Mahia blasts into future

Not long into Electron’s fight to slip gravity, there’s an image from an onboard camera that shows me the magnitude of what’s happening here.

A close look at a freeze frame, the shot of the Mahia Peninsula reveals spots where I tried to surf, with heavy names like Rolling Stones and Last Chance, where friends and I fished and looked for paua, where we lay under the pines in a camp ground and the large area of land at its tip, that was covered in sheep and a no-go zone.

If someone had told me then this would be the operational epicentre of a Kiwifounded space programme — now launching Nasa gear into space — I’d have told them to cut down smoking what was apparently abundant in the area.

But with hard-core fishermen, hell surfers, retirees and holiday makers, Mahia is now the place of rocketeers.

Part of New Zealand’s most exciting industry is based there, thanks largely to the drive of Peter Beck. Besides the hundreds employed in Auckland, there’s a ground crew drawn from locals. They’re part of something not imagined in the area or most of New Zealand a few years ago.

Beck saw it from the start. Even though there were knockers waiting for failure — and because space is hard there may be some — Beck, the restless tinkerer and creator from Southland, was never deterred.

Throughout Rocket Lab’s short life he has been confident but not cocky — and always cautious. With the media, he gives just enough to convey a sense of who he is but never really laying it all out. He’d much rather talk about rockets than his personal life.

Investors have loved what they’ve seen. There’s a relatively small sum of taxpayer funding he can draw on but its private money from here and Silicon Valley that’s powered this budding industry. Venture capitalists and aerospace giants have seen what’s achievable, launched from a farm on the eastern edge of New Zealand.