ROCKET LAB: HOW DOES THE ELECTRON ROCKET WORK? 🔥

Video from the channel VIKING EXPLORER about Electron, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 11:12. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

A Spanish-language educational video presenting Rocket Lab and its Electron launcher. It covers the company's origins, the rocket's technical features, and the plans it had in 2020 to reuse it and to reach the Moon.

Peter Beck founded the company in 2006, after a trip to the United States that left him disappointed with the space industry. His idea was that cheap electronics and very small satellites could greatly reduce launch costs. Internet entrepreneur Mark Rocket was the first investor and co-director between 2007 and 2011. In 2009, Rocket Lab claimed to be the first private company in the southern hemisphere to reach space, with the Ātea-1 rocket. The video notes that it carried no telemetry and was not recovered, so the achievement could not be verified. In 2010, a US Department of Defense contract to study a small-payload launcher gave the company a decisive financial boost.

Electron is a multi-stage rocket, not reusable at the time, capable of carrying about 200 kg into space for around $5 million per launch. The video compares this with the roughly $80 million it cites for a SpaceX launch. Its Rutherford engines use battery-powered pumps and are almost entirely 3D-printed. On 21 January 2018, Electron placed three cubesats into orbit from New Zealand. By the time the video was published, it had fourteen launches. To reuse it, the company planned to slow the stage with a parachute and catch it in mid-air with a helicopter. The video finally mentions a planned NASA mission toward lunar orbit, linked to preparations for the Artemis program.