[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> Airbus **Insider**: "[[Peter Beck]]" **Source**: [TMRO Space](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFioCS17Vt8) **Date**: August 4 2018  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFioCS17Vt8 ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Host 1:** Mike, what are you excited about talking about today? **Mike:** I'm really excited that the Commercial Crew program is one step closer to opening up spaceflight for the rest of us. **Host 1:** That's awesome. And Sarah, I'm excited that we may have a new technique for discovering rogue planets. We don't have to rely on luck anymore. **Host 1:** Jared, what have you got? **Jared:** Well, I've got Peter back in person in studio, the CEO of Rocket Lab, to talk about what they're doing in the future. **Host 1:** Awesome. All that and more on this episode of Tomorrow, Orbit 11.30. [Music] **Host:** And welcome to Tomorrow everybody, episode 11.30. We are so excited to have Peter back here today, the CEO and founder of Rocket Lab. Peter, thank you so much for coming on the show. **Peter Beck:** Been a big fan. My absolute pleasure. ### Early Interest in Space **Jared:** So we're just gonna go straight into it today because we're just so excited to have you here that we put the interview first. Why don't you go ahead and just tell us a little bit about yourself, because we all have that moment that sort of sparks us getting into space. What was that moment for you that sparked you getting into space? **Peter Beck:** For me, it was from a really, really early age. My father tells the story: I was about two or three years old, and he had taken me outside and showed me a re-entering spacecraft. It was shooting across the sky in brilliance and flame. I was like, "Goodness, what is that?" And he explained to me that humans had made that thing in the sky. I'm like, "Okay, what about all these other dots and stars in the sky? Were they made by humans too?" "No, no, no, those are Suns and they've got planets." I'm like, "Okay, what's a planet?" "Yep." "So, are people on those planets?" And he's like, "Well, the jury's out on that one." At that point, for me, it was just all about space. It was like this is the most incredible, captivating thing. Just a mind-blowing experience. And ever since then, that's what it's all been about. **Jared:** How did you continue doing that? You kept your interest for quite a long time because you still have it. How did you continue to pursue that? **Peter Beck:** For me, it's always been about the rocket. Everything else is the air to support and grow the rocket. As I went through school, I built telescopes. I've always been very practical and good with my hands. I started building rockets at school, and then when I moved into gainful employment, I started off as an apprentice tool and die maker. I would do the day shift at my job, and then the night shift would always be building rockets. My whole life I've always sort of run two shifts. Now it's just two shifts of rocket instead of one shift of real work and one shift of rocket. For as long as I can remember, it's always been about rockets. **Jared:** What was the first real project that you worked on by yourself that you built together straight from beginning to end, and you were just in awe of the fact that you were able to make that? What was that project for you? **Peter Beck:** I've built a lot of stuff. Hovercrafts and... **Jared:** Yeah? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, I just build stuff. That's what I do. But if we just limit it to rockets, the first serious rocket program was my hydrogen peroxide rocket program. It would be fair to say that I lacked the generally accepted common resources and PPE equipment when I first started. Getting hydrogen peroxide in New Zealand was really difficult. I managed to source some, and I remember it was very difficult to source the concentration that I needed. I managed to source 50%, and it arrived on my doorstep. The guy left it in the sun, and it wasn't in an approved container. It arrived on my doorstep and the container was like spherical because it was hot and outgassing. The first thing was like, "Oh, this is not so good." Then I proceeded to build a garden shed and put inside all the distillation equipment I needed to get it up to 92% where it was useful as propulsion. That was the first really deep program where I spent a lot of time researching and understanding. **Jared:** That sounds dodgy. **Peter Beck:** One of the things that I've always been consistent with throughout my life and career is really getting an understanding of the fundamentals before doing anything. I knew what I was biting off. I knew that the spherical container sitting on my doorstep was not a good situation. **Jared:** So having that good foundation is kind of what allows you to end up moving forward with those little projects that you had at that time? **Peter Beck:** Exactly. Making sure you have that deep understanding of the fundamental engineering, the fundamental chemistry, and the fundamental physics. ### Transition to Professional Rocket Development **Jared:** Eventually you reached the point where, I guess, what I would call a very well-pursued hobby started to become something that you were thinking about maybe doing professionally. What was that point like? **Peter Beck:** If you look at my career, it was always about trying to get to this point and further, of course. My original plan was to do a trade because I needed to have great hand skills to be able to build the engines and the systems that I wanted to do, then go to university and get the good theoretical grounding as well, and then go and work for NASA or one of the larger defense primes. That was the plan for quite some time. I ended up at a New Zealand government laboratory doing advanced materials and structures, mainly in composites and superconductors. I went on a rocket pilgrimage trip to America. I spent a month over here, and the whole point of it was to get a job at NASA or Lockheed. I mean, for a contractor, you know, as a guy sitting back in New Zealand, that's what you do, right? I came over here and learned two things. I went and visited all the little shops in Mojave, I got escorted off the campus at Canoga Park Rocketdyne, and did the whole shebang. The two things that I learned: Firstly, what I was doing back in New Zealand was fundamentally no different than anybody else was doing in the Mojave Desert. I'd always felt that what was happening there was just such a higher level to what I was doing, and I get there and it's like, well, the engines are the same, having the same problems I'm having, using the same instrumentation. Some of their injector designs actually really sucked. So it was understanding that actually the level I was operating at wasn't a million miles away from everybody else. The other thing that I realized is that for me, small launch was always really obvious that that's where it was going to go. If you think of a spacecraft, what is it? It's solar panels, it's batteries, it's electronics, and it's a sensor. And what's in a sensor? Well, there's going to be some optics, or generally there's more electronics. It was really obvious to me that spacecraft were going to shrink, and if spacecraft are going to shrink, then you need a vehicle to service that. Right from day one, when I was stomping around America here back in 2006, nobody was really focused on doing that. You talk to the big primes, and they're like, "Yeah, no, that's not where we see it going." So that was kind of the impetus of starting Rocket Lab. I flew home on a 12-hour flight back to New Zealand, and I spent the first half of the flight thinking, "Well, my dreams are crushed. This is not how it was supposed to be at all." And then the other half of the flight doodling logos, just thinking, "Well, screw it, I'll do it myself." So that was the motivator. **Jared:** That's pretty potent, I would imagine. ### Founding Rocket Lab **Jared:** So you get back to New Zealand, and what do you do at that point? **Peter Beck:** Well, you quit your job. That's the first thing that any entrepreneur does. **Jared:** Standard entrepreneurial practice. **Peter Beck:** Put in the resignation letter. And then I raised a small amount of private equity. I knew that I needed to build credibility and I needed to build capability, so I spent the next couple of years working away, building what was a sounding rocket called our Ātea 1. We launched that in 2009, and we became the first private company in the southern hemisphere to reach space. That kind of opened up new opportunities. We did a lot of work for DARPA and Lockheed, and we kind of bootstrapped for a number of years to a stage where it's really