[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> June 26 2023 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [Moonshot Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6UVr-pAewc) **Date**: June 26 2023  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6UVr-pAewc ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Christopher Lawson:** Welcome to Moonshot, the show exploring crazy ideas and the even crazier people who are making them happen. I'm Christopher Lawson, and previously on the show we met some startups building technology for the small satellite market. When we explored those businesses, one company kept popping up, and that was Rocket Lab, a company which has built a rocket launch facility on the east coast of New Zealand. That's pretty unique because there actually aren't that many places around the world that you can launch rockets that can reach space, let alone one that's based in the Southern Hemisphere and that can launch up to 120 times per year. So join us in this episode as we meet the founder of Rocket Lab to find out why they had to build their own launch facility in their quest to make it easier and cheaper for businesses to reach space. ### Peter Beck's Early Interest in Space **Peter Beck:** I've always been interested in space as long as I can remember. It was probably my father taking me outside and actually showing me a satellite in the sky, and looking at this thing that man had put up there, this little star whizzing across the sky. Then as a young kid, starting to ask further questions as well: what are all these other stars, the sun? What if those planets have people on those planets maybe? So for me, it was, I don't know what age it was, but very, very young. It's always just been such a fascinating thing. A lot of people fully understand where they live, what city they live in, and what country they live in, but actually we live in a solar system and a universe. For me, it's always just been fascinating. **Christopher Lawson:** This is Peter Beck, the CEO and founder of New Zealand-based Rocket Lab, a company building launch vehicles for small satellites. **Peter Beck:** The mission of Rocket Lab is to democratize access to space. The small satellite industry is growing at an exponential rate, and we see large geosynchronous fat importance disaggregating into a number of small satellites. But the problem is launch and launch cost, but more importantly, launch frequency. We saw this about four years ago, that really the key to enabling the small satellite revolution was launch frequency. What Rocket Lab is really about is creating regular and reliable access to space to enable the small satellite industry to really grow and do the amazing things that it's predicted to do. ### The Need for a Private Launch Facility **Christopher Lawson:** Now if the mission of Rocket Lab sounds a little familiar, that's because we mentioned them in one of our previous episodes looking at New Space. Rocket Lab is aggressively chasing the launch market for small satellites, and they are a couple of years ahead of companies like Gilmore Space Technologies and also Virgin Orbit. Rocket Lab has already launched a few rockets and deployed four satellites, and after a successful launch of their still-testing rocket at the start of this year, they've moved into commercial operations. And that means they'll be looking to launch an awful lot of rockets. **Peter Beck:** The goal of the company from day one was to achieve a high launch frequency, and we had to do a number of innovative things. Obviously there's some technology which we can talk about later, but one of the biggest constraints was the launch site. All the launch sites in America are all federal or government-owned, so we needed to find a way of creating the world's first private orbital launch range. If you look at America, there's a lot that goes on there. There's a lot of shipping traffic and there's a lot of aircraft traffic, so it's very difficult to achieve both launch frequency but also launch azimuth - the direction that you need to put stuff in orbit. So we sort of stood back and looked at the problem and said, "Well, how can we solve that problem?" And ultimately we had to go to a different country to solve that, and that was New Zealand. When you're talking about launching stuff into space, a small island nation in the middle of nowhere is exactly what you need, and that's what we had. After we completed all of the regulatory processes, the launch site was licensed to launch every 72 hours. That's an incredible frequency. **Christopher Lawson:** There's probably no other launch site on earth that could do that many launches? **Peter Beck:** No, that's true. It's the only private orbital launch site operational in the world today, and it was fundamental to the whole vision of the company, which was to provide access. Every 72 hours sounds like a lot, but when you talk about air travel, commercial air travel, it's very infrequent. But for the space industry, that's a lot. When you're looking at constellations and tens, if not hundreds of satellites, then that's the kind of frequency you need to be able to service the infrastructure. ### The Vision Behind Rocket Lab **Christopher Lawson:** As you heard when we spoke with Adam Gilmore, a lot of the rockets being built for small satellites are only designed to carry a very tiny payload. Gilmore is designing his rockets to carry payloads of up to 400 kilograms, and Rocket Lab's is even smaller with a maximum payload of around 225 kilograms. Peter says that