[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> September 14 2022 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Aerospace Summit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB50pxINgL4) **Date**: September 14 2022  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB50pxINgL4 ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Charlie Bolden:** Thanks very much. It's good to be here and good to be joining the U.S. Chamber for the first Global Aerospace Summit. My name is Charlie Bolden, for those of you who may not know me, and I'm here with Peter Beck, the CEO and Founder of Rocket Lab. Rocket Lab was founded in 2006 in New Zealand and has since moved its headquarters here to Huntington Beach/Long Beach ("one beach") in California back in 2013. Before we get into the formal questions though, Peter, I have a trivial question for you: what in the world is a "rocket-powered contraption," since in your Wikipedia it said you spent your young days building rocket-powered contraptions? **Peter Beck:** I always figured that the best test of your rocket qualities is to put a leg on the side of it. So I built rocket bikes, rocket packs, rocket scooters in my misspent youth. **Charlie Bolden:** Are you using any of them today? **Peter Beck:** No, no. **Charlie Bolden:** Well, Rocket Lab manufactures spacecraft, satellite components, they also provide satellite launch and on-orbit management services. Their prime launch vehicle, I think, is Electron, and just recently they launched the NASA CAPSTONE lunar mission on its way, and we can talk a little bit about that. And their cargo carrier is Photon. [He] uniquely employs a 3D-built, 3D-printed rocket engine, so I'm very interested in that. ### The CAPSTONE Mission **Charlie Bolden:** Let's start about CAPSTONE. CAPSTONE satellite launched on June 28, 2022, and you and I both have great hopes for its success. You want to talk a little bit about it and how you got involved with it? **Peter Beck:** CAPSTONE was a really interesting mission. It's really divided into a number of different partners. Our part of the mission was to launch the CAPSTONE spacecraft, put it in low Earth orbit, and then our Photon high-energy stage did a series of orbit-raising maneuvers and then finally sent it off onto a TLI [Trans-Lunar Injection] trajectory into the Moon. At that point, we separated off the CAPSTONE spacecraft and it's going off and doing its thing there. It was an important mission because it's the first part of obviously the Artemis program, and it's important to test out the NRHO [Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit]. But what we're most excited about is that was a $10 million dollar contract. So the capability that we've created there now is for some tens of millions of dollars, we can send you to the Moon, we can send you to Mars, we can send you to Venus, and it opens up a whole new era of low-cost planetary science expeditions. ### Public-Private Partnerships **Charlie Bolden:** Several of the panels so far today have talked a little bit about the importance of public-private partnerships, and you and I backstage were saying, in my mind, CAPSTONE is a perfect example of the public-private partnership where NASA buys a service. Can you talk a little bit about the—pick one of the three companies, I happen to like Advanced Space, which is the manager of the project. **Peter Beck:** Yes, I mean, the way the project came about is really Advanced Space came up with these very unique kind of orbital determination techniques, and a little company really kind of primed the mission. And then all of the other industry partners—there was us and a couple of others—all came together to execute that mission. But to your point, it wasn't a NASA-led, kind of prime mission. It was very much a small business-led mission. **Charlie Bolden:** And as you and I talked, the reason we think it's critically important is because NASA's put this small business in the critical path for Artemis, because what we hope to learn from that will be critical for the success of Artemis. Spaceflight's traditionally been a government-led endeavor, but the landscape's changed quite a bit. Last year at this conference, I think you mentioned the point, you spoke to the opportunities for commercial sector to partner with the public sector. How critical are government partnerships for the future of space exploration and space sustainability? **Peter Beck:** I think it's absolutely critical, and I think there's a clear dividing line between things that commercial entities like us can't make a business case for—that's when the government needs to step in and do. But once there's a business case established, that's when the government should step out and allow industry to come in and provide those services at best value and best cost. But you know, if I think back through Rocket Lab's history, it's just peppered with all of these