[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> May 17 2023 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [Sharesies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xadNDJVBNQU) **Date**: May 17 2023  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xadNDJVBNQU ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Leighton Roberts:** Welcome to Shared Lunch brought to you by Sharesies with BusinessDesk. My name is Leighton Roberts and I'm one of the co-founders and co-CEOs at Sharesies. Before we get started, here's some important information: investing involves risk, you might lose the money you start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor. We also recommend reading product disclosure documents before deciding to invest. Everything you're about to see and hear is current at the time of recording. Today we're stoked to be joined again by Peter Beck, Rocket Lab founder and CEO, from his base in the US. It's great to see you again, Peter. Thanks so much for joining us. **Peter Beck:** Oh, my pleasure, Leighton. It's great to chat. **Leighton:** The last time we spoke was November 2021. It's pretty crazy how quickly time travels, doesn't it? If anyone wants to check that one out, it's up on our YouTube channel and also on the Shared Lunch feed. But since then, a lot has happened in your world. We've had multiple launches, we've got NASA contracts ramping up, and of course from the investor side of it, a lot of market volatility between those times as well. So I'd love just to get started if you could start by talking us through the main focus areas that you've had over the last 18 months here. ### Recent Developments at Rocket Lab **Peter:** Right, 18 months seems like a lifetime ago. So tremendous amount has happened in 18 months. You know, we've scaled the business an awful lot, we've bought a bunch of companies and won some really significant programs. We've been to the Moon, and we've had some preview milestones pass on both the space system side but also on Neutron, the new launch vehicle side. And there you, as you point out, incredibly volatile market. Tech stocks suffered pretty majorly, and growth stocks really suffered, but also in the space sector I'd say it was hit pretty hard as well. **Leighton:** Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm so glad you touched on some of that merger or the acquisition stuff straight away because it was something we talked a lot about last time, 18 months ago actually. So it'd be great if you could just give us an update on what's been happening there and also any sort of thoughts you've got on for the future with regards to that. ### Strategic Acquisitions **Peter:** Yeah, so we've acquired Sinclair Interplanetary, which was our first acquisition, a Canadian company that built reaction wheels and star trackers. And you notice a theme through all of our acquisitions—all companies that we work with for a long time and all companies that have had a history of 100% mission success, and then they build beautiful-looking hardware as well. So that was the first one, and then ASI, which is a software company, a satellite software company. And then we did PSC or Planetary Systems Corporation—they do separation systems for rockets and satellites. And then finally, Solero, which is one of the only three solar cell space-grade solar cell manufacturers in the world. And if you combine all of those things and you kind of lay them out on your kitchen table, you've basically got all the hardest and most expensive part of the spacecraft or a satellite. So we very strategically went after those assets very early and made sure that we gave those things up that are going to be really important growth drivers for our Space Systems business in the future. **Leighton:** It's some 18 months. It's not very often you speak to someone who within their time mentions the Moon as one of those things, so very cool. ### Q1 2023 Financial Results **Leighton:** So last week, May 9th I think, you released the first quarter results. It would be great if you could talk us through the key points or key takeaways from that. **Peter:** Yeah, no, it was a good set of results. Revenue is up and margins are up, which are important elements. And we continue to make really solid progress through all of our programs. And I would say we have probably this quarter and the last quarter, we saw more defection from other potential launch providers than we've seen for a while. We generally see a little bit of defection in the quarter, but generally not multiple defections. And that was in large part, one small launch company into bankruptcy and a number of other ones failed to deliver on previous kind of promises and milestones. So that was something to note from that quarter. We had a couple of beats, which was great, and we continue to make really solid progress throughout the whole business—all of the Space Systems businesses and everything had a really good quarter. **Leighton:** Nice. And I also saw your forecast an increase in revenue again for Q2. Any major things driving that? **Peter:** There's always launch, which has a big influence on that and how many launches we can get away in a quarter. All those Space Systems represent almost 70% of our revenue now. Our launch always is a big swing because it is