Peter Beck on Rockets, Dinner with Elon and the Future of Space

The difference being is that you can make, you know, bad decisions for a longer period of time if you have billions of dollars to put in behind it. But, you know, I think we're proof that it doesn't take billions. It just takes the right decisions at the right time. All right.

I could not be happier. About an episode. We are going to talk to Peter Beck today. A lot of you will know who Peter is, but if you don't, he's the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab. Rocket Lab is a space company, a rocket company based— well, it started in New Zealand. It's based in California these days. Peter has an incredible life story. He's a self-taught rocket engineer, didn't go to college, built Rocket Lab in Auckland, in New Zealand. That shouldn't be possible either since New Zealand has no aerospace industry. Obviously, if you follow my work, I documented a lot of Peter's story in When the Heavens Went on Sale, my book, and Wild Wild Space, our film on HBO. And so look, Peter's near and dear to my heart. I've always found his story incredible. Always enjoy talking to him. Just to set the stage for those of you who are not rocket buffs, Rocket Lab has traditionally been making this smaller rocket called Electron. It is now heading towards a bigger rocket called Neutron, which puts it in head-to-head competition with SpaceX. It's also got a satellite business, a spacecraft business. It's turned from a rocket company into a full-on space company. And Peter is just barreling forward, and this should be a big, fantastic, interesting year for Rocket Lab. And so we'll talk to Peter in a second. Once again, I want to thank E1 Ventures for being the sponsor of this podcast. Go to E1 Ventures for all your venture capital needs. Find people, find decision makers and whose podcasts they're gonna support. Thank you for all your likes and reviews. Please keep them coming. And with that, let's go talk to Peter Beck. Peter Beck. Hello.

Great. So congrats on your company, by the way, Ashlee Vance. It looks like it's going great.

Thank you. Congratulations on your company. You've had one for much longer than I have. But thank you. Thanks, Pete. Yeah, it's been an adventure. Thanks for making time for us, Pete.

No worries.

Gosh, where to begin? We haven't chatted in a little while. I realized, I think it's been about 10 years since we've known each other, just about.

Yeah, probably is.

Yeah. Yeah. To give people a little background, I mean, I went to New Zealand, I think, for the first time in 2016, and I had heard these rumors about this crazy engineer who had actually— this was like, 2016 was a weird time. There were rocket startups appearing everywhere, and most of them you could tell were not real just by the website and the language they used. But I kept— all my friends in the business kept telling me there was this real human in New Zealand who actually knew what he was doing. But I was skeptical the first time I went down to visit you. And then I was blown away when I saw 3 Electron bodies right there on the floor. Yeah, amazing. I can't believe how far you guys have come.

Yeah, well, 10 years, it feels like a very long time. I think you've aged better than me though, Ashlee, to be honest.

No, no, sadly, I must say, I think Chris Kemp has aged better than any of us. He always looks youthful. Well, Pete, I mean, there's a million questions I have for you. You guys just reported some earnings and gave some updates. I mean, why don't you, in your own words, you want to give us the latest and greatest Rocket Lab news? And keep in mind, this isn't like a full space audience.

Yeah, I mean, look, the big sucking sound of all resource, time, and cash in the company is Neutron. So, you know, we are plowing towards getting that vehicle on the pad launched. So a lot of the earnings, we spend a lot of time covering that. The company continues to grow. I think this quarter we're 32% over last quarter of this time, of this period last year. So yeah, no, it's just continued growth and the team now is knocking on sort of 2,600, I think, or more. And— Wow. We have like 40 spacecraft in backlog and it was a big quarter for Electron. So we flew 5 and booked 8. So, you know, that product continues to, you know, to grow and grow in demand. So no, it was a good quarter.

And to give some people context who might not be space buffs, so Electron is your smaller rocket that was the, it's been the workhorse of the company. When you guys started, there were dozens, quite literally, companies trying to make small rockets. You guys are like basically the only game in town. You're the only ones who figured it out and nailed that and have launched what, like 60-something times?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 63 times. And yeah, it's been a great success.

Yeah, and then you've been working on this larger rocket, Neutron, which looks a little more like a direct competitor to something like the Falcon 9, a much larger system. And like you said, I mean, all resources and hands on deck behind that. And then, you know, for people who don't pay attention to the space industry, I mean, when I first started covering this, you were either a rocket company or you were a satellite company, made solar panels or some part of this whole equation, you guys have been one of only a couple really companies that have tried to master all of these things. I mean, in the big picture, space rocket companies have changed over the last few years, or the ones that wanna be successful, I suppose.

Yeah, yeah, well, I think, look, the rocket business is an incredibly hard business, both technically and, you know, from a business standpoint. But it is the keys to space. And it is, you know, if you have the keys to space, you can do almost anything. And of course, you have more options available to you. But it becomes very, very powerful when you also can build all the infrastructure in space. So, you know, as a company, that's kind of where we're going. You know, two-thirds of our revenue comes from all of our satellites and spacecraft components and all the rest of it, and one-third from launch. But what it means is, Because I think, you know, it's fair to say we're about the only company in the world where someone can turn up and say, hey, I want to do this thing in space, and we can design the spacecraft, architect it, build it, use all of our components, launch it, and then operate it. So it really is an end-to-end kind of thing we're trying to create here, which is pretty unique.

