[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> December 12 2019 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [CNBC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wbRpwUVvvo) **Date**: December 12 2019  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wbRpwUVvvo ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Reporter:** Wall Street's top space analyst Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas telling us yesterday that markets underestimate national security interest in space technology. And just today, Rocket Lab, which competes with SpaceX and Blue Origin for a slice of the space business—although in a very different part of the space business—unveiled its first launch site in the US. I had a chance to speak exclusively with CEO Peter Beck earlier. Take a listen. ### Launch Achievements and Recovery System **Peter Beck:** It's been an amazing year. We've flown six times this year, and we're now the fourth most frequently flown launch vehicle in the world. We've delivered 47 spacecraft to orbit, and as you pointed out, our last mission was really important. We both flew a new autonomous flight termination system but also had a really wonderfully successful test of our first stage recovery. So we re-entered the first stage all the way down to splashdown, which is really the hard part—a great milestone. So incredibly proud of the team. **Reporter:** Why the shift to reusability? **Peter Beck:** Really for us, it's not so much about changing the cost objectives. It's really about increasing launch frequency. So reusability gives us the ability to basically double production. If we can get it back once, then we can essentially double production, which is really the constraining thing for us right now. **Reporter:** It's pretty incredible to hear you talk about that given the fact that you're producing rockets, what, one every 20 days or so, which is a pretty fast pace I think for the industry in general. How does that speak to your launch manifest and how many customers you have signed up? **Peter Beck:** Well, I mean, we're certainly very busy, and this has been a long-awaited capability. You know, small satellites have had to live with the uncertainty and not all the great things that rideshare has to offer. So no longer do you have to be the second-class citizen on a very large launch vehicle—you can get your own bespoke orbit on your own timeline. So it's really a new shift for the industry. ### Competition in Small Launch Market **Reporter:** I want to dig into that a little bit more because there's so much competition, or I guess maybe I should say prospective competition, when it comes to small launch right now. And certainly, we've seen some companies already try and fail. And then you have seen some of the big more established names like SpaceX now announcing their own rideshare programs. How are you thinking about competition and how do you maintain the lead? **Peter Beck:** I think we look at competition as—look, it's incredibly difficult to get onto orbit, and then once you get to orbit, it's equally as difficult to ramp production up to a regular cadence. So there's certainly a lot of emerging competition there, and we'll wait to see how that establishes itself. But the market is certainly very busy, and there's lots of opportunities. So we're really trying to solve a problem that's been there for a while as quickly as we can. ### National Security and Space Force **Reporter:** Now you mentioned you're working with the Air Force, and that's a relationship that will expand today given the fact that the National Defense Authorization Act is making its way through Congress now and it's going to finally stand up a Space Force. How big of a deal is that? How much of a game changer could that be not only for Rocket Lab but also just for the sector as a whole? **Peter Beck:** I think it's important for the nation. And what we're trying to do here at Rocket Lab is provide really responsive launch. So the whole point of this LC2 complex is to be able to literally have launch on demand. So everything we've done here is to enable really rapid call-up for launch to address concerns at a rapid pace, which has been the holy grail for a very long time.