about building credibility and capability. **Jared:** And that credibility, was it working with other companies? Was it hardware? Was it like a combination of doing and working together? **Peter Beck:** No, it's just doing stuff. Actually getting out there and doing it. I hate PowerPoints and PowerPoint companies. I'm a strong believer that if I'm going to show a PowerPoint, it's got real hardware in it, not animations and dreams. For me, it's all about real hardware and being real. That was one of the reasons why we were so successful in raising capital in America. We didn't turn up to the VCs with PowerPoints and vaporware. I turned up to our first VC meeting with the blueprint of the rocket. It was like 20 meters long, a five-to-one or two-to-one kind of scale blueprint, and rolled it out on the boarding table and said, "Here it is, it's designed." I had an electric turbo pump in my luggage, and I just picked it up and said, "Here's the electric turbo pump, it works." It's not "I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that." It's like, "This is it. I've done parts of this, and it can go further than that." **Jared:** That's kind of how you did it. **Peter Beck:** Exactly. **Jared:** Laid out a clear plan. **Peter Beck:** Because you have to understand, raising capital for this kind of venture, especially back in 2013... I'm a New Zealander from a country that has no space industry. I'm turning up with a rocket that the market is obvious but not super obvious for, and it's got a whole lot of new technology that's never been done before—like electric turbo pumps and carbon composite. There's a whole lot of technology risk, and by the way, we're going to need a bilateral treaty and New Zealand government to create regulations so that we can launch out of New Zealand to get the launch right. If you write it down on a piece of paper, it's a leap of faith. **Jared:** That's a really tall mountain to climb to get up there with it on. **Peter Beck:** But you guys went through it. **Jared:** Yep. **Peter Beck:** And you made it happen. **Jared:** Yep. ### Challenges in Building Rocket Lab **Jared:** What were some of the struggles that you guys had to contend with at that time? **Peter Beck:** Oh jeez. Not to look back on this, it's depressing. I think, look, if you want to build a rocket, that's one thing. If you want to build a launch site, that's a whole 'nother. If you want to do both and also build a large, successful rocket company, that's a tough game. **Jared:** That's about barriers to entry of the market. **Peter Beck:** That's a tough game. I think a lot of people forget about the fact that if you are a company, you don't just have to worry about the rocket. You have to worry about the launch site, you have to worry about the ground support equipment and everything that goes with it, and making sure everybody around you is happy, both governmentally and community. **Jared:** Yeah, and you have to ensure that. **Peter Beck:** Rocket Lab is a third the rocket, a third infrastructure, and a third regulatory. I mean, we had to build roads, blow fiber, upgrade internet, and sew in tight chips just to support the launch site. It's huge. **Jared:** You guys are bringing in a lot more, it sounds like, than your typical sort of startup aerospace company would, simply because of your location. **Peter Beck:** Absolutely. When we say we're vertically integrated, I mean, we own everything from the launch site through to the roads, through to the launch vehicle, all the downrange tracking assets. We own them all. It's very, very good, but that's what you need to move the needle. You can't move the needle if you just go out, do the same thing off the same launch range with the same amount of frequency. You just don't move the needle. **Jared:** Even the tracking assets you said. So wow, that's that's a bit more than most companies here in the United States. **Peter Beck:** Yes, that's done by the Air Force or someone. **Peter Beck:** Exactly. I mean, the launch range is... we've got a couple of five-meter dishes, then on a remote island 500 kilometers away from New Zealand, we own another five-meter tracking dish. Then we've got some in Cork and Azores. We own a whole tracking network. ### Developing the Electron Rocket **Jared:** So, you guys are starting to... Let's just go back to when you're kind of working on your first Electron and trying to figure out the things that you're going with that. What's that period like? How's that going in generating that and getting that from that blueprint out to the launch complex itself? **Peter Beck:** You know when you're climbing a mountain, and you're climbing up and you think, "This is terrible. Why on earth am I doing this?" And then you get to the top, and it's like, "No, that's okay," but it's a bit windy. And then you get down to the bottom, and then you're having a beer, and it's like, "That was awesome!" It's kind of like that. So, during that time, it was just a small team, and we were just doing incredible things. It was a really, really great time. I think one of the special things about the company is that we've really tried—and done well at—maintaining that. If you want to see what your potential is as a person, then come work for us. If you just want to cruise in there and do some stuff and cruise out, don't even bother. If you want to actually see what you're capable of as a person, have huge responsibilities and huge projects, then you're the right person for us. **Jared:** Really push that bleeding edge with it there. **Peter Beck:** Yeah. ### Innovation in Materials and Technology **Jared:** And you guys have done that with things like composites. That's not something that typically has happened in rocketry. I mean, even just in aerospace in general, most of the time it's like aluminum, lithium-aluminum alloys, and other things like that. So why composites? Why specifically that? **Peter Beck:** That's a great question, and it can be answered in a number of ways. When we started the vehicle, there were two requirements that we wrote down on a piece of paper: it must be affordable, must launch every 24 hours. So every design decision, every decision within the company is based around those two requirements. The composite tanks for us—yeah, we can go with traditional aluminum tanks, which means we're going to be friction-stir welding them, we're going to be passivating them, we're going to be painting them, and we're going to do all those kinds of things. Or, if we did a composite tank, we can build this giant mega-mandrel as we call it, and we can just pop them off in one hit. There's much more performance, much lower cost, and much more mass-manufacturable. So that requires you to undertake a big R&D program to get there, but the payoff is huge. It's the same with the electric turbo pump and same with the 3D printed engines—huge R&D programs, but at the end of the day, that's where you need to be. **Jared:** We've got a really good question from Sweepy that kind of goes into those R&D programs and some of the interesting things that you guys have done, especially this one. They're asking, "What is the hardest part to get working in a turbo pump? Is an electric one a solution to get around the complications of a gas generator cycle, or is it just straight-up better?" **Peter Beck:** It's a good question. The gas generator cycle is a great cycle, but it is a thermodynamically complete cycle. The nice thing about electric turbo pumps is you remove all the thermodynamics out of it. For us, if we want to do mixture control, propellant utilization, startups, shutdown transients—it's software. It's not RF sink pipes and all that kind of stuff. For us, the electric turbo pump gave a lot more flexibility for the mission. On ascent, we're continuously throttling the engines to maintain an optimum trajectory, and you can just do a whole lot of stuff. **Jared:** So it's basically simplicity? **Peter Beck:** Yes, it is. And for the scale of vehicle that we have, it makes a lot of sense. If you look at what technologies are really moving forward, battery technology is moving forward at a great pace. If you look at a gas generator cycle, it's 50 percent efficient. Now, an electric turbo pump cycle is 98% efficient, but you have the drag of having to carry batteries with you all the way—unless you're on a second stage, where we actually eject the batteries. Then you end up at the same efficiency as a gas generator. But battery technology is getting better and better, so on your second stage, it won't be long before we're actually more efficient than a gas generator cycle. **Jared:** So you plan to kind of upgrade as you go as the technology gets better? **Peter Beck:** Being on the technologies that are absolutely sure to improve. **Jared:** Another