Especially because I guess SpaceX is so— kind of serving itself all the time, right? Right. It's making satellites for itself. It's, it does some rideshare for other companies, but you're, you're, even though you do some of that, you also, like you mentioned, I mean, you have all these companies now coming to you to, um, it used to be you had to handcraft every part of your own satellite, and now Rocket Lab is making huge chunks of that, and people can kind of focus just on what they're good at, bring their specific sensor communication system to you guys. And so yeah, it's crazy to see how this has evolved. In some ways went like faster than I thought. And then obviously space sometimes—

Too slow for me. It's going way slower than I thought. I mean, to me, it's a logical endpoint, right? Like it's just that everything on a rocket is a giant engineering compromise. Everything on a spacecraft is a giant engineering compromise. If you can mash those two together, then you make less compromises. As simple as that. So it's just obvious that the big space companies in the future, at least to me, will always have the ability to launch stuff and the ability to build whatever platform they need. And then if you want to take that one step further, I mean, it will become very, very blurry about what is a space company and what is a services company. And I think you could say that with Starlink right now is like, is it a space company or is it a communications company? And I think that that will only continue to shape up like that.

Okay. I'm going to— I'm going to get like, I don't know, I've known you for a long time. I kind of would like to make this more— just want to know a little more about Peter Beck's day-to-day life.

This is where you start asking, asking about my feelings again.

This is— you love it when I do this. You know, I just As you mentioned, the company's gotten huge. So this is a Saturday for you, I think, while we're doing this, and you're in the office on a Saturday.

Well, it's really Friday because— and then if I'm down in New Zealand, Monday's like Sunday. So this is fine.

Okay. Okay. So when I first met you, I mean, you— yes, you were already CEO running a pretty big company and having to do all the CEO things, but I know you still liked working on the engineering side. I mean, how much, how do you split your time now? And are you at all able to do the things that I know that you love to do the most?

No, no, I definitely, definitely do. So, you know, Neutron, I'm, you know, deep in that program and, you know, I get to do some cool stuff. And if I ever need some kind of, you know, mental therapy, I just go to Stennis, our engine test site, and swing a wrench with those guys for a couple of days. So, no, so I still get to, you know, do all the things that I really enjoy. And, you know, I would say that if I'm good at anything, it's kind of understanding, you know, complex engineering systems as a complete system. So, you know, understanding, you know, the rocket from tip to toe and how everything interacts with each other and the compromises that you can make. I still think I'm useful. Maybe the engineers think I'm no longer useful, but I still think I'm useful. And, you know, certainly enjoy as much time as I can spend on that.

And how do you split your time? I mean, you must be going back and forth constantly.

It changes. Yeah, it just changes. It depends what's happening. So if we've got a big engine test campaign or a tank test campaign or something, then it all moves around. Yeah, just if we've got to earn earnings, like the last few days, it's just been 100% focused on that. So, you know, and I always, I really enjoy the business part of business as well. Whether it's the kind of entrepreneurial or the thrill of the chase or all those kinds of elements of the business thing. Or also it's like, you know, building a business is not that dissimilar to building a rocket. I mean, you have to make the right decisions and apply the right resources and whatnot. And at the end of the day, it's whether rocket building or company building, it's good fun.

I mean, there's something kind of funny, which is like when you first started, this was a billionaire thing and you stood out as the non-billionaire trying to compete. And then we had this period of all these IPOs and venture-backed rocket companies. You know, most of those have sort of either gone away or are struggling except for you guys. And now you're back, you're kind of back at this billionaire thing because Blue Origin has started to launch a bit more. Eric Schmidt has just taken over Relativity. I was thinking about this the other day, but it's like you come so far that you end up back in this spot where you're basically against 3 guys with near limitless resources again. I don't know, do you find humor in any of this?

No, look, if money, if the money was, the solution or the key enabler to this industry, then Virgin Orbit would've been successful. I mean, Richard Branson put $1.2 billion into a small launch company. Relativity would've been successful in its first incarnation. Like, the good thing about this industry is yes, you can have billions, but it doesn't guarantee success at all. So, you know, the rocket gods are the ultimate levelers of these kinds of things. You still have to make the right decisions. The difference being is that you can make bad decisions for a longer period of time if you have billions of dollars to put in behind it. But I think we're proof that it doesn't take billions, it just takes the right decisions at the right time and you can also be successful.

What did you make when you saw Eric go all in on Relativity?

Well, I haven't really followed. I mean, I saw that he kind of took it over, so I'm not really sure what the plans are there. But, you know, I mean, you certainly, yeah, I mean, I think there need to be some significant changes within architecture and company and all of that to that be successful, which, you know, I'm sure Eric's smart enough to see.

Yeah, I mean, that was a bold, bold move. We will see how it plays out. You know, you talked about you can have all this money and just continue to make bad decisions. Like the— when I was reporting my book and doing the movie, I mean, I talk about this in the book and I think you and I have talked about it. It's kind of the most— it's like the question that stays with me the most, I think. From doing all this reporting is that there was this— there were all these rocket companies that I was following. And, you know, SpaceX was doing very well. And then obviously, like we talked about, you guys have done really well. You're in New Zealand. Most of the people on your team in the early days had never launched a rocket before. It was a bunch of 25-year-olds, mostly from New Zealand, Australia, a bit of Europe. It's like one of these situations where your American rivals seem to have kind of like everything on their side. And yet you were the ones that succeeded. And, and I bring SpaceX into this too, in that these seem to be the only two cultures that have figured this out. And I've never been able to put my finger fully on on why this is, and you guys were always the one that didn't make sense. Um, I don't know, like, like when you look at hindsight and you're able to reflect a bit, do you have any, any sense as to like why you guys figured this out when everybody else couldn't?