partnerships, whether it be NRO missions we've done and partnered with, the NASA VCLS contract—one of the very first launches that we actually did was a great example of a NASA-Rocket Lab partnership where we were just a little tiny company at that point. We had no proven technology at all, and NASA partnered with us and gave us a contract to launch something. Which, when I look back on, was quite formative for the company because it enabled us to take that NASA stamp and go and raise venture capital. ### Rocket Recovery and Reusability **Charlie Bolden:** Great. In May, Rocket Lab caught a falling—my term, "caught"—you captured for a while a falling first-stage rocket with a helicopter in mid-air before it came loose and went into the ocean. But the point was made: it was the first attempt at recovering rocket launches from space by helicopter. This was key to Electron program's milestones and in making your launch systems reusable. Can you talk a little bit more about your upcoming dry landing, refueling, and launching tests that we might expect later this year? **Peter Beck:** Electron is a small launch vehicle, and in a small launch vehicle, there just is no margins. So really, the only viable way to do reusability is to, as you say, let the atmosphere do the work and capture it with a helicopter. We proved that that was possible. It's kind of easy to—everyone thinks that catching it mid-air with the helicopter is the James Bond moment, that's the hardest part. Actually, the hardest part is it launched 400 kilometers away, traveled Mach, you know, seven and a half times the speed of sound, and then we had to rendezvous exactly at the right point, in the right time, with the helicopter. That was actually the tricky bit. But what that means now is that we can literally capture that thing, fly it back to land, refuel it, and go again, which is reusability—it's just such a game-changer. ### STEM Education and Talent Pipeline **Charlie Bolden:** You know, here in the U.S., we're always talking about "kids have to go to college, have to go to college." You didn't go to college, you're self-educated post-high school. But given that, and the fact that you have two kids, 10 years old and 13, is that right? **Peter Beck:** Yep. **Charlie Bolden:** How do we inspire young people to fill the STEM pipeline and sustain the growth of science and research for that community? **Peter Beck:** My pathway was unusual in the fact that I came from a tiny little town at the bottom of the South Island in New Zealand, and New Zealand had no space industry. So I was growing up watching NASA TV, and my options were really limited, and my educational choices—I went and did a tool and die making apprenticeship because if I went to university, nobody's teaching me about rockets. I understand the principles, but the bit that I was lacking is I needed to build these things. So I followed a non-traditional career in that sense. But as I think forward, we have a real talent shortage within the industry. At Rocket Lab, we run apprenticeship programs, we have a whole education program, and we've visited 150 schools and we've got eleven and a half thousand kids signed up to our Space Ambassadors program. And we learned very early on that there's no point in targeting high schools because by the time the kids are at high schools, they've already decided what they want to do, or it's already been beaten out of them that they can't have dreams. So we found that we go to the primary schools and we use the rocket as the inspiration, but teach them two things. We teach them, obviously, there's a strong angle of STEM, but we teach them that you don't have to sign up to go and do a job—follow your passion. If you want to create a business, go and create it. So we teach entrepreneurialism just as much as we try and promote STEM in those programs. **Charlie Bolden:** I applaud what you're doing because I'm one who happens to believe that NASA, when I was there, the vast majority of the population in the NASA workforce is not engineers and scientists, and we could not survive without them. And I think what you're doing is just perfect. ### Responsive Access to Space **Charlie Bolden:** Very quickly—you're now working on a responsive space program to get satellites into space faster and on shorter notice. This is obviously appealing to the defense customers. To what do you attribute Rocket Lab's success, and what does that tell you about the small and mid-sized satellite and launch market more broadly? **Peter Beck:** It's a very common topic, responsive access to space, and we kind of chuckle because we do it just about every launch. We've had a customer come to us five weeks before launch and go, "Hey, can you get this on orbit?" And getting through the licensing process—we just did two back-to-back missions for the NRO. So responsive space exists, but if you don't have the satellite, it's all kind of a bit