Rocket Lab's Electron launch from New Zealand - 11/11/18

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPwMuUxSrcA

Their engines seem to be committing seppeku. You can see just before staging they're letting off a lot of sparks indicating something inside is disintegrating. It's probably not a huge issue, the engines only need to last that long anyway.

[Clovis]

It's so cute how they're using the Everyday Astronaut's music in the interlude.

I'm pretty happy about the fact they use some of the kick-stage fuel to de-orbit it afterwards to reduce space debris. Most launch providers wouldn't bother with that.

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Kick stages are used to circularise orbits, not deorbit. Not that it matters anyway, they're likely in LEO and won't last more than a few years before reentering.

[Clovis]

If you watched the explanation in the middle of the video, it explains that they are both used to circularise the orbit and then the remaining fuel is used in the kick-stage to de-orbit the kick-stage after the satellite has been detached...

Obviously they aren't going to use a rocket to put the vehicle into space just to de-orbit it again. I was talking entirely about how it's good that they are using remaining fuel to de-orbit to reduce space debris.

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I never implied that.

[Clovis]

You were saying that the kick-stage doesn't de-orbit itself though.

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I have no clue how you came to that conclusion.

[Clovis]

From your first quote here, you're suggesting that kick-stages don't de-orbit, but the video says they do de-orbit themselves.

[LoneWolf_Recon]

RocketLab really seems to be the most promising company for nano/CubeSat launches. As commercial industries enter more and more into aerospace, even SpaceX can't cater to small-medium companies who want to get their payloads into orbit.

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The kick stage isn't redundant as they're needed to circularise an orbit.

I'll pull a definition from wikipedia just for you:
An apogee kick motor (AKM) refers to a rocket motor that is regularly employed on artificial satellites to provide the final impulse to change the trajectory from the transfer orbit into its final (most commonly circular) orbit. For a satellite launched from the Earth, the rocket firing is done at the highest point of the transfer orbit, known as the apogee, thus giving the engine its name.

[gman003-main]

Does anyone have a guess what their super-secret proprietary "green monoprop", used in the kick stage, is made of? The obvious guess (obvious to me at least) is some sort of peroxide, but somehow there's absolutely no info on it that I could find. They've got a patent on some kind of non-newtonian mixture of oxidizer+fuel but their refusal to comment seems to indicate that's not being used (why would you keep secret something protected by patent? Why wouldn't you hype something you have a patent on?).

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It's probably Hydroxylammonium nitrate. It apparently gets far better isp than hydrazine does when used as a monopropellant. About 250s.

[Clovis]

How is it even possible for you to still be misunderstanding me?
This is what I said earlier. Let me put it in bold for you.

"It explains that they're BOTH used to CIRCULARISE the orbit and then the REMAINING FUEL is used in the kick-stage to DE-ORBIT."

I don't know how I can possibly make it any more clearer that the kick-stage performs two roles. The video you put in the OP even explains this, so I have no idea why this is so complex for me to get across.