Yeah, it's a good question. Um, look, it's not like one thing. I think that's what makes it hard. It's not like one one thing that would be an easy thing to point to. I think it's a collection of a whole bunch of different stuff. I think in a lot of respects, the cultures between SpaceX and Rocket Lab are similar but different. You know, the one thing that we really drive home here is hustle. And that means different things to, you know, to different people. But in the Rocket Lab context, it means like, When there's an issue, you don't just sort of stop and accept there's an issue. You just find a million different ways around that issue. And I think a lot of people get to a problem and they just sort of go, well, we can't get this valve. So they just, okay, it's going to be 9 months till we get this valve. So we'll just have to wait 9 months for the valve. Maybe it's a boldness or an arrogance or also just a sheer willingness to survive. We just would never accept that and we would just go and make a valve and just make it work. So I think that's part of it. I think we are an engineering company first and everything else is second. And so all kind of decisions are kind of an engineering-based approach. Methodical kind of approach. And if you look right throughout our leadership, right up through our corporate structure, everybody's deeply technical. I mean, Adam Spicer, our CFO, you can have as deeply technical conversation about a rocket engine as you want with him. So I think having that right across the business is important.

And like, I mean, I imagine, As with any adventure that you go on, you learn things along the way. But how did you kind of like figure this out?

I mean, it's just engineering. It's just engineering at the end of the day.

And this kind of came, but what about the leadership side? I mean, you don't strike me as someone, maybe you do. Do you read like a ton of business books? I don't know. Where did you pull your experience?

No, I've never read a business book or any of that self-help crap in my life. No, no. Yeah, no, no. I mean, everybody's got their own style and I lead differently to other people in this industry and other companies and they lead differently to me and I think it's whatever kind of works.

Are there big things that you've changed as the company's got bigger?

No, not really. I think the thing I spend the most amount of time on is making sure things don't change. Making sure that our culture doesn't evolve as we get larger. Particularly difficult when you go and acquire companies with their own distinct cultures and making sure that you infiltrate their culture with your culture. So I think I spend more time and worry about the magic of Rocket Lab being diluted more than changing anything for a different system.

Yeah, and along those lines, I imagine you have to be be polite on these things because you're working with NASA and government customers and things like that. But look, when you guys were building your launchpad in New Zealand, you went at this ridiculous pace. The— as you've built your third launchpad in the United States, there's a reality to this that there's bureaucracy surrounding this just by nature of kind of where it is. What— because I know this culture that, that you set up, um, in New Zealand and in, and in Southern California. But so what has that experience been like? I, I have to suspect you cannot always go as fast as you would like to.

No, um, but there's the— there's always two, two approaches to this, right? Like, there's one approach where you get up into everybody's junk and just get angry and publicly shame and all those sorts of things. And then there's the other approach where you try and convert the people to your way of thinking and bring them along on the journey. And I would say that genuinely, the vast majority of the time, that's the approach we've always taken as a company, whether it be with the FAA or anybody else, we've always tried that approach. On occasion, you have to just call it out. Call out and take a different approach. But I guess that's one thing that's a little bit different. So yes, we had to deal with a lot more bureaucracy than we normally had to deal with. But the Electron pad at LC-2 at Wallops Island, let's not forget, we built that in 9 months. So we built it quick. Now we couldn't launch off it quick because of an autonomous flight termination system that was quagmired and in regulatory. But in Neutron's pad is the same. Like, you know, that is a big pad and it has been built in record time. So, you know, within a couple of years that pad has been built along with its assembly building. So, yep, sure, there is, there's certainly certain things that, you know, bureaucracy certainly slows you down and gets in the way. But we've been pretty successful at converting that bureaucracy into supporters and it not being, not been much of a drag.

When you started building the pad in the US, you took a big chunk of the team that had done that work in New Zealand, right? And brought them to the US?

Yeah, but there was also a big team from the Wallops crew as well. So yeah, I mean, we took the guys that built one pad because it makes sense, you know, so we don't have to learn or make mistakes again. But a lot of the work was also done by, you know, the local people at the pad and also the surrounding areas. So it's the same with Neutron, exactly the same with Neutron.

Yeah, no, I was just, I was curious if you take someone like Sean de Mello and transport them to the US to try to help instill some of the culture, you know, that you guys had spent all these years setting up in New Zealand.

Yeah, well, I mean, and that's, that's exactly what we do. I mean, you can go to just about any site and you'll see a crazy Kiwi there. And we do that strategically, right?, right? Like as I mentioned before, part of my job is to make sure that the magic never dies and we make sure that we put the right personalities in the right areas to reinforce and grow it.

Do you think, it's interesting, we had, we talked about this a bunch already, this whole first wave of rocket startups and then bunch cleared out. Now there's kind of like a new wave of a couple companies coming and I don't know, I mean, do you think It's interesting how this is divided up. I mean, you guys just own the small rocket business pretty much completely. And then now we have quite a bit of competition on the larger rockets. Do you, do you feel like this is a solved problem or do you think we keep iterating on— there's only so much you can do to some extent because of the physics. I'm just curious if you think we We had this first wave and then somebody actually figures something new out as we go on a new way to tackle this problem.

