEO, Peter Beck, had publicly ruled out; the video includes his "eating his hat" gesture when announcing it. The plan is for the stage to re-enter the atmosphere nozzle-first and deploy a ballute, a balloon-parachute hybrid that can open at very high speed, followed by a parafoil. A helicopter would then hook the line in mid-air and carry the stage to a recovery vessel.

Rocket Lab, a California-based company founded in 2006, launches small satellites from its Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand and was building a second complex on Wallops Island (Virginia). After seven Electron flights it had gathered data on the first stage's re-entry. Until then it had maintained that reusing it would force the Electron to become a medium-lift launcher. Unlike SpaceX and Blue Origin, which land using their engines, the method resembles the one announced by United Launch Alliance for the Vulcan.

The first challenge is for the stage to survive re-entry intact ("the wall"); helicopter capture would come after that. If it works, the Electron could fly again quickly and lower the cost of small satellite launches.