> Only the third country to achieve this.

What do you mean by this?

Probably meant the third country with a private sector capability to launch rockets, US and China being the other two.

as opposed to New Zealand?

Rocket Lab is a US company, they would not have been able to build what they did without full ITAR and MTCR compliance.

Maybe you need to let them know.

They were founded in NZ by a NZer, they launch from NZ, their employees are NZers. Calling them a US company is equivalent to saying Google is Irish.

	▲	walrus01 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427351 Design and manufacturing is in the los angeles region aerospace industry cluster. It's been a US company for the last 13 years. https://rocketlabcorp.com/updates/rocket-lab-makes-its-defen...