I mean, it's totally a SOP problem. At this point, there's one Electron rolling off the line every 15 days, which is by far the harder thing to do than just putting one on the pad. But I think the reason why you see these continual waves is that Really, you have to build a small rocket before you can build a big rocket. And it's a few things. One, the lessons you learn are a much smaller scale. If you screw up a stage 1 tank at Mito, you know, owe you a couple of hundred thousand dollars versus, you know, $20 million. So you kind of have to do that. And also, you know, these are all entrepreneurial companies, so they're raising capital. I mean, it's pretty hard to go, I've never built a rocket before, this team's never built a rocket before, give me like a billion dollars and we'll go and build a rocket before. And that experiment has been run. And I think anybody, by anybody's measure, it was a pretty colossal failure. So it's kind of by necessity, you have to, start off small with small amounts of capital. And if you've got small amounts of capital, really you can only build a small rocket. So it's, yeah, it's literally like a graduation. Once you build your small rocket and you figured it out and you have enough credibility that you can do that over and over again, that you can go and raise the capital to go and build a much larger rocket. And I think that's probably where the billionaires come in, is they can skip that step because they don't know how to raise capital.

Have you ever been out to Longshot Space in Oakland?

Longshot?

Yeah.

No. What do they do?

They're in, I guess there's probably like maybe 3 kinetic launches. They're doing a big—

Oh yeah, like Spin Launch and those guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Longshot's not doing a centrifuge. They're doing 10-kilometer-long space cars. Yeah, I was curious if any of the kinetic stuff at least intrigued you.

A little bit. So we have like skunkworks here at Rocket Lab. And we actually studied alternative launch for about 2.5 years. I had 2 physicists looking at it. And the reason why I'm talking about this is because actually we published the paper, so somebody can go and find the paper now. And we published the paper because it didn't work. But I think it was probably one of the most complete studies of beamed energy where, you know, you have ground stations and either microwave or laser and you beam energy to heat a heat exchanger and dislocate some hydrogen. It gives you a really, really high ISP. And it's one of those beautiful things like space elevators and things like that that in theory look really good on paper. So we studied that for quite some time and things like, you know, laser blooming in atmosphere and it went into some really good details. And basically at the end of 2.5 years, we concluded that it just was just not a good idea. But I think it's great that people are looking for alternative launch means because I think we all want to travel around the solar system. But rocket propulsion as it exists today, it just hasn't changed since the end of the '50s, right? Like we've reached 98% seastar combustion efficiency very, very early. We understand all the propellants that you can mix to make the highest performance. And it's hydrogen, oxygen. So we've already kind of maxed out chemical propulsion. We have many, many decades ago. So the only thing that is left to do is just to build bigger and bigger rockets. And they just become comically large at some point. So unless you can solve this ISP or this performance problem, Then it's very, very difficult to put any meaningful mass in orbit, which is the solution to explore the solar system because humans are incredibly fragile. So we take a lot of crap around us to keep us going for any period of time, which translates into a lot of mass in orbit. So until that problem's really solved, we're not going very far at all. And so it was a super interesting program because it that you had thousands of seconds of ISP versus hundreds. But we basically concluded that didn't work. So there's a long way of answering your question, but I think it's important that people study different ways of doing it. Now, we were studying it for different reasons, human exploration of our solar system. But kinetic would be a bit tough for— for that, that would be an unpleasant journey.

Yes, yeah, yeah, especially. You wouldn't want to be the test pilot on that. So, but what are you saying? You're saying you kind of studied this in different ways and come to the conclusion, not worth pursuing, but you're also happy people are trying. I don't know, it doesn't sound like a huge vote of confidence for the folks that are trying.

Well, I mean—

But you're saying—

G is a problem, right? Like G is always a problem. And the SpinLaunch guys, same issue, right? I mean, at the end of the day, materials and systems are relatively fragile. So if you've got hundreds and hundreds of G, then that's just sort of kind of problematic. And by the very nature of spacecraft, every kilogram is precious. So everything is as light and as flimsy as possible. So, you know, kinetically, if you're launching bricks or, you know, things like that into orbit, that may be great. And there may be a use case or a business for that. But, you know, if you're looking kind of in the more immediate term of spacecraft and bits and pieces, then it's not clear to me that it makes much sense. But I could be completely wrong too at the same time.

Do you— do you— I don't know if—

well, I—

there is no hindsight here, really, because you're, you're all in. You know, when I talk to people sometimes, look, they're huge fans of everything you've done. They still— some people will say to me, you know, Neutron— you were talking about big rockets. I mean, they said Neutron should have been bigger, especially with Starship coming. And yeah, I mean, you know, you kind of got to take these things in stages and you're committed. But I don't know, you must have battled with that question, obviously, how big to go and just the way the market has gone where small satellites haven't been quite as popular, I think, as people thought. And I don't know. Yeah. Do you have any— I'm sure you're going to admit all your Neutron regrets right now.

