[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> November 2 2018 **Insider**: "[[Peter Beck]]" **Source**: [Everyday Astronaut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9BncsgvuQ) **Date**: November 2 2018  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9BncsgvuQ ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Tim Dodd:** Well with just three days notice I came out here to New Zealand to see a rocket factory and they got me when they said that there's someone I could talk to that would answer all my questions about rockets. Wonder who that would be? **Peter Beck:** This is the CEO and founder of Rocket Lab. Rumor has it I can ask you any question. **Tim:** Anything you want. Come on down, let's do it! I have a video tour of the factory already posted, there's a link in the description if you want to see more which you definitely should. But meanwhile, let's get right into this interview in the coolest boardroom ever. But I do need to apologize about the sound—there's a lot of manufacturing noise and echo in this new room, but it's hard to beat this view. **Tim:** That entryway by the way, what do you think? **Peter:** Oh, I get—literally I was stunned. **Tim:** Good. **Peter:** Yeah, I was. I actually just was taken back for a second. **Tim:** Good, that's what I wanted. So did the inter-portal remind you of 2001: A Space Odyssey? **Peter:** It honestly didn't until she said that. **Tim:** Oh yeah, like definitely. And just the stark white with the red accent through it just is—it's amazing. **Peter:** Yep. And then going, turning the corner when clients walk in and see like it's that even the room of controls in the work of art you're hanging the bottom part of a stage right there. Like that's gonna be an experience for anyone that gives the opportunity to witness. ### Company Philosophy **Peter:** Well I mean, there used to be a quote on the wall but I had to take it down. The quote was "Make everything you do a work of art, because if it looks like crap and doesn't work, you've got nothing. But if it looks good and still doesn't work, at least it looks good." So it's a big, it's a really important thing for me personally. But you know, throughout the company as you walk around here, everything is beautiful. The engineering is beautiful, the design is beautiful, and it drives people crazy, but it's important that everything is beautiful. **Tim:** Even though norms on the launch site are beautiful. **Peter:** Yeah, you're right. **Tim:** And Denis really think about them that's the kind of— **Peter:** But that is the attention to detail that matters. And it's all that stuff, all comes across to a client as knowing that this is how tight you run the ship and how important all of that is to the product. **Tim:** Yeah. **Peter:** And look, you know, we kind of like to think we're the ULA version of startup in the fact that we don't rush and take risks. I mean, you know, we're getting a bit of a reputation as the company that scrubs all the time and I'm fine with it because, you know, I'll scrub every day over making sure something is absolutely perfect. **Tim:** Yeah. **Peter:** And I think it shows in our results. You know, when we went in orbit earlier this year, we just didn't go to orbit. By that thing we put it within one kilometer of perigee and three kilometers about the GOM, 0.09 degrees and inclination. So we inserted that exactly where it should be. **Tim:** That's—and that's what matters. It's at the end of the day, that's all that matters. **Peter:** Yep, and scrubs are cheaper than booms. Way cheaper. **Tim:** Way, way cheaper. ### Carbon Fiber and Triboelectrification **Tim:** Now correct me if I'm wrong, you actually—there's something specific to your vehicles being built entirely out of carbon fiber. You have to worry more about—is it triboelectrification? **Peter:** Triboelectrification, yep. **Tim:** Tell me about that and tell me how, if whatever you can speak about, how you've mitigated some of that. **Peter:** So I mean, it's a phenomenon where you generate static charges. You fly through the clouds and, you know, there's ways of mitigating it. Initially we decided that we wouldn't bite off that piece of work because what are the chances that tribo was really going to affect us? It turns out like 50 percent of every launch. **Peter:** So we've ended up going through the whole process of coating the rocket in special coatings for the nose cones and whatnot. But the carbon composite, it actually works for you because it's electrically conductive. We aren't—we even had to make changes to the vehicle on the components that weren't electrically conductive. **Tim:** Really? **Peter:** Yeah. **Tim:** So it's not like—so an aluminum rocket might be worse in that aspect than a carbon fiber rocket? **Peter:** Aluminum's great, great conductivity. And when you see them painted, they're painted with paints and coatings that carry electric charges. Of course as you see with our vehicle, we don't paint it because we don't need to paint it. **Peter:** So the exterior of the vehicle is fine, but we have other things like in the nose cone which has ablative material on it to deal with the heat. That wasn't conductive so we had to create coatings to really create a triboelectric resistant— **Tim:** Or is it like, how anti-tribo is a nose cone even? **Peter:** Tribo was gone, neither what do you hear that call. **Tim:** So is that actually a reason you've had to scrub? **Peter:** Absolutely, yeah. Many times we've had to scrub because of tribo. **Tim:** Really? **Peter:** Yep. **Tim:** See, that's the stuff that the people who are, you know, the average person like, "Why are they scrubbing right now? It'll be a beautiful day." And they're not gonna know that the reason is static electricity essentially. **Peter:** Yep. And these are all the things as you grow up that you learn, the operational constraints. And the way that we work here, the way we tell everybody, is we're not looking to launch two or three rockets. We're not trying to rush to get to the second launch or rush to get to a third launch. We're trying to rush to get to the hundreds more. **Peter:** And that requires a whole different kind of thinking. **Tim:** Because your end goal isn't so much—like not even a number, but it's really your cadence. Like that's that's how you become the best, a well-oiled machine you can be is for you guys to be launching a lot of vehicles. **Peter:** Exactly. ### Small Rocket Philosophy and Market Strategy **Tim:** So is that kind of how you can manage not producing larger vehicles, because you see it as—we can specialize to our customers like, you know, we can literally get people on little rockets instead of having to lump them all together and have this kind of clumsy manifests? **Peter:** Yeah, I mean if you look at what's happening within the space industry, the big GEO rockets are declining. The sales are declining in those and you've got SpaceX and Ariane all competing for those big GEO rockets. But if you look what's happening in the LEO market and the small spacecraft market, it's 200 percent growth year on year on year. And there's something like 2,500 spacecraft that need launch within the next few years. **Peter:** So the real needle mover here in the industry is frequency. That is what is going to fundamentally change the way we use space and ultimately, you know, life on earth. That's actually the needle mover here. **Tim:** So if I'm a customer, a potential customer, I've got a 200 kilogram small satellite—why sell me on—because it might not be by the numbers, it might not be the cheapest cost per kilogram, dollar per kilogram. So what reason do I come to Rocket Lab for? **Peter:** Well, you're gonna get a beautiful 3G RMS, so you're gonna get the softest ride in the industry. But more importantly, you get to go on the day you want to go, into the orbit you want to go. Because if you're a couple of hundred kilograms spacecraft, your options to get to orbit right now is rideshare. And so you might be waiting a really long time to have a tier-on for someone else that's even remotely close to your inclination in orbit. **Peter:** And then you no longer have control over your schedule at all. If you're piggybacked on somebody else's schedule, you have no control over the destination of the orbit, no control over the apogee, the perigee, the inclination. So then you have to provide your own propulsion. **Tim:** Which makes the vehicle—like if you're a small sat, you can take them to the destination as opposed to them having to make it bigger and more expensive, so there might be cost savings. **Peter:** So they can basically design the satellite cheaper. **Tim:** With the attention. **Peter:** Yeah. We're the same price as rideshare. So you can choose to either rideshare and wait years and get to some rubbish orbit, or you can pay the same amount, get a first-class service delivered exactly where you want, on your schedule, on your time frame, and with a very, very smooth ride, in a cool-looking rocket. **Tim:** And