Looking up

Tracey Cooper gets up close to that historic Kiwi space launch.

A small Luke Skywalker figurine could help bankroll New Zealand's space race, if they can find it.

The plastic toy could be the first and only Star Wars character to actually venture into space. It was inside the rocket Atea-1, which lifted off from Sir Michael Fay's Great Mercury Island on Monday afternoon, launching New Zealand into space race for the first time.

The figurine was part of a "special payload" placed inside Atea-1 by Rocket Lab director Mark Rocket, who hoped to put it on internet auction site Ebay if and when it's recovered.

With Star Wars figures keenly sought after by collectors, depending on the type of figurine, what condition it is in and its significance, the Luke Skywalker toy could be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

"Fingers crossed he comes back," Rocket says in the hours after the successful launch on Monday afternoon.

Rocket who changed his name from Stevens and his Rocket Lab colleagues, technical director Peter Beck and senior engineer Nikhil Raghu, each had a personal item among the payload of the 6m long rocket.

For Beck, it was a dollar coin, while Raghu went for a small piece of silver.

Also in the rocket was a USB card and map from mapping company Kiwimaps, after company owner Colin Boot paid about $5600 to win a TradeMe auction for payload space on the rocket.

"It'll be the only map that's been in to space," he says.

Boot was one of more than 50 people who spent Sunday and Monday on Great Mercury Island watching and waiting to see Atea-1 blast its way into history.

The woman he beat in the internet auction, Clare Keenan, was also on the island and had a sticker on the side of the rocket with a photograph of her grandmother Suzanna Lizamore, 84, who died earlier this year, on it. Keenan runs a business, Curtain Call, which provides "a tailored celebration of our clients' lives in a way that captures their individuality and passion even after they exit". That includes sending their ashes into space.

Keenan says she would have loved to send her grandmother's ashes in to space as she was such an adventurous woman but was happy with having her picture on the side of the rocket.

"I did think of her when it was going up," she says.

"It was better than I could have imagined."

The rocket developed over more than a decade had several stickers on the side and Beck says it was not simply a matter of sticking them on to look good.

"If we cut half a millimetre off a 3mm screw we save something like 0.01gms. If we do that to enough screws, we can put a sticker on the side," he says.

Such attention to detail appears a hallmark of Beck's work, with a raft of calculations required to keep the weight of the rocket as low as possible.

The lighter the rocket, the less fuel needed to get it into space and the more payload it can carry.

Another tenet of his work is his classic Kiwi can-do attitude, best demonstrated by a last minute flight to Whitianga for a $6 brass connector to save the launch, which had been delayed for several hours after a fuel aerocoupler failed to disconnect from the rocket during the first launch attempt early on Monday morning.

In many ways, the launch could only have happened in New Zealand and was a quintessentially Kiwi operation.

From the dried sheep shit littering the picturesque Great Mercury Island launch pad to the whitebait fritters, crumbed scallops, lamb chops and sausages in bread complete with Watties tomato sauce served at the Sunday night barbecue.

From the iwi blessing and naming of the Atea-1 rocket to the converted garden shed bought from a K-Road discount store used as a command center for the launch.

There are shades of both motorcycle racer Burt Munro who, like Beck, hailed from Invercargill and inventor John Britten in Beck's work.

The refusal of United States companies to sell rocket parts to people in foreign countries meant Beck had to design and build everything himself. Even sourcing a laptop from the US took more than a month after authorities there learned it was destined for a rocket company.

There's also a nice connection between Sir Michael and Beck.

It was Sir Michael who was behind New Zealand's innovative use of fibreglass yachts in America's Cup racing with KZ7 and Beck, also, has built his rockets from carbon fibre, rather than the more common aluminium. The night before the launch, Beck used Sir Michael's waterfront office lined with scale model America's Cup racing yachts to outline his long road to space.

"I started the company and put a sticker on my garage, that was it," he says.