question from our chat room from Melon is, "Are the tanks all composite?" **Peter Beck:** Yes, 100 percent composite. **Jared:** And you guys on your rocket use RP-1, Rocket Propellant 1, which is highly refined kerosene, and liquid oxygen? **Peter Beck:** Yep, LOX. **Jared:** And usually, composites don't do so good at cold temperatures in an oxidizing environment. Those are typically not two things you want to combine together. **Peter Beck:** So there was a huge research program, a lot of material science went into that to develop materials that were both resistant to micro-cracking, because that's one of the biggest issues with composite tanks, and also LOX compatible. So we ended up with a tank that is very similar in LOX compatibility to aluminum and, of course, no micro-cracking issues. **Jared:** Samuel Prices from YouTube actually has a really good comment that kind of talks a little bit about batteries. He says, "He's dying to find out how you feel about the coming advancements to battery tech and how that will affect the performance of your rockets." **Peter Beck:** It's just all positive. When we started the battery program—I think I'm nervous to quote the numbers because they probably would be wrong—but already between what we started with and what we can buy now, it's nearly eight times more efficient. It's a great forum for increased capability. **Jared:** And Billy M from YouTube also has a question that I kind of wanted to ask, or a part of a question that I wanted to ask, which is, "Are there any plans to make bigger engines for other aerospace companies?" My general question I guess that I was gonna ask with this is: are you guys going to build anything for anyone else, or are you guys—Rocket Lab—just gonna stay Rocket Lab as it is? **Peter Beck:** No, Rocket Lab is staying Rocket Lab. We have a very defined mission. If we can continue on this trajectory and continue to build and launch at a high rate, then we can actually have a significant impact to the world. Once you create space as a really frequently accessed domain, you can experiment on it, you can create things in it. The thing that excites me most about the space industry right now is we're like the internet was when you sent the first email. That's like space—we've sent the first email. Who would, if I went back to the time when you've just sent that first email and told you all the stuff that's gonna happen, you'd just go, "That guy's on drugs." But that's where we're at right now with the space industry, and it's just extremely exciting. So, no, I'm not building a bigger rocket. I have no intentions of building a bigger rocket. I think where we are at right now, the key here is frequency, not mass. It's frequency. Very rarely does a customer say, "Oh, my satellite's too big." What we're seeing, in fact, is people are designing to Electron because we're trying to create the standardized vehicle and standardized frequency. ### The Importance of Launch Frequency **Jared:** With frequency, how important is frequency and what kind of frequency are we talking about yet if Electron...? **Peter Beck:** Frequency is everything. It's absolutely critical—from a guy who's launched one rocket this year, but absolutely critical. The whole program and all the factories were built—it's all about making sure we can get frequency. Because once you have frequency, you have access to a domain. Think of America where there was, what was it, like eighteen times someone went to America in one year? So let's just take America, and let's just say there's eighteen freight trains that traverse the country, nothing else. What would the economy in America look like if there was eighteen freight trains that traverse the continent? **Jared:** Not great. **Peter Beck:** Not great, no. So you need frequency. You need that frequency to actually open the domain up for innovation and execution of new things to help us all down on Earth. **Jared:** To kind of talk a little bit about frequency, Wicked in our chat room is asking, "With your main goal being high launch rates on the cheap, do you have any plans to implement clean range policies in your present and future launch sites?" I guess I'll also throw in there that you guys chose New Zealand as your place to launch—did the frequency of being able to launch from New Zealand kind of affect that as well? **Peter Beck:** Yeah. Addressing the first question first, remember the two requirements: "launch every 24 hours." We went to all the ranges in the US, and in time they'll increase their launch frequency. But you have to remember that when Falcon Heavy launched, 562 airline flights were delayed. So imagine a guy turns up there saying, "I'm gonna launch every 24 hours." That's tough. It's one of the things that doesn't scale well in America—disrupting air travel does not scale well in America. So we sort of took a step back on how we're going to solve this problem. What you need for a launch site is azimuth. You need a wide range of launch inclinations and azimuth. You need that and you need the ability to launch really frequently. So you need to be in a spot where you can achieve these azimuths, but really what makes an ideal launch site is a small island nation in the middle of nowhere. And that was New Zealand. Most people think that Rocket Lab launched out of New Zealand because "Peter's Kiwi and he doesn't want to leave home." That's not true at all. **Jared:** You're here in LA, so... **Peter Beck:** Yeah, the company is headquartered here, and we have a big factory here. We only launched out of New Zealand because that launch site is the only private launch site in the world. We own it, it has the largest amount of launch inclinations—we can shoot sun-synchronous right up to 37 degrees—and we're licensed to go right now every 72 hours. And there's just nothing there. I've got nothing to hit until Chile. **Jared:** So no planes, no... **Peter Beck:** Nothing there. **Host:** So boats... **Peter Beck:** There is one flight to Chile a week that we interrupt, but that's it. And you can kind of move it around, around that. **Jared:** Totally. So you've literally got nothing stopping you, at least in terms of range and things. **Peter Beck:** Yeah, so the range piece is a huge, huge piece. You may have seen recently that we're looking to establish a US range as well for particularly US customers. The plan here is—the reason why it's called LC-1 is not because it rolls off the tongue—it's because there's LC-2, LC-3, LC-4. We'll be building launch pads all over the next decade, all around the show. **Jared:** A lot of people are asking about where some of the places that you're planning to launch from, especially in the chat room. I have six or seven questions in front of me right now, basically: "Are you coming to the US?" "Where in the US?" "Another thing?" **Peter Beck:** So we're definitely coming to the US, establishing a launch site in the US. We're running a competitive bid process right now, so within probably the next week, we'll make an announcement of which site we've selected to establish the US range from. We're having a little bit of a peek into the UK to see if we want a European-based launch site. And the other one we'll be looking for is equatorial, so as close to zero as possible. **Jared:** A really good question in our chat room from Astro YYZ is, "Has ITAR been a challenge for finding clients and staff for Rocket Lab?" **Peter Beck:** Huge. ITAR is a massive piece of our business. We have engineers in New Zealand, we have engineers in America, and we work together very, very closely. We've had an incredibly close relationship with the State Department since the inception of Rocket Lab, basically. It's challenging and sometimes it's frustrating, but it is part of your business, and you just have to work with the rules and regulations and make business decisions around that. ### Orbital Debris Management **Jared:** Also coming from our chat room, Citizen711140 is asking, "How is Rocket Lab dealing with issues of orbital debris and oversaturation?" **Peter Beck:** So you might be familiar with our kick stage. We developed that for a number of reasons, but the way we intend... Look, we're trying to be a super high-frequency, perhaps the highest frequency launcher ever, and with that comes responsibilities. You can't just be throwing stuff up there willy-nilly and not worrying about all that kind of stuff. We took a very forward-thinking approach right from the beginning and said, "Okay, we're going to do this sustainably and responsibly." So when we go to orbit, one of the reasons we have that kick stage with its own propulsion system is: firstly, we go up into an elliptical transfer orbit with the second stage. So if we go into a 500-kilometer circular orbit, we go to like a 180 by 500 