Well, I mean, Look, and historically we've been okay at this, right? So, you know, we were building Electron when other people were building 1-tonne vehicles. Which one has been more successful? And, you know, if you're a small satellite, we understood very clearly that if you could ride on a rideshare, you obviously would. Because it's much cheaper. So the only people that ride on Electron, for example, are people that require dedicated launch. If you look at the kind of dedicated launch satellite masses, like the 95th percentile is like 150-200 kgs. Electron's designed to take up to 300 kgs. So, you know, there's very, very few satellites that we can't launch on it. And then of course, it's perfectly sized for, that particular payload and represents the lowest cost. Now, with a 1-tonne vehicle, you're kind of in that no man's land where you're now too large. Like, if you turn up with a 250-300 kg satellite on a 1-tonne rocket, well, guess what? You don't get a discount for not using the 700 kgs of the capacity of that vehicle, but all the costs and everything still remain. So, you know, instead of an $8.5 million launch, it's a $19 million launch. And then from a rideshare perspective, you're too small to be economically competitive. And rideshares, you can't get enough on to be economic. So, you know, we don't kind of just pull this stuff out of the sky. And we studied it very, very deeply. And, you know, when we were looking for Neutron, we studied that very, very deeply as well. And, you know, on a Falcon 9, if you just ignore Starlink, the average launch mass of a Falcon 9 is 5 tonnes. So, you know, when we're thinking about, and every kilogram of a rocket of spare capacity costs money. And like I said before, nobody, you know, you can't give anybody a discount for not using the full capacity of their launch vehicle. So, no, I think we've, and history will prove me right or wrong here, but I think we've selected a, you know, a throw mass that we think is going to be extremely commercial. And if we're wrong, actually, because the diameter of Neutron is so huge, if we need to increase payload capacity, a tank stretch becomes really pretty academic. So we reserve the right to be right and wrong, but we can also do something about it pretty easily if we are wrong. But history would say we've been pretty good at this.

It did, yes. It's like the question I get all the time, like while I was writing the book and after the book is that it's weird, right? The things we use all these satellites for, for the most part right now are communications and imaging. I think you could make a pretty good case that, that I think when I was first starting out writing my book, I mean, people were pretty skeptical that things like Starlink would work, that we'd even see this first wave of like 10,000 satellites or 20,000, to me, even with comms and imaging alone, I can see a pretty clear case to, I don't know, 40, 50, 60,000 satellites. There is still some frustration, at least for me, it's always like, well, what's next? What else can we actually do in space? And I don't know, you guys have, you and I haven't talked about this in a long time. What are you, Who comes up with what that increases even more demand for these launches?

Yeah. I mean, it's a good question. And I think everybody needs to understand also that we're pretty much at the beginning of this. Right? I mean, if we're honest, it's really only sort of 5 years since launch cadence and costs have dramatically changed, both on the medium class and on the small size class. Before Electron, you had to buy a Pegasus if you want a dedicated small rocket at $50 million. So we're right really at the beginning of this kind of evolution. And costs are only going to go down. It's only getting less expensive here. And as the scale of spacecraft go up, you know, the cost of all the components and everything in them continues to go down and down and down. So, you know, a whole bunch of things that just wouldn't have been economically viable all of a sudden become very economically viable. So I'm not gonna try and pontificate what might be next because I think, you know, I know well enough that the biggest thing yet to be, you know, to be done in space hasn't even been thought of yet. So, you know, I think we're very early in this journey.

I mean, I've always felt the same way. I think I kind of argued parts of that. I don't know if I'm surprised. I would've thought, thought somebody kind of would have cracked, cracked the nut on one other, one or two other big things already. I know you said you won't pontificate, but if you— there's nothing on the list of whether it's like what Varda is doing with trying to get manufacturing going, or, or I mean, I do hear the AI people talking about the data center in space stuff all the time. I don't know, any of those jump out at you as possibly more realistic than others?

Yeah, I mean, as I said, once the economics drive to a different, keep driving to different places, I think a lot of those things become much more viable and feasible. I think one thing I think that will be interesting is the evolution of the commercial space station. And, you know, I think that will drive a new human exploration, you know, solution and requirement. So I think, you know, space stations have been government assets, run like government assets, and just like rockets were government assets, now we're going to have commercial space stations. So I think that will be very, very interesting to see how that plays out. Because if the ability to build a space station and operate it dramatically reduces in cost, the ability to get there dramatically reduces in cost, then all of a sudden, it's not just tourism I'm talking I think it's much more useful for things than that. But all of a sudden, accessing low Earth orbit in a human sense is gonna become much more viable, and then all of the stuff that you can do with that.

So when you say more useful than tourism, you're talking about what, like some kind of manufacturing, more science?

Exactly, yeah, all of the above, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just the ability to build more stuff as well. I mean, it's sort of, circular reference and self-feeding that if you can get up there and you can build this stuff easily, then you'll build more and more of it. And as you build more and more of it, then it continues to grow.

You guys just announced a point-to-point transport deal with, was it with the Air Force? Which branch of the Air Force?

Yeah, AFRL, Air Force Research Laboratory.

And that's scheduled, I think, for 2026?

No sooner than 2026, yeah.

Okay, and the idea there is like some kind of proof of concept of taking some cargo from one point on Earth through space to another place.

Yeah, yeah, and look, everybody's very early in this concept, but I mean, at least technically that's feasible. And if you can get your launch costs down far enough, then, you know, obviously they're gonna be super high-value cargoes, but, you know, there's plenty of examples of those. So I think it could be pretty interesting, yeah.

Yeah, but like I've heard, I mean, this has been a fantasy of sci-fi people and space people for years and years and years. So what, it just took us to this point of like cost, reusability, all these things to start actually being able to run these tests.