super lumpy, and we're completely dependent on when a customer or if a customer turns up with spacecraft on time or not. And even things like the weather can push us out of a quarter, so it becomes pretty lumpy. But I think it's just solid growth right across the whole business. There's no business unit that's not pulling their fair share of weight. It's really promising to see. ### Revenue Breakdown **Leighton:** Yeah, great to hear. You just touched on 70% of revenue coming from Space Systems activity. Can you just break down the other 30% for us? **Peter:** Well, take it the other way around. So 70% or two-thirds of our revenue comes from Space Systems, which are spacecraft, satellites, and spacecraft. One-third pretty much comes from launch. And look, that changes from quarter to quarter and will change over time, especially as Neutron comes online. Those are sort of $50-55 million dollar launches, so they're pretty meaningful revenue events when they occur. But at this point in time, that's pretty much where it sits. And quite frankly, that's where we wanted it to sit, knowing that launches always going to be lumpy. As I said before, it could only take one bad weather day and push you out of a quarter. So having that padding of the more predictable Space Systems revenue is good. ### Recent Launch Successes **Leighton:** In the first quarter, you launched three successful Electron missions for commercial constellation operators—so Hawkeye 360, Capella Space, Black Sky—and one of these launches I saw was the fastest turnaround ever. Can you talk us through that? **Peter:** Well, yeah, not only was the fastest turnaround ever, it was between two different launch sites in two different countries. So we launched out of Wallops Island in Virginia, US, and then flipped down and launched in New Zealand seven days later. That's a really impressive feat by the team. That's not easy to do. Standing up and basically at some points, two launch sites were running simultaneously because the launch occurs over many days and many days of preparations and waiters and rehearsals and whatnot. So we basically had two running two launches running at the same time. **Leighton:** I mean, how's that crossover and stuff between similar people? Or you're sort of running two completely separate teams now? I assume this is a skill or a capability that you're aiming to build over time as well. **Peter:** Yeah, so we kind of share the resource around. I mean, obviously, New Zealand is the high-frequency launch site, so a bunch of Kiwis go up, and we've had a bunch of the US folk down in New Zealand training and trying to kind of be fluid between the two sites. Look, it wasn't by all means easy. The guys would launch one rocket, then jump on a plane, come launch another rocket. But over time, as we continue to build the teams in both sides, this becomes more normal. The US launch range is really intended for high-value government customers, and the New Zealand range is just such a great range for doing high-frequency launch. ### Launch Mission Names **Leighton:** The names of these are interesting. So the 34th launch was "Stronger Together," the 35th was "The Beat Goes On," and the most recent was "Rocket Like a Hurricane." How do you come up with these names? Who gets the honors for that? **Peter:** Well, it's sort of funny because if a customer buys a dedicated rocket, they get to name it. And it all started when we launched the first one, and the reason why we called it "It's a Test" is because you have to give a rocket some kind of designator so that it's in the range calendars and Space Command and everybody can track it. So we figured that we would give it a name that represented what it was. So we called it "It's a Test" so that when it came up on everybody's computer screens, it just says "It's a Test." And we did the same one with the one after it—"It's Still Testing" and whatnot. So we like to have a bit of fun with it, and our customers have gone on board. The "Rocket Like a Hurricane" was named by NASA, not by us. Everybody is kind of—it's such an incredibly serious and stressful business, this is the one thing that you're allowed to have a little bit of fun on, in my opinion. ### NASA Relationship **Leighton:** Yeah, just that NASA comment there—that they named that—really got me for some reason. It's not [what you'd expect from] the seriousness. That's right. Not very cool. So you know, great sequence, my next question actually about NASA. So looks like the NASA relationship is growing from what we're hearing anyway. Is Rocket Lab considered a preferred supplier in its field? **Peter:** Well, I think that's probably a legal term around that, so I'm not sure if that's legally creeping. Look, we work with NASA for years and years, right back to the very first VCLS mission where NASA bought a ride from us before we even had a rocket. So they've been a great customer. We have not only on the launch side, but we have a number of programs with them on the spacecraft side. We have Lock Set, which is an on-orbit propellant depot experiment. We're building the two Escapade spacecraft that are going to Mars for NASA. And we have a number of Space Act agreements with them to develop technologies. And then from time to time, we're launching a bunch of small spacecraft. So they are a