elliptical orbit with the second stage, and then we separate off the kick stage. The advantage with that is, because your perigee is down at 180 degrees, that second stage comes in way faster than it would any other way. Typically, what most people do is they take the second stage, and they do the second burn out of the transfer orbit and put their whole second stage in orbit. The trouble with that is it's a big lump of mass, and it stays up there for a long time. Most people don't realize that like 70% of the space junk up there is rockets, not spacecraft and rocket bits. So that's the first thing we do: we put that second stage into that highly elliptical orbit so it's dipping into the perigee, and it's continually getting brought down way, way faster. **Jared:** It's kind of touching the upper atmosphere in that area. **Peter Beck:** As quick as we can. So now we've got our kick stage, and it's got its own onboard propulsion system. We do the kick and we circularize that orbit, deploy our spacecraft, then the nice thing is we can flip that around and use all the propellant left and de-orbit it or shorten its life way, way, way down. At the end of it, we just leave the spacecraft in orbit. **Jared:** So you guys are doing good orbital stewardship? **Peter Beck:** And we consider ourselves leaders in this. We think it's very important. **Jared:** And kind of talking about that kick stage, Preston Crow of YouTube is asking, "Can you give us any insight into the fuel that's used in the Curie engine on the kick stage? Haven't seen anything specific, just that it's 'green.'" Anything you can tell us about it, or is that kind of super secret? **Peter Beck:** There's the "can't talk about it" bit with it. ### The Humanity Star Project **Jared:** Good question here from Nico One, which is actually kind of talking about something that you had on your second launch earlier this year, which was the Humanity Star, which I thought was a very cool idea. Just tell us a little bit about the Humanity Star. **Peter Beck:** As I explained at the beginning of the interview, the reason I got into space was my father took me out and showed me a shooting star. That was my "overview effect." That was when I was like, "Well, there's way more in this planet and way more in this universe than just me sitting on the ground." The whole overview effect is incredibly powerful when people go into orbit. I was trying to create an overview effect, the same overview effect that I had down on Earth. The message was always: take your child out, take yourself out, look up at the Humanity Star, but don't look up at it—look past it and realize that you are one person on a rock in an entire universe. The whole point of the Humanity Star, the orbit that it went to, the trajectory, and the design of it was that every single person on this planet had the opportunity to see it. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, in love or at war—everybody had the opportunity to witness that and experience it. Sputnik was great, but you had to have a handheld radio, which means that you have to have some level of technology within your country. And really, we took a bit of flak for it, and that's fair enough. But what wasn't so clearly obvious was there were tens of thousands of people that wrote in to us and sent us emails that actually took their kids outside and saw it and really had an overview effect and realized the importance of where they are in the universe. **Jared:** I was really surprised at how the astronomical community kind of reacted to it because, during the time period that Humanity Star would be visible, usually that's when your calibration frames are being taken. That's not when you're actually doing visible imaging at dawn and dusk on the horizon. **Peter Beck:** And also things like the International Space Station, the Iridium satellites, and satellites in geosynchronous orbit are just as bright as Humanity Star was going to be. So that was a bit of a surprise. This made it prompted some really interesting discussion. One of the points was, "How can this little company do this that can potentially affect everybody on the earth?" Like, everybody can see it. So it raised some important questions, and it was really good. What was really cool is we had a number of people that wrote in and said, "Because of the Humanity Star, they now want to be astronomers." So I'm like, "Take that, astronomers." **Jared:** And Humanity Star's technically the first satellite New Zealand satellite, right? **Peter Beck:** It is. **Jared:** Well, there you go. That's really, really cool that you were able to do that. ### Inspiration and Mission **Jared:** There's some super interesting questions in here. Stormer in our chat room is asking, "Did anyone in the space industry inspire you?" **Peter Beck:** It's not one single person that I said, "Wow, that person is amazing," and I want to aspire to be that person or anything like that. What my inspiration is, what drives me and gets me up in the morning, is knowing that this is a really important thing that can have an effect on so many people. You think about a satellite—it's the only thing that humans have made that has the ability to touch billions of people every day. If you put up a weather satellite, it provides weather to New Zealand, and then ten minutes later, it's providing weather to Australia, and then 30 minutes, it's North America, and then India, and so on. That one little shoebox piece of electronics has touched literally tens of millions of people's lives. People have decided to get married in that time because of the information from that satellite. People have decided to go to war in that time. It's that information... it touches just so many people, and you can only achieve that from space. So that's truly what inspires me. It's the mission, less the people. It's more about the mission. **Jared:** Is that why would you say that sort of an overarching idea as to why, the "why" of Rocket Lab is to enable that? **Peter Beck:** 100%. It's all about empowering humanity's potential. That's what it's about. What can you do in space that moves the needle for the species? That's what it's all about. **Jared:** That's a very good way of going about that. ### Personal Touches **Jared:** Actually, we've got a question from Ben from our chat room, which is that he heard that there's a really cool story about your wedding ring that you have. **Peter Beck:** I mean, doesn't everybody make their own wedding rings? **Jared:** No, not all the time. **Peter Beck:** I'm not actually wearing it today because I've got a different one on because it has worn out. So probably not a great story, not a great testament to my engineering if it wore out, my wedding ring. But the reality is, it's just your standard titanium carbon fiber wedding ring. **Jared:** But you designed it and built it yourself? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, everyone does. **Host:** Oh, see? Did you like make it at home? **Peter Beck:** I've always had a very large workshop. But seriously, I like making stuff, always have. Especially important things, like the Humanity Star—it was important that I made as much of that as I could. I needed my hands to touch it. **Jared:** How much of it did you actually build yourself? **Peter Beck:** Well, the one that was on flight one, I built the whole thing. The one that was on flight two, I ran out of time, so the composite team really built the majority of that one. But it was still really important. Things like wedding rings and things like that, they need DNA. ### Approaching the First Launch **Jared:** Could we go back and talk a little bit about that time when you were approaching your first flight of Electron? What was running through not just your head but everybody at the company when coming up on that? **Peter Beck:** I don't know how you explain that because you've got a group of guys that have given their life for the last four years to get to that point. You do everything you can. I sat down with the engineering team and said, "We're not going to fly unless all of you give me a 92% confidence." I didn't want any system or any guy coming in here on the first flight unless they had a 92% confidence. It's a long story, but that's how we got to 92%. So we arrived on the pad, and it's not fair to say we were confident. I mean, we were confident in engineering, but you don't know what you don't know. We're a very conservative, methodical bunch at Rocket Lab. We don't take risks. Even right now, if we see something weird, we'll just stop and go and investigate it. The first flight was incredible. The vehicle performed really, really well. Unfortunately, we had a ground issue with the flight termination system from a third-party contractor, but the vehicle was on