the need to provide rockets to carry these nano satellites was very obvious, even back in 2006 when he founded the company. **Peter Beck:** I started the company over 10 years ago, and to me at the time of starting Rocket Lab, it was very, very obvious which way the space industry was going to go. If you look at Moore's Law and how it applies to electronics, it's very obvious that it's going to apply itself to satellites, given that satellites are largely electronics. So satellites were going to shrink, and there was always going to be a need for increased access to space. If you put those two things together, it's kind of an obvious proposition that a launch vehicle for small satellites more frequently is an obvious requirement in the market. We saw that quite some time ago, and as a result, we've been able to get to market first with a vehicle that meets that niche. **Christopher Lawson:** Were you aware of the need of having to build your own facility, etc., when you first started? **Peter Beck:** Some of it is obviously learned along the way, of course, but we really only started the Electron program in earnest four years ago. It was very obvious very quickly that the launch was a major constraint. The romance of building the rocket is always alluring, and that's where people kind of start, but for us, you have to break it up into three different things: One is obviously the technology, that's a third of the magnitude of the project. And then second is regulation or regulatory, probably the second magnitude of the project. And then third is infrastructure because building a launch site is... if anybody's thinking about it, I wouldn't, I don't recommend it, it's a mammoth undertaking. We had to upgrade internet backhauls to entire townships and put tracking stations on remote islands in the Pacific, and build lots of roads and all the kinds of things that you wouldn't normally associate with the space industry. ### Technology and Cost Reduction **Christopher Lawson:** Let's talk a little bit about the technology behind your rockets. Space is always seen as this really expensive business to get into, but with new technology, 3D printing, etc., the costs can be reduced. How are you utilizing new technology in your rockets to make sure that you can access space on the cheap? **Peter Beck:** We started the whole project with two requirements, and that was: launch at least once a week and launch affordably. Those two requirements drove everything we did. So when it came to things like rocket propulsion, how can we build rocket engines at a much reduced cost and a much increased frequency? Certain pieces of technology really stood out, and one of them was obviously 3D printing or additive manufacturing. We started experimenting with that when most people were making Bond bikes. It was really about identifying the breakthrough technologies that were going to have the most disruptive effect and backing them and really pushing hard. Ernest Rutherford had a famous saying, "We have no money, so we have to think," and that kind of formed the basis. You see the engines named Rutherford. It wasn't that we were completely short of capital because we have very good investors, but certainly not the capital that a government would have to throw into a project like this. **Christopher Lawson:** Unlike Gilmore Space, which is using a hybrid rocket engine, Rocket Lab uses a liquid mixture containing a mix of liquid oxygen and RP-1, which is a highly reformed type of kerosene and is a similar sort of fuel to what SpaceX use on the Falcons. And given that SpaceX is leading the charge when it comes to space exploration, I asked Peter what he thought of Elon Musk's plans to send people to Mars. **Peter Beck:** I think it's inspiring for everybody. For us, what we're more focused on, obviously, is where we think we can have a greater impact than human spaceflight - to actually build infrastructure in orbit that affects everybody down on Earth on a daily basis. Going to Mars is an incredibly noble and exciting thing, and I'm sure we're going to get there with Elon. But we're more focused on how we can improve everybody's life on Earth daily by building infrastructure in orbit that can really have a massive effect. **Christopher Lawson:** Would you want to go? Like if Elon called you up and said, "Hey, do you want to come to Mars," would you go? **Peter Beck:** No, no, certainly not, no. I think I can have a better impact on this planet. ### Funding a Private Space Company **Christopher Lawson:** Welcome back to Moonshot. I'm Christopher Lawson, and in this episode, we're speaking with the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck. Now, one of the questions which always comes up whenever anybody speaks about space is the cost. Space is expensive, even if you're doing it on the cheap. So I wanted to know how you actually fund a space program if you're a private company. **Peter Beck:** It's like building your team. Building your investors group is exactly like building your team, and your company is who you hire. So you need to build and find great people. For us, it wasn't just about the money; it was about who are great partners for this project because the project is very ambitious. For us, really tier one Silicon Valley venture capital was the place to go. We boast a really great board and great series of investors. We have Khosla Ventures, we have Bessemer Venture Partners, Data Collective, and Lockheed Martin as investors. So a very strong and powerhouse group of folks who, if you talk about the Silicon