if you're in the rocket, you know— **Peter:** It's got your logo on it, nobody else's. **Tim:** Really? Your customers will— **Peter:** Of course. **Tim:** I think I have a new goal. I'm gonna save up for—like forget supercars and stuff. My new goal is to have my own rocket. **Peter:** But it'd be a shame to not fly it then. [laughs] **Tim:** Yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll see how that goes. ### Carbon Fiber Challenges **Tim:** So the big, the next big question is obviously, you know, carbon fiber and cryogenics. How on earth did you tackle that? **Peter:** That's a big problem, that's a big problem. And it's not just the cryogenics, because you have tanks. There's the liquid nitrogen tanks and you have liquid oxygen. So you have the compatibility of the liquid oxygen with the composite, which was a huge amount of research. Then all the cryogenic element that you point out, which is also another chunk of research. **Peter:** But you also have exterior thermal heating as well. So you have two or three hundred degrees exterior temperature heating. You've got negative 180 degrees (this is all centigrade) internal cooling, and these great temperature gradients. And then you go and smash it through the atmosphere and give it a big whack as you pass through sheer layers and all those kinds of things. And you can go down to that tank and literally push on it. It's that thin. So it was a big engineering challenge. **Tim:** Is that one of the things you almost started with—a fairly electronic, you know—I mean, the reason for the carbon composite is as an enabler to build tanks that have unprecedented performance mass-wise and manufacturing was—it's something just unprecedented as well? **Peter:** So we start off with a tube, we bond on bulkheads, and we have a tank. If you think about how you'd make that tank out of aluminum, you start off with flat sheets of aluminum and you roll them, your friction-stir weld them, and then you've got to paint them and passivate them and then stress relieve them and all those kinds of things. It's a big process, whereas you can see out in the factory, we just start off with these mandrels and you just start building tanks. **Tim:** It seems backwards because it seems, you know, carbon fiber is such an exotic material, then you think of it like that'd be so hard to manufacture. But then as long as you have got a machine that can do the process, you lose—that's half the challenge. ### New Zealand's Carbon Fiber Expertise **Tim:** So I put together a little interesting kind of maybe coincidence about New Zealand and carbon fiber and the history of New Zealand. You guys are really big into sailboat racing with really high-end carbon fiber hulls and carbon fiber sails and masts and all that stuff. Did you actually poach from the sailing industry talent? **Peter:** Well, in New Zealand before I started Rocket Lab, I was working in a government lab on advanced composite materials and structures. So we all came into this, this love of the black. You know, it looks good. **Peter:** New Zealand does have a very rich history and a strong capability in composites for sure. We certainly employ one-third of all of the composite industry within New Zealand. **Tim:** Really? That's one of those things you just never ever know. I mean, that's really cool that an island nation so small—what, four million people? **Peter:** Simply. **Tim:** That you guys are able to be experts in carbon fiber, which is clearly one of those industries that's continuing to replace a lot of traditional aluminum and steel in a lot of instances. **Peter:** Exactly. ### Electric Turbopumps **Tim:** And another thing that you guys do obviously—I think the other really one of the biggest things that's so unique with you guys is obviously electric turbopumps. I mean, everyone talks about that for obvious reasons—no one else has done it. First off, why had no one else done it yet? It's one of those fundamentally really awesome ideas. **Peter:** I think the answer to that is a couple of fold. Firstly, the battery technology really wasn't there until recently. Also, the power electronics—speed controllers and motor controllers are the size of your hand, and they're dealing with 60 kilowatts of power per controller. So huge energy is out of these tiny little components. So that technology has advanced a lot. **Peter:** I think it was always possible, but the funny thing is that when we first announced the turbopump cycle, we watched everybody—the forums light up and say, "Oh they'll never work, it's impossible." The density of the mess and the batteries, they'll never get there. The chemical equilibrium for a gas generator versus carrying all those batteries all the way, it's never gonna work. **Peter:** And we just said, "Oh yeah." **Tim:** You actually knew? **Peter:** Well, of course we did. But I think one of the things that people didn't realize about—there's nothing efficient until you reject a battery. And when we flew, nothing is efficient until you eject a battery. **Peter:** So the second stage, you'll see when the second stage flies, about two-thirds through the burn there's two small things come out. **Tim:** Yeah. **Peter:** Those are the batteries. You eject those batteries. **Tim:** It's hot-swappable batteries. **Peter:** Exactly. So we treat batteries as fuel. You draw the energy of the batteries. Once there is no more energy, you eject them. A gas generator cycle is at best 50% efficient because you're burning propellant—combustion temperatures are very low. Something about 50% efficient. **Peter:** Electric turbopump is 98% efficient. So if you eject the batteries, you're in a better place than the gas generator is. The argument has always been, "Well you have to take all the mass of the batteries to orbit," and battery technology, as we all know, that's one of the most competitive—that's the new oil right now. **Tim:** I know everyone's planning to make batteries better, more viable, cheaper, better density, better charge—all the stuff. You guys are riding that. **Peter:** We are reaping the benefit of all of that because when we first started the electric turbopump program to where we are now, which is just like three or four years, it's about 20% density improvement already. And there's a lot of things on the horizon that don't look like two weeks or three years, so that just breaks your advantage. **Tim:** So will you be doing small design updates? Are you planning to kind of evolve the vehicles when these technologies come out? Or do you think you'll end up at some point being like, "All right, we've got new battery technologies that we can use, we can now stretch the tank." Is it easy for you guys to stretch the tank, and now that you save some mass in the batteries, can you stretch the tank a little bit? **Peter:** We could do it, but for us it's more about increasing reliability than increasing performance. This is the question I'm surprised you haven't asked already, because there's a question I get asked every time. I was going to put a sign here that says, "Don't ask when a bigger rocket?" **Tim:** Yes, exactly. **Peter:** Because the upgrades we'll do to the vehicle are not to lift more, it's to lift more often and more reliably. And I think this is the thing that's always been missed in the space industry—there is no standard. **Peter:** I mean, you take the CubeSat as a standard, right? A 3U Cubesat is a standard, except for the pregnant, the non-pregnant, the tuna can, without tuna can, the extra-large, and all the machinations of the 3U which make it non-standard. **Peter:** So what we're trying to do here is we're trying to provide a platform that is absolutely standard—the vibrational environment is standard—so that people can build spacecraft and just get them on orbit and provide services. This is the absolute end goal here: to just enable companies and people to build infrastructure in space, get rid of all of the crap that goes along with it, and just get to that point. **Tim:** You're almost—it's such a different philosophy. I feel like you didn't start with—you're not starting this: "We need to do..." I don't know, it's almost like backwards from what I think a lot of time it's from. **Peter:** Winston is backwards. **Tim:** Well, that—and that might be—it's definitely seems like almost 180 degrees different from the normal way that someone will look at building a rocket. It's like we have to lift X, Y, or Z, doing this, that, and they have these variables. And you start on such a blank page that you could literally define your own variable. And I think some of those obviously is launch cadence, reliability. What other variables were you able to start with when you decided that design? **Peter:** Well, I mean, naturally we chose a payload class that physics marries well with. 150 kilograms, couple hundred kilograms—you can build a seriously meaningful spacecraft to provide meaningful services. 