 Few events last year aroused the imagination as much as the launch of Rocket Lab's Ātea-1 sounding rocket from Great Mercury Island in November. Named Manu Karere (Blue Messenger) by local iwi, Ngati Hei, the successful launch signalled a start, more than an ending, for the rocket's creator and CEO of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck.
Peter has an interesting pedigree as an engineer and at a relatively young age, he is poised to be one of New Zealand's significant contributors. He has already been honoured with the award of the Cooper Medal by the Royal Society.
Starting out as an apprentice toolmaker at Fisher & Paykel's production facilities outside of Dunedin, Peter spent eight years getting hands on experience in precision tooling before a stint working for a super yacht company in New Plymouth. He then moved to IRL - Industrial Research Limited - as part of their smart materials and structures team.
Throughout a lot of his working career though, Peter had been, "mucking around with rockets", and says that he, "liked the engineering challenge - they're simple to look at but getting them to hang together is full of challenges".
Over time the enterprise grew bigger and Peter became aware that it was feasible to do something with rockets in a business sense. "As the years went on I wanted to make a business and work in the space industry as well as getting something into space," he says. That was the beginning of Rocket Lab and a connection with investor, Mark Rocket arose when Peter sought external investment.
The launch of Ātea-1 last year was a massive stepping stone for Peter, his company, and New Zealand engineering. As Peter says, the launch was a technology demonstration for a market that is extremely difficult to break into and the fact that the launch was a success has led to opportunities that could mean very big things for a small (at this stage) company.
When I interviewed Peter in January he was about to undertake a trip to the US to talk with a number of large military organisations and aerospace companies - and more significantly - to have meetings with four different NASA facilities.
"The launch created a real stir in the international space arena," Peter says. "At the launch we were told how clean the plumes were and how well it went and now people are talking with us who didn't want to before. Even the fact that we haven't yet located the payload section was no real disadvantage to us. One observer said to me ‘if that's the only thing that went wrong then it's still a huge success.'"
"In this industry this was the first launch vehicle of its nature. Sounding rockets travel at high velocity - so there's a lot of development to make them fly, as the margins are so tight. We had to develop a new launch from scratch - we had to make everything - thermal coatings, guidance system, propulsion etc," Peter says.
Even still, while Rocket Lab proclaims itself to be, "a privately owned rocket science company" it is also engaged in a number of other challenging and intriguing ventures.
One of these is a collaboration with Rosco McGlashan and the Bullet project team to break the World Land Speed Record later this year. Rocket Lab has been contracted to develop four 15,000lbf liquid bi-propellant engines to power the Aussie Invader 5R Land Speed Record Vehicle. While the site for the attempt has not yet been decided there is talk of it being held in Dubai and it will be another fantastic opportunity to showcase the ingenuity and sheer determination of a team of young New Zealand engineers.
For more information visit: www.rocketlab.co.nz
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I was talking to Peter Herbert recently and discussing his thoughts on 2010 and what changes would help businesses within our industry and what was crucial to our industry. His view, and the view of many of the people I have been talking to recently, is pretty clear - the value of the New Zealand dollar. 
