A National Reconnaissance Office satellite sits on a Rocket Lab Electron vehicle before its Aug. 4, 2022, launch. Credit: Rocket Lab
By Aurora Garner-Randolph (spokesperson for Stop the Space Waste),
Published by The Press, 22 September 2024
OPINION: When I tell someone I’m going to protest against the New Zealand Aerospace Summit, they often react with confusion.
People ask hesitantly: “What’s wrong with aerospace? I thought that was just GPS satellites and space missions!” And I don’t blame them.
The aerospace industry does huge amounts of public relations work to paint itself as a benevolent, science-focused industry, and it’s been pretty successful in its greenwashing efforts. The summit, hosted in Ōtautahi on September 23-24, is themed Aerospace for Good, its website flooded with buzzwords like “sustainability” and “diverse“.
But beneath this glossy corporate veneer lies a violent truth about aerospace. Its ties to foreign militaries and weapons companies mean that the industry is steeped in blood.
A closer look at the Aerospace Summit reveals links to weapons of destruction. The summit will be attended by representatives from Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the world’s fourth and first biggest weapons manufacturers respectively.
Boeing Sustainability lead Kimberly Camrass is speaking at the conference. Meanwhile, thousands of Boeing guided missiles have been shipped to Israel and used to target aid workers and civilians this year.
A Palestinian father, whose family was killed by a bomb with a Boeing serial number, described how “the bodies were reduced to shreds”. The only recoverable piece of his baby daughter’s body was her hand. Weapons executives who are profiting from the deaths of children are being welcomed into Christchurch.
A key sponsor of the Summit is Rocket Lab, a New Zealand/US aerospace company that conducts suborbital launches for various corporate interests.
Their launches for the US military could be, according to the Public Advisory Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control, breaking New Zealand’s nuclear free law.
Last year they launched four Haste (Hypersonic accelerator suborbital test electron) tests for American weapons contractor Leidos, and they have plans to launch further Haste tests in the coming year. The purpose of these tests is to facilitate hypersonic weapons development for the US military.
Rocket Lab and the aerospace industry present themselves as peace-loving and science focused, but are only too happy to assist the most powerful military in the world to build vast weapons systems.
Last week, Stop The Space Waste, the peace action group opposing this summit, met with Mark Rocket, president of Aerospace NZ, former co-director of Rocket Lab, and summit host. His willingness to speak with us was encouraging, but I would say he spent most of the meeting talking in circles, throwing out phrases like “global context” and “industry dialogue” to avoid addressing our concerns about US military expansion.
My impression was that he seemed resigned to his role in the military weaponry supply chain, and adamant that Aerospace NZ taking a stance against military ties wouldn’t actually change anything.
We were equally adamant that it was important for New Zealand to honour its anti-nuclear legacy by cutting ties with violent militaries.
Round and round we went, until my activist colleague made a final point. “The elephant in the room is the killing. We don’t talk about the killing. Nobody wants to talk about the killing.” There was a long, long silence. Mark avoided our gaze.
As we protest outside the Aerospace Summit, that will be our message. We can’t keep looking away as companies like Rocket Lab drag our country further into the control of murderous foreign militaries. We can’t keep looking away while executives from weapons companies speak in our city while their pockets are lined by the slaughter of children overseas. And we can’t keep turning away from the violence that New Zealand’s aerospace industry facilitates.
See: Original Article