60 kilograms, 50 kilograms, 20 kilograms lifting CubeSats—don't get me wrong, CubeSats are wonderful. But if you want to build a really serious spacecraft, then you quickly find yourself in the 150 kilogram place. **Peter:** And if you look at all the mega constellations, they're all around 150 kilogram place. **Tim:** What are the most serious contenders for mega constellations right now? I know there's—it's OneWeb. **Peter:** Yes. **Tim:** Still kind of haven't heard from them lately, but then SpaceX is talking about Starlink. What are there other people out there talking about doing? **Peter:** Yeah, there is. Definitely there are. And most of those are around that 200 kilograms. **Tim:** Oh, they're all that 150 kilogram. **Peter:** Of course they're all that, on that. It converges—it's like a bicycle frame, you know, the triangle design just converges. If you think about what are the things that I need up there—only a certain amount of comms, a certain amount of electricity harvesting, a certain amount of station keeping. You combine all those things and you miniaturize them at today's technology, and you end up with round about that. **Peter:** And it's very rare that we'll find a spacecraft that's too big for us, too heavy for us, too wide for us in this market space. It all converges. ### Comparison with SpaceX **Tim:** So I guess I mentioned manufacturer SpaceX. I have to ask as a spaceman, obviously someone that is watching this stuff as close as anyone—how does it feel? I feel like you guys are compared to SpaceX all the time. It's kind of the new young SpaceX. Is that a big compliment to you? Do you love that? Are you crazy when that happens? What's that like? **Peter:** Well I mean, I think—I mean SpaceX has absolutely redefined the industry. So to be held in the same light, of course, is always favorable. But I like to think that we're Rocket Lab, we're not the new SpaceX, we're the new Rocket Lab. **Peter:** So, you know, we're our own thing. And the big difference is, I guess, I'm not a billionaire. I'd like to be a billionaire. We're the only non-billionaire space company right now that's kind of got stuff done. **Peter:** And human spaceflight is wonderful, and I think it's hugely inspiring for the human race. It's just not something I'm into personally. **Tim:** Don't blame me. I'm not blaming that's right. **Peter:** I think we can move the needle for everybody on this planet more by building infrastructure in space to provide real stuff, really things that are really important to everybody. **Peter:** I mean if we've seen a few people [go to space]—and you know, it's amazing. Don't get me wrong, absolutely wonderful. I'll be cheering, I'll be at the front of the cheerleader, I think that's hugely inspiring. But if we can build a constellation of a couple of hundred spacecraft or whatever, we can provide Internet to everybody on the planet and distill the knowledge of everything to everybody on the planet—that moves the needle for the species further, in my opinion. So that's what I'm focusing my efforts on. **Tim:** That's really noble because I feel like that question comes up all the time in just "Why space?" You know, people be like, "Why do we spend all that money up there?" It's hard to explain to people that all that money—first, that money stays down here. That's generating revenue on earth. But people often don't tangibly understand the benefits of spaceflight to them. It's hidden infrastructure. **Peter:** It's like pipes under the road, right? Like, you know, until it goes badly, until you push your toilet and it all comes backwards, you care about those pipes. **Tim:** This time, it's the same with GPS. You know, turn off GPS and see what happens in the world. **Peter:** Oh God, you know, no more Tinder. **Tim:** Okay, since— **Peter:** No more self-driving cars, you're going. **Tim:** It happens and people forget how to drive. We're all just gonna be a sack of potatoes on the interstate. That's—and it's crazy to think about it, and people—it's a common misperception. People don't realize how reliant they are on space infrastructure. It's critically reliant, even like banking transactions. **Peter:** Everything. **Tim:** That's interesting because I'm a pretty big component of exploration. I think it's in our, you know— **Peter:** It's great. **Tim:** Done, you don't disagree. **Peter:** Absolutely great, but I've never heard someone say, "Not my role," but not yours. That you obviously still feel the romantic vision of it, but the fact that you're not pursuing that—it's that I've just never really thought of that, and that's really interesting. That's unique. That is unique to you, I think. But I love that. ### Launch Frequency and Site Selection **Tim:** So that brings me up to—as far as the Electron goes, how many—you guys are licensed to fly it every 72 hours? **Peter:** Yeah, that's, you know, that might happen yet. And don't forget, we're gonna get another US launch site coming online soon, so that'll increase it a little bit more. And there's a very good reason why LC-1 is called LC-1. **Tim:** Continues to have many more than one. **Peter:** Yeah. **Tim:** As far as launch sites go and launch cadences go, you were very particular when you chose New Zealand, and it's not because you're from New Zealand. So first, describe some of the benefits that you guys have launching here and why you chose this for your first launch site. And then let's talk about Wallops. **Peter:** We'll do the hardest one first, I guess. So I mean, look, we're all about launch frequency. And we spoke to all the ranges in the US, and it's one thing that doesn't scale very well in the US—launch frequency. And it's not for any other reason other than just air traffic and shipping and marine. **Peter:** Like with the Falcon Heavy launch, I saw the reporters—like 560 flights were delayed or canceled when Falcon Heavy flew. **Tim:** No, that's true. **Peter:** People either had some kind of delayed or canceled because when I turn up to our launch site and say, "Hey, I'm here to launch, I want you every 24 hours," everyone goes, "Good, but you can call up all the airlines and tell them that you're going to mess with their schedules." **Peter:** So it was very obvious it was hard to scale to the kind of launch frequency that we wanted to achieve. So we looked all around the world for a launch site, and what you need is a small island nation in the middle of nowhere, and that's ideally New Zealand. It took a lot of work, took a tremendous amount of work—bilateral treaties and new legislations and laws and stuff. **Tim:** Do you feel like you just swapped one set of people worrying about approvals, but like the FAA and all the air traffic stuff? **Peter:** No, no, because we still need the FAA licensing. So we had to do that too. **Tim:** So you really did just cut back on a lot of that—we're having to work around flight schedules? **Peter:** Yes, and marine tracks. You have to understand—we started with one piece of paper, and on that piece of paper it had two requirements: must be affordable, must launch weekly. And everything has been driven from those two requirements—building a launch site and whatnot. **Peter:** The easy thing to do would be: "Okay, let's just build one site in the US and let's just live with one a month, and then we'll worry about how we can get to true frequency." I mean, that's not gonna work for us. We need vision and a roadmap to get to this. So we decided to do the hardest thing first, which was build a remote site. **Tim:** And you literally built every square inch of that and your own tracking infrastructure, right? **Peter:** Yes, we have tracking stations all around the world. And when we build everything, we had to build roads. We had to push in brand-new roads, we had to upgrade roads, we had to upgrade internet backhauls to entire townships. It was a big infrastructure. **Tim:** How did the locals feel about that? **Peter:** We work really, really closely with the locals. The land that the launch site is on is owned by local indigenous Māori people. They were looking at diversifying their farming, so space just was a great diversification. **Tim:** I feel like not too many people ever get to choose between a crop or a sheep and a rocket. **Peter:** It's a funny story because we met in a donut shop in Napier, and we explained what we're looking to do and what was about. And they just looked at each other and said, "Well, we've been looking at diversifying farming." So that was a funny comment. **Peter:** And they were—that made up—I just can't—I would love to have seen their reactions when initially telling them, "We're gonna launch rockets." **Peter:** I mean, look, I kind of simplified it because we did a lot of work. We spent a lot of time in the community, we had lots of cups of tea in the community—because it can be a scary thing, right? Company's going to turn up and launch rockets—what the hell? So we spend a lot of time with community engagement and build a lot of relationships down there. And we're very lucky that we have such a supportive community. **Tim:** That's important, that's important. That's