long and great customer, and we've had a really great relationship. You get to do the cooler stuff when you work with those guys—really neat stuff. **Leighton:** Yeah, and some incredible history as well. How are you thinking about developing that relationship with NASA? And interested in any future involvement—I mean, I'd love if you could give a bit of a 101 to the listeners actually on Artemis, which I know Rocket Lab's been involved in that program, and if there's any sort of future work that you expect in there. Any thinking on Mars or just anything about their future would be great to hear. **Peter:** Well, I mean, obviously, NASA is a large government organization and lots of programs. Our solar business, before we bought it, had supported 40 years of NASA programs. Solero did all the solar panels and cells for the James Webb Telescope and the Mars helicopter. If you've seen that, those are Solero panels on top of that. In fact, we're building new panels for new programs there. So we get a lot of exposure through all of our business, not just launch, into these programs, whether it be solar or radios or separation systems. So across from the Artemis vehicle that went around the Moon, we did the cubesat separation systems for the ride-along cubesats that are on the main booster. So yeah, we get to play in some pretty cool stuff. ### Neutron Development and Competition with SpaceX **Leighton:** Fascinating. As Neutron is taking a lot of your focus at the moment—well, look, it looks to be—which will allow you to take on SpaceX's Falcon 9, can you give us a bit of an update on this? I'm also just interested in the SpaceX stuff. Like, the more I read, the more closely competitive it looks between the two. So just interested in that more broadly. **Peter:** I mean, Neutron is intended to be a similar vehicle to a Falcon 9 for customers to select. And the Falcon 9 is a credible vehicle, and it's been the industry kind of mainstay. But there's a lot of people that are looking for other solutions other than a Falcon 9. And it's always good to have a little bit of competition in a market when one person is very dominant. And we really think that Neutron is a good solution to that and a good opportunity to provide customers with a bit of launch diversity. So we continue to really lean into that, put our shoulder down, and really work hard to try and get that to the pan. But yeah, I would say that it is unashamedly designed to be a competitor to that class of launch. **Leighton:** Can you just give us an idea of like the demand and market for this size payload? Like, where's the demand coming from? How often do you expect it to be in use and that type of thing? **Peter:** So I mean, if you look at the launch industry in sort of the 2024 to 2030 time frame or 2026, depending on how ambitious you are, there is a massive deficit in launch. You have a lot of media constellations and spacecraft coming to market that are all requiring launch around that time frame. And you could take a very bullish approach and say, well, there's going to just be a tremendous shortage of launch. Or if you take a very pessimistic approach, there's still a pretty tremendous shortage of launch. And what we're trying to do with Neutron—and the reason why we went public, one of the reasons we went public—and while we're trying to time it to kind of land in that end of 2024 time frame is that in that sort of 2024 to 2030 time frame, we want it to be there to service that requirement for launch. So it's all kind of hands to the pump to try and get that vehicle there around about that time frame to take advantage of that opportunity. And quite frankly, the reason one of the reasons why we didn't start developing it earlier is it wasn't clear that firstly, there was going to be the investment in the spacecraft constellations as there has been, and it wasn't clear when that demand would hit. But the moment it was kind of clear when all that came into focus, then we knew that we had to position ourselves with a product to meet that opportunity in the market. ### Human Spaceflight Potential **Leighton:** Cool. So Neutron also has the capability down the line, I think, for human spaceflight, potentially taking crew to the International Space Station. Like, when do you think we could see people, and what does that look like as far as we're out on the development cycle? **Peter:** So as we're going through and developing the vehicle, we're making sure it's human rateable as opposed to being human rated, and the difference there is like classrooms of paperwork. But it gives us the ability to not go back and redesign stuff, which is important. At the moment, the way I look at this is that there's really only one customer for human spaceflight, and that's NASA. And it's actually that customer is actually pretty well served right now. You've got SpaceX obviously, and then you also have Boeing with their Starliner when it comes online. So you've got one customer with two providers; it's pretty tough to make a business of that. So our view is that there will be a lot more commercial human spaceflight, but until there's more than one customer to serve, then we'll just kind of hold our powder dry. We're ambitious and forward-looking people, but it's okay to take risk on your engineering—it's not okay to