[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> November 25 2019 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [Your Space Journey Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8CTwU0gJ74) **Date**: November 25 2019  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8CTwU0gJ74 ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Chuck Field (Host):** Hello, thanks for joining us today for Your Space Journey. We have an exciting episode today. We'll be speaking with Peter Beck, the founder and chief executive of Rocket Lab. But before we speak with Peter, we want to do our special segment about Your Space Journey. This is where we share segments from our audience where they describe what drew them to the passion for space and what they're most excited about for the future of space exploration. It's my privilege to introduce my friend Philip Shane from "What The If." I was fortunate to meet Philip earlier this year at a NASA social. Here's him telling his story for what drew him into space. ### Audience Space Journey Segment **Philip Shane:** Hi, I'm Philip Shane. I host a science and space podcast called "What The If," and I do that because I grew up watching Carl Sagan. I pursued science and even interned at NASA for a number of years when I was much younger, and I realized science wasn't my thing. I realized what I really wanted to do was share the stories of the people who do it to the world that has never heard of it and should appreciate it. There's a whole lot of people that don't appreciate even the fact that space is there. It's above everybody's head—just look up. And I think they're afraid to. I grew up with a serious passion for that through the Apollo missions, the Space Shuttle, all these things. Then I got invited to a NASA social event just recently. It was the SpaceX Crew Dragon launch. It was the first time I ever attended a rocket launch in person at NASA. The thunderous roar at night and the blinding light and orange and red and white smoke billowing out from the rocket as it took off right in front of us into a sky full of stars—it was the most science fiction thing I've ever experienced. I always knew this, but it just fully, even more, magnified that sense of excitement, joy, passion, thrill, just giddiness frankly for an appreciation for living at this time, being able to share what the people at NASA do in particular. We live in a golden age of space travel, and that's an amazing thing. **Chuck Field:** Thanks so much Philip for sharing your story. I look forward to seeing you again in an upcoming launch. But now on to our future guests. ### Peter Beck Introduction **Chuck Field:** It is my privilege to introduce Peter Beck. Again, Peter is the founder and chief executive for Rocket Lab. Since founding Rocket Lab in 2006, Peter has grown the company to become a globally recognized industry leader in space and a billion-dollar company employing world-class engineers and technicians. Peter started Rocket Lab's Electron orbital launch program in 2013. He also oversaw the development of the world's first and only private orbital launch range located in New Zealand. Peter played a crucial role in establishing international treaties and legislation to enable orbital launch capability from New Zealand. That capability was realized in January 2018 with Rocket Lab's first orbital launch of the Electron rocket. I wanted to kind of go back a little bit. You just launched, as of the time of this, "As the Crow Flies," and I believe that was your ninth Electron flight, and so far 40 satellites launched. I just have to congratulate you on that. **Peter Beck:** Thank you. I really appreciate it. **Chuck Field:** Well, you've done a wonderful job, and one of the things that we love to ask is we'd love to find out sort of where the passion came from for space. I understand that as a teenager, you sort of developed an interest in powerful engines, and you wanted to build rockets growing up. Tell us just a little bit more about how that passion began. ### Early Passion for Space **Peter Beck:** Yeah, I mean, look, as for as long as I can remember, I was always fascinated by space. I would go out and look at the night sky and just sit there in awe and wonder. And to boot, I loved engineering, so it was kind of the perfect marriage of two passions really. I loved the challenge of building rocket engines. There's something about just harnessing that enormous energy and controlling it and using it to achieve really cool things. It's just really, really exciting. **Chuck Field:** Well, I've heard that your high school counselor actually requested to meet with your parents because they were concerned that your dream of launching rockets, building rockets, was absurdly unachievable. Is that true? **Peter Beck:** No, that's absolutely correct. Yeah, there was a local aluminum smelter that was down the road, and I was very good with my hands. So the normal kind of trajectory would have been to go to that aluminum smelter and be a tradesman, which would have been a fine career, but just not something that I'm interested in doing. **Chuck Field:** There's obviously a lot of young adults out there, and they have these dreams that some would consider crazy. What advice would you give to someone for not holding back, for going for their dream? What advice would you give? **Peter Beck:** I think that's an absolute must. