[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> April 23 2020 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [IN DEPTH](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjuxmH7eWHc) **Date**: April 23 2020  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjuxmH7eWHc ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Felix:** My name is Felix and I am your host for today's episode of What About It, and today I have something really, really special. I have Peter back for an interview, and we're going to ask him some really interesting questions. So without further ado, here we go. Welcome to the What About It studio! Why don't you tell the audience who you are and what you do? **Peter Beck:** Thanks very much Felix, it's an honor to be on your show. So, Peter Beck, CEO and founder of Rocket Lab. We build and launch small rockets to deliver small satellites to orbit and beyond now, and we also build satellites and flight components as well. So not just a rocket company anymore. ### How Peter Became Rocket Lab's CEO **Felix:** And then what did you do before Rocket Lab? I would be interested in how do you become the CEO of a launch provider. **Peter Beck:** Well, I guess my story is probably a little bit unconventional. To start, I'm not a billionaire, but just a very passionate person in fields of engineering and space. I started off building rockets when I was very, very young and it just got a little bit out of control really. But it really got to the point where I felt that I could do something commercially with what I'd learned and built. **Felix:** That is absolutely awesome. You're the one founding member of Rocket Lab too, right? You're the person who founded this? **Peter Beck:** [Nods in agreement] ### Why Electron? **Felix:** And then why did you go for Electron? Why didn't you go for a medium or a heavy lift launch vehicle? **Peter Beck:** For me, this has always been very obvious. If you think about how you can build infrastructure in orbit very affordably, very rapidly, and how you can really innovate fundamentally, you get driven to a cost problem. Whether it's one ton of carbon fiber and titanium or it's 100 kilograms of titanium and carbon fiber, 100 kilograms is always going to be less expensive than one ton. So it's kind of obvious that the starting point here for the thesis should be: well, the smaller spacecraft, in theory at least, the less expensive it should be. So I've always been a super passionate advocate of small spacecraft, and the miniaturization of electronics and componentry has really fueled this. We started to see the CubeSat standard as a big push in the industry, and you can see what started off as really an education academic curiosity - people started to build businesses off the back of that. I think the MarCO mission is a huge statement of what can be done with CubeSats. I think driving to a small platform is super obvious that there is going to be a lower cost barrier, and it's easy to make lots of small things versus very large things. With that in mind, if you accept that as truth, then the next logical evolution is access. How do you get these spacecraft into space? How do you provide that frequent and low-cost access? So we really started with Rocket Lab: small spacecraft are going to be a big thing. Rideshare is useful but it's not the end-all to really getting your business and spacecraft to exactly where it needs to be. So there's a real need to dramatically lower the cost and dramatically increase the launch availability for small spacecraft. That's where the concept for Electron really started. But you have to understand that Rocket Lab is like a 13-year meandering, painful path. It's not an overnight success of Electron just turning up. When I first started, it was building sounding rockets with the scientific community, and we built a bunch of small sounding rockets into space in 2009. It wasn't really until 2013 or 2014, later 2014, that I felt that really myself and the team had the credibility to go and raise the real capital to go after the Electron project. So where do you go with massive and ambitious and improbable ideas? You go to Silicon Valley. So that's where we raised the first bit of capital. **Felix:** So that's why you're based in the United States as well, right? **Peter Beck:** [Nods in agreement] **Felix:** So you've had this awesome April Fool's joke with the Electron Heavy, and it even sparked some community content, and it was really, really awesome. I had a big laugh with that. Is there – I mean, of course it was an April Fool's joke – but is there any chance we're gonna see something like that in the future? **Peter Beck:** No, no, no. I mean, I feel like I need to tattoo it on my head. It's got to that point where I need to tattoo on my forehead: "I will not build a bigger rocket." Okay, but I do reflect back and I remember saying very distinctly that I will never try and recover a rocket either. So maybe tattoos are not a good idea. But no, I think Electron is really, really well placed in the market. Obviously, when you go after building a rocket, it's a huge capital project and you want to get the size of your rocket right - that's something you can't screw up. So we looked long and hard at what we thought was going to be the best size platform for the industry, and we really think we're in the sweet spot. Because anything larger than our current Electron, you end up having to rideshare it to make the economics close. So if you have a one-ton or even a 500 kg class vehicle, no longer can a 150 or 200 kilogram