Vector Launch (formerly Vector Space Systems)

[ringsider]

https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2019/12/30/vector-launch-attorney-alleges-former-ceo.html?ana=e_phx_bn_editorschoice

It looks like Vector is currently in several lawsuits, one of which is led by Jim Cantrell (Case # C20194675).

The first one was filed by a group of investors within a few weeks of the initial news, interestingly against about 20 individual people.

There is another article linked in the one you quote that gives some more details of what happened, a lot of it quotes from Cantrell himself and responses from Vector:-

https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2019/12/20/former-vector-launch-ceo-talks-about-reasons.html

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/vectorlaunch/status/1220796654611120128

Official statement regarding Vector's on-going restructuring efforts and asset purchase agreement entered into with @LockheedMartin to be “stalking-horse bidder” for GalacticSky

[Pueo]

So it looks like Lockheed Martin decided the easiest way to make a frivolous patent lawsuit go away was to buy the company suing them.  What are the odds that Lockheed Martin will take those patents and launch frivolous lawsuits of their own? 

[FormerVector]

Now that Vector is (mostly) officially bankrupt and sold off, I believe I can provide some details and not feel too guilty about potentially sabotaging an attempt at reviving the company/technology.

I'll start off with a brief high-level overview of the company's achievements.

The "first" rocket Vector ever launched was P-20, ~July 2016 (Vector founded ~April 2016). This rocket was 99% Garvey Spacecraft Corporation - it was already designed, bought, and almost entirely built by the time Vector was a thing. The rapid time to launch was great for raising money though.

The second was B0.001, "P-19H". The P-19H name comes from Garvey Spacecraft - this rocket was also mostly built and ready for the final touches before flight. The plan was to launch this ASAP, hence why it was skinned/wrapped (it's the slightly shorter and skinnier one compared to the MEU/B0.001 with a dark red checker pattern - P-20 was orange). I don't know the specific details, but I would guess investors wanted to see a big rocket launch in order to settle a bet/boast, so we took P-19H apart and slapped the engine and modified mcmaster-carr 60 gallon compressed air tanks into an aluminum tin can. We also took the fins off and put them onto a now MUCH larger, MUCH heavier rocket. This one did not have TVC, and the primary goal of stability was "can we use the existing fins and not have this thing immediately do a 180 off the launch rail and auger into the ground." Luckily for us it did not do that. Ultimately we were limited to ~10 second burn duration due to a tradeoff of FAA part 101 amateur waiver rules, sufficient ullage volume to maintain chamber pressure at burnout, reasonable T/W ratio at liftoff, and not tipping over once it left the rail. It got somewhere in the 1000-2000 ft altitude range - I honestly don't remember. The parachute was set to deploy at apogee, which it did. It was also anchored to one of those thin aluminum rods connected to two of the ribs (welded). It also failed spectacularly, and all of us had a very embarrassing facepalm moment since that was obviously a very reasonable and expected outcome. Without a parachute, it then proceeded to head nose-first towards the desert floor, before hitting a layer of warmer air, tipping up to almost horizontal, and pancake'ing onto the desert floor. And yes, the burning kiwi mission patch was most definitely a stab at Rocket Lab. I'll leave you to guess whose idea that was.

The third was B0.002. This one was almost a straight copy-paste of the B0.001. The rocket was stated to have "new avionics, code upgrades, AFTS, and upgraded engine." The actual truth was "still development avionics that are far from the flight config, bug fixes that we found on the previous launch, valves that are commanded closed at end of flight (10 seconds) instead of burning to depletion, and an engine with a different injection pattern." Improvements yes, but also significantly overstated progress. The launch delay was indeed due to an auto-abort during ignition detection. We were using a spark igniter for ground testing but had not done the development work to get it to work on the test vehicle, so we were using a trio of solid grain igniters with a 2/3 majority voting. Each one was tracked via a thermocouple - one igniter failed, one TC failed, and the engine auto-aborted. We then had to depress, approach, recycle igniters, repress, and then launch. The parachute deployed at apogee, did not rip out (we used a legit anchor this time), but got tangled up and did not unfurl completely. It broke some pretty sizeable trees on the way down. Altitude was somewhere around 1500-2000 feet, but I don't remember. Worth noting that the numbers quoted by the company via tweets etc. were actual legitimate maximum predicted performance numbers - we were just always under the mark due to actual engine performance, propellant conditions, etc. Oh and for this flight we used propane on accident - the company delivering the propylene mixed it up and we didn't think to check. Safe to say we were VERY rigorous on checking our fuel deliveries from then on.

