Kiwi rocket launch a high-profile event

I was thrilled to be part of the Mercury Island rocket launch.

It was an honour and a privilege to be invited to be a part of such a momentous occasion. We knew it was history in the making - Kiwi history in the making - and were there to experience it. From the moment I boarded the chopper at Mechanics Bay on Sunday with my friend Paul Holmes and Labour MP David Shearer, it was the sentiment most often repeated.

Sir Michael Fay and his beautiful wife Sarah were incredibly gracious hosts catering and accommodating a group of nearly 40 who were all invited to the launch because of their significance to the project. Well, apart from me, who came because of a long-held fascination with space.

I dined with the Fays a couple of months ago at David Tua's boxing bout in Hamilton and Michael kindly extended an invitation to watch the rocket launch on the island.

But it seemed utterly surreal when we were actually there at 7am yesterday morning to watch Manu Karere (translation: bird messenger) launch off 120 kilometres into the sky. It is the first privately-funded, Kiwi-made rocket to be launched from here and the atmosphere was electric.

Click here for photos.

As the TV cameras rolled, reporting live from the site to the viewers at home, we were huddled around an enormous rock metres away from the launch pad. "Hit the decks behind the rock if something goes wrong," we were told by safety range officer Mark Rocket, the business brains behind Rocket Lab. We laughed. He didn't.

No surprise, Rocket changed his name by deed poll, though he won't say what name he was christened with. "All journos want to know that," he laughed. Rocket counts Sir Richard Branson and his nephew Ned RocknRoll (another deed poll creation) as friends. They met through the space venture Virgin Galactic. Christchurch-based Rocket is dead keen to go up on it. His Rocket Lab partner, Peter Beck, wouldn't dream of it. He thinks he's nuts.

Beck is the madcap rocket scientist with the vision. A true genius. He is a young William Pickering and like Pickering, you just know he's destined for great things.

The 60kg Manu Karere launched - eventually - at 2:28pm performing a 22-second burn and reaching a top speed of Mach 5. The hybrid fuel that Rocket Lab created and patented worked, but things weren't completely plain sailing.

There was a delay of seven hours after the aero-coupler around the fuel line froze and Beck, using his Kiwi ingenuity, came up with a solution and choppered to Whitianga (still wearing his white coat) to buy a hydraulic coupling from an engineering supplier. It apparently cost around a measly $5. NASA, eat ya heart out.

Originally the launch was scheduled for 6am but an hour was added to the timeline to allow the television crews to report live from the site in time for the 7am news. There was some speculation in the group that the original one hour delay caused the rocket to freeze after it had been sitting on the launch pad, but the boys weren't so sure. Holmesy didn't agree. Media like to play a media-blaming game. It's their favourite pastime.

Rocket, Beck and Fay are currently trying to locate the GPS signal from the instrument payload that crashed - hopefully - in the waters not far from the island when the rocket returned to earth. The data will be analysed and the boys will no doubt become overnight millionaires. NASA is also creating its own innovative hybrid fuel that is environmentally friendly. Rocket Lab beat them to it.

- Rachel Glucina




Photo: Blindspott's Damian Alexander and his wife Tracy Magan witnessed the rocket launch. Photo / Rachel Glucina