smallsat turn up on your doorstep and there be economic sense in a dedicated ride. You end up having to be full of CubeSats or other satellites and you're just back to that rideshare model. This is what Rocket Lab specializes in: incredibly accurate orbits, very tight timelines or very specific timelines in very specific orbits. It's like taking a limousine to a party versus a bus. You expect to pay a little bit more for the limousine, but boy you arrive in style and it's a good ride. So for us, building a larger vehicle - the economics don't make any sense and it's not what our customers want. They don't want to rideshare; they're coming to us because they don't want to rideshare. **Felix:** So you end up like, as you say, the economics just back at a rideshare vehicle. There isn't really any other option than Electron on the market, but everything else is rideshare - is bigger, is waiting time, is more. **Peter Beck:** Yeah. **Felix:** I agree. Brilliant, very nice move. ### Why Use Mid-Air Recovery? **Felix:** So about your recovery efforts, you've recently done your test drop and it turned out beautifully. You chose to go mid-air recovery. Why is that? Why not go propulsive? **Peter Beck:** It's pretty simple really. In a small launch vehicle, you're continually battling mass. I like to use a pressure transducer analogy. A pressure transducer is a sensor that measures pressure, and it's about the size of a matchbox. There are other options for smaller and bigger, but that's the general size. So on a large vehicle, the mass of that pressure transducer probably equals 0.00000001% of the total vehicle's mass. On Electron, it might represent 0.01% of the mass - it's a much bigger fraction. Any mass you add to the vehicle has a disproportionate effect. It's really, really hard to build a small launch vehicle that has good throw capability. The weight of the ice on the outside of the vehicle can have a dramatic effect on your payload lift, so you have to be very careful and delicate with all of these trades. If we wanted to do a propulsive landing, I'm no longer building a small launch vehicle. Now I'm building a medium to large class launch vehicle, because the propellant reserves that you need and the systems you need onboard don't scale well with the size of your rocket at all. So for us to be able to do recovery, there was really only one solution, and that was to let the atmosphere do all the work. We can't use chemical propulsion to do the work; we need to use the resources that we have available to us, and the atmosphere is a fantastic decelerator. Our approach is a bit different. What you trade for not having to do propulsive landing and not having to carry propellant is more logistics - hence the reason we have to catch the stage in mid-air downrange. That's what we traded for propulsive landing. But really, in a small launch vehicle, propulsive landing is just not an option. The mass penalty just does not trade. **Felix:** You'd be out of your niche exactly. **Peter Beck:** You would lose the purpose, and all of the cost advantages you have with a small launch pad and a small rocket all go out the window. ### When to Expect the First Recovery Try? **Felix:** So when can we see the first try? You've done your two guided reentries and you've done your test catch, and everything turned out beautifully - at least from the outside. I don't know the numbers of course, but it looked really, really well done. So when can we see the real deal? **Peter Beck:** Flight 17 is when. If you break the program up into three different tranches: The first bit was, and arguably by far the hardest bit, can we re-enter and guide a stage through the atmosphere and keep it in one piece and impact it in the ocean? I gave us a relatively low probability of doing that the first time, not for any other reason than there's just so many unknown boundary conditions. When you're trying to model this and understand it, the only way you can get those boundary conditions is to fly. That's why I still have to eat my hat, which I'm not looking forward to. The latest plan is I'm going to blend it into a fine puree and mix it with chocolate cake. But actually, until we actually catch one, I feel like I should hold off eating my hat. Anyway, the plan there is the three tranches. Re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, we can call that a tick. We did it twice in a row, stage behaved quite predictably, we measured the environments we needed to measure, and we understood what we need to understand. We put ourselves well ahead of where we thought we would be. The next pillar was: can we pick the stage out of the sky with a helicopter? For me, that was the least unknown bit because it'd been done in the past with other programs, yet in a slightly different incarnation. So to me, it was pretty low risk, but nevertheless, it's one thing to see it, it's another thing to actually go and do it yourself. So that's kind of the second pillar of work. The third pillar is: how do we decelerate this stage after it's reentered and put the stage into a position we can recover it? So Flight 17 is where we have the full parachute system on board. We're going to re-enter the stage, guide it in, and then attempt to slow it down under parachutes and gently splash it down into the ocean. I'm not going to try and recover it with a helicopter yet. We'll splash it down into the ocean, we'll go and pick it up, and that is where the rubber will hit the road. That is when we will really understand how much work we've got ahead of us or how far