The "fourth" was intended to be B0.003 at many points in time. This was right around the point where our "business model" of raising revenue by launching rockets started to catch up with us, since we had mostly been coasting along on previous Garvey Spacecraft hardware while also trying to design an orbital rocket at the same time. Half of the upper management wanted to keep launching incrementally, the other half thought we would never have enough time/money to be able to do that and needed to pivot 100% towards an orbital launch attempt ASAP. That will explain some of the confusing and contradictory FCC/FAA notices, PR, and tweets going back and forth between B0.003/B1.001/B0.101. The internal plan was changing a LOT. As for the actual vehicle, it was intended to fly with TVC and only 1 engine. Due to physics, that did necessitate moving the propellant tanks from their previously most-forward position to as aft as possible to bring the C.G. down. We also added a water ballast tank to bring the T/W down to representative flight levels so we could exercise the TVC system during the sketchy part of liftoff. We couldn't just add more propellant since we were pushing the limit of what is allowed under a part 101 amateur FAA waiver. We could not launch under a legit FAA waiver since our license paperwork was no where NEAR being complete - hard to create 200 pages of documentation for a rocket that isn't fully designed yet. I'm a bit fuzzy on remembering the details, but it went something like shipping the rocket a few weeks early to meet a ridiculous schedule, which then became even longer since now we had to finish integrating a rocket while out in the middle of no where. It then did not even matter since we failed to load the vehicle with liquid oxygen due to some really poorly designed thermal insulation and ground support equipment. I will provide the defense however that this was less the result of us being terrible engineers and more us being pressured to produce a solution yesterday, when we knew it was a dead-end since it was not traceable to the final orbital configuration. We then brought it back to the shop and briefly considered flying it at Pinal Airport (near our Arizona Test Site). We REALLY wanted to fly it in Kodiak, but (understandably) they wanted nothing to do with us when they were busy supporting actual paying customers. Ultimately we decided not to fly it and instead do a horizontal static fire test. I don't remember the details, but we managed to almost burn the thing down after the engines turned off.

While all of this was going on there were also a bunch of "publicity stunts" at places like Camden, Florida, and Vandenberg. Those were a mix of PR, throwing a bone towards whoever we were working with at those places, and also convincing people that our rocket wasn't that scary. A LOT of people we talked with about site/launch safety were super skittish about our entire operations, especially propylene. But you tell them it's basically propane and then roll up with the MEU and they see it's only 45 feet tall and they calm down a bit.

People also advised at the very start that it would be bad to name the company Vector Space Systems with Space Vector around. A certain someone ignored that, and we got sued. Big surprise. I think at one point one of the engineers tried to buy something from Space Vector and they (understandably) were extremely amused.

B0.101 had quite the history. It went back and forth over the life of the company between being a thing and not being a thing. Overall, it was intended to be a 2 out of 3 engine first stage, half loaded propellant tanks without a pressurization system (since we didn't have it working yet), and an inert second stage. We would still perform stage separation, but the mission would end there. Due to the high impulse this design necessitated a full-up FAA launch license, which was the biggest hurdle. Alternatively, the hardware was designated for the "B1.001" configuration, which was the full orbital configuration - 3 engines, TVC, pressurization, stage separation, second stage engine, pressurization on that as well, full propellant load, the whole nine yards. Once various systems were seen to be taking a bit too long to be ready for flight, we descoped and put B0.101 back onto the table. The rocket was stated to have a mass problem (the tanks) and engines which met performance. This was surprising to some people here since we had received the tanks a year+ previously. Believe me, we knew all along the tanks were overweight, and it was a problem. We had solved that problem for the next build sets of the tanks however. Oh, and the engine definitely had performance issues. We (and by we I mean the upper management) decided to file for 8 different locations for the FCC request deliberately to make it so that people couldn't figure out where we were going. You all were definitely starting to frustrate them (and safe to say I agreed that it was a bit ridiculous).