pointless having the rocket sitting on the pad. So our message to everybody, and the bit that we focus on, and the reason why we're not just a rocket company, is because if you just got the rocket there, you're only half the equation. So true responsive access to space is the satellite and the rocket coming together to deliver a capability. ### On-Orbit Management **Charlie Bolden:** Rocket Lab advertises that you're going to do on-orbit management. Talk to me a little bit about what you envision that being. Are we talking about grabbing satellites and de-orbiting them, or grabbing satellites and refurbishing them, or what's the long-range vision? **Peter Beck:** I guess the longer-range vision is we're trying to build an end-to-end space company. So launches—launch is really enabling, it's the keys to space, so you can't do anything without the keys to space. So we've kind of solved that problem. Now we've moved into the spacecraft arena where we're solving that problem. And then the endpoint is just providing services. And we already find today a customer will come to us and they'll have a concept for a satellite, and they'll want to buy a reaction wheel or some component from us. And quite often those conversations will end up, "You know what? This space gig looks pretty hard, so can you just provide us the service rather than sell us parts?" So I think that's ultimately where the model is going to go—people are going to provide services rather than individual parts. ### Space Systems Business **Charlie Bolden:** Great. This next question I have, I'm hoping I can get it in in the time we have left. It's a long question, and I'm going to read it: Over the past year, Rocket Lab has seen significant expansion and diversification in its space systems business led by SolAero product line. The Q2 numbers show that space systems contributed about $36.4 million or 66 percent of the total quarterly revenue. Rocket Lab's poised to continue that trajectory following NASA's selection of Rocket Lab to manufacture the solar array panel for NASA's GLIDE spacecraft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Where do you hope to see Rocket Lab's space systems business by this time next year? Be careful what you wish for, man. **Peter Beck:** So the space systems part of the business has grown enormously, and it's really all about making it simple. It's about creating capability and providing solutions in the simplest way. So yep, we've experienced a lot of growth there, but ultimately, what we're trying to achieve here is to lower the barriers to entry for everybody to get capability on orbit. ### Challenges in the Space Industry **Charlie Bolden:** As the owner of a rocket company, what's the one thing that bugs you the most about conducting your business? How do you—how do you differ, and we were talking about CAPSTONE—how do you differentiate for the uninitiated in the—where's the break in responsibility for a particular mission? **Peter Beck:** When you're a part of these larger missions and you're part of an element of many, if one element lets it down, then you get just as bad PR as the element that let it down. But I think, more broadly, the thing I love about the space industry and the thing that frustrates me about the space industry is the same thing. In the space industry, you can stand up on this stage and say, "I'm going to land someone on Mars," or "You're going to go and do the most amazing thing," and everybody stands up and applauds and just goes, "Yep, that's going to happen." And that's the most amazing thing. The frustrating thing is that there's a lot of aspirations in space but a little bit shy on execution. And it's great to have these hugely ambitious dreams, and we all love it, but one of the challenges is that at some point in time, you have to execute. And space is not easy to execute in. ### Future Outlook **Charlie Bolden:** Ten years from now, how big will Rocket Lab—how big a rocket will Rocket Lab be? **Peter Beck:** Well, we've got the Neutron vehicle, which is a pretty significant vehicle—it's 13 tons to low Earth orbit. Ten years is a very long time horizon in Rocket Lab. It's often joked that one year at Rocket Lab is like dog years—it seems like many more years. We get a lot done in one year. So in 10 years' time, if we continue the trajectory, I think we hopefully will have had some pretty significant impact in the world. **Charlie Bolden:** Well, I think you've had pretty significant impact already. When I look at the success rate that you have and the number of launches per year, that's pretty impressive. So congratulations. Touch some—I know, knock on wood—but never get too cocky in the space industry, trust me. **Peter Beck:** You're absolutely right. **Charlie Bolden:** But thanks very much for spending time with us today. Thanks to all of you again for coming out, and I think we'll—well, Carol, we didn't give you any time. Thanks.