Are all the engineers Non American citizens then? Wouldn't trying to hire Americ...

Inconel · on May 25, 2017

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.

punkrex · on May 25, 2017

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.

valuearb · on May 25, 2017

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