From here I'm reaching territory/information that never got out because we didn't live long enough for anyone to tweet about it. Since it was late summer 2019 and Darpa Launch Challenge was in ~January 2020, with both Virgin Orbit and "Stealth Space Company" AKA Astra also nearing their orbital launch attempts, we pulled B0.101 off the table. A very obvious suborbital attempt was not going to get us anywhere. Instead we took that hardware and designated it for integrated stage testing. I really wish we had gotten to this part - we would have gotten some really sweet videos/photos/data out of it and been able to really show all of the progress we had made as a company. From there we would have used that information to build the B1.002 - almost entirely equivalent to the B0.101/B1.001/stage test articles, although with stretched first stage tanks. We had a mass and engine performance problem, so we had to squeeze the performance out as much as we could. That rocket had a very real chance of reaching orbit - and by orbit I mean putting the second stage and a pinch of dust into a 180x300 km low inclination orbit for a day or two, assuming it didn't explode or fail for any number of reasons rockets explode or fail. From there we would have progressed to the B1.003, which had even further stretched tanks and larger engines on BOTH stages to get back to our advertised performance. We were also considering scrapping the Vector-R entirely and moving directly to the Vector-H, which would have been in the ~200-300 kg to orbit range (AKA an Electron). The scale of the Vector-R just wasn't playing nice, and we were running a real risk of making a bigger Vector-R just to bring a bigger and heavier second stage into orbit without any additional payload. It would have been a serious engineering challenge to get either of those working, and one that I sincerely wish we had the opportunity to attempt.

The company ended up closing its doors so suddenly because, in the process of changing CEOs, we realized that the money we thought we had to cover us for a few weeks/months until we closed the series C round we did not actually have. Due to the WARN act, we did not have enough money to keep everyone employed for 60 days and therefore all of us got let go without ANY warning at all. A bit of irony there, that the law ended up directly causing the very situation it is supposed to prevent.

I have a bunch more stories and information to share, but for now I'll keep it as-is. I'm not entirely sure how much I can share without getting in trouble with the rules around here, but I believe what I have stated is for the most part either public knowledge or things anyone can guess at and have a reasonable expectation of being correct. I'm also not entirely sure how interested people are in hearing stories about a failed rocket company.

Overall, it was an experience I will never forget. The only regret I have is that I wish we had failed because we tried to reach orbit and just couldn't execute on the engineering, rather than failing because someone's dirty laundry finally got aired and we got the rug pulled out from under us (said dirty laundry is public, but I'll refrain from posting it at this point in case it will get me in trouble - ultimately I don't want to cause problems for anyone here.)

[jamesh9000]

That was absolutely fascinating. I'm always interested in what goes on at these companies, and the gulf between marketing and reality (aerospace has always seemed to have a particularly vast gulf in this area, which fascinates me as it's supposed to all be based on hard numbers). I would be happy to read as many pages of stories as you've got, as long as no one gets in trouble of course.

And yes, the burning kiwi mission patch was most definitely a stab at Rocket Lab. I'll leave you to guess whose idea that was.

Jesus Christ Jim....

[Steven Pietrobon]

The "first" rocket Vector ever launched was P-20, ~July 2016 (Vector founded ~April 2016).

My records show that P-20 was launched on 30 July 2016.

The second was B0.001, "P-19H". ... It got somewhere in the 1000-2000 ft altitude range - I honestly don't remember.

Launched on 3 May 2017.

The third was B0.002. This one was almost a straight copy-paste of the B0.001.

Launched on 3 August 2017.

Is there any chance of Vector being resurrected by whoever bought the assets?

[john smith 19]

Is there any chance of Vector being resurrected by whoever bought the assets?

Is  there anything left to resurrect?

It sounds like they launched most of the hardware they got from Garvey.

I think most of the lessons learned have been of the intangible variety.

[ChrisWilson68]

Now that Vector is (mostly) officially bankrupt and sold off, I believe I can provide some details and not feel too guilty about potentially sabotaging an attempt at reviving the company/technology.

Thank you very much!  It's really interesting to hear the inside story, even if it's after the fact.

I suspect a number of people at other launch start-ups have had similar experiences rushing to try to balance giving the impression of progress with actually making a viable product, all without enough time or money and desperately hoping to seal the next round of funding.

