Rocket Lab has developed substantial experience in developing complete sub-orbital flight vehicles from the ground-up. Through these development programs, Rocket Lab has gained the capability and expertise to design, develop, manufacture and test the associated subsystems and flight hardware that form the vehicle.
Some of the capabilities developed from flight vehicle programs include:
Design, development and testing of a variety of solid, hybrid and liquid rocket engines.
Significant experience in storing, handling and operating with Nitrous Oxide.
Design, manufacture and successful flight testing of non-explosive parachute deployment system for sounding rockets.
High-level design and testing of state-of-the art dual-redundant flight computer hardware and software for sounding rockets. Features include 16-bit DAQ, telemetry options, high dynamics GPS and recovery location using GPS co-ordinate transmission through Iridium.
Design and testing capability for lightweight, liner-less composite pressure vessels for Nitrous Oxide.
Non-destructive inspection capabilities (tap, ultrasound) for composite structures.
Design and testing of a successful no-shock, non-explosive separation system.
Successful development of ablative heat shields and nozzle materials.
Novel manufacturing method of ablative composite nozzles.
Experienced with optimising flight vehicle concepts and specifications from a clean sheet of paper.
Design of metallic and composite flight structures and all associated hardware.
Rocket Lab has also developed substantial capability in high-level modelling, simulation and analysis to assist with rocket engine and flight vehicle design:
In-house codes developed for trajectory dependent aerodynamic heating models of flight surfaces
3 degree of freedom trajectory models developed in-house for flight performance prediction
Vehicle dynamics codes to assist with ensuring dynamic stability of vehicle
In-house developed composite pressure vessel design software
Advanced finite element modelling capability – non-linear, composite and full contact.
Rocket engine development software including regression rate modelling, nozzle, injector design, chemical equilibrium codes and 3D grain regression modelling.
Capabilities 
Launch Vehicles