Editorial: Dreams launched at Mahia

Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck deserves the highest praise for his high-risk rocketry, writes Mark Story. Photo File

Few of us have a solid grasp of the physics involved in rockets.

The closest I've got to understanding the action-reaction of Newton's Third Law is releasing an inflated balloon and laughing at the acoustic energy.

Apparently said science is all about combustion propellant, specific impulse, gravity from celestial bodies and ballistic coefficients.

It is rocket science, after all.

Nor am I au fait with the arcane laws of space travel.

Which is why for me the rocket business playing out in Mahia remains indefinitely abstruse.

However, to get tangled up in thrust-to-weight ratios is missing the point. I'd hazard the primary allure's not in the physics - but the very mystery.

Rockets and space travel have always been the stuff of dreams, smoke, myth, mirrors and conspiracy. The exponents are therefore lauded as the vanguards of technology.

So it's no wonder we've seen a hike in rocket tourism and aeronautical groupies descending on the Wairoa district for the potential megathrust on offer.

Ignorant of its intellectual complexities we may be, but in the same way songwriter Bernie Taupin's purported sighting of a shooting star inspired Elton John to pen the atmospheric Rocket Man, there's universal interest and a type of wanderlust in what lies beyond our ceiling.

Despite another launch scrubbing yesterday, rocketry has found an unlikely fireside in Mahia.

It's sparked universal respect for the frontier mentality of the company's founder Peter Beck, a true pioneer on the peninsula.