pretty critical. ### Wallops Island Launch Site **Tim:** So now you have a new community that you guys just announced, and that is that you are going to be launching from Wallops too, right? And that's in West Virginia? **Peter:** Virginia. **Tim:** Virginia. Now, how did you end up there? You had four sites you were looking at, right? Alaska, Vandenberg, Kennedy Space Center, and Wallops. So why Wallops? Tell me. **Peter:** To be fair, it was a very close call and a really tough decision. Bear in mind this is the first site, so it doesn't mean it's the only one. But what we needed immediately was a site that we can achieve a very fast build on because we have customers that need to fly, and a site that we could leverage a lot of infrastructure, and a site that wasn't too busy. **Peter:** It's wonderful walking around KSC, it's a dream of course, but for this particular series of missions that we need to do, we just couldn't get there fast enough. And it's very busy right now, and Wallops is not. **Tim:** So this obviously services the orbit you need from there? **Peter:** So the other is—there like a specific customer you're looking for mostly for this, like a specific one? **Peter:** We have a number of customers that are ready to use the site. **Tim:** So I'm flying an Electron from inside—how does it actually make sense? Instead of them shipping you a satellite down here, how does it make sense for you to ship the whole rocket up there? **Peter:** Well, we have a factory in Huntington Beach. So we'll ship the components that are built here up to Huntington Beach for integration. You have to remember that we already have stuff—all our stuff coming from Huntington Beach, all the engines and avionics—it's all coming from there. So it's just kind of like, "You give our stuff and we'll give you stuff and we're good." **Tim:** But someday, do you see producing engines down here, maybe a full integration here? **Peter:** No, we always produce the engines and avionics in Huntington Beach. **Tim:** What about building the fuselages? **Peter:** If there's enough flight rate that requires that, we will. I mean, again, it's—the numbers drive. It's a point if it's cheaper to do it there. **Tim:** Exactly. **Peter:** Yeah, nice and easy. I mean, you can just let the numbers speak for themselves, I guess. **Peter:** I mean, this is the reason—the reason why we keep certain things—like composites here, as you alluded before, as we have an incredibly strong industry here and a very, very high talent pool. And there's certain industries in America that are, for talent, has been very, very tightly contested. **Peter:** So you may go out there to try and do some of this work, but actually you can't employ the people you need to employ and scale in the way you need to scale. So certain things make certain sense, and I guess that's the—it's really the Rocket Lab way now. ### Launch Site Selection Process **Tim:** As far as the actual—back to choosing on the launch sites—can you tell me how you actually do literally like run computer simulations to figure out where the flight traffic is? I'd like to know of course all that stuff. **Peter:** I mean, the nice thing about the MISSILAV—that's really widely available. But in selecting launch location for the Māhia site, there's tremendous amount of analysis that was done. The Māhia site can service a lot of inclinations from there. **Tim:** Like almost all of that? **Peter:** Basic sun-synchronous all the way to 39. **Tim:** So we just kind of get 39 to the equator. So is that why Wallops is involved—service then what Māhia can? **Peter:** No. Wallops can service up to 37, so it's not actually a lower inclination. But the advantage with Wallops is we have customers that don't want to leave America, so we can ship their payloads from America. **Tim:** And as far as—are those typically American customers? I assume that. **Peter:** Yeah. **Tim:** Are they against going to the opposite side of the world? Is there something there? **Peter:** I mean, you know, it comes down to the payloads and what they want to ship and what they don't want to ship. And the sensitivities around some of that. ### Rocket Vibration Environment **Tim:** So sensitivities—I had never heard you say or anyone quote that you pull a 3G ride the whole way. Is that obviously intentional? **Peter:** Meeting you—yeah, that is a selling point, basic. You know, 3G RMS—what's RMS? **Tim:** Like, main squared... **Peter:** Root mean square. **Tim:** Oh, root mean square. Okay. Because if you're not peak, you might have higher? **Peter:** It's certain frequencies, but a very nice dinner. **Tim:** Put it into context? **Peter:** Yeah, but put into context, NASA GEVS, which is what you have to fly a CubeSat and qualify CubeSat to, is 12G RMS. So put it this way: a transportation vibe spectrum is worse than the flight spectrum. So when we have a customer who has to transport their payload to New Zealand, it sees a harsher environment than the flight to orbit. **Tim:** How many G's would it see in a commercial— **Peter:** Well, I mean, you have to account for dropping the pallets and God knows. There's milk crates and what not, you know standard. But it's durational—I could see, you know, it's a 12-15 hour duration. So it's duration-scaled. **Peter:** But I mean, when we're working with customers and they're doing their vibration criteria acceptance criteria, that's the driving factor. It's not the launch vehicle. So that can again allow them to potentially manufacture—well, build spacecraft lighter and have appendages—you don't put all that effort into building a brick, put all that mass into building a capable spacecraft. So you can actually make more delicate little solar panels. **Tim:** We're already seeing a lot people are building to the Electron standard. They're taking the Electron standard and saying, "Okay, I'm going to build my spacecraft or my constellation to fly in that thing because it just opens the envelope." **Peter:** Yeah. **Tim:** I guess I never thought of that. That's why I'm not doing that, because that's not my job. That is really cool. ### Engine Configuration and Control **Tim:** So another thing you probably do—or that I've wanted to always ask about—with having nine engines on the bottom, do they all get gimballed? **Peter:** Yep. **Tim:** Do you do any thrust differential for yaw? **Peter:** No, we don't. It's all done through the TVC. **Tim:** Yeah, roll control and— **Peter:** Already it's all through the TVCs. But I mean, if one company could do the thrust differential on your engines—and don't you—I mean, basically infinite variable throttle control? **Tim:** But no one else can change—coming more precise, like quickly and precisely than anyone. **Peter:** When we do ascent, we're continually modifying the throttle profile on ascent to maximize efficiency. **Tim:** So here's actually one of those questions that—I've known all these guys—and I've never had anyone explain it because I just can't get the answer. So SpaceX's Block Five, the Merlin—they quoted saying that they're doing something that they acted like was new. They're maintaining only, I think, about 180,000 pounds of thrust per engine, or whatever it is, but they're lowering the chamber pressure on ascent to keep that variable chamber pressure. And I can't for the life of me figure out: (a) why that's advantageous and (b) how that's any different than throttling anyway. **Peter:** I mean, your only forcing function is chamber pressure. So you throttle to reduce chamber pressure. **Tim:** So it's probably not anything? **Peter:** But I mean, there's good reason why you want to do that. At certain points of the atmosphere, your nozzle is optimized for that pressure. **Tim:** That's right. Exactly. **Peter:** So there's good reason to try and altitude compensate with a throttle on the ascent. **Tim:** So how is that altitude compensating? Is it because you're lowering the chamber pressure? So I guess the difference between being in space and being on the ground is one bar. So if you lower your chamber pressure by one bar, you've kind of canceled that difference a little bit? **Peter:** It's not a little bit easier, but I mean, exit area is optimized. And it's always a trade, right? So when you're on the ground, you're over-expanded, and then when you MECO [Main Engine Cut Off], you're under-expanded. So you try and pick that sweet spot. **Peter:** Now you can play tricks if you start modifying your throttle, but you've got to trade that up against gravity drag. Because if you throttle back down, then you're eating gravity drags. Or aero drags. And then you also get a tail-end or a heating. So on ascent, you don't want to cook either. **Peter:** So the easiest thing to do is get it all out quick, but the trouble is getting it all out quick, it gets hot. **Tim:** It pulls Gs. **Peter:** Of course, Gs, apologies. So you always—this is the life of a rocket guy, right? It always, it's always a compromise in engineering. **Tim:** That was always my philosophy of