take risk on your market. So we'll wait until we're really sure that there's a market there, and then we'll go and execute against it. But I think to go into human spaceflight right now, given the size of the customer base, would be pretty speculative. **Leighton:** I already know this answer because I've talked about it to you about it before, but I have to ask. People asking: have you ever thought about going up to space yourself? **Peter:** No, I mean, I understand the risks too well, and I have incredible admiration for an astronaut who is able to sit in a capsule and turn all that off. And unfortunately, I don't possess that because it's all the knowledge and none of the courage to do that. So no desire at all. **Leighton:** Sometimes those knowledge and courage things go together as well, don't they? I'm with you, though. I struggle to get on a plane at times. ### Market Challenges and Competition **Leighton:** But it's a tough industry, and your competitors are feeling it, such as we've got Astra being dropped by NASA, Virgin Orbit going bankrupt and laying off staff. How's Rocket Lab navigating these economic challenges, and is there anything specific or actions you're taking right now with regards to that? **Peter:** Well, I think in some respects, a lot of this was not hugely surprising to us, at least. We're very commercial in the way we think about things. We built Electron and brought it to the market. We were the first mover, which I think in this instance was a huge advantage. And also, we were focused on delivering a commercial product from day one. So the very first Electron doesn't look much different to the 35th Electron—they look kind of the same product. Whereas a lot of companies will tend to rush a product to market that's kind of a beta version, full of lots of problems and errors, and then aim to kind of address it later. Well, in this industry, you don't really get the chance to address it later because you consume so much capital and time that that's really challenging. And it also becomes a point—I mentioned before about being a first mover—where you build enough heritage that, because heritage in this industry is everything, when you pour your capital, your life, and your soul into a spacecraft, the last thing you want to do is take risk on getting that to orbit. So Electron and the team have established themselves as building a very reliable vehicle, touch some wood, and customers can rely on us getting their spacecraft to orbit. So even if a new entrant comes in and offers a ride 20% less, there's just no desire to do that. To get up to 30 flights of heritage, it's going to take a lot of capital and a lot of time for anybody else to kind of get there. So it's like I said, this is an example where being a first mover is a huge advantage. And the cost to shift to something that's unproven—it just doesn't trade very well. And as a result, you've seen some of these things occur. **Leighton:** It's interesting. How do you think about the balances of short-term—maybe you've touched on this a bit here—but the short-term delivery versus the long-term thinking of some of the mere goals, I suppose, of space and where that can go? And like, how do you keep a balance on that? And I guess, in particular, has that got any more challenging or is there uniqueness to that through being a listed company as well? **Peter:** I mean, we have a saying at Rocket Lab: "Do what you said you're going to do." And everybody gets measured against that, whether you're the CEO or a contract cleaner. Everybody gets measured against: did you do what you said you were going to do? And I think that's super important because the great thing about the space industry and kind of the downside of the space industry are one and the same. The great thing about the space industry is someone can stand up and say, "I'm going to build a space station in orbit," and everyone will yell and cheer and think that's great and give that company or that person a lot of support to go and achieve that. And the downside of that is that execution is a little bit lacking in the industry. So there's lots of aspiration, which is great, but a lot less execution than there is aspiration. So the way we kind of think about it is, we have clear goals and clear points we want to get to. But as the engineer, we're always kind of got a healthy dose of optimism and pessimism to ensure that we're forward-leading but not that far forward-leaning that we start to break the laws of physics or certainly things that we think we can't engineer ourselves out of. So I think that's the difference. In the space industry, you see a lot of really flamboyant kind of characters promising great things, which is awesome. We're kind of a little bit more reserved, perhaps Kiwi in that sense, where we'll promise exciting things but only the things we can be absolutely sure we're going to deliver on. ### SpaceX's Starship and Launch Costs **Leighton:** Cool. So recently, SpaceX made headlines around the world with the biggest rocket ever launched, Starship. It successfully launched but then exploded soon after. So when it does get going, Elon has said that they're aiming to get the launch cost down to around 10 million dollars US. How stiff is this competition from SpaceX, and what are you thinking when you think