Yeah, totally, yep.

And that's something you think stays in the military, super high-value payload for a very long time or that, I don't know, where do you see that going? I'm kind of fascinated.

Look, I'm probably not a subscriber to the New York, London ballistic rocket air travel or space travel as it may be. I think at the end of the day, human spaceflight, by the very nature of it, remains risky. You have tremendous energy stored and released. So whenever you do those things, it's kind of, you know, and a safety factor of 1.1 by the necessity of the rocket equation, then you always are going to end up in a situation where that's just a little bit more dodgy than not.

Okay. All right. There's like a bucket of questions that I'm going to shift gears on you a little bit. There's stuff I've always wanted to ask you.

Oh, God, here we go.

Yeah. Some of these questions you will like or be neutral on. Some, to your exclamation, you will not like. When I was doing the book, I got to go down to Invercargill, where you grew up. And I know you sort of hate these ambiguous questions, I think. But I don't know. I mean, there's something about that place. Well, first of all, it's really cool. Your dad has all these sculptures all over the South Island. I didn't realize until I started doing the reporting. I mean, he was like a— seems like a just incredibly unique guy. He did sculptures. He ran the local museum with his telescope that I think he built, or you guys built together?

Yeah, he built. Yeah, he built when he was 18.

And he's in— and had what, like one of the world's largest jade collections, I think, and like seemed like this crazy history buff across different areas. Just like an incredible character, right?

Yeah, yeah. No, he was an interesting guy for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's something about that part of the world because Burt Munro comes from there and he set, what, like the land speed record on a motorcycle? You were this teenager building fast cars in his garage, his own propellants, rocket engines. We all know the rocket bikes and all that. It's not a very big town. Like, what is going on down there that it breeds people like you?

Well, look, I think you can go to any town and just about anywhere in the world and there's always folks that do interesting things. I don't think there's anything particularly special about Invercargill. I enjoy going there. Time slows down there. That's probably why I had to leave pretty early because you go there and you get kind of sucked into the vortex of Invercargill and everything slows down. So it's a great place to go And very, very beautiful, of course. But I don't know, I'm not sure. I mean, if there's kind of anything special. Yeah, I don't know.

You never want to buy into my theories. I don't know. I don't think Burt Monroe and Peter Beck can come from a 50,000-person town and there not be something interesting going on there.

I think the one thing I would say is that I think as you live in any kind of small town and especially towns that, you know, you don't have tremendous amount of resources in, people become very resourceful in those environments. And I think, you know, there's the number 8 wire saying in New Zealand, which I personally hate, but it kind of, cutting it short, it kind of means that you, you make do with very little and you kind of jerry-rig stuff together and kind of make it work. And I think the Southland farmer, the Southlander, that's probably more prevalent than most places within the country where you're at the bottom of the South Island, the middle of nowhere, and there's not much population or resources around you. So by necessity, a farmer is not a farmer. A farmer is a mechanic, a welder, a machine operator, and all the things that are just to keep everything going. So I definitely think there's a level of resourcefulness down there that probably is unique. And I think if you went to any little town in an isolated area, you'd probably find the same thing.

I'm not sure most people realise this, but there's quite a number of aerospace startups in New Zealand. It's a tiny country. I mean, I think probably after the United States, it might have of maybe China. Um, it probably has second or third most. Um, I think, um, I know you would never do this, but I will trace this all back to you and Rocket Lab, you know, sort of setting, setting the standard. I, I know you tend to be a New Zealander and humble about these things, but there must be something satisfying about, about seeing this effect you guys have had?

Yeah, I mean, sure, it's good. And any Rocket Lab employee that wants to spin out and do their own thing, generally I'll end up as an investor. And I guess outside Rocket Lab, one of the passions that I have is entrepreneurism. And Kiwis are really resourceful, innovative people, as you've probably come to know. They're really, really crappy at building big companies though. They just can't.

Terrible at selling themselves.

Terrible. Terrible. Yeah. So, but, and you know, when I first started Rocket Lab, it was kind of cocooned in this environment that, you know, that's why I went to Silicon Valley, right? I mean, you go to Silicon Valley and anything is possible. Any idea is possible.

To a fault. Yeah.

No, no, not, it's wonderful. Don't ever change that. That's the most magic thing. You know, I remember having my first meeting with Vinod Khosla and it went quite well. And the first thing I did is I went to, you know, it's like a little supermarket that's right by Khosla there and bought an American flag and took it home and hung it in the office because like there's something incredibly special about that place that it's, you know, you just think as big as you want to think and everything is golden.

So no, go ahead.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So I've lost my train of thought now anyway.

No, no. Well, and is this, is that you feel like some of that's bleeding over in New Zealand now?

Like, oh yeah, sorry. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean that and, you know, the venture capitalists here were just rubbish, like terrible, predatory, terrible. You know, they viewed that, you know, the higher the risk company, the more stock they should own because it was higher risk. And I'm like, Guys, it's higher risk, it means you're going to need to raise more capital. So you want to have the least amount of stock, be the least dilutive you can at the very beginning because this thing is going to need to raise a lot of capital. So there's just a whole bunch of fundamentally archaic views about how you do this. And I was pretty vocal and it was a while there that nobody invited me to their start-up summits because it had quite a dissenting view on all of that. But over time, it's changed. And it's, you know, I would say New Zealand venture capital and New Zealand start-up culture now is great. And, you know, we brought over a few of the investors that invested in Rocket Lab. And all of a sudden, you know, the term sheets that were being delivered by New Zealand VCs just looked ridiculous. So you kind of have to sharpen your game up a little bit. So now, I mean, it's unrecognisable. And as a result, you're seeing lots of really cool companies, not just in the space industry, but in the tech industry in general, really starting to do good things. But the number one thing I still fight with New Zealand entrepreneurs is not thinking big enough. Is not going really, really massive. There's a tendency for New Zealanders to just sort of not push too hard.