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is you go and get a real job. So no, I think it's the bigger the dream, the better as well. I would just encourage anybody out there, if they've got a true passion and something that they think they can pull off, then just go for it. There'll be plenty of people along the way that won't think the same way that you do, but at the end of the day, what have you got to lose? You've got a very short time on this planet. Let's make it count. **Chuck Field:** I couldn't agree with you more. ### Rocket Lab's Founding and Mission **Chuck Field:** Now, let's talk Rocket Lab. You founded it in 2006, and by 2009, it became the first private company in the southern hemisphere to reach space. Now some of our audience might not be familiar with Rocket Lab, and I just wanted to get a little bit more about what sets it apart from some of the others. **Peter Beck:** I mean, I guess we were probably one of the early movers on seeing that satellites were obviously going to shrink, and with the shrinking satellite, there would be a requirement for a launch vehicle that would be able to service and deploy those satellites. We officially started the Electron program in 2014 and started raising capital out of Silicon Valley and various institutions to develop the Electron launch vehicle. It's a small launch vehicle that's designed to lift small payloads into orbit, but really frequently to a number of trajectories and inclinations and altitudes, and really kind of open up space for the small satellite. Historically, small satellites have been kind of second-class citizens on very large launch vehicles, ride-sharing at the time or the pace or the orbit that the main spacecraft wants to go to. So think of us as—I really don't like using the saying—but think of us like as the Uber of space. You have a very large bus, and that's fine if you want to jump on with a whole lot of folks and go somewhere, but if you just want to pick up your phone and get picked up at your door and dropped off at your door in comfort, then that's really where we excel. **Chuck Field:** That was a great analogy. I love that. And one thing I asked—I love too—is just the mission names themselves. **Peter Beck:** Yeah. **Chuck Field:** "As the Crow Flies," "Look Ma, No Hands." **Peter Beck:** My wife is in QA, so we loved "It's a Test, Still Testing." **Chuck Field:** Yes, because this time—what led you and your team to develop such creative names for your missions? **Peter Beck:** Well, I mean, look, this is an incredibly serious business. There's just no room for any error. So this is about the one thing that you can actually just have a bit of fun with, and it kind of reflects the nature of the team here. We work incredibly hard, but also we like to have a little bit of fun now and again. And really, that was how we express ourselves through the naming conventions. ### Rocket Lab's Innovative Technologies **Chuck Field:** And you mentioned Electron, of course. Now, I understand it's all carbon composite. The Rutherford engine, if I understand right, is actually 3D printed, correct? 24 hours per engine, right? **Peter Beck:** Correct. **Chuck Field:** You have revolutionized 3D printing. Can you tell us a bit more about that process and what led you to do this? **Peter Beck:** So for us, it's all about manufacturability. We created a number of new technologies not because we wanted to do something different. We really looked for ways that we could solve big historical problems. As you pointed out, it's an all carbon composite vehicle. We did that simply because we're able to produce the tanks and the structures at a cost efficiency and scale using those techniques that we couldn't with aluminum. And then the Rutherford engine, when we first announced the Rutherford engine, it was all 3D printed, electric turbo-pumped. I think there were a lot of people in the industry who kind of looked at us sideways because that was at a time when it wasn't a very common thing to do. We've put over 90 of those engines into space now, and everybody 3D prints some or most of their rocket engine these days. The technology—we really pushed the boundaries at the time, and we did that because there was no other way that we could produce engines at the quality, the performance, and the flight rate other than this additive manufacturing technique. **Chuck Field:** Can you tell us a little bit more about the Kick Stage? What I understand, and I'm sure you can put this in a lot better wording than I can, is that the Kick Stage helps achieve that exact orbital trajectory they need, even more circular than elliptical. Can you tell a little bit more about how that works? ### The Kick Stage and Sustainable Space **Peter Beck:** Yes, the Kick Stage is—it does a number of things. Firstly, think of it as a very capable third stage. It has its own propulsion system, its own communication system, its own guidance system. And you're exactly right, it enables us to insert to orbital accuracies which are almost unheard of within the industry—some kilometers or sub-kilometers of accuracy. The propulsion system is perfectly sized for those really, really accurate orbital insertions. But moreover, we have a very strong commitment to the sustainable use of space, and for us, we weren't really comfortable with leaving large portions of our launch vehicle in orbit. The typical way you go to orbit is you go into transport orbit with your second stage, then you realize your second stage, you put your whole second stage in orbit, and then deploy your spacecraft. Orbital lifetime is a function of mass, drag, and altitude. So if you can remove some of those things, then you can shorten your orbital life. What we do is we leave our second stage in an elliptical orbit, so we don't actually circularize with that second stage. Because we leave it in an elliptical orbit, it de-orbits in a matter of weeks, and we don't leave it behind. And then the Kick Stage, as you correctly point out, circularizes the orbit, deploys the payload, and then because it's got its own propulsion system, we can de-orbit that as well and leave nothing behind except the spacecraft. For a company that claims they want to launch a lot of spacecraft, that seemed to us the only responsible thing to do. **Chuck Field:** It makes so much sense. And what I understand, it's sort of an evolution of the Kick Stage is where Photon, your satellite platform, comes along. And you had some news recently where I believe you've had an extended range now which includes lunar vicinity. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about that announcement. ### The Photon Platform **Peter Beck:** Absolutely. It always used to frustrate me that I had our launch vehicle that had basically the same equipment as the satellite that I was flying, and my launch vehicle became a satellite for a number of hours while I was deploying my customers' payload. It just seemed such an incredible waste. Why could we not turn that into a spacecraft in its own right and then allow people just to focus on building the sensor, building the payload, rather than actually having to build their own spacecraft? That bore the evolution of the Photon spacecraft bus. As we've continued to evolve that spacecraft, we've realized some of its capability. With some small modifications, we can really do some incredible missions with that, including, as you say, deliver small payloads to lunar orbit. ### Reusability Plans **Chuck Field:** One other thing that I was really impressed about this year, Peter, is you gave a presentation that talked about just how, as an engineer, you spoke at some point how you don't want to throw away anything, and you're moving towards plans for reusing Electron's first stage. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about that reusability plan. **Peter Beck:** So actually, Flight 10, which is on the pad now, is a really big milestone for us. Flight 10 is a block upgrade. It has a full guidance suite onboard, telemetry suite. It also has a reaction control system onboard, so little rocket engines that will orientate the stage for re-entry. This is really a first foray into re-entry deep into the Earth's atmosphere. We'll learn a lot from this mission, and we'll learn how close we are, how far away we are. But basically, everything's on this stage except for the aerodynamic decelerator. So we won't be trying to put it under a parachute, we won't be trying to capture it—we'll just be pushing it deep and fast into the atmosphere to gain as much knowledge as we can about the environment to feed back into our models. **Chuck Field:** That's one thing I think you explained really well too—because of the size of your spacecraft, it's not even, it doesn't make sense, it's not physically, I don't know if it's possible to return to launchpad using all that fuel. So you're recovering it mid-air, which I think is brilliant. I think that's just a wonderful idea to make the reusability of rockets. **Peter Beck:** We were tasked with a very difficult approach here, and for a long time, I believed that it was not possible to recover a small launch vehicle because the environment you have to push through—we've got to go from eight and a half times the speed of sound to 0.01 times the speed of sound in around about 70 seconds. That's a tough thing to do. So for a long time, we didn't believe that that was achievable. But as we started to fly and capture data, we learned more and more and got ourselves comfortable, along with developing new technologies that we believe are going to provide that solution. But yes, it is quite a different approach. If we were to use propulsive landing that others have demonstrated, we would take a small launch vehicle and turn it into a medium-size launch vehicle, and we're not in the business of building medium-size launch vehicles. Some things scale well and some things don't, and it was just one thing that didn't scale well. **Chuck Field:** That just makes so much sense, and I cannot wait to see as that happens in the future. It's going to be incredible. ### Second Launch Complex at Wallops Island **Chuck Field:** Now, Rocket Lab is doing some incredible growth, and one of the things that you're doing now, I believe, is you're building your second launch complex at Wallops Island. How is that going? Can you tell us more about that? **Peter Beck:** I think words fail me for how impressed I am at the team—both the Rocket Lab team, the MARS team, the Virginia team—at how quickly that launch site has come together. We started driving piles in February, and it's going to be activated and certified for flight in December. There's a lot of concrete and a lot of infrastructure that had to be built there. I think we redefined how quickly you can build a launch site. Certainly, the team there in Virginia have never seen something built so quickly. But it's a real testament to a great collaboration that we were able to push that out of the ground so fast. **Chuck Field:** That's incredible. But I've heard you say just how immense of a project that was. It's no easy feat. **Peter Beck:** It is really not. I think people underestimate the ground infrastructure in launch a lot. It's like building a mini city in some respects. It's just crazy. ### The Future of Space Exploration **Chuck Field:** Peter, we're so excited for you on that. Given just space in general and how it's going, where do you see the future of space exploration going? Where would you like to see it, say, five years down the road looking back? What does Rocket Lab look like? **Peter Beck:** I think the definition of success for us will be that we're flying incredibly frequently. Photon is a platform that is just a very prolific platform that enables a much lower barrier to entry to the market, so someone with a concept, an idea can just get on orbit and provide a service. I think if we can get to that point, then the world becomes a very different place. I think if space is truly opened up for commercial influence and government needs, then I think everybody's life down on this planet is going to look vastly different. ### Conclusion **Chuck Field:** It's wonderful. Peter, again, congratulations to your team. We're just so excited about the future for Rocket Lab. I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to join me today. Really appreciate it. **Peter Beck:** It's an absolute pleasure. Thanks very much for your support. **Chuck Field:** Your Space Journey! Wow, I really enjoyed my conversation with Peter today. Hope you did too. If you'd like to learn more about Rocket Lab, just go to their website at rocketlabusa.com. I want to thank Peter for joining us today. I also want to thank Philip Shane for sharing his space story earlier in the episode. If you'd like to share your space story with us (less than two minutes, please), we would love it if you'd leave us a voicemail at 317-862-4700 or email us your audio or video clip at [email protected]. You can also help us by sharing this episode with a friend or rating us on your favorite podcast applications such as Apple Podcasts, or if you're watching on YouTube, just give us a like and comment there too. We'd appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule for joining us today. We'll see you next time. God bless you.