[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> December 17 2022 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [Everyday Astronaut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONIjRQpjpDA) **Date**: December 17 2022  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONIjRQpjpDA ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Interviewer:** First of all, thank you very much for taking the time and having me here. It's been a great day, even though we've had some delays. **Peter Beck:** Yep, hopefully we can go on Sunday. **Interviewer:** I remember in the press call on Wednesday I asked if you were having concerns about the FAA getting back in time for the window, and you said "don't worry, it's going." Technically, you're still right about that, so I can't be mad yet. **Peter Beck:** Yeah, yeah. ### New Launch Facility at Wallops **Interviewer:** Why don't you talk a little bit about the new pad and these fairly new facilities? What have you learned from stuff down in New Zealand, and how have you implemented that here and maybe changed things in different ways to make it work better? **Peter Beck:** I think the biggest difference is we own and operate the entire range down in New Zealand, and we're in complete control of everything. Coming to a federal range, you're a guest on the range. What's unique here is that we are the launch vehicle provider, we work with the NASA range, NASA also works with FAA, so you've got to get a NASA range sign-off and an FAA sign-off. It's like duplication and double the amount of work to get to a launch. I think what we learned is the incredible value of your own private range. We just have incredible flexibility to do what we do. That's probably been one of the biggest learning curves—just the complexities of actually operating out of a federal range. ### Pad Construction and Infrastructure **Interviewer:** And so then specifics on the pad construction—we've had infrastructure with some existing pad infrastructure. How have you integrated with that from what you have already done at LC-1? **Peter Beck:** We've pretty much built it largely standalone. We took LC-1, then we made some improvements to LC-1, and we built LC-2. You'll notice that LC-2 has its own oxygen tanks, for example. To fire up the entire Antares [rocket] liquid oxygen, it's good just to top off Electron. It just doesn't make sense, so we just transfer some liquid oxygen over to our tanks and just run it as we would at the range down in New Zealand. And then we took all the learnings from the LC-2 range, because every range does things slightly different and has certain requirements that are different, and we built LC-1B down in New Zealand. And now LC-1A down in New Zealand is down for maintenance, and we're upgrading that to be the same as LC-2 or LC-1B. So all the pads are the same, all the software is largely the same, all the operations are largely the same. It's fairly straightforward and seamless to shift between pads. ### Launch Cadence and Capabilities **Interviewer:** And so from here, what were you kind of looking for in terms of key and response, everything that's up and running? **Peter Beck:** We have multiple launches scheduled for here next year. It really comes down to how quick the range can turn. We can feed as many rockets into this facility as it can take. At the moment, there's kind of a soft feeling of 12 launches a year, but everybody is keen to move past there. Next year we have somewhere between four and six missions coming out of here. There's another mission in January, so in Q1, we already have pretty much rolled straight into the next mission right up here. **Interviewer:** And I know you mentioned the other day in the press call that the next Electron is set to arrive next week, I believe? **Peter Beck:** Christmas Day, I think it is. **Interviewer:** Oh, okay. It's a nice present for someone. **Peter Beck:** Exactly. ### Rocket Transportation and Integration Timeline **Interviewer:** So what's the timeline like from the rocket being shipped to here, and then kind of turnaround from here? What are you expecting to hit with that? **Peter Beck:** The transit time is somewhere between eight and ten weeks from the New Zealand factory. The integration timelines are basically the same. I mean, we've launched 38 plus rockets over the years, so the team has got it down pat. Integration timelines are all consistent here as they are down at launch. **Interviewer:** And then yeah, this year, since April, we've demonstrated one [launch] a month, and you intend to continue with that or increase on that next year? **Peter Beck:** Exactly. ### Launch Pad Capacity **Interviewer:** Do you think with obviously now LC-2 hopefully being up and online, that'll help increase that cadence more? **Peter Beck:** Yes and no. I mean, we have basically the two pads in New Zealand, so we have all the infrastructure we need down there to support basically almost whatever cadence we choose. So we're not infrastructure limited. It is handy to have another pad operational here. It doesn't really change our ability to launch more. ### Team at Wallops **Interviewer:** Talk more about the team here at Wallops and how that's assembled. Have a lot of them come from New Zealand? Where is the team being assembled from, and how are they doing it? **Peter Beck:** So there's a core team here at Wallops, and given that this is the first launch, we've got some specialist operators over from New Zealand. We also have some folks from Long Beach headquarters that come in. So it's a little bit of a mix and match of various things. There are always certain specialists that we actually fly around the world. We have some folks in the U.S. office who fly down to New Zealand every time. For us, it's just pretty much business as usual—standard to move people around. Certain expertise just goes wherever the rocket or the launch does. In fact, down in New Zealand, we've had a bunch of LC-2 operators launching vehicles down at LC-1, obviously training. It will be the same thing as things kind of ebb and flow. Some launches, like this year we had the NRO launch that was 15 days apart, so there's a requirement for extra operators around that period, so we just move them around. **Interviewer:** Well, thank you very much for your time. **Peter Beck:** My pleasure. **Interviewer:** Good luck on Sunday. **Peter Beck:** Thank you. **Interviewer:** Cheers.