photography. It's always kind of a compromise. I mean, then you can lower your shutter speed, but then I'm gonna get blur. Don't raise your ISO, and now it's grainy. Or spend a lot of money. **Peter:** Even for 4x different. And I can't imagine the charts and the people making those decisions, because there are so many variables. And they all have to snake around each other. And at some point, you have to just go, "This is our choice." **Peter:** And sometimes, it's welcome. **Tim:** All right, so you've acquired a consequence and you know, it's welcome. Even though you've now flown and are literally ramping up to fly even more of these—is that something you do as rocket engineers, as a company, continually refine? Like, "Oh, probably." **Peter:** I mean, and for us, the requirement here is manufacturability—like how can we increase manufacturing cadence? And there always will be a continued drive on reliability. **Peter:** I think if you stop optimizing for those things, then it's a bad day. **Tim:** So your big difference is that you're able to crank these things out like crazy. They're reliable, and you can—how quickly, if I were to tell you I have a satellite and maybe not right now as you're getting ready to return to flight, but in the future... **Peter:** Well I mean, literally, what is realistic as far as—"I need this to go to space." **Peter:** I think every payload is probably a couple of months from first contact to onboard. But the limiting factor there is regulatory. It's not integration, simulation, loads analysis. It's not modifying payload plates and all that kind of physical stuff—it's licensing. **Tim:** Really? **Peter:** So does the spacecraft have all the correct frequency allocation licenses and our licenses, FAA licenses, New Zealand Space Agency licenses? Those are the limiting factors. **Tim:** And there's always gonna be some kind of supplementation there. **Peter:** But I mean, to be fair, all the agencies understand us, you know, actively working to find solutions to it. It's the one outsider is—we're unique in some respects, and we've enjoyed working with the regulators. We haven't found the regulators at all trying to put roadblocks in what we're trying to do. We've found the regulators trying to solve problems with us. **Peter:** And especially—we were the first ever truly 100% FAA-licensed launch because all the other launches launched out of Wallops or from a number, and they're all NAFA arrangers. So this is the real first true 100% commercial launch was done out of Māhia. So it was the first time that FAA really had to do that in the commercial scene in a different country. **Peter:** So it's very easy to say no and make it complicated, but they didn't. They said, "Yeah, this is good. Let's work out how we can do this." ### Aerospike Engines **Tim:** The other thing that I—as a rocket nerd, I should almost do a segment called "But it Works in Kerbal Space Program" and talk about some of those things. But I think one of the big ones that I would love to hear someone that knows why explain it—why not aerospikes? Why haven't aerospikes been done? Did you never—did you look at them? Is it something you would love to do at some point? What do you think? **Peter:** I've done my time on aerospikes myself, really. I mean, they're attractive for all of the right physics reasons, but a pain in the ass for all of the engineering reasons. And it kind of cancels itself out. **Peter:** I mean, as it says, it's better physics, but engineering—trying to engineer them, it's far more complicated. And the mess and complexity you end up driving into them, this is my own personal experience, versus just a typical conical bell—it's just not worth it. **Peter:** So you physically are adding mass to potentially gain a little bit of—you know, at the same point you end up—in my experience, you end up in the same point, except with a much more complicated system that's unproven. And cooling is always been a big issue—it's really hard to cool that in the middle of a spike. **Peter:** And then things like TVC—it's very easy to gimbal a little chamber that's conical. But a hole or a spike—do you gimbal the whole aerospike? Or do you have a multiple port aerospike where you just throttle the aerospike? And then what about all the altitude compensation effects that you get? **Peter:** I mean, you have the same complexities with multiple engines—the plume interactions, you know, as you're sending through atmosphere. You've got all those plume interactions, and the plumes are changing, and then your control system is changing as well because the TVC functions differently at different points—interactions and recirculation zones. And it's all plain in the apps, but it's still less of a pain in the ass than something like an aerospike, in my opinion. **Tim:** But see, that's the thing that I think people just—the internet, so of course you're gonna have armchair engineers like me that have to sit there going, "But..." You know, there's obviously some logic behind it. It's not like it's the golden child waiting there to be adopted. It's just—it clearly has, again, been compromised. **Peter:** And the other thing to think about is that if we were like a purely research organization—maybe it's a different story. We're a commercial company. R&D is not funny anymore. R&D is just expensive and time-consuming. **Peter:** So pick your battles. And in the industry right now, what we see is just a whole ton of companies—especially in small launch—a whole ton of companies trying to differentiate themselves with different technologies. And it's like—it's almost like you have to come up with something new in order to be funded, or in order to be the guy. **Tim:** Like PR exactly. **Peter:** I mean, we did a lot of stuff new—not at all because we wanted to differentiate ourselves. We didn't build carbon tanks and 3D print engines and electric turbopumps and all those kind of things to try and be different because everything else is no good. **Peter:** Those were—going back to that white sheet of paper—those were the things that were going to enable this frequency. We needed to 3D print rocket engines. There's no way that we could electroform rocket engines at a cost and a performance and a frequency that we needed. We needed to 3D print. That was the only technology that scales well; the other technology didn't scale. **Tim:** So it is a matter of—it's kind of the right place at the right time for you. Because if you probably tried to do this 15-20 years ago, before 3D printing was commercially available at scale is an and battery technology—I mean, you would have not been here today. **Peter:** I would have been a very different vehicle. **Tim:** A very different proposition. And now you're able to, compared to other aerospace companies, start up and have a successful launching program already with a lot fewer moving parts and lower financial investments as well. You haven't had to have 10 billion dollars from the Air Force. **Peter:** That's right. **Tim:** Am I wrong? **Peter:** That's amazing. **Tim:** That should definitely be celebrated. I hope that that helps encourage other people that are, you know, on that fence of whether or not they're gonna take the dive into some scary venture. **Peter:** And you know, if I should, because what's the worst that can happen? **Tim:** Yeah. ### Peter Beck's Journey and Vision **Tim:** So why—I guess, what was that point for you? When did you just know: "I have to do this and I'm going to." You had to at some point put all eggs in the basket and say, "Rocket Lab, this is my destiny, I can't do anything else." What was that tipping point, or what was the decision? **Peter:** So I mean, for me, it's always been about space. Every—I've always worked multiple shifts in my life. The first shift, the day shift, was a paying job. And it was a job that was both financially but also technically driving towards the goal of Rocket Lab. But I would do, back at the government lab, I'd work during the day on advanced composite structures, and then come five o'clock, I'd click over into the second shift and I'd be doing the same thing with rockets. And using the government's—the Crown—asset that was sitting there dormant at night to build rockets. **Peter:** So it's always been about this for me. So there's a couple of inflection points, but there's no like one tipping point where I just woke up and... It's a lifelong passion and journey, it's not an instantaneous, "Hey, I'm going to make rockets today." **Tim:** So you and Burt Munro then. **Peter:** Oh no, Burt Munro was fabulous. Have you seen his mortise? It's held together with wire and cable ties. But he knew from the get-go—like his whole life almost—to just take me on this journey to pursue his passion. **Peter:** Sorry, with the Munros—you should know that the Munros used to come and use my grandfather's workshop, where he used to come into my grandfather's workshop and use all the lathes and mills to make a motorbike. And it used to drive my grandfather absolutely insane because