LONG BEACH, Calif. — Rocket Lab has opened a new engine development center in a building that, six months earlier, was the headquarters of a competing launch company, Virgin Orbit.
Rocket Lab held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Oct. 4 for its Engine Development Center here. The 13,400-square-meter facility will be used for production of both the Rutherford engines used on its Electron rocket and larger Archimedes engines it is developing for the Neutron rocket.
The facility had previously been the headquarters for Virgin Orbit, where that company built its LauncherOne rockets. Virgin Orbit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April and Rocket Lab acquired the lease on the building, along with the machinery and equipment inside, for $16.1 million in a bankruptcy auction in May.
Rocket Lab previously estimated the value of the facility and its contents at about $100 million. However, Adam Spice, Rocket Lab’s chief financial officer, said in an interview that the biggest impact of the purchase is “de-risking” the schedule for scaling up engine production.
“Things that we were thinking we could probably get done in 12 to 18 months, well, it’s done. So really it was more of a timeline and uncertainty shrinker, if you will,” he said. “Getting stuff for 16 cents on the dollar didn’t hurt as well.”
Before the bankruptcy sale, Rocket Lab has planned to produce engines in its existing headquarters just a few blocks away. “We could have done that, but that wouldn’t have allowed for the expansion of our space systems business,” he said, which produces satellites. “It’s freed up a tremendous amount of ability to scale up our space systems business. It’s probably a bigger enabler for space systems than it is for the rocket part of our business.”
The proximity of the new engine facility to Rocket Lab’s existing headquarters is another benefit, he added. “We really lucked out.”
Rocket Lab began moving into the…
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