Well, I think you always thought big, and I would say you were like, I always appreciated, I would say you were good at being, you didn't bullshit, right? And you would always like kind of be pretty secret about what you guys were working on and then only kind of talk about it when you delivered. But you were already saying you do appreciate some of the Silicon Valley, that hype, that suspension of disbelief. But you've never— you've been resistant, I know, all this time to kind of like embrace that in your personality, the way you talk about Rocket Lab.

Well, I'm always internally conflicted because half of my brain is wired as an entrepreneur and the other half is wired as a conservative. Engineer. So you end up constantly fighting internally because half of me wants to go after this crazy thing and the other half is like, well, this just doesn't seem sensible. But I mean, you end up in a kind of a middle ground. But yeah, I think we've always been very transparent and honest about what we think is is achievable and not achievable. And you know, it's just part of the culture of the company.

My sense is you're trying to like avoid Silicon Valley these days. Now that you're a public company, you don't have to deal with the VCs. Have you had enough?

No, I actually the opposite.

Okay.

I love it. And you know, there's nothing better than, you know, still go to the odd VC, you know, CEO conference and bits and pieces just to get a bit of a kick. So no, I, you know, I really love that. I mean, a public company is a bit dodgy. You know, there's less freedoms, certainly, than as a startup. We very much run Rocket Lab as a startup, but you know, there are certain guardrails you have to have that are kind of less fun.

Weren't we texting though? Maybe it was San Francisco specific during its kind of fallow period. I mean, weren't you trying to avoid the city? I thought I remember. Something about this?

Well, San Francisco in general is, it's a little bit better now, but it went through a pretty rough patch there a couple of years ago. It was shocking, in fact. But no, I mean, location agnostic. But I mean, I guess the, and look, I sit on investment committees of some startups, and I'm sorry, some venture capitalists and advisors to some venture capitalists as well. So no, I very much love that. Side of it.

Okay, now you're gonna love this next question. The movie, what was it like? Is anything— did you enjoy— did you take any pleasure from watching this film?

Oh, it took a while, Ashlee Vance. Um, come on, I have to say, you did— no, no, no, no, no, look, look, you did an exceptionally great job. I think it's— everybody who watches it really, really enjoys it. There's something deeply uncomfortable about seeing yourself on, on in these things. You know, I just wanna build rockets. I'm not into any of that. So it's always uncomfortable to see yourself, but everybody's enjoyed that movie. And I think it's done a, you know, it's been, congratulations, it's been a really good.

Well, all thanks to you. I don't know if, Lots of people, I'm sure, do not know the backstory. I mean, I guess you can tell from some of the footage that I was working on that for like 6 years. There must have been— people probably don't know that I ran out of money along the way a couple of times and things like that. I mean, you must have— I'm sure there were— I'm sure you were surprised on some level when that actually got finished.

Oh, no, I knew you're going to do it. No, no, no. Never had any doubts that was going to come out.

Okay.

Do—

did— last time I was in New Zealand, I mean, you were— I was like kind of surprised because Rocket Lab was already a big frickin' deal, but you were not like a household name. I don't know. Are you getting— I'm not saying because of the movie, but in general, are you— do you get recognized in the street now? Is this— New Zealanders are funny. They kind of like don't like it when people succeed to some degree. So maybe not. I don't know. But yeah, what's your life been like the last 2, 3 years?

Yeah, well, I mean, Rocket Lab is pretty well known in New Zealand now. And so it's not uncommon to be recognized at all, which is fine and odd at the same time. To be honest with you, I enjoy going to the States because nobody knows who the hell I am. And that's good. But yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, I guess it goes with the territory as the company's kind of got bigger and whatnot. And yeah, sure, your movie doesn't help, Ashlee Vance, that's for sure in that respect.

Do you fly United?

I do, yep.

And nobody's grabbed you on the plane?

Nobody's grabbed me on the plane, no. But I have to admit of sitting there and seeing someone watching the movie and then pulling the hat out of my laptop bag and my sunglasses and trying to slink off the plane for sure.

Were they sitting like right next to you?

I haven't had that one yet. Haven't had that one yet.

Okay, all right. All right, another question you're gonna love. We'll see if we'll get the full story from you. I remember, this is from my memory. I wrote about it in the book. Hopefully I did this right. Right, you can correct me. But I remember being in New Zealand with you and you were kind of like, hey, set up— I'd like to have dinner with Elon or, you know, talk through some things with him. Can you kind of help facilitate that a little bit? And I think I put you guys in touch on email. And then I don't know, a couple months passed and I heard you guys did have dinner. I remember texting you kind of being like, how did it go? You're like, it was great. And then And, you know, from my reading of the situation, this is like SpaceX, not too long after this, decides to really get into the rideshare business and come after some of the sweet spot of you guys' business. So when you told me that meeting was awesome, was it awesome? Do you have any— I always felt like you got more on Elon's radar as a result of that.