he'd come in, make a hell of a mess, and then bugger off. **Tim:** First New Zealand connection with Burt Munro. **Peter:** 10 degrees of freedom. **Tim:** That to me—that just hilarious. The fact that it's almost—I mean, in my opinion that'd be like the coolest thing ever. That guy's amazing. Don't get me wrong, he achieved wonderful things. He's—the way more—I'm gonna just make this out of the wire and my fence, instead of the—you're creating—Burt wasn't so worried about aesthetics. **Peter:** No, he wasn't. But his attitude though—I'm just clearly—the goal was out here and against all odds, eventually got there. **Tim:** That's it. **Peter:** Well, I mean, I've always said you need two things: you need a dream and hard work. That's it. Anything else can be accomplished with those two things. **Tim:** And self-reading is that—I think a lot of people ask people that are clearly doing outrageous things. I get asked, "How are you able to be a full-time fake astronaut?" And it's a matter of—there's a lot of work that people just don't see. The dream and hard work, that's it. **Peter:** It's just—and if at some point you can't not do it. You know, you're so driven by the passion, by the—you can see what's ahead. You just know if I do this and this, then I'll hit this and this and this. And it just keeps compounding. **Tim:** And so I wonder if that's just a common thing amongst entrepreneurs and creators is they just can't help it. Their days are destined for that. **Peter:** I think it is. I mean, I think most entrepreneurs have a capacity to absorb work that is unnatural. **Tim:** I think that's absolutely right. ### Technical Aspects of the Rocket **Tim:** Now going back a step—as long as you'll have me, because I'll talk rockets with you as long as— **Peter:** No, no, I'm happy. This is fun. **Tim:** So is there any advantage when you have nine engines to doing any kind of throttling to perform almost like an aerospike on ascent—that the center engine can stay at a higher thrust and the outside, or anything? Is there any cool fluid dynamics that happen that you can— **Peter:** I mean, there is, and we have done some stuff there. It's incredibly complex problem if you want to talk about trying to solve analysis. You've got chemical, you've got multiphysics, structural, thermal—like it's the hell analysis. The whole CFD element is coupled in there. **Peter:** And as you have seen, it's a continually changing variable. The domain that you're working in is continually changing. So it's not like you can just optimize for one point in time. And for us, we spend a lot of time on this—a lot of time. And bottom line is here, there are some tricks you can do to play with stuff. **Tim:** Even—we know if all your engines are able to thrust vector control, is it advantageous to actually aim them into the center near MECO or anything? You know, they get close with the vacuum space, and is that not really— **Peter:** Oh, there's stuff you can do. **Tim:** I'm just—so what—are there been any fun challenges or any fun developments that, you know, that you can talk about or want to talk about that you maybe didn't see from the get-go? Like, anything. Well, I think for me, like the triboelectrification thing—I had no idea that was even a consideration. Were there any other, with New Zealand and the nature and birds or something, any of those—like, "We had to do this because of that?" **Peter:** I don't know where to start. I mean, I had to sing a mihi—that wasn't in my job description. **Tim:** I don't really know what that is. **Peter:** I joined in. It was so bad. Is this on film? Is there video of this somewhere? **Tim:** I hope not. Certainly. No, no, no, you can have—well I hope you know that at some point, one of the most famous images for better or worse of early SpaceX is Elon with maracas. I hope at some point, 10 years, we can uncover—although the team of Rocket Lab singing indigenous songs in order to gain access to their own site—is that basically it? **Peter:** Yeah, and I mean, it's about being a good cultural steward. I've been welcomed into their community. I mean, it's actually a very moving experience. But from a person who's managed to go through their entire life, you know, lip-synching even like the school assembly, having to stand up there basically cold stone solo in having to do it is—I can talk to us at a room of thousands of people are not be worried, but that was terrifying. **Tim:** If I had to guess before opening that launch site that you are going to have to sing in front of a group of people—do you think that would have changed your opinion at all? **Peter:** No, it's just the things you do. **Tim:** That is crazy. Okay, what about other things? As far as the rocket goes, any things that were unique to New Zealand or even unique to your turbopump system? **Peter:** I mean, it's just man, mini. I mean, a rocket is just an insanely complex piece of equipment. So what can I talk about? The trouble is that every day is a barrel. Every day it's something. So it's hard to say what is something that really caught us by surprise. **Tim:** Your original rocket that you built—kind of because I've heard you say that you don't want to show up trying to sell something through PDF. You want to build hardware around and height backwards and showing people that you can actually do what you say you're gonna do. **Tim:** So I think your original intent was then to do the Ātea sounding rocket, and you were the first in southern hemisphere to reach space. Congratulations. **Peter:** Thanks. **Tim:** But what lessons did you learn building that? I think one of them is—well what was, what were you using for fuel again? **Peter:** Well, that was a hybrid. So it was nitrous oxide, and I built—we developed our own solid fuel. **Tim:** So was that one of those things where—I think I heard an interview somewhere that you said you kind of thought it was almost like, can you know, almost screwing convention. Like, "I'm sure this is almost better." Why did you pursue that propellant choice, and what lessons did you learn, and how did that apply to your next vehicle then? **Peter:** Or didn't, really. That's the guts of it. You didn't wear anything from—I mean, you learn different things. I think the best learnings are the things that go wrong. And when things go right, then there's a tendency to go, "Good," and stop. When things go wrong, you really understand things, know a lot more. **Tim:** You didn't learn not to go with convention because of all these new things that are radically different about this vehicle? **Peter:** I mean, I guess I guess—look at even for a very pragmatic point of view, from basic engineering point of view, just because something's been done that way before, it doesn't mean it needs to also be done that way. Because when it was done that way back in 1960s, you had these resources to pull upon. So you had a different set of resources now to pull upon. So why should you be doing it that same way? **Peter:** So within Rocket Lab, we're not afraid of the new stuff. If someone comes with a new piece of software that will help—even if it's just a new piece of CAD software, we don't go, "Oh, is this gonna be a spreadsheet or whatever?" It's open later on. If it's newer and that's better, then we go for it. **Tim:** That's—and that's like—that's—yeah, you're right. I feel like traditional aerospace has been: make it work and then stop. **Peter:** Stop. **Tim:** And then if it's like, making a change is a huge deal. A big bureaucratic deal even down the chain of command in the company. Someone—a technician sees a problem because this isn't the most efficient way I could assemble this. It might take them a year that—actually listen, you know. It seems like your approach is quite a bit different, and people have a lot more individuality. **Peter:** And that's a fun thing about Rocket Lab is we're other sized where you can still have an influence. So we're not a 7,000 people or 10,000 people company where it's very difficult for someone on the shop floor to have—or anywhere within the company—to actually have true ownership and make a true difference. **Peter:** But I'd say we're in a sweet spot in size where you can come to the company and actually have real responsibility and make a real difference. I think that's one of the unique things about it. **Peter:** And you know, we run a flat structure here. I don't believe in offices. I just sit out with everybody else, and that's where I expect everybody else—all the managers to be. So it's a very open, collaborative space. **Tim:** It's so funny. You have taken again kind of what's being called the Silicon Valley approach as far as—it's a very different approach to aerospace. And the confusing part is you don't have any of that background. It's not like you grew up in San Francisco trying to develop apps, yet you're running a company in a very 21st century way. **Peter:** I am sometime explained as an American stuck in a New Zealand body. **Tim:** That's an American thing, although I did