[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> July 23 2022 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [Manuel Mazzanti](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILSZQ1c5fcc) **Date**: July 23 2022  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILSZQ1c5fcc ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Interviewer:** How are you Peter? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, good thanks. **Interviewer:** Thank you, Peter, for your time. I know you are super busy. I really, really appreciate it. I was eager to talk to you, and you know, it's very difficult for me to start a conversation with you without mentioning Capstone and how successful it's been. We had a couple of scary days, but so far it's been very successful. Can you share with us some little last-minute information on how it's going? How is Capstone the ship itself going? How is Photon doing? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, absolutely. So it was a great mission and very, very technically difficult for us—for anybody. I think a lot of people see a launch go up and think that was the end of it, but of course on the end of the launch was our Lunar Photon spacecraft. We stayed in orbit for a very long time, well, a number of days, raising the apogee higher and higher and higher, and then ultimately set it on a TLI or a trans-lunar injection trajectory. Then we separated off the spacecraft, the Capstone spacecraft, and that's when NASA and Advanced Space took control of their spacecraft and operations. And yeah, as you point out, they had a couple of scary days there, but my understanding is the Capstone spacecraft is healthy and they've done the burns they need to do for now, so that's great. Lunar Photon continued on, and we kept it there as a backup platform if required. We ran and had been running a bunch of kind of deep space experiments with it because that is a platform that is not only useful for what we achieved going to the moon, but it's a great deep space platform for visiting other planets and asteroids and so on and so forth. So it's been a hugely successful mission for us. **Interviewer:** Peter, do you agree with me that Capstone—we can consider Capstone as an inflection point for the company? It's like now I see you're playing in another league, like these guys are going to the moon. Do you agree with me? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, I definitely—we certainly think so. I mean, interplanetary spacecraft manufacturing is non-trivial, and not only that, now we have a small platform launched on a small vehicle for some tens of millions of dollars that can go to Mars, can go to Venus, can go to the moon. And that's just never been available before. So as much as it is an inflection point for the company, I actually think it's an inflection point for space sciences because generally those space sciences missions you measure in decades and billions, and now you can measure in months and millions. ### Rocket Lab's Evolution to End-to-End Service Provider **Interviewer:** Peter, did you always envision Rocket Lab to be an end-to-end service provider? Or I don't know if this is for several reasons—could be like for increasing margins, going public—but from the very beginning, you said, "Okay, let's go into having a small launch rocket company"? Or what is it that made you go and transform the company that it is right now, to basically you're offering a bunch of services? Electron is becoming a standard. What was your objective from the very beginning? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, so I mean actually, the second Electron that we ever launched had a kick stage on the top, and in that kick stage had a whole lot of recesses for solar panels. That wasn't always intended to ultimately turn into a satellite, so we always envisioned not just stopping at launch but also building satellites. And once we started building satellites, we realized that the supply chain of critical components there was really strained—nine months for a reaction wheel or a year for a reaction wheel. So that just didn't meet our requirements. That's when we started either developing internal technologies or acquiring companies so that we could actually get the stuff moving at scale. **Interviewer:** My question was regarding this because we now have a small launch market that is becoming huge. We are having, only in Europe, we're having a lot of new potential players. We have PLD in Spain a month away from launching Euro One. We have a bunch of providers in Germany and others in France, UK. So I'm thinking, if I'm starting a small launch company tomorrow and I'm not becoming an end-to-end service provider, I'm dead in the water. **Peter Beck:** Well, I think there's an important distinction to make there. It's incredibly difficult to launch one rocket successfully. It's 10 times more difficult to launch a 20th rocket. And so although there's a lot of small launch providers that are trying to build a platform to be commercial and be competitive, for as long as I've been doing this, there's always been a hundred small launch companies nipping