[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> April 18 2023 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [CNBC](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPMPz8LWVP8) **Date**: April 18 2023 ![](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPMPz8LWVP8) 🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPMPz8LWVP8 ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. Interviewer 1: In the Space Race this week, the SpaceX Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built scrubbed its test launch yesterday but planning another attempt this week, meanwhile Rocket Lab adding Hypersonic Suborbital launches to its services, Morgan Brennan is in Colorado Springs for the Space Symposium where she is joined by Rocket Lab's CEO, Morgan. **Morgan**: John thank you, that's right I am joined by Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab here at one of the biggest space conferences of the year which really spans the gamut, everything from military space, to civil space, to commercial space, a lot of commercial space. **Peter**: Yeah **Morgan**: And a lot of investors actually here on site this year. Let's start with your news of the week, and that is the fact that you are introducing this new service to test hypersonic capabilities sub orbitally, why are you doing this now and how big is this market? **Peter**: It's quite and exciting time because it's an entirely new TAM for us, and the US is kind of lacking behind in hypersonic technologies and this is a great opportunity to have high cadence test flight environment for these payloads to really move forward the US's hypersonic research. **Morgan**: So in terms of suborbital tests, it's not so much a new capability for as repurposed one from your Electron rocket? Pe**t**er: Totally so we take a standard Electron orbital class launch vehicle and we fly it in some really unique trajectories to provide these hypersonic trajectories, so yeah it's take an Electron and make a couple of wee tweaks to it and all of a sudden we have this great high frequency hypersonic testing platform that hasn't existed. **Morgan**: In the mean time, your Electron rocket, you've done two launches from your new site in Virginia, you've got more launches coming specifically out of New Zealand in the coming weeks as well. Launch cadence for the year and how is the reusability efforts? **Peter**: Yeah good, our launch cadence this year, we're on target for sort of 15 flights. You know our fastest turn around so far this year has been seven days between flights. So the machine is cranking and the vehicles are flying successfully and our last flight was a reusable vehicle and we splashed that down successfully and now we're kind of at the point where we're recycling and harvesting engines and components off those launch vehicles and getting ready to actually put them back into service and re-fly them. **Morgan**: When does that happen? **Peter**: It happens pretty shortly? I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say exactly but it happens pretty quickly. It's not just one engine as well it's a whole multiple gamut of reusable components that are all now kind of re-entering the production line and going back into service. **Morgan**: The conversation I keep having and I've had it multiple times just here today alone, is the fact that you have this emerging mismatch between supply and demand when it comes to the satellite launch market, the fact that there are so many satellite constellations that are poised to go to orbit in the coming years and not enough capacity in terms of getting them there, so what does reusability of Electron enable and the development of your new heavy lift Neutron rocket. **Peter**: Yeah so Electron is really serving that market very very well. There's lots of flight opportunities and that's just sort of doing it's thing. Neutron is the new flight opportunities for us where, exactly as you say, in that sort of 2026 to 2030 timeframe there is a massive deficit of launch and there's lots of constellations that are really vying for an ability to get on orbit. So, we saw that coming and we started work on the vehicle so hopefully we'll bring it into service in 2024 and really solve some of those problems and take advantage of that market opportunity.