There's a little more about the engine in this April thread:--
http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=839.msg28527#msg28527...which has a link to an article that has a video of tests of the engine and close-ups of its construction:--
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/small-business/67717283/rocket-lab-unveils-electric-rocket-engineIt's not as impressive as a Saturn V, but hey, aren't some of us here impressed by almost
any rocket as long as it works?
I remember being about 8 or 9, so in 1957 or 1958, finding a small spider and coaxing it into a small glass jar, capping the jar and tying a piece of string to it, and tying the other end of that to a fireworks rocket via a hole I had drilled in the bottom of the wooden tail, so it must have been early in November, close to Guy Fawkes. Was too impatient to wait for darkness, so immediately lit the rocket, which rocketed up until the string went taut and it started to drag the jar up. But it went up about 5 metres (16 feet), and took the jar up about 3-4 meters, then sputtered back down to the ground without setting fire to any of the dry, late spring grass.
Spidey survived the g-forces and staggered away with an unsteady gait to continue doing whatever little spiders do on a sunny day.
Total success! I was a rocketeer!
Edited to add: November 1957 seems to be the best candidate because I had seen the first ever satellite, Sputnik 1, on 9 October 1957 at 8:06 pm NZST. And in 1958 after a big air show on 29 March, we aeronauts switched to Super Sabre jets, breaking the sound barrier, and making parachutes for most of that year. We learnt that making a parachute from a split-open sack and baling twine, tying it on, and jumping off a shed roof was not successful. In fact, the chute caught on a corner of the roof and the chutist was slammed heavily into the wall.
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Nice to see the New Zealand-born physicist Ernest Rutherford being honoured in the name of the Rocket Lab engine.
