[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> May 12 2021 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [Motherboard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7iVs0Cq84M) **Date**: May 12 2021 ![](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7iVs0Cq84M) Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7iVs0Cq84M ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Interviewer:** I'm really pleased today to have Peter Beck on the show. He is the CEO and founder of Rocket Lab. Thank you so much for joining us. **Peter Beck:** Oh my pleasure, Becky. Great to be here. ### About Rocket Lab **Interviewer:** Can you tell us a little bit about Rocket Lab, what motivated you to start this company, and how is it kind of distinct from other space companies out there? **Peter Beck:** Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company. I think we're most famously known for small launch, but we also build spacecraft and satellites and also, you know, moving into more of the applications side of the space industry as well. So we're a company with a very strong track record, over 19 launches under our belt, over 100 satellites on orbit. ### Interest in Venus Exploration **Interviewer:** That's really exciting, and given that you've had all the success in low Earth orbit, I know that Venus in particular has been a long time passion of yours and a destination that you wanted to explore. **Peter Beck:** Yeah, I mean it is a fascinating world. **Interviewer:** What first got you interested in it, and um, you know, just tell us a little bit about your journey towards like eventually getting there. **Peter Beck:** The earliest memory I have of space really is standing outside with my father looking up at the night sky and him explaining to me that all of those stars in the skies were suns, and you know, a lot of them have planets around them and there could be somebody standing on that planet looking back at me. That was probably quite a bit to take in for, you know, I don't know how old I was, but sub five years old, and that was really the point in time that really set my trajectory forever. I look at Venus and really, to me, arguably the largest question we have as a species is: is life unique in this universe? I don't know of a bigger question than that, and that's really the question that I'm trying to answer right back from when my father took me outside and showed me those stars. So I always promised myself if I ever had the ability to try and answer that question, that I would give that a shot, no matter how low or remote the probable outcomes could be. And I'm in a very fortunate position now that I have a rocket company and an interplanetary spacecraft, so it would seem very rude to not give this a crack. **Interviewer:** Well I mean that's what's fascinating too is just this idea that private companies could get into interplanetary exploration, this realm that very much has been public and governmental space organizations. So that would be, I think, a real game changer for a lot of these worlds that we want to visit, including Venus. And you know, I agree that it would be completely rude of you, it would be such a faux pas if you didn't go. **Peter Beck:** Yeah, that would be the ultimate failure. **Interviewer:** Exactly. ### Venus as a Target for Exploration **Interviewer:** So, you know, Venus has become even more topical and relevant since last year. There was a potential detection of phosphine, possibly a biomarker, lots of debate in this community about that Venus skies. But you know, it's not a new idea that Venus might have something like that in the sky. So in many ways I feel it's been an overlooked planet compared to Mars, where we have really cool missions and you know, it could have extinct life or something like that on it. But it just seems like, why not go to this sister planet? So do you think that Venus is more interesting than Mars, or can you not pick favorites when it comes to that kind of planet? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, well I mean, I completely believe that Venus is the most underrated planet in our solar system, for a number of reasons. I mean, it's one of the planets that has the potential for still existent life, so that kind of raises its ranking, that's a couple of stars there to begin with. But also if you look at Venus as an analog to Earth, I mean Venus is just Earth gone bad. So there is a tremendous amount that we can learn from Venus with respect to climate change. It's kind of Earth's sister that's just gone down the wrong path. Let's make sure that we don't go down that wrong path, and I think there's a tremendous amount to learn from Venus as a planet for our own planet back here on Earth. ### The Planned Venus Mission **Interviewer:** Yeah, and to that point, you know, what would this mission look like? Would this be a mission where you'd have a lot of time to go into the skies and get some samples, or is it kind of a quick test demonstration for stuff that you want to do later? **Peter Beck:** Well, really the mission is to pathfind and it's also to show that this can be done, and I seriously hope that there's a whole campaign of missions that come in behind it. But as I mentioned before, even how remote the possibility of finding some kind of evidence of life, it's still worth a shot. And this mission will be very, very remote. Literally, we've got around about 200-odd seconds in the atmosphere of Venus to take samples and look for markers of phosphine and any other organic compounds. So it's one instrument, a laser-tuned mass spectrometer, and it's not like we're going there with the whole science lab. So it's a high-risk mission to get a very short sample of the atmosphere in a very short amount of time and small amount of data to try and make some hypothesis about what we see, but still a thousand percent worth it. **Interviewer:** Yeah, I mean it will be a fascinating mission regardless because, as you mentioned, you know this will be the first private mission there and it's just such a rare planet to be able to study in the first place. There's not a lot of history of exploration, so that's all great. ### Implications