New Zealand space launch is first from a private site

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.

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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.

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Re:New Zealand space launch is first from a private site by valuearb on Thursday May 25, 2017 @01:22PM (#14418670)

Why would the US want guys like Wernher von Braun working on our space projects?

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