[rocketguy123]

Thanks for writing this, very interesting! I was hoping to at least see a suborbital attempt after all of the hype

How mature were the avionics/TVC/valves/etc. when you were ultimately shutdown? What did you think the chance of reaching orbit would've been?

[ccdengr]

I'm also not entirely sure how interested people are in hearing stories about a failed rocket company.

I think you might be surprised.

I know you won't be able to share details, but are you still doing rockets elsewhere or have you moved on?

[FormerVector]

Is there any chance of Vector being resurrected by whoever bought the assets?

Is  there anything left to resurrect?

It sounds like they launched most of the hardware they got from Garvey.

I think most of the lessons learned have been of the intangible variety.

Early on when we were a team of < 10 engineers, the sub-sub-suborbital launches took up a lot of our time. At the end with almost 100 engineers, everyone was focused on the first orbital launch attempt. Almost all of the hardware was ready for flight, and integrated onto the vehicle. We had a bit of work to connect the two together, and were still doing a bit of troubleshooting on avionics and ensuring the engines would survive the full burn durations without poking holes in the ablative. But we would have had opportunities to solve those problems during the integrated stage tests. Overall I think we were ~3-6 months from start to finish of stage testing assuming nothing went absolutely completely horribly wrong, and we'd probably be rushing towards the first orbital attempt right now after having a bit of completely reasonable schedule slip while solving issues that cropped up along the way. And of course the company would be continually stating "launching next week!" the whole time.

Overall, there is hardware that is decently close to flight...but everyone who knows how it works and what needs to be done is gone.

Now that Vector is (mostly) officially bankrupt and sold off, I believe I can provide some details and not feel too guilty about potentially sabotaging an attempt at reviving the company/technology.

Thank you very much!  It's really interesting to hear the inside story, even if it's after the fact.

I suspect a number of people at other launch start-ups have had similar experiences rushing to try to balance giving the impression of progress with actually making a viable product, all without enough time or money and desperately hoping to seal the next round of funding.

I would say "you have no idea" but you probably actually do have a good idea of how these things work. It's endlessly frustrating having people within the company say "everyone else takes 12 months, but we can do 6 months because we're smarter than everyone else." Don't they realize that's what everyone else also says?

Thanks for writing this, very interesting! I was hoping to at least see a suborbital attempt after all of the hype

How mature were the avionics/TVC/valves/etc. when you were ultimately shutdown? What did you think the chance of reaching orbit would've been?

Avionics was more or less complete for the first attempt. We were still making upgrades and putting in added functionality, but the barebones was there. TVC had a bit of integrated testing to work out the kinks between valves/controllers/GPS/etc., but that is not too surprising since for a VERY long time they did not have access to hardware at all. The valves were good to go as well - early on we had a list of 20-30 valves for all of the unique applications across the vehicle to optimize mass. Very quickly we realized valves are actually stupid expensive, and we'd be spending a few million dollars on valves for a $1.5M rocket, so we only had a handful of valves just slapped all over the place. We had a few issues towards the end with our main valves (once we realized the poppet of our LOX valve was titanium...we learned that the hard way), but had gotten those mostly resolved at the very end.

I'm also not entirely sure how interested people are in hearing stories about a failed rocket company.

I think you might be surprised.

I know you won't be able to share details, but are you still doing rockets elsewhere or have you moved on?

Yep, still doing rockets. A plurality of us ended up down the street at Virgin Orbit, one or two at Rocket Lab's Huntington Beach office, a few at each of Relativity, Firefly, ABL, and Blue Origin. Some also ended up at Aerospace Corporation/Raytheon/Northrop/Boeing. I don't think anyone went to SpaceX or Lockheed Martin, but that's not too surprising.

[TrevorMonty]

ABL, Relativity and Firefly would all benefit from lesson learnt by your engineers. Knowledge gained won't be wasted.

[FormerVector]

Also since I just realized this video isn't private anymore (not sure when that changed), here's the eleventh hour Hail Mary near-full duration burn that was performed in order to see if we could get anyone to give us enough money to hire people back. This was the weekend after Vector closed the doors, so all hardware was already existing: we just hadn't done a full-duration since we didn't want to break things we didn't have replacements of. There's a better video on a harddrive somewhere, but due to miscommunication this one got uploaded instead.

