[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> December 1 2021 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [Bloomberg Technology](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axWEvAj3Fao) **Date**: December 1 2021 ![](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axWEvAj3Fao) 🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axWEvAj3Fao ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Interviewer:** As you heard Ed mentioned there, the stock's been doing fairly well. Rocket Lab is rivaling Elon Musk and SpaceX in the business that you're in. Is there enough demand to really be a significant competitor to SpaceX? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, look, I mean the space industry is growing, and there's no doubt that if you look at the satellites and the programs that are scheduled to occur over the next decade, space is going to become a one or a two trillion dollar industry, depending on whose numbers you wish to believe. What we're doing is keeping our head down and working hard and making sure that we're able to supply all of the things that need to be supplied to let that market grow to the scale that it needs to grow to. **Interviewer:** You've won a lot of contracts from US government agencies, but what about a longer list of private companies where SpaceX seems to dominate? **Peter Beck:** Look, I mean, a launch manifest is pretty much 50% commercial, 50% government. And as you mentioned, we've flown about all the government agencies from the NRO to NASA and all the commercial companies from little startups through to more mature startups like Planet, and then right through to the large blue chip defense contractors. So we've had a fairly good run across both commercial and government. ### Reducing Space Costs **Interviewer:** Now the mission that really got you started was bringing down the cost of a rocket launch, which you have done. You know, rockets are still expensive endeavors. How much further do you see that cost being brought down? **Peter Beck:** Well, there's a couple of elements there. What we created was the first small dedicated launch vehicle, where customers with small satellites can get on orbit in an affordable time and in a quick time frame. As we've continued to grow the business, now we do a lot within our Space Systems group. We have missions to the Moon, missions to Mars for NASA, and then the next big milestone for us is our Neutron launch vehicle, which is really a significantly larger vehicle designed to really create a competitive environment in that medium to large launch sector. **Interviewer:** So where do you see most of the growth taking place across the industry and for Rocket Lab itself? **Peter Beck:** Across the industry, definitely mega constellations. These are constellations putting up really critical infrastructure that we're all going to use in the future and we all use now. And then within Rocket Lab itself, we like having a diversified portfolio of kind of 50% launch and 50% satellites and in space systems. So that diversification gives us the ability to have fingers in just about all the pies. ### The Future of Space Industry **Interviewer:** So talk to us then about what comes next, because obviously there's a lot of competition here. There's a whole space economy that's growing, and I'm curious where you see the most vibrant part of that economy in the future. You know, how big a piece of the pie is space tourism, for example, and what about everything else? **Peter Beck:** The space industry is interesting because there's a tremendous amount of excitement and ambition, but it's a little bit shy on execution. If you look at our industry, SpaceX was obviously the first private company to send a satellite into orbit, Rocket Lab was the second, and then there's been a couple of others after that. But from the launch perspective, there's like a hundred and something launch companies at our last count, but there's only been a few that have actually managed to deliver stuff to space. And that's just fundamentally because you wake up every morning and do better with physics, and it's just super hard. But I think where the industry is really going is you're witnessing real time the democratization of space. Things that used to be government-only enterprises or government-only programs are really now turning into commercial programs. And we can do that because the cost of launch has come down, the cost of building satellites has come down, and you can actually build real infrastructure and provide real commerce in space. **Interviewer:** So let's say a decade from now, or maybe it's two decades from now, depending on where we see the most dramatic changes, what does the space industry look like? **Peter Beck:** Well, I mean, I certainly hope it looks vastly different from today. I think we're right at the beginning of this process of democratization. I've kind of likened it to when we first sent the very first email—that's kind of where I feel like we really are. So I think there's a tremendous amount of growth, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity, and we're certainly making sure that we position ourselves to catch that wave, that's for sure.