How South Korea cribbed from SpaceX to launch its space ambitions
- Home-grown rocket Nuri was developed by looking at pictures of SpaceX’s Merlin engine, said the director of the Korea Aerospace Research Institute
- A treaty among established space powers such as the US, Russia and France excludes technology transfers of crucial elements for aspiring nations
“What caught our eye was the Falcon’s Merlin engine. We developed Nuri looking at the pictures and using it as a point of reference for design,” said Yoo Jae-Suk, a director at Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), referring to the SpaceX engine.
Starting with a small staff and limited ambitions, the programme first turned out a 6-metre-long rocket in 1993. It now has about 1,000 personnel, among them 250 researchers, at its Naro Space Centre base. The gleaming facilities are situated in the south of the country where the ocean meets rugged mountains.
Yoo, who just assumed a new role as KARI’s launch vehicle tech research director, had a smile on his face as he went through a frigid white warehouse that contains a copy of the Nuri rocket that towered above people walking by.
There’s a business goal as well, with the government looking to increase South Korea’s share of the global space economy to 10 per cent by 2045 from the current estimated 1 per cent.
With a treaty among established space powers including the US, Russia and France excluding technology transfers of crucial elements for aspiring nations, South Korea had to build its 200-tonne, three-stage liquid-fuelled rocket from the ground up.
Many South Korean firms as well as the government have relied on overseas commercial satellite firms to put their payloads into space.
Nuri is launched at the Naro Space Centre in the southern coastal city of Goheung – a South Korean version of Merritt Island in the US that is home to Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre. The rocket is waiting in pieces for the two-months-long assembly process – led by aerospace firms including Hanwha Aerospace and Korea Aerospace Industries – in a warehouse that can easily fit a 747 jumbo jet.
The flagship Nuri rocket stands at a height of 47-metres (154 feet), slightly smaller than Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket, which has a payload capacity more than six times greater.
It cost South Korea US$1.6 billion to develop Nuri over the past decade, but that was just a stepping stone. The priorities now are bringing down costs, boosting efficiency and transferring more operations to the private sector, Yoo said. Hanwha was selected by the government as a key contractor last year.
The global pace of launches hit a new high in 2021 and looked to end 2022 at a similar volume, according to data from Quilty.
“We are trying to build a SpaceX-like company in Korea,” said Park Chang-Su, who spearheads KARI’s launch vehicle systems research, expressing hopes that Hanwha could make the business profitable. “Elon Musk has made it a very tight market for other companies.”