about that? **Peter:** Well, at the risk of being attacked, the my last comment holds true. Great ambitions, but I think that's starting to break the laws of physics in some sense. Look, you might get down to 10 million dollars worth of propellant cost, but that's not what it actually costs to launch a rocket. The propellant cost on Electron is a mere few percentage points of the total cost of the rocket. The real cost of launching Electron is the team of people that it takes to launch Electron. It's not even the cost of the rocket product; it's the cost of the team and then the overheads of running all the launch sites and the factories and all that kind of stuff that actually rolls into what it costs per kilogram to put something in orbit. So I think there was a little bit disingenuous to just take the fuel cost and say, well, that's what it costs, because that is not what it costs to launch a rocket at all. ### Business Pressures and Stresses **Leighton:** All right, great. I'm moving out of rockets very briefly and into more running a business, but just interesting how you deal with the pressure—quarterly reporting, stakeholders. You know, particularly in these markets, you need to have lots of faith. The tech failures, hefty numbers which you need to fund R&D and operations just by nature of the business. I don't think it really gets much more expensive than space, does it? But just interesting how you deal with this pressure and keeping me down. **Peter:** Look, I mean, that's cool running a business, right? At the end of the day, I'm the chief engineer of the company. I love the engineering, and that's awesome. But also, I'm building not just rockets and spacecraft but building companies, and this is all part of building a company. And sure, like there's a whole bunch of stuff that aren't fun, but that can be said in any job, right? And look, if you wanted a low-pressure environment, don't start a rocket company. I mean, every satellite that we launch on a rocket, quite often the fate of the company is in our hands, especially early-stage startups. A startup will put a satellite on their rocket—it's all of their capital, all of their hopes and dreams. And if we mess that up, then there's a good chance that company goes away. So there's tremendous pressure; it just comes with the role, comes with the territory. Now, of course, there's different kind of pressures when you're talking about company and investors, but equally, we take all of our roles and our jobs super seriously, and we know what we're here to do. But at the end of the day, financial stress is no different to launching a rocket as far as the stress level meter goes. It's all just pinned, peaked in the red all the time, pretty much. **Leighton:** Yeah, I mean, you definitely added a lot more pressure points to the things that were probably people not even considering, which goes into space. But super fast. ### Silicon Valley Bank Situation **Leighton:** Also just want to touch on—it made news all around the world—Silicon Valley Bank. We saw in your update last week, I think it was 7.9% of cash at SVB. When the regulators shut the bank, just interesting how that's progressed. Has it changed your thinking in any way? Is there any ongoing impact? Was there any other impact from other bank collapses? **Peter:** No, I mean, we had a sweater—a small amount of cash in there that we just used for transactions. And subsequently later, after it all got resolved, kind of moved away to different banking friends. We have quite a lot of cash and cash equivalents on hand, as you know, 450 million dollars. So although 7% of that is still a big number, we were well diversified across a number of banks and everything already. So it really didn't cause us any kind of issues other than it was not great to see. I would say for me personally, what caused me more issues is, the one thing I do outside Rocket Lab is help startups, and a lot of startups had a lot of money in there. And there's a lot of really worried people for a number of days. So it was good to see it kind of get resolved, but it's kind of a reminder of the times you live in. This is a pretty wild time. **Leighton:** Yeah, really is. The tech startups were flying that morning, weren't they, around there? I first heard about it through a text from a shareholder in the US, and it was just, yeah, a lot of nervousness from a lot of people as well. But I'm obviously glad to see it resolved like it was. ### Being a Kiwi in the Space Industry **Leighton:** Next question is just uniqueness about being a Kiwi and what that can bring to the space industry. Interested if you get any support from New Zealand, specifically Trading Enterprise. Any thoughts on that? **Peter:** I would say that this is not necessarily just in the space industry, but like I mentioned before—and I know this is about Rocket Lab—but I do a lot in the startup community in New Zealand. And I would say that I love taking Kiwis to Silicon Valley because they do exceptionally well in Silicon Valley. Because I think New Zealanders have got that right kind of level of mix of aspiration but also honesty. Because you can see some—gosh, I've had some crazy, crazy—I'm sure you've seen the same thing—crazy pitches that you're just like, this doesn't come in, make sense. Like, do you have no