Valley guys, they only - the tier ones are only interested in the next Googles, the next Facebooks, the guys that really go after the big opportunities. And they have to have those guys as part of the companies, it's really important. **Christopher Lawson:** Rocket Lab has raised around 75 million US dollars, and all that investment has enabled them to scale their team rapidly. Peter told me that Rocket Lab hires around four to five people each week and now have around 250 people working for them across their offices in the US and New Zealand. And all of those people will help the company scale their launch frequency. **Peter Beck:** The plan at the moment for this year is to get to a one-a-month cadence. If we can achieve that, then that's a fair way to what most countries can do. And then the following year, we'll go every two weeks, which will see us launching the most amount of spacecraft to orbit than anybody else. **Christopher Lawson:** The New Zealand government has approved up to 120 launches per year, which is a huge amount. And unlike SpaceX, Rocket Lab is planning to just throw away all those rockets after every launch. But given how spectacular it was to watch the two Falcon rockets landing simultaneously, I had to ask Peter what he thought of reusability. **Peter Beck:** When your stage is the height of a skyscraper and worth tens of millions of dollars, it really makes great sense. It's exactly what you should do. When your stage is much, much smaller and not worth as much, then the pure kind of financial logistics, they don't close. If you try and recover the stage, you end up putting so much mass in the stage that you degrade your ability to put payload on orbit pretty dramatically. But also just the cost of refurbishment - the way we've gone about designing and building the stages, it's more cost effective for us to just rebuild them rather than refurbish them. **Christopher Lawson:** What are the costs like? Obviously, this is cheaper, and this is one of the things that you were talking about is that this is cheaper than ride-sharing on a SpaceX rocket, etc. What are the sort of cost differences in terms of launch? **Peter Beck:** One of the biggest issues with small satellites is the ride-share market. Ride-share is fantastic if you've got a technology demonstrator or you just want to get one spacecraft on orbit, and that's all you really need to do. But if you're trying to build a commercial constellation where you want control over the schedule, control over the orbit, ride-share just fails really, really badly. Most of the customers come to us because we can give them certainty about, "Well, this is the orbit you're going to, it's exactly the orbit you want, and this is the timeframe you want, and you're in charge of this vehicle," rather than kind of second-class passengers. So that really has the biggest impact. You can have all of that for the same price as being strapped onto the side of some rocket on a bumpy ride. For the same price, you get the Cadillac. ### Peter Beck's Passion for Space **Christopher Lawson:** At the top of the show, Peter spoke about his childhood fascination with space, which I think is something that actually many people have in common. I can remember building rockets as a kid and then going off somewhere with my dad to find a place where we could launch them. But for Peter, that fascination runs at another level. He was so captivated by space that he actually got into the industry and then built a rocket company. So I asked Peter what he actually loves about space. **Peter Beck:** It's definitely that fascination. From an engineering perspective, I love it because it's so hard. I like things that are hard. But what really gets me up in the morning is that if we're successful in what we're trying to achieve here, we're going to have a really big impact to a large portion of people on the planet. Some of our customers have really exciting projects - internet from space where everybody, everybody in the entire world, gets access to the internet, and just so many wonderful things. Better climate change understanding, better weather predictions, all these things can occur if we can simply have better access to space. So that's what really inspires me. **Christopher Lawson:** If you're looking ahead 10 years, 15 years, what does Rocket Lab look like? **Peter Beck:** Gosh, that's a long time frame. We tend to... an afternoon is a lot that happens in an afternoon here, let alone 10 years. Our primary mission is to enable the building of this critical infrastructure on orbit. I think the world even five years' time, if we're successful, will look very, very different, let alone 10 years. I think in 10 years' time, if we've succeeded in our mission, then life for everybody on Earth is a little bit better. ### Conclusion **Christopher Lawson:** Thanks for joining us for another episode of Moonshot. If you love what we're doing, then send us an email to [email protected], and please make sure that you share the show with your friends. It's really the best way of helping us grow our audience. Moonshot is a production of Lawson Media, and it's hosted by me, Christopher Lawson, and also Andrew Moon. Andrew Millet designed our amazing cover artwork, and Brake Master Cylinder composed our theme track. You can find out more about the show by following us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram - just search for Moonshot Pod or head across to our website, moonshot.audio. Join us again next time as we explore more ideas that are changing our future.