we are through the program. We've instrumented the stage and we have a good idea of which bits are cooking and the bits that are fine and all the rest of it, but until you get it back, you just don't know. So that's the next big milestone. **Felix:** What condition the rocket is in basically after re-entry? **Peter Beck:** Exactly. **Felix:** When's Flight 17 gonna happen? **Peter Beck:** It's a little bit COVID dependent, but we would expect it to be sort of third quarter of this year. **Felix:** Wow! All of that achieved in one year, that is incredible. Awesome. **Peter Beck:** The recovery team are under no illusion that they need an Electron back in the factory before the end of the year, that's for sure. **Felix:** Really cool. I'm definitely going to root for you. Very nice. ### Rocket Lab NASA Certification **Felix:** So you've recently been certified by NASA. What does this mean for Rocket Lab and what makes this a big deal for you? **Peter Beck:** It really is actually, and it's probably undervalued. NASA certification is quite a big deal. It's not just "we like your rocket" - they go into all of your business processes, your quality control systems, and really look at how you build a rocket, how you can guarantee the quality of your rocket, how you can guarantee mission assurance, right back to digging the material out of the ground. So I think it was a really important thing for us to do as a company, and it was for me really a great validation of the team, the product, and the service that we bring to market. We were trying to bring just the absolute premium product and service to the market, so this is a nice thing to have. **Felix:** So they basically turned you inside out, looked at everything, and said, "Yep, you're on standard." ### Importance of Wallops? **Felix:** So Rocket Lab right now has two launch complexes - one in New Zealand and the other one at Wallops in the United States. Why did you put so much effort into opening up the second launch complex? What's so important about this? **Peter Beck:** The New Zealand launch complex is a private launch range. We're licensed to launch every 72 hours out of that launch range, so we have the volume we need out of there. But we do have some government customers with very sensitive missions, and the whole point of the Wallops Island launch site is to be able to service those customers for urgent need missions - missions of high importance and national security that need to launch out of America. It's a site we're licensed to launch twelve times a year from, so comparatively speaking, it's a relatively low-volume launch site, but it's for very high-value customers and missions. **Felix:** So most of the time for Electron, it seems to all come down to time - speeding up the process, reducing time, and increasing flexibility. **Peter Beck:** Yeah. **Felix:** The southern end spaceport in Scotland - is that still an option? Because that would open up the gate in Europe basically, and I would of course love to have that because I am from Europe and there's nothing out of Europe. So is there anything in the talks yet? **Peter Beck:** We took a good look at that launch site and we ran a lot of analysis. For our Electron launch vehicle, we couldn't make any commercial trajectories work. Not to say that another launch vehicle that has a different risk profile can't, but for Electron, when we did the analysis and the trajectories that we could fly out of there, we didn't really get any trajectories that were commercially viable for us. So it was great to take a good look at that, and we wish everybody well there to develop something, but for us and our vehicle, it just wasn't commercial. **Felix:** There's just too much land surrounding it basically. It would be too dangerous, so you only have a few flight paths available. **Peter Beck:** Right. **Felix:** I would have loved to see that. That's a pity. **Peter Beck:** The thing is also that everybody is - I find it super bizarre that everybody is excited to build launch sites. I think if you talk to anybody who actually built launch sites, nobody's excited about it. It is incredibly capital intensive and painful. So my advice to anybody is: don't be in a rush to build a launch site. That is not a fun thing to do. **Felix:** Is it because of all the certifications needed and all the things you have to look into? **Peter Beck:** Exactly. And building a launch site in a country that doesn't have one is even worse, trust me. In New Zealand, there were no standards - workplace standards and industrial standards. A traditional industrial standard would say if you have an oxidizer, don't put it near a fuel, but at a launch site, by definition, that's exactly what you have. Two propellants flowing into a launch vehicle very close to each other, and you intentionally are going to ignite it. So it's not just the launch site - the regulatory piece is huge in this business. In New Zealand, for us to build the New Zealand launch site, there had to be a bilateral treaty in place. The New Zealand government had to create laws - a bunch of laws went through Select Committee in Parliament and were passed. And then when the laws were created, they had to create a space agency to administer the laws. And then with all of the subsets of laws, they all had to be modified or amended as well. For example, we had to get space designated as a freight destination so that when payloads come in, they weren't taxed because it wasn't their final destination - space was their final destination. It was like a temporary transit