trajectory and everything was nominal to reach orbit on the first day. So it literally wasn't the rocket's fault, it was ground. **Jared:** How bad was it? **Peter Beck:** It was an incorrectly configured flight termination ground software. I've got that framed—that piece of code. But the reality is we are a really, really conservative bunch. The first flight, it's just one of those things you never—I don't know how you can explain it. **Jared:** Did the second flight feel any different than the first flight? Did you have more confidence? **Peter Beck:** Yeah, we knew we had a very solid vehicle because on the first flight, we had 35,000 channels of instrumentation. There wasn't a thing on that that wasn't instrumented. I was just amazed what the analysis teams could do with that data. We saw an acoustic vibration at 22 hertz, and with the instrumentation on it, they were able to determine that there's a little cavity on the separation lock that caused an acoustic vibration in the air on the way up, and that's where that came from. It's like, "Wow, holy moly." So that's how well-instrumented we had the vehicle. We were conservative, we set our margins where they needed to be, and we could see that we had a very, very solid vehicle, which gave us a lot of confidence. At that point, I'm just like, "You know what, team? Go to production. Let's start scaling the factories. Let's just go now," which we did. **Jared:** And now you guys are coming up on your third flight, right? **Peter Beck:** Yep. **Jared:** How are things going with that? Because I know a couple of weeks ago, things were set and going, and then... **Peter Beck:** Yeah, I saw something, yeah. That was, again, doing the right thing. You know, better to hold and not have... Well, here's the reality. In two years' time, we can have this interview, and you won't remember the time that we scrubbed twice, but you will remember the time that we blew a rocket up. So for us, we saw some unusual behavior on a motor controller, and we just thought, "Well, we don't like what we're seeing here." So we took time, went back and investigated. We thought we had it. Clearly, we didn't. We went back out to the pad, and we saw a similar thing. Now we really, really understand it, and we've made changes to hardware. We found where the potential issue lay. This is the thing about... It's not just about the rocket, it's about the investors in the company and the investors backing the company. We've got just such tremendous investors. It's not about "We're gonna run out of money, so let's get this one launched." It's like, "No, we do this properly, and we make sure that we're in the best position," and our investors back us to get to the right point. Look, it's not an ideal scenario. We had a much higher flight rate plan for this year. But it's more important to get it right now than to go on and fly with risk. It's just the way I'm built. You know, I'm a quarter Scottish, quarter German, and the rest Kiwi. So, you know, I'm tight as anything on money, and then I'm a German engineer, and then a Kiwi innovator. It's just not within our DNA to put something on the pad with high risk and just go. We just will never do that. **Jared:** So overall, with Rocket Lab, it is essentially enabling the things that you want to happen to very positively influence humanity? **Peter Beck:** 100%. We go to space to help everybody on Earth. That's the thing, right? I mean, that's what it's all about. ### Standard Questions **Jared:** Excellent. All right, well, Peter, thank you so much for coming on. We're gonna ask our standard questions real quick, go with it. These are just four questions that we ask everybody—no right or wrong answers or anything. **Peter Beck:** Well, for some of them I guess... **Jared:** What's your favorite space shuttle? There would be a right or wrong answer. **Peter Beck:** Well, depends. **Jared:** But for these at least, there's no right or wrong answer. So let's just go straight into it. First one is: What is your favorite space mission, past, present, or future? **Peter Beck:** So, past would have to be the Voyager series. I mean, how cool is that? Sending humanity's knowledge and wishes and dreams out into the universe. I mean, it doesn't get any cooler than that. I think that would have to be the past, and then future—I'm cooking some stuff up. **Jared:** Well, I guess we'll have to have you come back and talk about whatever you're cooking when you're done cooking it. So the second one: Human or robot exploration of the cosmos? **Peter Beck:** Robot. Robot. **Jared:** What? Have you seen— **Peter Beck:** These bodies. Hard place for space exploration is so needy. They need food and water and oxygen. **Jared:** Not for me. But just straight-up robot? **Peter Beck:** No, I mean, qualified. I think there's a deep need for humans as humans to go and explore, and that's what we do as humans. But if you wanted to do some deep exploration and do some deep scientific stuff, go and do that with robots. If we want to go to Mars, of course, that's a great thing for humans to do. But for right now, I would say that we can learn much more as a species if we just send robots. **Jared:** I think you're the first person to actually say just this. I think everybody so far that we've asked this question has said both. But you know, you've got a pretty good justification for it. And a third question: Where should we go next? What's the next frontier we should go to? **Peter Beck:** Well, this is once again not gonna be a popular kind of thing here, but I think we've got stuff to do on this planet. Look, I have a fundamental policy that I don't leave a flat meal. I'm not interested in human spaceflight. It's obvious from the last answer. I do think it's important, and I think it's special, and we need to do it. Leave someone else to do it. But I think as a species, if we just purely think as a species what we can do really—let's focus on right here on Earth and building infrastructure in space and doing things in space to understand our planet and improve our planet, improve our lives on the planet. So I think where do we go next is: let's just hunker here for a while because this is not a bad place. Then we shouldn't not explore, but I think the focus should be here. **Jared:** And then the final question, my personal favorite question: Why space? **Peter Beck:** Oh, gee whiz. That's actually really hard. I mean, I've got my own personal views on what interests me in space. I mean, it's just like, how can there be anything else other than space? I mean, you think about it—once again, it comes back to a species-level thing. You think about humans as a species and where we are—fragile on this one rock, and everything else is out there. I don't even know how to answer that question. It's just such a crazy question. It blows my mind. I guess it's—how can it not be space? **Jared:** It's almost like, you know, you're in it, so... **Peter Beck:** Yes, yeah. You're floating on a rock in the universe of space, so get to know your neighborhood. **Jared:** Good way to answer it. Peter, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We really appreciate everything that you answered and your amazing perspective today as well. Thanks so much for coming on the show. **Peter Beck:** Oh, it's a pleasure. It's a blast. **Jared:** And we do want to thank our Tomorrow patrons as well, specifically of the escape velocity variety who make this specific segment of this episode occur. These folks give us $10 per episode or more, and if you would like to help out the show, you can head over to patreon.com/tmro. Also, don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and hit the bell as well so when you get updates, you can know when we're gonna have awesome people like Peter coming in to talk. We are going to now go to break, and when we come back, news from the past week. So stay tuned, there's more Tomorrow right after this. [Music] **Host:** Welcome back. As we always like to start the news off with some launches, we've got Mike with a brand-new Launch Minute. ### Launch Minute **Mike:** All right, so this week we had a Chinese Long March 3B rocket which launched on Sunday, July 29th at 01:48 Coordinated Universal Time from the Xichang Space Center in southwest China. Long March 3B rocket is a four-stage liquid-fueled rocket with four hypergolic liquid-fuel boosters. The first, second, and fourth stages are also hypergolic; the third stage is actually cryogenic with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The payload for this mission were two Beidou navigation satellites, which are Chinese GPS satellites, specifically the third-generation Beidou-3 MEO 5 and MEO 6, also known as Beidou 33 and 34. Beidou is named for the Chinese word for the Big Dipper constellation. The