[lrk]

Thanks for being that open - I love hearing this kind of "war stories".  If you felt more comfortable posting in a slightly less public way, I'm sure Chris would be happy to set you up with L2 access. 

It's always sad to see a company go under like this, with how much effort was poured into the project by a small group of people.  I'm sure many if not most of the numerous up-and-coming space companies could succeed if they had enough money. 

To be honest I never thought Vector's chances were that great, but I at least imagined the end would be a bit more spectacular.

Oh and for this flight we used propane on accident - the company delivering the propylene mixed it up and we didn't think to check. Safe to say we were VERY rigorous on checking our fuel deliveries from then on.

I lost it at that part   What a way to demonstrate the flex-fuel capability of your engines!  Orbital launches from almost anywhere burning almost any type of fuel!  I'm almost surprised this wasn't used for marketing

[ChrisWilson68]

I'm sure many if not most of the numerous up-and-coming space companies could succeed if they had enough money.

I think it's important to make a distinction between succeeding technically and succeeding as a business.

It is possible that given unlimited financing and time most of the numerous start-ups could eventually succeed technically, meaning that they could produce a system that regularly put payloads into orbit.

But it is not possible that most could succeed as companies.  It's inevitable that some would be more efficient than others, and the better ones would succeed while the worse ones would all fail.  And that's the way a market economy is supposed to work.  Efficiency only comes because most who try fail and go away.

If the capital markets are working properly, then the companies that can't get financing are the ones most likely to have failed as companies.

[Craftyatom]

Overall, it was an experience I will never forget. The only regret I have is that I wish we had failed because we tried to reach orbit and just couldn't execute on the engineering, rather than failing because someone's dirty laundry finally got aired and we got the rug pulled out from under us (said dirty laundry is public, but I'll refrain from posting it at this point in case it will get me in trouble - ultimately I don't want to cause problems for anyone here.)

Thanks for the rundown of how operations went!  Some real tragic parts, but it definitely sounds like roughly what we were expecting.

While everyone's here, posting hindsight and making things available for posterity, I figure I'd share some old pictures.  May 11, 2017, I was down to Tucson (for other reasons) and decided I'd swing by Vector's shop there, as well as scout out the location of the Vector hangar/test site/whatever that was theoretically being built south of WorldView.  I could see some telltale hardware in the shop - only way I even knew I had found the right place.  There was no sign of the new building, however; in fact, the new road that was supposed to lead to it had barely even been marked out yet.  Google Maps shows the completed road now, but it still just leads to a big patch of dirt.  Any information on how that went down, or just about sites in general?

Coincidentally, I also got to tour Virgin Orbit in fall of 2018 and 2019, and knew Vector had something in the area, but never managed to make a visit (the schedule was tight - I had to drive until 3am to get home afterwards).

Anyways, here are the only real pictures I took on that outing (besides a bunch of WorldView, who had a much snazzier building but a much more boring business case ), in case anyone comes back in a few decades to write an article about the old small launcher wars.  Feel free to use as you wish - I stripped out the EXIF and censored the license plate.

[Jrcraft]

Sorry for the thread bump, but it appears that Vector has re-launched it's website. https://www.vector-launch.com/

[john smith 19]

Oh and for this flight we used propane on accident - the company delivering the propylene mixed it up and we didn't think to check. Safe to say we were VERY rigorous on checking our fuel deliveries from then on.

Firstly thank you for posting.

Propylene is a pretty rare choice as a fuel. If you'r OK with LOX then you're comfortable with cryogens in general so what's the attraction? I can't believe it's cheaper than methane and (as Steven Pietrobon would point out) they are all very similar in Isp except for propyne due to its triple bond.

It's still astonishes me that 8 decades since the first orbital launch (and with multiple text books and the NASA SP8000 series on line) people still cannot design a set of tanks to meet a weight specification.   

[Davidthefat]

Sorry for the thread bump, but it appears that Vector has re-launched it's website. https://www.vector-launch.com/

Connecticut?

[TrevorMonty]

Sorry for the thread bump, but it appears that Vector has re-launched it's website. https://www.vector-launch.com/

Connecticut?

Sorry for the thread bump, but it appears that Vector has re-launched it's website. https://www.vector-launch.com/

May of found new backer. Here is hoping they fly.