He said while it had been a "hard road" to get to the island launch, everyone he had dealt with had been supportive of his plan.

"In engineering we times everything by pi, which is 3.14," he says. "So if it's meant to take a day, it takes 3.14 days, if it's meant to cost a dollar, it costs $3.14. Customs had some issues because it (the rocket) was technically leaving New Zealand but returning."

But that problem was quickly resolved and "there have been no roadblocks placed in our way whatsoever".

He said an initial plan to launch the rocket from Australia's Woomera range proved "just impossible". Then he learned there was a Defence Force range already designated out the back of Great Mercury Island.

"I wanted to speak to Sir Michael and ask him if we could launch a rocket from his island. Within a week he was in our lab," Beck says.

"CAA (Civil Aviation authority) were really helpful. It can be a two year wait to get airspace in the US but we had 80 square kilometres of air space closed off and air traffic diverted with no problem at all."

Rocket launching wasn't on the Thames Coromandel District Council's district plan "so immediately it was a non-complying activity," Beck says. That was also quickly sorted and Beck says during the planning stages for the launch, he became "very good at convincing people we were not nutters".

Sir Michael says he was initially told there was "a nutcase on the phone" and he asked what the call was about. When he learned someone wanted to launch a rocket from his island, "I said: `when can I talk to him'."

He became an enthusiastic supporter of the launch programme and Beck's work.

"I'm confident that bird will fly tomorrow," he says on Sunday night.

Rocket says the island has "the appropriate celestial pedigree".

"Maori came her from Hawaiki by using the stars. Captain Cook came here 240 years ago to record the transit of Mercury."

He also noted New Zealand already had a space pioneer in Havelock's Sir William Pickering, who played a major role in America's space programme development in the late 1950s and 1960s.

But it's unlikely Pickering ever had to deal with flowering scotch thistles and wandering sheep during his work. Early on Monday morning, Beck and his team were among the thistles in a sheep paddock, beginning the fuelling process for the rocket.

When the rocket failed to fire first time, the crowd dispersed until word came at about 2pm that the problem had been fixed.

A convoy of 4WDs quickly hit the dusty roads to the launch site and people perched on vantage points among the rocks.

The visitors had a better view than Beck, who was squirreled away in the command bunker below the launch site.

"A decade and a half of testing and I don't even get to see it," he says.

At 2.23pm, a cheer went up when Rocket announced: "We are going for launch everyone."

"Remember to have a place ready in case something goes wrong."

From there, the pair, with senior engineer Nikhil Raghu went through their enthralling pre-launch checklist.

Raghu and Beck controlled the launch from the bunker which was protected by several massive wharf piles placed over the roof while Rocket sat among the rocks with everyone else.

Their voices were played through a loud speaker, heightening the excitement.

"Range safety, go or no go?" Beck's voice asked.

"Go," Rocket replied.

"Weather, go or no go?" "Go."

"Iridium, go or no go?" Raghu takes over: "Go."

"Avionics, go or no go?" "Go."

"In the tradition of great New Zealand explorers: New Zealand, we are go for space," Beck says amid wild cheers.

A few seconds later and Rocket was pumping his fist in the air as Atea-1 shot skywards with a throaty roar and a fiery tail, sending sheep in nearby paddocks running aimlessly in every direction.

"Fantastic effort Peter. It was glorious to behold. Well done buddy," Rocket told Beck as Atea-1 soared spacewards.

"Thank you very much for believing in my dream and supporting it," he replied as Rocket was mobbed by people wanting to congratulate him and media wanting to record his initial reaction.

"Just the power of it," Rocket says. "It looked like it was doing the business."

"It burned for 22 seconds as far as we can tell and if that's the case, space is home free.

"There've been so many ups and downs to actually get here. It was our last tank of gas, we were going to scrub the launch three times."

"I used to think Peter was a really smart guy, now he's in the genius category."

Indeed. – Fairfax