development of the Beidou program began in '94 and is expected to have global service in 2020. The first Beidou test satellite launched in 2000, and now 34 Beidou satellites are in orbit. When fully deployed, the Beidou fleet will consist of 35 satellites, including 27 in medium Earth orbit. This was the 21st launch for China this year. However, China had another launch so far this week—they had a Long March 4B rocket which launched on Tuesday, July 31st at 03:00 Coordinated Universal Time from the Taiyuan spaceport in northeastern China. The Long March 4B is a three-stage hypergolic liquid-fueled rocket, and the payload for this mission was the Gaofen 11 remote sensing Earth-imaging spacecraft. Gaofen means "high resolution," and it's a civilian Earth's imaging program. It provides all-weather global surveillance network and is using a combination of visible light, infrared cameras, as well as radar. At least 14 Gaofen satellites are planned for their network. US military tracking data indicated that Gaofen 11 was placed into an elliptical orbit between 200 and 45 kilometers at perigee and 691 kilometers at apogee, and was inclined 97.4 degrees to the equator, so it was in a sun-synchronous lower Earth orbit. This was the 22nd launch for China so far this year and matches their previous record of 22 launches in one year back in 2016. But also, we have to root for our favorite underdog, Copenhagen Suborbitals, which had a launch of their Nexø II rocket today, Saturday, August 4th, at 07:35 Coordinated Universal Time from the Baltic Sea. It was not a suborbital flight—it only reached an altitude of 6,500 meters, but the Nexø rocket is a technology demonstrator in advance of their much bigger Spica rocket that is going to take their astronaut into space. Nexø is an important part of the Spica technology roadmap, and just as the Nexø I, the Nexø II rocket is powered by their own BPM 5 engine. In fact, it's the same engine that was used on the Nexø I flight, and it provides 5,000 newtons of thrust and runs on ethanol and liquid oxygen. Nexø II is also guided by their own custom-built guidance and navigation computer, which had some upgrades, and also features a dynamic pressure regulation with a 20-meter helium tank to keep the fuel nice and pressurized for the launch. The rocket was recovered through parachutes after the flight. **Host:** Wow! Congratulations, Copenhagen Suborbitals. Holy crap, I'm sweating. **Mike:** My goodness, that is amazing. **Host:** Wow, definitely congratulations to Copenhagen Suborbitals, one of our favorite underdogs, of course. Congratulations to Mike. Wow, this is going to be a really interesting way to do launches, but I'm loving it. That's really cool, really good job. ### Rogue Planet Detection **Host:** Wow, so you were talking earlier a little bit about how we're finding things not just based off of luck. What is going on there? **Sarah:** Okay, so back in 2016, a team of astronomers at the Very Large Array discovered an object that looked like a brown dwarf. Further study has indicated that it is actually a rogue planet. What they were looking at were the radio emissions. Up until now, our only way of discovering rogue planets was pure luck. We had to have a telescope aimed at a distant star, and then there had to be a rogue planet go in between us and that star, occult the star. It had to pass right in front of that distant star, and then we could use gravitational lensing and just happened to just catch this random action. Now we may have an actual tool for looking at the skies and finding rogue planets. Now we can determine whether or not there are as many out there as we think. **Host:** And we're using lasers? **Sarah:** We're using radio. We're just gonna redshift it down to radio. **Host:** How does this work? **Sarah:** This planet that they found is about 12.7 times the mass of Jupiter, which puts it just underneath the mass where it would need to be to start fusion burning deuterium. So it's not really producing a whole lot of heat on its own, enough for us to look at out and see it as if it's a star. Instead, it's got—just like Jupiter—a really massive magnetic field. This one happens to have one that's 200 times the power of Jupiter's. **Host:** That makes it easier to find, then? **Sarah:** There's something that's reacting with that field. It's got aurora or the equivalent. It's looking like what we see at Jupiter when Io is passing through Jupiter's magnetic field—these cool aurora traveling around the North Pole of Jupiter. They produce radio emissions very similar to what we saw on this dwarf—I mean, planet. So it's got a little binary or a moon or something that is creating this interference in its really powerful magnetic field, and that's producing radio emissions that we can detect. Not only are we learning more about really strong magnetic fields, we're learning more about extrasolar planets, and we can maybe find those rogue planets that we've been looking for. **Host:** That's awesome. So why—I don't want this to sound bad—but like, why do we care? **Sarah:** Because with microlensing, it looked like there were fewer rogue planets than we thought. The way we have figured that stellar systems or planetary systems form predicts that there will be a lot of planets, but we weren't finding them. We have like one-fifth of what we expected, or some crazy small number. With this, we might be able to find more and really solidify our "Yes, we know how planetary systems form." **Host:** Thanks, so we're either gonna like totally prove ourselves right? **Sarah:** Yes. **Host:** Or like really disprove ourselves by going, "Man, we don't know nothing." **Sarah:** If we found this accidentally using a different process for something else, odds are pretty good that there are more that we'll be able to find. So we're probably gonna prove ourselves right. **Host:** That's what she said. Very hopeful. I wonder, though, whether or not, like, would this be only strong enough—like, would these transmissions only be strong enough to detect really strong magnetic fields, or would we be able to find even other smaller objects that are that are working? **Sarah:** Well, since this one was found by accident, and it took several years to realize, "Oh, wait." Initially, it was thought to be a brown dwarf that was really old and cool. Now it turns out to be a really young, really powerful magnetic field around a young rogue planet. So as we fine-tune what we're looking for, we should be able to find smaller and smaller, just like with transits. We have been able to get smaller and smaller detections. **Host:** Nice. To the point where we can start seeing, I don't know, Io has quite the magnetic field. **Sarah:** But if we look at these things, we find that there is a disturbance in the magnetic field, and that means there is a partner with it. So it's not just a rogue planet—it's also a rogue planetary system. It's a planet with moons. So we could be finding captured asteroids as well. **Host:** Maybe that is awesome. All right, see, now I care too. Beautiful. ### Commercial Crew Astronaut Announcement **Host:** So, Mr. Mike, we were talking a little bit earlier about—I mean, human spaceflight, it's one of the things we'd love to discuss around here. There's some interesting things going on in Commercial Crew. Why don't you go ahead and fill us all in? **Mike:** So yesterday, on Friday, August 3rd, NASA officially announced who the astronauts are going to be on the first Commercial Crew missions. Man, the Commercial Crew missions heading up to the International Space Station—this is a big deal. I'm really excited for this. The agency has assigned nine astronauts to be part of both the demonstration flights and the actual missions of both Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX's crewed Dragon. NASA has worked really closely with both the companies throughout the design, development, and testing to make sure that the systems meet NASA's safety and performance requirements. So let's go ahead and jump right to who the astronauts for these flights are going to be. For Starliner, the first pilot's going to be Eric Boe, who was a colonel in the Air Force—a fighter pilot and test pilot—and he was selected as an astronaut in 2000. He piloted the Space Shuttle Endeavor for STS-126 mission and Discovery on its final flight for STS-133. Then we also have Chris Ferguson, who is a retired Navy captain who piloted Space Shuttle Atlantis for STS-115 and commanded Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-126 and Atlantis for the final flight of the Space Shuttle program, STS-135. He retired from NASA in 2011 and has been an integral part of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner program, and I'm happy to see that he's part of that. Next, we