In article ,
says...

On Monday, May 29, 2017 at 2:05:18 AM UTC+12, Jeff Findley wrote:

I'm surprised they got as far as they did.

But yes, there is a bit of a PR spin going on in the news articles.
This was a test flight and it was mostly successful... mostly. But it
did not go into orbit, so it's not quite ready for paying customers who
expect their satellite to be placed into earth orbit.

Still, SpaceX had several Falcon 1 failures before they finally "got it
right". This stuff isn't easy.

Jeff,

RocketLab received $75 million a few months ago, and announced
three TEST FLIGHT prior to committing to their first COMMERCIAL
LAUNCH.

Yes, this has been reported.

Had everything gone perfectly, the company may have dropped one
test launch. As it stands, they will review 25,000 channels of
data collected,

Yes that 25,000 channels of data collected has been reported too.

and run it through their automated design and production process.

You make it sound like Rocket Lab has some sort of artificial
intelligence that can take 25,000 channels of data from a test launch
and tweak the production process without human intervention. That
simply isn't true though. That data will be interpreted by engineers,
not by some "automated design and production process".

Their tooling is largely digitally defined, and they have an
awesome system of continuous improvement building their hardware
with equipment that others might have called in an earlier day
rapid prototyping. Their next rocket will have some awesome
improvements, and their next one after that. As they strive
and achieve perfection.

I'll wait to see how the next couple of launches go. Like I said, this
stuff isn't easy. Running out of money before successfully making orbit
has happened to other start-ups in the past. It could happen again,
even though I hope it doesn't.

Jeff
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