at my heels. But every year there's 100 or 90 or 80 or whatever small launch companies nipping at our heels. And not being arrogant about it, but the barrier to entry is just excruciatingly high. When you look, there's only really been one or two others that have made it to their first flight, and they just failed to scale in any kind of way. I think a lot of people think flying a rocket once is the hard bit, and it's actually not—that's the easy bit. So although there's a lot of companies trying, as of yet, we still remain the only reliable dedicated service. Not to be arrogant to think that there won't be others come along, but I think when you pair that with being end-to-end, I think it's very powerful. It gives you a lot more options and a lot more visibility. And then having a reusable launch vehicle is just another level of strength that is very hard to overcome. **Interviewer:** So you're kind of waiting for a market consolidation. It's impossible not to happen. **Peter Beck:** Yeah, look, I mean, I think we've all been saying for many, many years there's way too many small launch vehicle companies, and there's going to be a couple that survive in their niche. But I think we've lived in a very buoyant funding environment for the last five years where a lot of stuff was funded, and that was great. But I think we live in a very different environment now where that level of funding is likely to cease. **Interviewer:** Now I see your launch manifest that is extremely diverse and impressive. You have solar sails, a factory in space with Varda, you're going to Venus, you're going to Mars. That's not easy at all. **Peter Beck:** No, it's not easy. **Interviewer:** It's fun though, it's super fun. **Peter Beck:** Yeah, it's super fun. **Interviewer:** But my point is, if I'm one of those hundreds of small players that want to—I mean, it's very difficult to achieve this, to get to this point. It's extremely difficult. **Peter Beck:** Yeah, it is. And the projects that we go after are always technically difficult projects. We're very good at biting off really difficult things. The Capstone mission to the moon was a great example of that. The Mars missions and all the other projects—they're both exciting missions but also technically very, very difficult to do. But that's what we really love, and that's kind of one of the differentiating factors for us. We run towards those things, not away from them. ### Launch Cadence and Future Plans **Interviewer:** Peter, I saw several interviews where you were talking and even speeches where you were mentioning the revolution of the small [rockets] maybe a couple of years ago, and how important it was for you to achieve these 72 hours between launches. With this complexity of missions you're having, are you still with this objective, or do you prefer to have more complex and diverse missions and to have more timing in between launches? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, so we set the factory up to be able to deliver one rocket a week. The launch site is licensed to launch every 72 hours—not that we aspire to launch every 72 hours, but the launch site is licensed to do that. A rocket launch a week is a very big challenge, but we've scaled the factory, we have multiple pads, and we're at the point where we could support that cadence in time. The challenge of course is the market growing to meet that capability and that cadence. So at the moment, we're launching at least once a month. I mean, the last launch we did two launches within 15 days. We were going to do another launch within 10 days, but our customer had a delay. Generally, it's very rare that anybody waits on a rocket from Rocket Lab. Generally, our cadence is driven by our customers' readiness, not by our readiness. So it's really market driven, what cadence you want to achieve, but certainly we have a factory and launch site that's capable of it. ### Varda Space Industries Collaboration **Interviewer:** Can you tell me more about these missions with Varda? Because it blows my mind that factories or producing something in space were basically done inside the space station. Now we are going to have an orbiting lab that then you're going to recover. Can you tell us a little bit more about this first mission? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, it's a great collaboration. The Varda guys have built these cool little factories, and there's lots of different applications for them. Our job is obviously to provide all the resources to the factories while they're on orbit and then target the re-entry of the factory or the reentry probe to land back at its landing spot. You might go, "Why would Rocket Lab want to do a project like that?" Well, if you look at our future aspirations, we have Neutron as a launch vehicle, and one of our aspirations there is to ultimately fly crew. If you're going to fly crew, you've got to bring them home, and if you're going to bring them home, that means you have to be very good at that kind of reentry and targeting reentry corridors and doing those kinds of things. So we always do things for a very strategic reason, and that partnership with that particular customer is really going to hone our ability to do very, very pinpoint accuracy landings and targetings and re-entries. **Interviewer:** This is very interesting about Rocket Lab that you not only are launching stuff but also collaborating and participating technologically with each one of your partners and clients. And you're learning in the process, which is—I love it. **Peter Beck:** Yeah, it's a great relationship. ### Launch Complex 2 and Neutron Development **Interviewer:** How is Neutron coming? Maybe—well, how is LC2 coming first? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, LC2 is—the guys are out there flat out. It's like any of these projects—there's a big empty field for ages while you're doing all the design and the certification and licensing and all the rest of it. Then all of a sudden, the stuff starts coming in the ground, and it's an exciting time because stuff's starting to go into the ground now at LC2, so that's super cool. Neutron's pads are all defined and will be—we'll be pouring concrete and doing all those kinds of things here pretty shortly. So it's a kind of a fun time in the project. Like any project, you kind of tread water for ages because you can't see any visual progress, but there's a whole bunch of stuff going on. And the same with the launch vehicle. So there's a tremendous amount of design and analysis, and now we're building, starting to build full-scale articles, which is super fun to see—giant tanks, molds, and bits and pieces. **Interviewer:** Are you still planning to have a launch from Wallops this year for Electron? **Peter Beck:** We certainly are, yep. It's governed by NASA's ability to deliver the AFTS software and work that they've been working on for the last couple of years. But the pad is ready, the rocket is ready, we're ready, customers are ready. We just need NASA to deliver on what it's promised. ### Future Crewed Missions **Interviewer:** Going back a little bit to Varda missions, you are using them as an exploratory opportunity to, in the future, launch crew. Is it your idea to try to use Neutron and a future capsule to go to the space station? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we don't want to—I don't want to write off anything anymore. Like, I've made a reputation for myself in saying, "We'll never do that," and then having to eat my hat. So I no longer say that we'll never do anything because life is funny like that. But certainly, Neutron has been designed to be human-ratable. It's not going to be rated for human spaceflight out of the shoot, but it will be able to in due course. **Interviewer:** I imagine that you have like a drawing board or the first designs of the crew capsule? **Peter Beck:** Well, not in any great detail. We're obviously ensuring that it's capsule and crew compatible, but I'm a great believer in finishing one thing before you start the other. Hence the reasons why, when we started Rocket Lab, it was all about small launch, and we got the launch vehicle sorted, and then we started to talk about satellites. Then we deliver satellites, and then we talk about going to the moon, and so on and so forth. In this industry, there's a tremendous amount of aspiration and a little bit less execution. I like to veer on the side of less aspiration and more execution. ### Five-Year Vision **Interviewer:** Peter, where do you see Rocket Lab in five years? **Peter Beck:** Five years is a long time frame. Like, five years of Rocket Lab is like dog years—it's like 20 years everywhere else. But in five years' time, we would expect that Neutron is a stable vehicle in the market. Look, if you asked me a couple of years ago, "Would you be going to the moon?" I would have laughed at you. If you asked me a year ago, "Would you be building spacecraft for NASA to orbit Mars?" I would have thought that's pretty unlikely. And so the pace of acceleration and movement is continuing to be vertical, which is fun. A long way of saying five years is a long time, and I certainly hope we can continue on this trajectory. **Interviewer:** Are you excited with all this happening commercial space? By the way, I never asked you, would you like to go to space someday? **Peter Beck:** No, no. I have tremendous aspiration for any astronaut, and I just—I think I'm better on the ground than in space. ### Closing **Interviewer:** Another question—I don't remember if I asked you before. Do you speak some Spanish? **Peter Beck:** I do not, no. I could probably muster a couple of words, but that would be embarrassing for all. **Interviewer:** All right. Peter, thank you so much for your time. I probably—maybe in the future we have the chance—I have the chance to go to New Zealand, or why not maybe to LC2, to do like a live transmission or a live feed in Spanish. I would love to at some point go to New Zealand to do a coverage and to show the factory. Maybe we can arrange that in the near future. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it and congratulations for Capstone and the upcoming missions. **Peter Beck:** Thanks so much, appreciate it. **Interviewer:** You're welcome. Bye. **Peter Beck:** Cheers.