[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> September 15 2015 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [Spark Innovator Conference 2015](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILAu-yGuLIQ) **Date**: September 15 2015  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILAu-yGuLIQ ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Peter Beck:** I guess what's really important to me is that New Zealanders were instrumental in putting the first satellite into orbit. Not many people know that, but this guy here is Wernher von Braun, the famous rocket scientist. So he basically built the Saturn V and went to the moon. And this guy here is William Pickering, a guy from Nelson. That rocket they're holding is the Explorer One, the first US satellite to go into orbit. So Kiwis have their place in space and in innovation. ### Rocket Lab's Origins **Peter Beck:** I started Rocket Lab in 2007. I was building rockets when I was at school, and they just got larger and larger and more and more complicated to the point that it became feasible to do something commercial with them. We're a team of 22 guys at the moment, and we drastically need more people. We're considered world leaders in a particular kind of propulsion called viscous liquid monopropellant and GNC - guidance navigation control algorithms. And we've won a few awards along the way and stuff like that. ### Making the World Take Notice **Peter Beck:** In order to be able to go and win contracts and do what we want to do, we needed to do something to make the world take notice. So we put all our eggs in one basket and back in 2009, we built a rocket called Ātea-1, and we launched that and became the first private company in the southern hemisphere to reach space. In the US, it was all about "How on Earth did those Kiwis make that rocket so small and get so much performance out of a small rocket?" We did a whole lot of stuff in that launch vehicle that was really pushing the boundaries. After we did the launch, basically the deal we did with the New Zealand media was that they could follow it and do whatever they want with it provided they syndicated through their international partners. So we found ourselves after that launch in the position of gaining credibility. Instead of turning up at the likes of DARPA and Lockheed Martin begging for a meeting, we were invited by the directors of those companies to come and talk to them. ### The DARPA Breakthrough **Peter Beck:** DARPA was kind of our big break, I guess, early on. It's enormously hard to get a DARPA contract even if you're a US company. So we did that and we proved that it worked, and then we went back to DARPA and afterward built a lab-scale motor and proved that the chemistry was right and the physics were right. They funded us again to do another program. That program was to demonstrate the technology in the most controversial way possible. So we built an A9 Sidewinder missile, we launched it, and we smoked the current state-of-the-art for an A9. Then life got really, really interesting. Everything that we've done for Rocket Lab to date has been for the bigger picture stuff. I've got no desires to be a defense contractor. I've got no desires to increase the performance of a missile by 18% - in fact, quite the converse. But nevertheless, the DARPA contract, the Lockheed Martin work we do, the Aerojet work - it's all weaving a path to where we actually want to go. ### The Vision: Democratizing Space Access **Peter Beck:** This is what I want to talk about here - space. What would happen if you could drastically change the way we access space? I'll give you an example of this: If you want to be Sky Television, you've got to go out and you've got to buy a minimum of three geosynchronous satellites. Each one of those satellites runs you between 50 and $100 million. The launch runs you about the same or more than that, probably a minimum of $100 million for the launch. Because you've got three assets up there, if you lose one asset on a launch, you're out of business. So you've got to insure the crap out of it. So you can add another $100 million on there for insurance. So basically, if you want to be Sky Television, you've got to raise a half a billion dollar capital minimum. What would happen if you took that half a billion dollar capital requirement and turned it into $5 million to be Sky Television? If you could get on orbit for $5 million and be commercial, then the world changes. If you can really change the access of space by orders of magnitude, then all of a sudden these sort of things can happen: - You can own your own satellite - You can do real-time crop monitoring - Real-time Earth observation I mean, the weather forecasting we've got is basically limited by the amount of assets we have in orbit. How crazy is that? So that's what Rocket Lab is actually all about - how can we change the way we access space and how can we significantly impact the cost of getting there? If we can do that, then the world's a very different place. ### On Entrepreneurship and Risk **Peter Beck:** I guess it all starts off with a good idea. What is a good idea and what's a bad idea? I guess you just got to back yourself on this one. Is it a good idea to create a space company in New Zealand that has no heritage in space and try and hit the control-alt-delete button on the space industry? Is that a good idea? 99% of people would tell you that it's absolutely crazy, that's just not a good idea, that's never going to work. But you kind of got to back yourself, and I guess there's no good idea and there's no bad idea as long as you think it's a good idea. I would just say go for it. Risk is everywhere, especially for a space company. Risk is everywhere. We design a launch vehicle with a safety factor of 1.1 to 1.2, so what that means is you only need to be a tiny little bit out and you've got shrapnel everywhere. So there's risk in engineering, there's risk in business. For example, that launch we did back in 2009 - if that thing had exploded on the pad, we wouldn't be here today. We'd be out of business instantly. You need lots and lots of courage because, like I said before, there will be a lot of people that tell you what you're doing is silly, and you shouldn't be doing it, and you just got to push through. If you're not passionate and driven and absolutely motivated, you will fail. I don't really believe that an entrepreneur is defined by their idea or by how big of balls they've got. I think this is what actually defines an entrepreneur: If you expect to try and take a business from nothing to something and for it to be a breeze, someone's going to walk in and offer a whole lot of cash for your business and you're going to walk out - it just doesn't happen that way. ### Final Thoughts **Peter Beck:** You've got a finite period of time on this planet, and believe me, it goes fast. So make your time on the planet count. That's kind of the precursor to the statement: don't dick around, just get it done.