Yeah, that's a fact. Yeah, no, much better to stay off the radar for sure.

Okay, that's all you're going to give me on that one? Would you have done it over again if you could?

Well, I mean, to be honest with you, the rideshare missions really haven't had any effect to our business. Probably have actually had a positive effect to our business because it enables customers to get a spacecraft up earlier and cheaper. And we see, you know, a very common trait is that someone will go up on a Transporter mission, prove out a spacecraft, raise some money, and then come over to Electron because they actually need to deploy their constellation in very dedicated orbits to provide the service. So, you know, that is, that in many respects has been pretty helpful. And Electron was never designed to compete with rideshare. I mean, prior to, you know, the Transporter missions, there was the PSLV Indian vehicles, and prior to that were the Dnepr Russian vehicles. Cheap, ubiquitous rideshare has been available throughout the world for as long as I've been in this business. So that didn't really impact us. I'd say that where the impact was had was companies that hadn't made it through the gauntlet, companies that hadn't got through the startup. And I think it was a pretty clever move by them in many respects because What would you rather do? Like, would you rather pull out a forest while the trees are just so kind of, you know, 2 inches high in seedlings? Or would you rather wait till they grow big and then have to get out your axe? It would take a lot more work. So by doing that, it kind of pulled out all the seedlings and made it very difficult for— And you see in the States now, there are no small launch vehicle developments. There's some in Europe, but there's basically none. And of course, I'm not gonna attribute that purely to that, but that in combination with Electron's kind of successful track record makes it very, very difficult to go into that market and try and compete.

What do you think happens to Europe's space program?

Do they end up, do they have like a, It's completely dependent on the governments because there is a fixed number of payloads and we fly payloads from all over the world. And the impetus for someone to go on a small launch vehicle that is unproven is pretty low, especially if the cost delta is very The impetus is very low. If you've got a payload and you can choose a vehicle that has like a 93% success rate and a high cadence versus a vehicle that may have flown half a dozen times and of that, majority of failures, what are you going to do? So there's a few things that have to happen. You'd have to come out and you'd have to just be like instantly successful and just launch after launch after launch after launch after launch. I mean, we had our first failure after 13 flights, and you'd have to do better than that, I think. And then, you know, the payloads, there's just like a collection of payloads from all around the world. So really, if, you know, if it would be up to, when I say it's up to the government, governments would have to bring sovereign payloads to nurture the company through that point, to nurture the company through to getting through the scaling. I mean, it costs twice as much for us to build to scale than it did to put the first rocket on the pad. So when you fly your first one, you're like one-third done. So you would have to have a lot of, I think, government support there in sovereign payloads and nursing them through to a point where they scale and then can kind of stand on their own two feet. That's my view, right or wrong. I think that's the only way I see that being successful.

Do you think like Russia, I mean, God, got a lot going on. I mean, do you think they ever mount any kind of revitalization, some sort of comeback? Space is so near and dear to their like national character.

Well, I mean, purely they have the capability. I think they've just got a bit of apology to the world for a while. So I think they've kind of cooked their chicken for a while. And you have to make good on a whole bunch of stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're getting close on time. I'm sure you probably have to go. I don't know, can we do like rapid fire on just a couple things?

Yeah, sure.

Starship? You know, how, I don't know, what do you, yeah, what do you make of Starship?

Well, I'd actually like to go and have a look at it one day. I think that would be super cool. I mean, look, it's a cool program. It falls back into the category of, what we were talking about before with kind of the limits of propulsion is you just end up building larger and larger rockets to be able to do more interesting things in our solar system. So, you know, hence the reasons why we put resource into like, can we not build a bigger rocket? Can we figure out a way to get better performance? And that's, you know, we'll continue to spend time on that. But, you know, for now it's really the only solution if you want to put large amounts of mass into orbit and put footprints on Mars and all these kinds of things.

Well, and SpaceX always goes fast and there's some amazing things about Starship. I have to imagine this is more explosions than they really had in mind. I don't know, like how realistic does it feel to you?

No, I don't think they would think that. I mean, like you'd have to ask Elon. He'll tell you that. No, I think like any of these programs, they always take longer than you hope. And there's a lot of new stuff to try and new stuff to learn there. So I wouldn't give him a hard time for that.

Okay, all right. Well, I promise not to keep you too long. I appreciate you letting me ask some of these questions that I know you hate.

Eddie, actually, these are fine. These are completely fine.

Yeah, but I always want to get at your soul, Pete.

I know. I know you do.

Thanks so much for the time, mate. I really appreciate it. And I hope to see you again. And I think, well, so somehow through doing this book and the movie and just being on X, I've been adopted by the Rocket Lab retail stock community. And so I have a standing offer for a brisket barbecue when Neutron launches. And so I'm ready for you guys to do this thing. I think I got a big party to go to out in Wallops.

Absolutely. That would be good.

All right, man. All right. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. And we really appreciate the Thanks, Ashlee.

It's great to catch up.

Thanks, mate. Core Memory is hosted by me, Ashlee Vance. Today's guest was Peter Beck from Rocket Lab. The show is produced by David Nicholson and me sometimes. Our theme music is by James Mercer and John Sortland, and the show is edited by the Pyrotechnic, John Sortland. Thank you all for listening. As mentioned, the show is sponsored by Yuan Ventures. Thanks.