of freight. There's all these little things that just add up to a lot of work. **Felix:** So basically you had to build a basis in the law system to in the first place be able to do it. **Peter Beck:** Yeah, an entire regulatory framework and then modify, amend, and append a bunch of existing rules and regulations. It's a big deal. **Felix:** Thanks for the insight. That is very, very interesting. ### What Makes Photon Special **Felix:** Okay, let's transition over to your next big thing in the pipeline - Photon. Could you explain to my audience what makes Photon special, why do you do it, and what's the reasoning behind it? **Peter Beck:** I look at launch as being a completely solved problem. We obviously have more work to do to scale, but there's a super clear path. It's just buying machines and building more rockets - it's a super clear path. So launch is solved. If you stand back and say, as a company, what are we trying to achieve here - if you ever come down to New Zealand or even into the U.S. factory, you'll walk in the door and the very first thing you'll be greeted with is a sign that says "We go to space to improve life on Earth." And it really forms the foundation of everything we do. Some companies go to space to land on other planets or explore moons or do lots of other things - that's their remit. We're about how we can leverage space to have an impact on everybody's lives down on Earth. And if you look at that, launch access is fundamental. But we believe that's a solved problem now, so you can put a tick beside that one. The next problem is spacecraft. For us, the true definition of success is when launch and spacecraft are just commodities - when nobody needs to assemble a room of 20 guys in white coats to go to space. You just need a concept, a sensor, or even an idea, and it should be feasible to put something together quickly, go to orbit, innovate, or build capability if you're a government, and get stuff done. So the Photon platform is really the next step there. I can't tell you how many times I've seen startup companies raise a chunk of money, build a team, build their own satellite, they put it on orbit, and they need that satellite to work before they can raise the next round. But the satellite doesn't work because of something stupid like a battery charging circuit or just something silly. That just needs to go away. In my world, people just need to focus on building the sensor because that is the thing that ultimately generates revenue for a company. Or if you're a government, build the sensor because it is what ultimately creates capability. So focus on those things, and everything else should just be a commodity. And Photon is what that's really about. ### All-In-One Service Rocket Lab **Felix:** So it's the all-in-one service basically. So you said it yourself - you put the check mark on the rocket, which is incredible in itself that you can say that, and now you want the customers to approach you with ideas. That's what I think the industry needs to go. **Peter Beck:** Ultimately, that's what we want to see it go. And you know, the hint is in the name. Photon - at least in a quantum state, electrons emit photons at a higher energy state, and that is exactly the definition of the Photon spacecraft. Electron emits a Photon. It's smaller but it's got a higher energy state. So Photon is not a piece of hardware, it's a concept. And the thing that makes a Photon a Photon is... it's always really annoyed me that I build a rocket, and on my rocket, I have arguably a better laser ring gyro and IMU than my spacecraft I'm carrying, a comm system, an RCS system, a power system, a propulsion system, and literally 100 millimeters away from all of that is a satellite that's completely duplicated all that. It just doesn't feel wasteful. So a Photon shares components with the rocket. It's a rocket, it's also a satellite, and a satellite, it's also a rocket. When a Photon goes to orbit, for example, the flight computer - the flight computer controls the launch range, ultimately launches the vehicle, and then guides the vehicle and controls the vehicle into orbit. Once it's in orbit, it says, "Okay, I'm in orbit now, now I'm a satellite," and just turns into a satellite. Same with many of the components of the launch vehicle on that Photon platform. It's a very efficient reuse of concept and hardware. **Felix:** It's a brilliant idea. Has anybody else done that before - something comparable? **Peter Beck:** Well, like any of these things, a lot of it's been done before. The Corona program was a great example of that. The original Centaur upper stage, it would go up and it would just stay as an upper stage and do multiple burns, do all its reconnaissance. It wasn't a super satellite. So I don't think the concept's new, but I guess we're in a unique time to make this a reality. **Felix:** To make it commercially available? **Peter Beck:** Yes. **Felix:** Brilliant idea. ### Future Goals for Rocket Lab **Felix:** So now let's assume you've done it all - you've got the Electron recovered and you've got customer for Photon. Is there anything in the pipeline that you could talk about, any future goals, anything you want to still achieve? Like, of course, it's not gonna be an Electron Heavy sadly, and it's not gonna be your European launch site, which is also very sad, but is there anything else? **Peter Beck:** I think if we can get to the point where anybody can come - we've lowered the barriers so that innovation and business can flourish in space - I think I'd call that a win, really. I guess