Re:New Zealand space launch is first from a private site
by sand500 on Thursday May 25, 2017 @05:34AM
(#14416216)
Are all the engineers Non American citizens then? Wouldn't trying to hire American citizens also be a nightmare with ITAR?
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Re:New Zealand space launch is first from a private site
by Inconel on Thursday May 25, 2017 @05:48AM
(#14416265)
I would assume most of their employees in NZ hold NZ citizenship although I'm unsure exactly how NZ handles ITAR.
They have engineers/technicians based in the US as well and I would assume most of those are US Persons (US Citizens or Permanent Residents). In the US you can get ITAR exemptions for non-US Persons but from my understanding it's a more difficult and much more expensive process so it is only done to recruit very high level talent.
I'm at SpaceX, which is a much larger company than Rocket Lab, and I can probably count on two hands the number of non-US Persons working here.
I'm fairly certain that Peter Beck, Rocket Lab's founder and CEO, who is a Kiwi, lives in Socal now.
Re:New Zealand space launch is first from a private site
by punkrex on Thursday May 25, 2017 @09:44AM
(#14417221)
While it's not exactly the same as ITAR, NZ already allows citizens of five eye countries to get security clearances without any ties to NZ.
So I would imagine that from NZs perspective it wouldn't be a big deal to let foreigners work on export controlled projects.