How much of that US/NZ effort was NZ though?
It is not our only space venture. Our universities are churning out aerospace engineers. It annoys STEM academics that the space industries keeps "poaching" the best grad students.
To the best of my knowledge, the company is not a strategic priority for New Zealand, we do not absolutely need to launch our own satellites. It is purely a commercial venture. They had no choice but to make it a joint effort.
If it was not a joint effort they would have far fewer customers and a extremely limited supply chain.
Quite a while ago when I met an MP who seemed interested in space. I asked if anything could be done to keep/inceltivize future space ventures fully on-shore. They shrugged their shoulders and said no.
Yes, I know you can launch from other locations, and my question is more of a curiosity.
Just remember that the best place the EU came up with is in south America. Places like mainland Netherlands probably qualify for the worst places to launch orbital rockets from.
1. Good atmospheric conditions. 2. Low air traffic. 3. Low/flexible/favourable regulations. 4. Good locations for ground infrastructure (in part because of 1. and also because everywhere is by the sea). 5. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, tertiary education geared to support the industry.
Also, and I don't know for sure this is a factor, but we have a number of specialised industries such as building large things from carbon composite (yachts) and radio communications for example.
I think option 3. is a big one. The govt. attitude is usually "give it a go", rather than a default "no".