quote San Francisco, is the reason for that. **Peter:** But I have to thank—your rockets and your philosophies are just so different, and it's really refreshing. And it's gotta be just ultra, so rewarding to see, actually physically see the fruits of all that labor. **Peter:** I mean, I guess it's in the eyes of the perception of the holder, right? To me this is just normal. This is how you would do it. So I don't see anything too radical. If you want people to collaborate better, don't stuff them in cubicles and offices. **Tim:** We don't have a cubicle. Sitting beside each other, it's very easy to communicate when the person sits there. **Peter:** Right, that's awesome. ### First Flight Challenges **Tim:** I think the only other questions I really wanted to ask about is—first of all, we're all learning a little more information. Your first flight was probably going to be, as far as the vehicle's concerned, a perfect flight. You just had—and tell me if this isn't something that's on the public—but basically the ground tracking stations. You had an issue with the ground tracking stations, and because you lost track, you had to terminate the rocket. Was that correct? **Peter:** That's correct. **Tim:** But where it was—were you having to make a decision of, "We have to pull this rocket?" **Peter:** No, no, absolutely not. That's done by the flight termination engineers. So they're sitting on a separate console isolated from everybody else and watching the track. And when the track goes blank, there's no thinking involved. **Tim:** Was there an elapsed time? Don't worry, you—could you see that the track had gone blank before? **Peter:** No, no, no, no. I mean, the first we knew it is the second stage shut down, and we didn't know why it shut down. And then it was terminated. **Tim:** How did that feel? **Peter:** I mean, in some respects, that's gutting. But in other respects, we went through—you know, on a first flight, let's be honest—I said to the team that we're not putting a vehicle on the pad unless everybody in the room has a 92% probability that all their systems are going to work. So I polled everybody, and everybody had to give me a 92% probability their systems are going to work. Maybe then we'll put something on the pad. **Peter:** So we went into that at least thinking we had a good vehicle. But there's an awful lot that you don't know when you just current is okay. So we got through all of the high-risk events, right through fairing separation. We just cruising—how weird—was 120 seconds left to burn on the second status. **Peter:** But from that flight, we got all the data we needed to really know what we had, because we had over 30,000 channels of instrumentation on that flight. So we knew everything that was going on. **Peter:** And so it's easy—I'm not sort of—look back and not a reflective guy. And that—it would be easy to be all angry. But the reality is I'm super happy because we got through all those events, we measured all the things we really needed to measure. That was—we ran that launch just like any other test we would do, whether it be for an engine or for a structural component. It was a test, and the object of a test is to gather data. And we gathered all the data we needed together. **Peter:** So from our perspective, that was very successful. Now, would we love that if we just carried on for the last 120 seconds or so? Yeah, of course. But I think we all learned a lot from there. And it sharpened your focus on some of the more operational areas. It's not just about the rocket. **Tim:** There's a lot of moving parts around getting that rocket— **Peter:** Huge amount—on the pad and off the ground. **Tim:** So I mean, regardless—second flight being a complete success, it's just equally huge. I mean, that's gonna go down in history, I feel like. I can't think of hardly any vehicles ever that have been that successful already on their second launch. **Tim:** And now you guys have had a bit of a reevaluation on—well, what if you have to reevaluate since your attempt at "It's Business Time"? **Peter:** So I guess, mentioned before—we're not rushing. We're working out how we build the next 100 rockets, not rushing to the next milestone. We don't—we're not scrapped for funding. So we don't have to take big risks to get to the next milestone because of funding and things like that. We're well-bet. **Peter:** So for us, it's the long game here. And we saw some behavior on the pad we didn't like. And it's kind of like jumping in your car—the engine check light comes on. Are you going to go for a journey halfway across the United States? No. You're gonna stop and assess what you saw and the witness you saw. **Peter:** So we saw that, and we like, "No, I mean this—we're not gonna fly with that." And we isolated it down to a motor controller. And then we looked at the motor controller, and we changed some processes. And we thought that that would buy us the confidence we need. And then we put another one back on the pad, and it's a very similar thing. **Peter:** So for us, it wasn't—it was okay, now we actually need to make a hardware change. So I mean, then we made hardware change to totally eliminate any of these issues from occurring in the future. **Peter:** Understand, these motor controllers—nobody's ever built these before. These are new. Nobody's ever dealt with this amount of power in a space environment and all those kinds of things. So it's not like there's a book you go to—how to design these things. **Tim:** Like so this literally is for a pump for a gas turbine— **Peter:** Exactly. **Tim:** Can literally pull from knowledge on that— **Peter:** Exactly. **Peter:** And look, we could have put a rocket on the pad literally the following week and gone. But it's once again, it's our vision and our eyes are on the big picture—the big wins here, the hundred rockets. **Peter:** So in a few years time, nobody will remember we scrubbed this launch a couple times. Everybody will remember if we had an issue on the way out. And it's just not our style. Why—we will not go unless we're 100% right. Now that means that we scrub a bit? I just don't care. Call me the scrub company—I don't care. But when I launch, I will be launching with a vehicle that we believe is 100%. **Tim:** And that makes sense. I mean, that's the right thing to do. And it's so funny when I—you know, I was personally live-streaming the last attempt of "It's Business Time". And the comments section, unfortunately, because it's the internet—I'm just gonna go, "Guys, it doesn't matter." It was—so what? You don't get to watch a rocket. Like, that's not something you deserve. This is free entertainment for people to be able to watch. **Tim:** In the long run, all that matters is mission success. That's all that matters. And that's amazing that you guys have already had the maturity to make those decisions and to know the long-term viability. **Tim:** And not manufacturing-wise—if you were going ahead with something hardware that you weren't positive on, you would have potentially dozens of rockets manufactured with bad hardware. And so for you guys, it's probably— **Peter:** Exactly. And the sort of flight guidance that we're trying to get into—we don't have time to go back and make hardware changes. Now's the time to go and do these things and get it right. **Peter:** And like I say, we've got our eye on the bigger prize, which is—we're not looking to build two rockets, five rockets. We're looking to build hundreds. And taking the time now to get it right makes it infinitely more easier now than it does, you know, rocket number 30, make a hardware change. **Tim:** That's—I love that. Like that's—mature and very, very admirable. ### Electric Turbopumps **Tim:** Well, I think that's that's awesome. So I guess as far as probably one of the last things I can really think to ask about is—we really didn't talk too much about the actual electric turbopumps. So when you guys started with a blank slate again, were you looking for like off-the-shelf components for the motors? Or what kind of help drive that? Or do you build the actual motor? 