of Finding Life on Venus **Interviewer:** But say, okay, just speculate—speculate that it's life on Venus. That tiny shot and you do get it, you get like some kind of very strong evidence that there is microbial life in the skies of Venus. How do you think that would change the world? I mean, even if it's just microbes that we find on another planet, what's the perspective shift knowing that we're not alone? **Peter Beck:** Firstly, we would force a whole bunch of science on Venus because it's like, okay there's something going on here, we really need to understand this. Secondly, I think it's pretty hard to argue with kind of completely undefendable truth, and I think that will change people's view on the universe and in our solar system. Even if there's life on Venus, is there life on some of the moons of Jupiter, and what is that life? Is there life in our nearest Alpha Centauri star neighbors and some of the planets orbiting that? **Interviewer:** I mean, it would be amazing to see a kind of flotilla of new missions to Venus be inspired by yours, and including, you know, follow-up missions that I'm sure you would want to do yourself with Rocket Lab. ### History of Venus Exploration **Interviewer:** You know, I wanted to ask a little bit just about the history of exploration of Venus because, although you know we haven't studied it as much as Mars, especially not in the US with NASA or anything, the Soviet missions there are really fascinating. **Peter Beck:** Amazing program. **Interviewer:** Amazing missions. So did you take inspiration from those, you know, now decades-old missions but also very sophisticated missions to Venus? **Peter Beck:** Absolutely, and the Pioneer missions are incredible as well. I mean, one of those little probes made it right to the surface of Venus and transmitted for some time. I mean, that's incredible. The work that's been done there to date has just been phenomenal, and absolutely take inspiration from what's been done there in the past and learnings quite frankly. Our re-entry probe will look very similar to the Pioneer missions and their entry probes with kind of improved materials and improved structures and improved electronics and RF links and all those kinds of things. But fundamentally, it's a very similar approach. ### Business Case for Planetary Exploration **Interviewer:** I have to ask too, just given that interplanetary exploration has been so much of a governmental thing and seen as sort of like a public service, is there a business case for going to other planets? Or does that not really matter to you? Like is it just a matter of wanting to start a new type of exploration from the commercial space sector and, you know, profits don't matter in that endeavor? **Peter Beck:** Well, I mean for this particular Venus mission, there's a much greater cause here, right? But I do believe that if we can demonstrate this, it fundamentally does change the way that we need to think about doing planetary science. If a private company can go to Venus and even try to look for life for some tens of millions of dollars, then instead of spending billions of dollars on missions once every decade, it does open a door for a platform that can go to other planets and other destinations for some tens of millions of dollars and do really meaningful sciences. It also changes the risk posture as well because if you're going to spend a decade and billions of dollars, your risk posture just changes because at some point it crosses a threshold from being "it can fail" to "it cannot fail." And when you're spending some tens of millions of dollars, you're definitely within that threshold where you can take risk and it can fail. So you can put new sensors and take risks, look for new technologies to do new things in a much more aggressive way. So I think ultimately, we'd love to see lots of the Photon probes proliferate through our solar system and learn as much as we can. But I guess the pure scientist in me really wants some of these questions answered, and I think everyone looks to make a contribution in their lifetime to the species. This is why I say this is rude for me to not try, because this is one thing that I can do that may or may not increment our knowledge of the universe and our solar system, and maybe increment or even answer—in my mind—the biggest question that we have as a species. ### Eating His Hat and Rocket Reusability **Interviewer:** One of the reasons that I'm excited about your Venus mission is that I know you're a man of your word because you recently ate your hat. **Peter Beck:** This hat is not tasty. **Interviewer:** Because you had made a promise, and you know that is a figurative phrase that most people take figuratively, but you had said that you weren't going to go into the reusability rocket game, right? Is that correct? And I believe Electron and Neutron are both going to be at least partially reusable, correct? I just, I mean I'm really impressed honestly, and I have to ask, like how did that taste? **Peter Beck:** Well, I mean, we have a saying at Rocket Lab: "We do what we say we're going to do," and everybody here gets measured against "Did they do what they said they were going to do?" We have a huge pride in the culture here of execution, so you can't let the team down in that respect. And there was some advocacy for a fake hat, but nevertheless, if you're going to do what you say you're going to do, you better chow down on some nasty tasting hat at the end of the day. And it is nasty tasting—I don't recommend that at all. That was the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth, that's for sure. **Interviewer:** Okay, good. Well, I guess that means that when you're making predictions about the future of the company, maybe you'll pull your punches a little bit more in the future. **Peter Beck:** I'm never saying "never" again, that is a fact. That's why we got it all out in one hit that we're building a large rocket, which we said we'd never do. We're doing it, and it's going to be human spaceflight capable. So we got it all out, so hopefully there's no more hat eating in the future for me. And I've learned my lesson to not constrain my thinking so tightly.