shame? Whereas a Kiwi—and sometimes it can be a negative as well—but I think Kiwis do really well at raising money in Silicon Valley because you talk to most investors, they'll know that if a Kiwi is pitching to you, they can be trusted and they can be relied upon, and their numbers are going to be right. And it's everything will be understated. If anything, it'll be muted and understated, but it'll be reliable. So I think that's certainly in the Kiwi way of doing business. I think it has helped me. Rocket Lab as an entity probably looks quite a bit different than some of our competitors in the way that we conduct ourselves. I mean, we have a "no thumping of the desk" policy. Like, if anybody wants to thump the desk and yell and scream, they'd go work somewhere else. But we're able to get equally as good results but doing it with a little bit more kind of finesse and respect. And I think that's something that I've seen across New Zealand businesses and New Zealand leadership over the years. ### Spin-off Technologies **Leighton:** Nice. So often we hear about NASA technology or ending up in other industries. There's heaps of examples. I think Velcro being one of the most famous, isn't it? But could you see Rocket Lab tech being used in other sectors or contributing to other areas, or is it already? **Peter:** Yeah, I mean, it probably already is. I'm just thinking some of the composites work we do and some of the material developments. I'm sure they've probably already made their way into other industries. But I mean, we have pretty active R&D programs. We have things that we're trying to solve, pretty significant problems. And we sometimes will patent stuff, but generally, it's knowledge. And especially if we're doing it with a NASA partner—we have a number of Space Act agreements with NASA centers on things like thermal protection and ballistic re-entry of launch vehicles and all of that stuff. Ultimately, we make public through the NASA partnership. ### In-Space Manufacturing with Varda **Leighton:** Great. Something that's really making me think outside the box just when doing some reading and stuff leading into speaking with you today was around this thinking with what you're looking to do with Varda—this sort of in-space manufacturing stuff. So I'd love it if you could talk us through some of that. **Peter:** Yeah, so that is an interesting one. So they came to us—they have a pharmaceutical factory, basically, and they build a capsule or re-entry capsule. And they came to us and said, "Look, we need you to build a spacecraft that will host our capsule, feed it with power and thermal, and keep it at the right temperature. And then we want you to re-enter it and target it to land in the desert, and we'll go and pick it up." And they're looking for various protein crystal proteins that only grow in zero gravity for drug research. So pretty unique spacecraft. The spacecraft in its own right has a whole bunch of—we call it Delta V or energy—to enable it to re-enter and re-enter accurately. And our job, as I mentioned before, is to keep the factory fed but also to accurately target that thing and land it in a desert, which is a non-trivial piece of guidance, navigation, and control work that our team have managed to pull off. So that's launching shortly, which will be exciting, and then re-entering shortly, which will be exciting. And you might say, "Well, why would Rocket Lab do that?" I mean, it's cool, that's good, and obviously, it's a profitable program; otherwise, it wouldn't do it. But for me, it was like, well, if we are going to do a human-rated capsule, I'd much rather learn on these smaller programs and really get that perfected with all the GNC where we have a lot of tolerance for its landing position, as opposed to a human capsule where there is zero, very little tolerance on your landing position. So it was a great opportunity to also build that capability in-house for those future programs. **Leighton:** Yeah, great. I love all the tie-in here that, you know, the value points for the future and how you can find other ways to test that earlier through also commercial means. It's been really cool to hear that come through. **Leighton:** Just thinking, you know, so we've talked about zero gravity creation of pharmaceuticals, which sounds pretty incredible and really challenges the mind to think what opportunities, you know—we've discovered so much on Earth, what else is out there with the way science could work. But what are there any other possibilities that you see space manufacturing open up? And like, are we going to see gigantic space factories in the future, or is there some sort of dreaming of what this could look like already? **Peter:** Well, I mean, that's I guess those are others' dreams, less so our ones. But certainly, I know that there's been a number of companies looking at manufacturing glass fiber in space. If you manufacture glass fiber in space, its optical property is far superior to what you can make on Earth. So you end up with fiber optics that can transmit vastly amounts more data and all these kinds of things. Now, it's always going to be for a pretty niche application because it's pretty expensive to put a factory in orbit and bring it home. But certainly for these niche applications, I think pharmaceutical was a really