Setting out to change the world is one thing. Setting out to change the way we leave it is another. Together with his Rocket Lab team, Kiwi entrepreneur Peter Beck has already achieved remarkable things, but he’s just getting started. The sky, it would seem, isn’t the limit. Not by a long way.
There are so many ‘how’s’ when it comes to Peter Beck and Rocket Lab. How has Beck achieved what he has achieved? How do you convince seed investors to put their money behind an “end-to-end space company”? How does a company become proficient in successfully launching rockets? How many rocket scientists does New Zealand actually have? How has New Zealand become the epicentre of satellite development and deployment?
How has all of this happened?
Because it’s a remarkable story. And given the nature of the enterprise, possibly even more remarkable is how down-to-earth the man at the centre of it all is.
Straight talking, economical with his words, but also open and contagiously enthusiastic about what his company does and what it is yet to do, Peter Beck talks about space like the CEO of a sea freight logistics company might talk about shipping.
“We’ve simplified space for companies, scientists and governments,” he says. “We’re helping people do amazing things. In the process New Zealand has become a spacefaring nation.”
And who is sending stuff into space? Companies you’ve likely never heard of, like Kinéis, a global Internet-of-Things connectivity provider which, with Rocket Lab’s assistance will deploy a constellation of 25 satellites across five dedicated Electron rocket missions next year. Or Astroscale Japan, which will use Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket to launch the ADRAS-J satellite, which is phase one of Astroscale Japan’s technology demonstration of removing large-scale debris from orbit.
Clever people doing otherworldly clever things. And it’s the ‘doing’ that appeals to Beck.
“I think it’s important to apply what you learn and put it to work. If you have a practical talent for something – whether it be mathematics or physics or engineering – then you should use it to create something or change something. Theories are fine, but it’s the practical application that makes a difference,” says the 45-year-old who spent his childhood in Invercargill experimenting with rockets before taking that curiosity into the workplace, teaching himself how to build them while working for Fisher & Paykel, then Crown entity Industrial Research Limited (now Callaghan Innovation).
Every Rocket Lab managed mission so far has left the planet from the company’s Launch Complex 1 (LC1) on Mahia Peninsula, about 90 minutes south of Gisborne.
“We had a clean sheet of paper to build LC1 from scratch, which was both a luxury and a colossal pain,” says Beck. “We couldn’t exactly go out and study other private orbital launch sites around the world and figure out what works and what doesn’t, because before LC1 they didn’t exist.”
In terms of activity, Mahia is right up there alongside Cape Canaveral in Florida, and other large scale launch facilities in China and Russia. The company is licenced to launch a rocket every 72 hours if it so wished.
“From about the tenth launch on, I was largely irrelevant in the room,” says Beck. “But realistically that’s how it should be. I look at everybody who comes to work with Rocket Lab as being the best at what they do. I have faith in our flight team’s abilities, so I let them get on with their role. I know where I add value and where I don’t.”
That’s not to say launches look after themselves. There are always nerves among the team on a launch day. A business working with expensive hardware and paying customers, Rocket Lab’s flight team can’t leave anything to chance.
“Everyone on console is extremely focused. If you’re not a bit stressed, then you probably don’t know what’s going on. We are very invested in providing a reliable service for our customers, so that’s our chief goal. It might look easy on the launch casts (Rocket Lab broadcasts every launch on its website) but believe me it isn’t.”
The company now has three launch pads – two at Mahia and another in Virginia, USA. At time of writing, 28 launches have been completed, deploying 148 satellites in the process.
This is a truly global business. Beyond global actually. But there remains a wry Kiwi sense of humour to the operation in its naming of each and every launch. Launch missions with bespoke artwork and officially registered titles like ‘They Go Up So Fast’, ‘Another One Leaves The Crust’, and ‘A Data With Destiny’ give the intensely complex nature of sending rockets into space a whimsical twist.
“It’s a serious business, so there’s no harm in having a bit of fun as well,” says Beck. “The mission naming process is an informal one – it usually comes down to a bunch of us standing around a computer trying to make each other laugh. Our first launch in May 2017 was a test launch. We had to come up with an international discriminator to register the launch, so it officially became ‘It’s A Test’.”
There is one recent launch that dispenses with the knowing wink in the title, however. In Rocket Lab’s mission list, 28 June 2022 records CAPSTONE. The customer? NASA.
On that day Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, paired with the company’s new Photon upper stage, sent the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) miniaturised satellite on a transfer orbit to the moon. It’s a highly complex component of NASA’s Artemis programme, which will eventually see the space agency return to the lunar surface.
Beyond merely transporting tech into space, Rocket Lab aspires to be fully emersed in planetary science missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus and further into the solar system. Building on the Electron rocket, Beck and his team are looking next to the bigger Neutron rocket, which will have a payload of 13,000kg to Light Earth Orbit, will feature reusable boosters and – crucially – will be able to take humans into space.
“To have significant up-mass capability and to be able to advance space flight with our own rockets would be an amazing thing. We’ll definitely give it a go,” Beck says.
“We set the bar incredibly high at Rocket Lab, which can sometimes be a barrier to growth. Good engineers want to work with good engineers, and that’s been fundamental to the way Rocket Lab has grown. So, it’s a slower, more deliberate growth path.
“We don’t base our success on how many launches have been deployed. That’s not a metric we track. But we do measure our success on our company culture. We want people to be proud to work for us, to come to work to achieve really cool things. I think by that metric, we are succeeding. We are having an impact.”
