Buy room on a rocket like you were buying an airplane ticket.

By Christopher Waldeck, Small Satellite Space News Editor in Chief

New Zealand’s Rocket Lab wants to further innovate the obvious convenience of CubeSats. Rocketlab CEO Peter Beck made the announcement that he was building an online reservation system for anyone wanting to launch their small satellites into space. Now the ability to reserve a spot for a satellite on a rocket is as customizable and simple as purchasing an airline ticket. This announcement was made at this weekend’s small satellite conference in Utah.

According to Popular Mechanics, Rocket Lab, a private spaceflight company based out of New Zealand, will launch a series of Electron rockets into space, each carrying a series of CubeSats. CubeSats are a class of small "nano-satellites" designed for lightweight missions. They can be used as an explorer or a communications satellite. Their size allows for easy reservation and cancellation similar to reserving a ticket on an airplane. 

It works similar to the way booking a flight on a plane works. If you see a seat that you like then you can reserve your spot on it. You imply click on the platform, pick a rocket and it opens up a seating plan for customers to reserve their spots. The platform for reservation allows for you to choose your travel. This makes it easy and relatable to similar experiences that people have had reserving seats and this simplicity transcends to reserving a seat on a rocket that is being launched into space. The orbit range of where the rocket will launch will be determined to further customize which rockets are on the course best suited to the purpose of the nano-satellites that are attached to them.

The customers still have to design and build the CubeSats, but reserving the cargo space has become simpler thanks to Rocketlabs. Understanding the prices for attaching the satellites can make it easier for designing satellites and managing projects that might involve building and designing satellites. This will make it more accessible for those in business or educational organizations to budget and take on projects that involve launching these satellites. It also adds to their affordable and convenient benefits of being able to customize and postpone or selectively plan the launch of a satellite.

To conclude, as this industry expands, innovations are making it increasingly more affordable to enter it and use it’s benefits. Small satellites are becoming useful and more frequently used compared to traditional satellites. The conference in Utah provided numerous sponsors and exhibitors the chance to showcase just what can be done with this new industry. I think RocketLabs has tapped into a niche for one of the prime benefits of using a small satellite versus a large satellite and that is convenience for launching. I look forward to seeing where it goes from here. As always follow Small Satellite Space News for more information about this growing trend: http://smallsatspace.blogspot.com/