'Cause you can't go and buy like a 60 kilowatt motor the size of a Coke can. **Peter:** No, and they don't exist. You can't even—like electric cars or anything? **Peter:** Not really, no. **Tim:** I mean, in one electron, you have the same amount of power as your average family SUV in two electric motors that are size of Coke cans. So we have—how many horsepower or whatever measurement you would use? **Peter:** Well, I mean, the nominal rating is 40 kilowatts per pump/motor. So there's 80 kilowatts in one Rutherford, and we have nine of those. **Tim:** How many—like in horsepower terms, I guess? **Peter:** The conversion—horsepower, see... 160 watts per horsepower—sorry, you know how to film this bit. **Tim:** [laughs] **Peter:** They should know how to convert. **Tim:** Right. The fact that you can convert on the fly—I don't think—Google kilowatt hours to horsepower. Those are some of the numbers that I just don't think people understand—the actual power these things are capable of. **Peter:** It's around about 110-120 horsepower per Rutherford in a tremendous that is, you know. That's just the electric. And you see when you have it—look around, that's smaller than a Coke can. So that has to be probably the highest density of— **Peter:** For like—we don't know of any others. **Tim:** Wow. Okay, so as far as you guys using turbopumps—electric turbopumps—that had been a lot easier to actually ramp up production? **Peter:** But with easier development of the actual— **Peter:** Yeah, well, the whole ethos around it was you take a horrendously complicated thermodynamic problem, which is a gas generator cycle, and turn it into software. **Peter:** So what people don't realize with the electric turbopump is—yes, you have infinitely variable throttle control, but you're not forcing valves, and you're not changing mixture ratios and gas generators and combustors and whatnot. It is literally software. **Peter:** And the lovely thing is, you can control what you start up. You know your lead-lag propellant rates and start up and all your shutdowns. You can control your mixture ratio. Your mixture ratio—we control with incredible accuracy because it's a real-time control with feedback in the mixture control. **Peter:** So one of the nicest things about electric turbopumps is you can suck those tanks dry—absolutely dry. So the engine shuts down when we run out of propellant, whereas a gas generator cycle, if you do that, you blow your gas generator to pieces. **Peter:** So for us, you know, we can just load sensors on the pump, and as the pump depletes in propellant, it's—you know, hundred milliseconds, an engine shutdown. **Tim:** So you actually, in a sense, gain a little bit more mass fraction that way too, because of course you don't have to have that X reserve of fuel that's— **Peter:** Exactly. Completely useless. **Tim:** What is that, you know, approximately? Is it like one percent of fuel or some— **Peter:** I mean, it varies depending on the vehicles. But you know, on the less efficient vehicles, you'll hear the callout, "Propellant depletion detect," and then the engine shuts down, which is in some cases a little float switch in the tank or whatever. And you still got a reasonable amount of tank in measure—a wall now immeasurable. **Peter:** And if your mixture ratio is wrong, you can end up with quite a lot of one propellant and a little bit in the other. And worst case, if you screw that up, then you'll disintegrate a turbopump. But for us, we just run the thing dry. **Tim:** So between that and the fact that you do hot-swapping batteries on the upper stage—is that literally—is it because it is a one-to-one ratio for the amount of mass on an upper stage that you can trade to orbit? **Peter:** Correct, to your payload potential. **Tim:** So, does that mean you're literally ditching potentially hundreds of kilograms off of those upper stage batteries? **Peter:** No, the batteries aren't that particularly heavy. They're very lightweight, efficient, efficient batteries. I guess if you were—if you had a gas generator cycle, you would be carrying more propellant mass than the battery mass because of the efficiency of the cycle. But I mean, you're burning it all the time, right? **Peter:** With a gas generator—but you know, we wait for discrete points in time to eject the batteries. Because as you get further and further and closer into orbit, it's less sensitive when you start the burn and when you finish the burn. So there's an optimum point in time where you ditch those batteries. **Tim:** What's more sensitive? Like, that the payload to mass ratio is not actually linear? **Peter:** And static, literally. So at the start when the stage is full and your acceleration is relatively low, then it's not a one-to-one ratio. But as you get closer to the end of the burn, it approaches one-to-one. But it's easier just to budget and say it's one-to-one. But it's not actually one-to-one. **Tim:** Well, and just like the payload, you know, the fairings—because they aren't taken—it's not the same as the first stage because they're there for a little bit longer, a little bit longer, and they get ditched. It just has to do with that—it's part of the rocket equation. **Tim:** How many times do you hot-swap? Is there just two sets of two, or how many batteries are on those upper stages? **Peter:** I mean, there's three batteries on there, and we will swap out two on the way up. **Tim:** That's genius. That's one of those things that I think it's such a cool idea. **Peter:** I mean, you end up with pretty much the efficiency of a gas generator, if not better. And that's for now—for now. ### Future Outlook **Tim:** So I guess then the last question that I want to ask you—why don't you think anyone else is doing electric turbopumps yet? I mean, it's one of those fundamentally really awesome ideas. **Peter:** I think there's the answer to that is a couple of fold. So firstly, the battery technology really wasn't there until recently. Also the power electronics—speed controllers and motor controllers the size of your hand, and they're dealing with 60 kilowatts of power per controller. So huge, huge energy is out of these tiny little components. So that technology has advanced a lot. **Peter:** So I think it was always possible, but the funny thing is that when we first announced the turbopump cycle, we watched everybody—the forums light up and say, "Oh, they'll never work, it's impossible." The density of the mess and the batteries, they'll never get there. The chemical equilibrium for a gas generator versus carrying all those batteries all the way, it's never gonna work. **Peter:** And we just said, "Oh yeah." **Tim:** You actually knew? **Peter:** Well, of course we did. But I mean, I think one of the things that people didn't realize is that—it's funny because when we first started, there was a—let's say there's a European organization that looked at it and said to me personally, "This is the dumbest idea. What are you doing? This will never work. It's stupid." **Peter:** That same European organization now has a program that's funded for millions of dollars studying it. Now it's a good idea. So I think part of it is that you just need to prove that it works. And then even if it's a dumb idea until it works, then it's obvious. **Peter:** So I think there's a little bit of that. And you know, I would not be surprised to see other launch vehicles—especially small vehicles—develop this, you know, use this electric turbopump cycle. **Tim:** And they're teaching it in propulsion classes now. Is that cool? **Peter:** I teach. **Tim:** So do you—do they tap into some of your knowledge, or do they ask questions? **Peter:** No, no. I mean, everyone's been able to—it's not rocket science. **Tim:** Yeah, it's engineering. **Peter:** I mean, the physics are easy. It's the engineering, as always, that's the tricky bit. **Tim:** It's kind of fun of it. It's a fundamental idea that's not some novel—it's gonna drive it to pump, a battery. **Peter:** Exactly. **Tim:** I had to look into that when I was researching your company. **Peter:** That's true. That's so cool. **Tim:** Is there anything else that you can think of that you're excited about? I guess then—and I know it's not a bigger rocket—but what is next? Like, what are you looking most forward to that in five, ten, twenty years, you know, will really define Rocket Lab or define your career, define your work? What do you think? **Peter:** I mean, so there's a couple of things. I think if we're able to deliver on what we want to do here and achieve the launch frequency that we're promising, then the world will be a different place. I mean, we will enable infrastructure in orbit that will affect everybody on earth. And that's what wakes me up in the morning—is knowing that we can actually have a meaningful effect on the species. That is ultimately what wakes me up in the morning. **Peter:** But as for Rocket Lab—look, I'm just getting started. This is the beginning; this is not the end. There's a lot that we need to do yet. So watch this space—there's a lot more coming. **Tim:** Peter, thank you so much. **Peter:** Pleasure. **Tim:** Really, this place is amazing, and I'm already very inspired. So I know I'm not gonna be alone on that. **Peter:** Thank you. ### Closing **Tim:** Thank you so much, Rocket Lab, for inviting me out to see your gorgeous new factory, and thank you, Peter Beck, for your time and hospitality. It was a real pleasure chatting with you. **Tim:** I owe a huge thanks to my Patreon supporters for helping me be able to do trips like this across the world and allow me to share my amazing experiences. If you want to help me continue producing content like this, head on over to patreon.com/everydayastronaut. And while you're on the internet, check out my web store for some awesome space merch: everydayastronaut.com/shop. **Tim:** Thanks, everybody! That does it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down to earth for everyday people.