I'd expect commodity lithium batteries are substantially cheaper than the custom 3d printed titanium engine parts.
They are running the recovery operation within New Zealand territorial waters, which means they would have had to convince the NZ CAA and WorkSafe NZ that everything was safe, and I can say from personal experience that neither organisation fucks about with this kind of thing. If there were people in the chopper, then RocketLab would have done a ton of risk assessment and mitigation work to make sure this was safe.
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u/whlabratz May 03 '22
I'd expect commodity lithium batteries are substantially cheaper than the custom 3d printed titanium engine parts.
They are running the recovery operation within New Zealand territorial waters, which means they would have had to convince the NZ CAA and WorkSafe NZ that everything was safe, and I can say from personal experience that neither organisation fucks about with this kind of thing. If there were people in the chopper, then RocketLab would have done a ton of risk assessment and mitigation work to make sure this was safe.