Enabling race in space between superpowers

Manu Caddie 

Opinion

Re: Launch pad disruption, Sept 12 story.

Both Rocket Lab and government officials continue to obfuscate the issues.

1. Weapons targeting systems are weapons, despite what Rocket Lab might want to call them. A technology used to identify a target for ordinance is a critical part of a weapons system. Whether that weapons system technology is being deployed for combat or for testing, it is still part of a weapons system.

2. New Zealand’s “national interests” when it comes to space policy have not been defined in legislation or policy, but remain an opaque catch-all, used in this case to justify the launching of weapons systems from Mahia for foreign military agencies and the companies paid to provide weapons and surveillance systems.

3. There is a big difference between payloads with “national security applications” (for New Zealand) and launches of weapons systems for foreign militaries and overseas companies. Officials and politicians seem to conveniently conflate the two and refuse to make a distinction in policy and legislation. There is also a difference between generic GPS technology and the satellites being deployed for specific military application by Rocket Lab customers including BlackSky, RAAF, Spaceflight Infrastructure Inc, US Army, NSA, NGA, Space Development Agency and US Space Force.

4. Rocket Lab claims the launch of weapons is against the law in New Zealand, but either the company and the officials signing off launches don’t understand what the weapons technology is used for, or they are all taking a very narrow interpretation of the Cabinet decision that payloads “contributing to nuclear weapons programmes or capabilities” and payloads “with the intended end use of harming, interfering with, or destroying other spacecraft, or systems on Earth” should be excluded from any authorised launches. The weapons guidance systems that Rocket Lab launches are used for both nuclear and conventional missiles, and their purpose is generally to destroy things on Earth.

5. How does Mr Johnson from MBIE (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment)evidence the public concerns about military customers and weapons payloads informing the values and objectives in the National Space Policy when these payloads are not mentioned once in the policy?

So while both Rocket Lab and the Government PR machines have been increasingly quiet on the military clients of payloads launched from Mahia — preferring instead to focus on climate science, cellphone, civil defence and GPS-enabling benefits of satellites — the reality is New Zealand taxpayers are enabling a race in space between world superpowers to control both nuclear and conventional weapons on land, in the air and at sea.