also have Nicole Mann, who is a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps and a test pilot. Mann was selected as an astronaut in 2013, and this will be her first trip into space. But as for the Starliner's first operational mission, those three crew members will just be for the crewed demo flight. For the first operational mission, we have John Cassada, who is a Navy commander and test pilot. He was also selected back in 2013, and this will also be his first spaceflight. And he's going to be joined by one of our favorites, Suni Williams, who is a retired Navy captain and test pilot, was selected as an astronaut back in 1998, and she spent more than 322 days aboard the International Space Station for Expeditions 14/15 via Space Shuttle and for Expeditions 32/33 via a Soyuz. She was also the command of the Space Station for Expedition 33, and she also performed seven spacewalks. **Host:** Oh god, oh god, I love Suni! She's one of the best. I really love her. **Mike:** But for the first crew Dragon test flight, we have Bob Behnken, who has a doctorate in engineering and is a flight test engineer and colonel in the Air Force. He joined the astronaut corps in 2000 and flew aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour twice for the STS-123 and STS-130 missions. And then we also have Doug Hurley. He was a test pilot and colonel in the Marine Corps before being selected as an astronaut in 2000. He piloted the Space Shuttle Endeavour for STS-127 and Atlantis for its final flight, STS-135. For the first crew Dragon operational mission, we have Victor Glover, who was also selected in 2013 as an astronaut. He is a naval aviator, commander, and test pilot, and this will be his first spaceflight as well. And then joining him will be Michael Hopkins, who is a colonel in the Air Force where he was a flight test engineer before being selected as a NASA astronaut in 2009. He has spent 166 days on the International Space Station for Expeditions 37/38 via a Soyuz and conducted two spacewalks. Probably the thing that is most exciting to me about this is there's going to be additional crew members that are going to be assigned to at least the operational missions of these Commercial Crew vehicles, and those people are going to be assigned by the international partners of the International Space Station at a later time. So we might see some JAXA astronauts on there, we might see some ESA astronauts on there, and maybe even some Russian cosmonauts as well. But meanwhile, NASA has announced delays in when the first flights may occur. Boeing will have their first uncrewed test flight late this year or early next year, followed by a crewed flight test in mid-2019. And then the updated schedule for SpaceX has an uncrewed test flight this November and the first crewed flight test in April of 2019. **Host:** So the reason we care about this so much is because commercial spaceflight, of course, is getting closer to becoming a reality and being available to the rest of us. **Mike:** Something I'm really excited about is that Boeing is already marketing the CST-100 spacecraft through Space Adventures, which offers tourist flights to the International Space Station. They've also partnered with Bigelow Aerospace once they have their own free-flying commercial space stations to transport people. SpaceX also has a deal with Bigelow as well to do that. So I'm just really excited because, even though at first it's gonna be, you know, the very wealthy or experiments that are extremely important to mankind, more and more people are going to start going into space because of these vehicles, and I'm so excited for it. **Host:** That is really, really cool. Very, very fun. **Host 2:** Gosh, so many things, so little to say. I know I want to go, but I only want to go if Ike also goes because they like the Mike and Ike combination there. So, who day, if you ever see me wearing a Mike and Ike shirt, that's definitely for them. **Host:** Very, very cool, Mike. **Mike:** Thank you. ### Crater Impact Rays Study **Host:** Miss Sarah, while we were talking about like other luck and things, you told a really interesting story earlier. Jared came in and said, "So why did you pick the stories that you did?" And so we already talked about the one, but then the next story that you told him—if you would actually repeat it because I think you said it so perfectly and summed everything up, and I was like, "I want to hear more about that." **Sarah:** All right. So there was this group of people, they were studying asteroid impact ejecta rays. You know, we've all looked up at the moon and seen the Tycho crater, and it's got these rays coming out of it. They don't look like rings like you would think that if you throw a rock into water, the rings radiate. We see fingers of debris. Well, there was a team studying it, and they were in a lab, and they were trying to replicate those rays, and they were not having any luck. So they went to YouTube, and they were looking at other people's work, seeing if anyone else was having better luck than they were at replicating these rays. **Host:** That's so smart. **Sarah:** And they found some high school students. They were throwing rocks near a sandpit, and they were replicating the rays. **Host:** Should I know? **Sarah:** So what they did—they went back to their lab, and they started messing with the size of the grains and changing the radius of the object that they were dropping into it. They couldn't get it until one day, one of the undergrads or postdocs—whichever it was—he was so tired, he didn't bother resurfacing their precisely calibrated sand pit, and he had the ripply leftovers from the last impact, dropped in their little, you know, 1.2-gram thing and got the right results. **Host:** That's so amazing. So what does this mean now? **Sarah:** This means, well, we can look at craters on other planetary bodies and Moon, Mars, Mercury, and we can figure out from the rays what the surface looked like before the impact and how big the impactor was. **Host:** How many rays you see... That's so awesome! **Sarah:** I know. It'll take, of course, more refining, but again, luck totally is... I can't even express how awesome this is. **Host:** That's so cool. The Internet is making world science. That's awesome. How—oh my goodness! I know I talked all over your stories there. Was there anything else you wanted to add to that? **Sarah:** The best part is, it's essentially—you could recreate this at home if you really wanted to. **Host:** Yeah, you can just plonk a stone at your sandbox. **Sarah:** Right. So we can do this on a science episode later. **Host:** Good, I'm just making more work for Lisa as we do. ### Closing **Host:** All right, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna give the thank you that is so deserved to our escape velocity citizens, people who have given us $10 or more per episode, and they've made this segment happen. And also our orbital citizens, these people are giving us five dollars per episode, and they helped make this show happen week after week, as you can as well. You can always send a [visit] patreon.com/tmro, and also, really, if you don't have the time, just go ahead on over to youtube.com/tmro and then hit the subscribe button and hit the bell so you can get ideas of when we are gonna be on next because every little bit helps, whether it's time or money, and we appreciate all of it. Next, what we're gonna do now is we're gonna go into another little bit of break, and then we're going to come back with comments and questions about last week's show. Stay with us. [Science promo] **Voiceover:** Science. It both draws us together and tears us apart, brings discoveries to cure us and threatens us. It is neither good nor evil. It is what we decide to make of it. There is so much more to learn, and we are curious. Together, let's explore the science of tomorrow. ### Viewer Comments **Host:** Welcome back. So this is where we go over your questions, comments, concerns, complaints about last week's show. Last week, we happen to have Bruce Banerdt, who was the principal investigator of the InSight mission from JPL. Principal investigator of InSight mission—I just want to make sure I actually said that correctly. And it is Bruce Banerdt, not Bruce Banner. There was a little bit of confusion over that as well—not the Avenger. I apologize for that. In any case, all these comments, I believe, came off of YouTube directly, but you can always also put in comments on our community at orbit.tmro.tv as well. It's a lot of great conversation going on over there. Anyway, first comment is from Jack Speed 439: "On the risk front: shuttle was dangerous. We're now on the Soyuz. How safe is that? So we shouldn't go backwards. So that puts us at requiring safety at least as