there's lots of stuff bubbling at Rocket Lab, and generally we don't talk about it until we've done enough. But one of my personal - and this is not necessarily a company initiative - but one of my personal objectives is to get to Venus. I think there's a lot of attraction with Mars, and I understand why. Mars is cool, but fundamentally Mars is cool because a human can leave a footprint on the surface of Mars. So it's very easy for the public to get super inspired about that and about sending a human to Mars and building a colony on Mars. It's super exciting. I guess I've got bigger questions - questions of the origin of the universe. And Venus, I've always had a soft spot for a number of reasons. Venus is an analog to Earth - if we screw up... [Brief interruption in transcript] You can't put your foot on the surface of Venus, so it's not very sexy in that respect. But I think we can learn a lot from it. But I guess the thing that I'm most passionate about is the atmosphere of Venus. There's a section in the atmosphere of Venus where it's one atmosphere and temperate. The environments aren't super nice - it's full of acids and lots of unfriendly gases. But there are a number of places on Earth that also live in that kind of environment where bacteria flourishes. The jury is still out among scientists whether or not in that sweet zone of the atmosphere there could be some kind of bacterial life. And that to me is just too much of a magnet to let go. Imagine if we could answer one of the biggest questions of humanity: is there other life other than us? And Venus is just sitting there, and it has a zone that at least in theory could support some kind of microbial or bacterial life. I've got to get there. I need to prove if there is life or not, along with a lot of other scientists. So I'm not a planetary scientist - I'm a passionate hack - but I think it's too big an opportunity to not go after. **Felix:** And could you send that with an Electron rocket? **Peter Beck:** We can get a 25 kg sensor to Venus. With the CAPSTONE mission, we're sending 35 kgs to lunar orbit on a ballistic lunar transfer. And that Photon high-energy spacecraft - using that stage unmodified, we can get about 20-25 kgs to Venus. **Felix:** Wow, okay. Wow, that sounds like an awesome lifetime project. Please do let me know once you have more information about Rocket Lab exploring Venus. That is just awesome. ### Peter's Thoughts About SpaceX **Felix:** One more question - SpaceX is a major thing on my channel and it keeps repeating because there are so many awesome projects, and I would really like to know your opinion about SpaceX and all their different projects. **Peter Beck:** I have an enormous respect for Elon and the entire team there. It's not until you do it that you realize how hard it is to do. And I think anybody who actually gets a vehicle on the pad, whether it works or not - the fact of actually getting a rocket on the pad, that's immensely difficult and highly respectable. Within our company, we have tremendous respect for the team over at SpaceX. We've got a bunch of SpaceX people as well, and Elon's probably got some Rocket Lab people, I'm not sure. I think one of the really good things about the industry is nobody wishes ill on everybody else, especially in the launch industry, because everybody respects how difficult it is and how many personal and financial sacrifices you've had to make to get that vehicle on the pad. So I think that's the really nice thing with the space industry and the launch industry - that respect, whether it's Elon or Tory or Jeff, I think everybody has a lot of respect. ### United Space Endeavor Is Key **Felix:** That's how I see it too. Every country, every player, every company is important in this endeavor, and without every single one of them, we couldn't be able to do this. **Peter Beck:** [Nods in agreement] **Felix:** All right, so this is the end of the interview because you've flawlessly answered every one of my questions, and I'm very, very sure that my audience is very much going to enjoy this. So I wish you all the best for your company and that you can open up your doors again pretty soon because of that pandemic, and thank you for giving me this opportunity. **Peter Beck:** Thanks Felix, it's been great. **Felix:** All right then, have a nice day. **Peter Beck:** You too, bye bye. **Felix:** Thank you for watching this episode of What About It, and now would be the appropriate time to hit the like button, subscribe, and don't forget to hit the bell button to actually receive a notification when I do my uploads. It's a version of support that doesn't cost a penny, and it does help me to produce more and better content. And if you do want to spend your money, consider becoming a patron - get insights into the production of What About It and chat with me on the Discord. Or you could buy yourself a new shirt on our merchandise store and look like me. There are plenty of original designs available in good quality for a low price, made by a space nerd for other space nerds. It all helps me to give you the latest and greatest about space and science. I hope to see you on the next episode. Until then, have a great time, thank you. So yeah, that is just incredible to me. When I got the reply that you'd actually do an interview with me, I was honestly floored. This is really happening, so thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. **Peter Beck:** Well, it might be a really bad interview, so don't thank me too much, you never know. **Felix:** Yeah, I turned out terrible.