good one where it's a relatively small product. But if you can perfect it, then not only can you build a great business, you can have a really meaningful impact on people's lives. ### Private Mission to Venus **Leighton:** Yeah, no, absolutely. So you're undertaking the first private mission to Venus, pretty interesting planet. So hottest one in the solar system due to runaway greenhouse gases, and I think it's aiming to happen in October this year, with the mission aiming to detect organic matter. So all of this seems massive. Like, how important could this mission be? **Peter:** Well, I mean, I should preface a couple of things here. So we had a Mars window May this year, but this is a philanthropic nights and weekends project. We have a number of science teams that are supported by philanthropists and also internally to Rocket Lab. This is, like I mentioned, a nights and weekends project, so real work always takes precedence. So the best Mars transit window for this year was actually occurred right about now. So we're now targeting a 2025 launch date, which correlates to the best transit window again, which buys a little bit more time. So this is, as I mentioned, a philanthropic, non-profit mission to Venus to search in the clouds for—using a nephelometer to see if we can measure trace elements of phosphate. And the reason why that's important is because if you can do that, then if you were so lucky to find these particular organics, then you would conclude that life actually is on Venus, and it's in this very narrow band of atmosphere. And I think why that's important is because if you want to take the scientific method, then in the absence of any evidence right now, as far as any human is concerned, we are the only life in the universe. Now, I think that's probably not true, but like I say, with the absence of any evidence, if you could find life on another planet, I think that would be kind of interesting. And then if you found it on Venus, you would also conclude that it's probably quite prolific throughout the universe, and I think that would also be super interesting. So it is basically repurposing all the old qual and test gear from our Capstone mission to the Moon. So when we built the Capstone mission to go to the Moon for NASA, we basically had to build two and a half spacecraft. So we're taking the one and a half left and putting it all together to complete this mission. ### Future of the Space Sector **Leighton:** It started to do it there a little bit, but we're just wondering if you could maybe blow our minds a bit on where the space sector could be in 20 or 30 years and the place that Rocket Lab might play in it. **Peter:** That's a long time frame. We like—one year at Rocket Lab is like dog years. I think it's nine years everywhere else. So just to look 10 is a long way, let alone 20. But what I would say is, our view is that the large space companies of the future are companies that will have launch and they'll build satellites, and they'll be a one-stop shop. And the reason why I think that's true is because a rocket is a giant compromise, a giant engineering compromise, and a satellite is a giant engineering compromise. When you have your rocket and your satellite and you can compromise those two things together, you get a far better solution and far better result. And being very vertically integrated and having the ability to deploy infrastructure in orbit almost at will is a very, very strong position to be at. So look, who knows what it looks like in 10 or 20 years, but my view is that the large space companies will be companies that have launch and also build spacecraft. ### Final Thoughts for Investors **Leighton:** Last question from us: what's the main takeaway for retail investors and prospective investors in Rocket Lab? **Peter:** Oh, I mean, takeaway—I mean, look, the market's horrible. We're executing and just keep your eye on us and keep holding us feet to the fire to make sure we continue to execute. And ultimately, my view is the markets are very efficient at working out good companies from those that aren't. And it's a terrible time in the markets right now, but this is all cyclical. I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to know, and I've seen a few cycles. So we just tell everybody and the staff and ourselves included to just keep executing and creating real value through creating actual products and things that work and all the rest of it. And ultimately, if you build a real company with real value, then it's rewarded in a positive cycle. **Leighton:** Excellent, great takeaway. Thank you. And I'm sure a message being shared around quite a few companies at the moment, particularly those in the growth phases and stuff. ### Conclusion **Leighton:** So look, thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in, and a big thank you to you, Peter, for joining us. We really appreciate your time and your insights. We have a special offer for Sharesies investors from BusinessDesk. If you use the promo code SHAREDLUNCH2023, you'll get $100 off an annual subscription to BusinessDesk, it's usually $249 including GST. This offer only applies to new BusinessDesk subscribers, can only be used once per subscriber, and can't be used with any other discounts. Enjoy the rest of your week, and thank you again, Peter.