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All right, we'll speaking of rockets. You may remember, just a couple of weeks ago, we spoke with our colleague Ashley Vance about the new HBO documentary Wild Wild Space. The film based on Ashley's book When the Heavens Went on Sale, The Misfits and Geniuses racing to put space within reach. That film, Carol follows three space entrepreneurs, including Peter Beck, the founder, president, and CEO of Rocket Lab.
It's a publicly traded company that manufactures and launches rockets, including one schedule to launch tomorrow carrying a satellite for a Japanese Earth observation company.
Yeah, it's a great film that really kind of gets into it. Rocket Labs customers, by the way, they include NASA, the US Base to Force, DARPA, Planet Canon, the National Reconnaissance Office, and so much more. Peter back joining us now from Mississippi. Peter, First of all, great to have you here. We were so excited to have you on with us. How are you and tell us what you've been up to as of late.
Yeah, no, thanks, thanks very much, it's great.
I'm just just doing a multitude of things, is all all good CEOs should should be doing.
And we're building.
A big rocket right now. So I'm down in Mississippi doing engine tests with the team here.
So there's a lot on.
Okay, well, let's just cut right to the chase. Then give us an update on the development of some of these rockets that you're working on, specifically of Neutron. Tell us what's going on. What's the latest.
Yeah, So Neutron is a kind of a solution to kind of the mid launch monopoly.
As as you could say. And so it's scheduled to launch mid next.
Year, and we're we're working hard right now on lots of fulsion building in building complete launch sites and factories and all of all the components that go into into a big rocket.
So can you give us an update in terms of, you know, when you anticipate that this is going to be you know, ready for deployment a little bit in terms of the time frame.
Yeah, yeah, sure, So we're looking to get this aple on the pad the next year and and get get it away, so hopefully people won't won't have to wait wait long. But what I would say is it's a a very.
Different looking rocket like if you if you.
If you see it, it's it's very much, you know, an advanced launch vehicle for the modern times, and you know, lots lots of innovation in it that should should really drive down cost even further.
It is pretty phenomenal. Folks who listen watch us, I mean know that my dad was involved in doing kind of He was an engineer aeronautical and worked on a lot of guidance systems for the original space program, so we kind of grew up with it. And he's not around, but I always think he would find it kind of amazing, you know, these rockets that can come back and be
reusable because it's just not the way it was. You know, talk to us again, how you kind of rethink about how you were doing it so differently than it was done you know, by government programs for so long.
Yeah, I mean, we'll start with a small rocket, the little Electron rocket, you know that you ever pulled it out. It's got its fifty first mission tomorrow.
And you know we rereinted that through the US atmosphere completely passively and then push it out of the ocean. Neutron is a propulsive landing, so we landed on the barge or the launch back at the launch site. But if you if you look at the vehicle, you know when it lands, there's there's no bit missing, there's no bearing, mission missing, second stage missing. It's literally as it looks as it took off and ready to load the next customers, payloaded and go again.
Peter I said that you're taking on SpaceX, you're taking on Elon. If we look at the numbers, as of mid July, SpaceX had launched seventy rockets this year, rocket Lab had launched just eight. Again, this was mid July. How do you compete with SpaceX? Is there enough room for both of you given that they were quite a bit earlier to the game, and they're bigger at this point, so much bigger.
Yeah, yeah, it looks sometimes it's a huge advantage to be a first over and sometimes a budget to be a second And you know, I would I would point out that if you look at the Electron rocket and how quickly that rand was actually the fastest rocket to reach fifty launches in commercial history, faster than SpaceX and.
Faster than anybody else.
And you know it will continue to do that firs to be we expected to be first to get to one hundred as well. So yeah, sometimes you know you can start at the back, but it doesn't mean you finish lists for sure.
Yeah, just ask Apple. They're doing just fine when it comes to smartphones, and they weren't first out of the gate. Having said that Elon Musk, there isn't a day Peter that goes by that. Tim and I don't talk about probably Elon or Tesla or his universe in some way. His antics though, can certainly get him into trouble. And I think about government contracts and so on and so forth. Does his antics help you in any way?
Oh? Look, I'm proudly boring.
I'm the boringest person you could imagine, and my focus is on building a large, successful Walkert company and nothing else. So yep, we have a very very clear and laser focus.
Well, my point being that people are like, you know what, I don't know that I want to identify. Even though Elon is doing so much in this world, I want to go with someone who is did you say boring that you were is a little bit more boring?
So that's what I mean.
Does Boring does his antics kind of make people say, whether it's the US government or some other government, say, you know, Peter, we'd like to work with you.
Well, look, I mean, nobody can contest right now that there is a launch monopoly. You know, the vast majority of all launches conducted by space X, and they've been very successful.
And good one. But you know, no monopoly survives the.
Test of time, and it provides opportunities for others to come in and compete. So, you know, we have a number of tests and customers, both government and commercials, who are really really desperately looking for alternatives for a variety of reasons.
Hey, Peter, earlier this week your company announced it a completed testing of two spacecraft that are headed to Mars.
It's going to.
Enable the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamic Explorers mission, also known as Escapade. Yeah, I'm wondering if you think new Glen from Blue Origin will be ready for Escapade.
Yeah, well, you hit on an important point.
Actually, two thirds of the revenue and scale of Rocket Landers actually from our spacecraft division, So two two thirds of the company is building spacecraft. Launch is really important and it always steals the show.
But what we're trying to build here is an.
Inter space company where customers come to us and we can you know, we can design and build the spacecraft, launch it, and then even operate it for them. But to your question, look, our spacecraft already. That's that's all I know, and so we're good to go whenever Blue is.
It's sort of so it sort of doesn't matter to you because your end of the bargain is being held up. You guys are ready.
Yeah, we're ready, and we look naturally we want to see the mission launching and be successful.
So you know, we weally rooting for them to you know, to do that. Hey.
You know, one thing that's certainly front and center for us, especially I feel like in the last week, but I feel like it's every week is climate change and what's going on. And you've been working, uh certainly with NASA about some climate change missions. What can you share with us about some of the missions that you have been involved in.
Yeah, We've been involved in a number of missions, as you point out, you know, one of them Tropics, which was a really important only launched last year. So back to that mission, uh, you know, following hurricanes and providing greater resolution and hurricanes. Uh, you know, super topical right now and and you know, really valuable and have has
already had a massive impact. I think that's one of the one of the great things about the space industry is you can put a couple of little boxes of electronics on all but and literally impact millions of people's lives.
Very cool stuff.
It is pretty cool stuff.
Hey, Peter, before we let you go, you how are are you thinking? Just thirty seconds, how are you thinking about Mars?
Look? I love Myles, but I love Venus way way more. Really, I don't. Yeah, I don't think about Mars too much.
I think much more about Venus because I think there's a closer analog to Earth and that we actually have a private mission for Venus to look for life in the clouds.
So love Mars. That sorry, Venus is better.
Second planet from the Sun's sixth largest planet that's out there.
Yeah, you're going to send You're going to send people up on rocket Lab rockets anytime soon.
Not anytime soon. I mean, we're certainly making sure the neutron rocket is human rate and ball. That comes down to making making sure that it means towards criteria. But we need the market to evolve.
There needs to be more destinations before I think that's commercially viable.
All right, Peter back, really appreciate you joining us. Peter Beck is the founder, president and CEO of rocket Lab.
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