BLUE WHALE — South Korea At a point when the South Korean government was wondering aloud whether there was any point in pursuing a space program and building a successor to the Naro rocket, we learned that a tiny company called Perigee Aerospace (페리지항공우주) had been working on a private rocket since 2012. Now emerging from stealth and backed by Samsung money, they announced plans for a launch vehicle called the Blue Whale 1. Ironically for something named after the world’s biggest animal, the rocket was absurdly tiny. Under two tons! Some of its competitors, which are still considered small, can launch payloads as big as this entire rocket. Its diameter would be 76 centimeters. They intend to mainly go for sun-synchronous orbits, and in that role their max payload would be 50 kilograms. Like most rocket companies, they also said that later on they’ll make something much bigger. In their case, that means something about the size of the Electron. So how could something so tiny get the job done? With an advanced engine — a kerosene burner with an oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle, like an Energomash engine. The most unbelievable part of the story may be the plan to build an engine this complex and advanced into a rocket that cost only two million dollars. How would they pull this off? How does it work? We have no idea. Details and technical data were very sparse. For instance, I saw no information at all about the upper stage. The company’s website was nearly content-free, and the usual places that collect rocket info don’t even know how its name is spelled in Korean. (푸른 고래-1?). It might be made of carbon composite, but there’s nothing definite about that. They won’t be launching it from Korean soil. Because they want to launch frequently, they need a spot with little nearby air traffic. They found their spot on the south coast of Australia, at a place called Whalers Bay on the Eyre Peninsula. It’s under construction, but facing some trouble with endangered species. Then they also got a spot at the Esrange site in northern Sweden, which has been launching sounding rockets for decades but has yet to send anything to orbit. After the company matured a bit, this tall tale was abandoned and they announced a much more convincing design for the Blue Whale 1. It would now be of a normal small size, burn methane instead of kerosene, stick to a simpler gas-generator engine design, and have four legs for vertical landing. And it wouldn’t need purified methane: just as the Nuri burns jet fuel instead of purified RP-1, the Blue Whale 1’s nine Blue 1S engines will use liquid natural gas, which includes small amounts of ethane and propane. It would have tanks made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic, and titanium grid fins. The upper stage uses an engine called Skyblue, which is pressure-fed. (They will also make a sounding rocket called Blue Whale 0.4 powered by two Skyblues.) Maybe that upper stage will change later, as a vacuum-belled version of the Blue 1S apparently does exist and has better performance. The fairings on top are recoverable and reusable, or at least that’s the plan. The intended payload size is 200 kilograms. Perigee is also a contractor with a role in helping to create the large methalox engine for the government’s planned next-generation reusable launcher. They want that thing to be able to lift around 35 tons — quite a contrast with the original Blue Whale concept, which might have struggled with anything much over 35 kilograms. Blue Whale 1: mass 19.8 t, diam 1.60 m, thrust unknown, imp 3.20 km/s, gas generator (methane), payload 0.2 t (1.0%), cost unknown.