safe as Soyuz. As we stuff around demanding safer systems from Boeing and SpaceX, we are using a less safe Soyuz system. Therefore, demanding/requiring unbelievable high safety standards is actually lowering safety standards." There was an interesting debate about this on YouTube, ironically, a little bit between Goona and Ben Credible, as a matter of fact. I'm sure they're both steaming about it, by the way. We haven't heard from anyone else here. Jared, did you want to go first on that one? **Jared:** Yeah, I mean, Soyuz and shuttle are about the same in terms of total safety. When you look at all of Soyuz, but if you look at just Soyuz that has flown crew, Soyuz is actually significantly safer than Space Shuttle. **Host:** Interesting. Mike, it sounds like you had some two cents to add there. **Mike:** Yeah, no, I completely agree. The Soyuz vehicle for humans is very safe, and there's a reason why they've been flying it for so long and all the incremental improvements that they've made. But I kind of agree with Jack Speed here that demanding these higher safety standards than even what the Space Shuttle was held up to is a bit unrealistic. We've talked about that before. So I don't know about if it's lowering the safety standards of—I'm assuming he means Soyuz—but there's different systems for everything, and compromises are being made so that we can actually begin flying safely. But there's gonna be an amount of risk no matter what we do. We're flying on rockets, for crying out loud. **Host:** For sure. As Pete said earlier, I'm not about to fly meat, so... There's an important thing to note that it is—there's some inherent risk anyway. Sarah, did you want to add anything else? **Sarah:** Oh, I think it was all said. **Host:** All right. Soyuz is one of my favorite crewed spacecraft, just throwing that out there because it's been—it's just—it's not—it's literally like, why reinvent the wheel? No, crew isn't human-rated, by the way, not "C-R-U-D-E." It's very clear, just following the official guidelines as to how you refer to spacecraft. **Sarah:** Totally, great. **Host:** All right, so next comment comes also off of YouTube from one Little: "I'd love to see what people who don't want to colonize space would say if we found an asteroid coming for Earth. They'd be on the first rocket out of here, I guess." Yes and no. Who wants to go first on this one? Oh, my—that means Sarah. **Sarah:** Apparently. Well, wouldn't we all be on the first rocket? I think the choices—do we colonize for the hell of it, or do we get off of a sinking ship? It becomes a completely different argument at that point. So I can't really fault them for saying, "Let's stay here on Earth," and then when Earth is doomed, "Let's go somewhere else." But on the bright side, if we had the time to evacuate for Mars, we would have seen that big impactor coming, and we would have options to redirect it. So probably colonizing at that point wouldn't be the best choice. It's either do it now or later. **Host:** Doing it now is far better. **Sarah:** Yeah, right. It's gonna happen. You don't have to go if you don't want to. **Host:** Are you going to happen? **Sarah:** Yes. **Host:** All right, awesome. I know what happens when we all agree on this. I personally want there to be as much survivability as possible. So like if an asteroid sort of happened today, how many people would survive? Would you actually get off planet? With their survival? Twelve people, maybe? But if we do this later when we've already colonized Mars and everything, in that way, we can ensure at least several hundred thousands, millions of people can survive. Anyway, the sooner we do it, the safer it's gonna be. **Mike:** And survivability with this, even, you know, depends on how much of an advanced warning you have of the object inbound as well. If you have enough time, which, by the way, is not what—was it in Armageddon? 14 days? I don't care what anybody says, Armageddon is one of my favorite space movies because it's practically an art film. It just doesn't try to BS you or anything. It's just like, "This is what's happening, and we're going full throttle with it." So I don't care what anybody says, it's one of my favorite space movies. But, you know, we need like 15 to 20 years advance warning for something like that. **Host:** Watch movie time, though, just shrunken down to two days. It's like Bob Thornton would make a good NASA Administrator. **Mike:** And any asteroid should run scared if we throw Bruce Willis at it. **Host:** That's right. **Mike:** Funny. **Host:** Thanks, guys. I have two comments that are back-to-back. One extra spicy, the other one just so it is aware of that. First comment comes from YouTube, is from Unpainted LED Syndrome says, "Oh, Banerdt, I have a hearing 'Banner.' Bummer! I wanted to hear more about his radiation, radiation research. Turns out it's just rocks on Mars." To which That Fan, also on YouTube, replied with, "There really should be a gamma instrument on it like..." Gosh, y'all are a bunch of dorks. **Mike:** I didn't have an incredible t-shirt to wear that day that was right. **Host:** Exactly, I do have one hanging in my closet, but I apologize. **Sarah:** No, that's all right. **Host:** Had to apologize after the fact to the guests. From YouTube, from one Ronald Shiflett, I believe. So: "The names of the drone ships are not just 'quote-unquote quirky.' They're literary references to important sci-fi." This created quite a debate on YouTube, and if you're interested in all of it, please feel free to go over and hit up our YouTube channel. I just wanted to use this really quickly to say: They're still quirky. I mean, they just are. Yes, they are literary references to sci-fi. I think everyone has their own identity of what important sci-fi is. My means Pteranodon's your favorite space movie. Mind's of course—it's not my favorite space movie. It's just one of my favorite space movies, okay? My favorite space movie is The Core. So say we all. **Sarah:** We all come from different backgrounds. We all have different focuses, etcetera, etcetera, and as do you, and that's what makes this entire community that much better. You know, don't—it together—not everybody's gonna understand every reference that gets thrown out there. That's perfectly fine because that opens up an avenue for someone to then go out and actually look at that reference, understand it, see where it's come from, and then decide whether they want to pursue it or not. And that's like a really great—that's a really great thing to do because it doesn't gatekeep. It doesn't keep this to us, you know, to a certain degree of people. "You have to have this kind of an IQ in order to understand it." Shut up with that noise! It just allows it to open it up, and that's what makes it so great when people do things quirky and out of nowhere and just out of left field. **Host:** I think it's one of those things where it feels to me a bit—it's the old adage of "if you love something, let it go" in terms of like, look, you know Elon named these ships. That was his reference that he really liked, and he wanted to share it with people whether or not they got it. And then that gives an opportunity for somebody to look into it more, and you're right, and maybe find something new that they absolutely love. Or, you know, they kind of go, "No, that was total crap, but Tolkien's the man," like—like it's totally cool, and we like all of it. **Sarah:** And yeah, so of course we still love you. **Host:** Of course, we still already do. **Sarah:** See, what you didn't have to read the instructor. I give— **Host:** Thank you, a very well-deserved thank you to all of our citizens that have helped make this amazing episode happen: our escape velocity citizens at ten dollars an episode, our orbital citizens at five dollars an episode, our civil orbital citizens at two dollars and fifty cents an episode, and our ground support citizens. Absolutely everybody here matters. Help continue that, make the shows happen week after week. These are obviously community-driven. You can head on over to patreon.com/tmro. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and hit the bell to be notified about all of these awesome episodes. **Mike:** Yeah, subscribe button is down here somewhere. **Host:** Here, yes. Next week, we have actually Mr. Chuck Ryan, who is a shuttle trainer resolution at NASA. So, what, are we talking about— **Mike:** A lot of interesting things. **Host:** That is a really cool picture. I really like that. **Mike:** How do I get one of those? **Host:** Well, maybe you can ask him next week. **Mike:** How many dollars? **Host:** That's all we've got for this week. Thank you so much for joining us in our discussion. It was such a pleasure. We'll see you guys next time. [Music]