COLORADO SPRINGS - Extremely busy with an eye to the future. That's a short and sweet assessment from Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck. In the pantheon of private space groups, Rocket Lab is a roaring success, and Beck wants to keep it that way.
Founded in 2006, Rocket Lab's quest to pioneer affordable access to space was supported by the development of Electron, a launch vehicle designed to give small satellites special rides to orbit. The rocket's first successful orbital foray took place in January 2018 from the company's launch site in New Zealand, located on the Māhia Peninsula on the North Island.
Fast forward to today, and Electron has flown 46 times and deployed more than 180 satellites for private and public sector organizations, including U.S. national security payloads.
Rocket Lab, headquartered in Long Beach, California, has a trio of launch pads, two in New Zealand and a third in Virginia, on Wallops Island. In addition, the company's Photon spacecraft platform has been selected to support NASA missions to the moon Marsand Rocket Lab plans to send a photon into private territory life mission to Venus.
At the top of the company's to-do list is now the development of the larger, partially reusable Neutron Rocket for the deployment of large spacecraft and satellite constellations.
As this brief summary shows, Rocket Lab has a lot of irons in the fire.
"We joke that a Rocket Lab year is like a dog year," Beck said. "One Rocket Lab year feels like five."
In an exclusive interview, Space.com spoke to the enterprising entrepreneur at the Space Foundation's 39th Space Symposium, held here earlier this month. The following conversation has been edited for length.
Related: Facts and information about Rocket Lab
Space.com: The track record for space startups is poor: many companies have come and gone. What do you point out about your success and growth?Peter Beck: I now feel like an old person in the community. First of all, I think we are very pragmatic. Execution is central. One of the things I noticed about the space industry when I got into it is that so many companies develop something cool and then try to figure out how to sell it. We identify problems and then solve problems. By creating value, you've built something that people want.
Space.com: What was the first problem you tackled?Hint: Initially it was Electron. There is tremendous growth in the small satellite industry and the need for a small, dedicated launch vehicle. So that's where we started. The plan was always much grander.
Space.com: How do you temper 'bigger'?Hint: Half of my brain is the go-getter. The other half of my brain is the engineer realist. And they wrestle each other all the time. We end up somewhere in the middle... We are ambitious and aim for big things. But we are also very careful and pragmatic about the way we approach and implement these. We never bet the company on anything. We take it step by step and continue to grow.
Space.com: Can you grow too fast, making it difficult to keep track of everything?Hint: It doesn't look like it's getting any quieter, that's for sure. Rocket Lab has a very distinctive and different culture. We bought companies. So when you buy a company, it's another cultural challenge. But it's quite simple. Just do what you said you were going to do and execute it. There are about 1,800 of us, which is more than I ever expected. I think if you anchor on some key elements and understand what makes you special, and then anchor on that, that's important.
Space.com: What milestones await us, say, a year from now?Hint: Two-thirds of our turnover comes from our space activities. Many people see us as a rocket company. It didn't help when we called ourselves Rocket Lab. We are an end-to-end aerospace company providing spacecraft design and manufacturing services satellite components, flight software and other things. We now stand shoulder to shoulder with the other prime numbers.
The big sucking sound in the room is the Neutron launcher. We just have to take it to the path. There are a lot of people who want that booster on the pad. We have a big job ahead of us, not only to have it on the market, but also to get Neutron into production and offer it as a reliable alternative at launch.
Space.com: On the space exploration side of Rocket Lab, what about your private Venus mission?Hint: This is an example where the entrepreneur gets a little carried away, but the engineer keeps it in check. Since it is a private project, it is a night and weekend affair for the team. Everyone involved brings their own resources. I must confess that I love interplanetary, and it actually comes from the urge to answer the question: are we the only life in the universe or not? Venus has the potential to answer that question, so it's worth doing.
But we have a lot of customers, satellites to build, rockets to deliver. So the Venus mission keeps getting pushed aside because we have a business to run. But if the entrepreneurial side took over, we would launch that tomorrow. The reality is that we have to deliver to our customers first.
There's a good Venus window next year, so maybe. I'm not going to commit to it. It depends where we are. We have a lot to do at the moment and big contracts to fulfill.
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Space.com: Rocket Lab serves as mission control for several spacecraft, such as the privately owned MethaneSat and Varda Space Industries' production efforts in spaceSpace.com: Rocket Lab has also experienced launch failures. How painful is that experience and how good are you at identifying the cause? that uses your Photon spacecraft. Why is that role important to the company?Hint: Ultimately, we're trying to build an end-to-end space business, including mission operations. We can design, build and operate your spacecraft. The big successful space companies of the future will appreciate the model we are building.
Space.com: Your success exceeds your misfortunes. What's happening on the Rocket Lab factory floor in terms of manufacturing?Hint: Unfortunately, we are very good at that. We invite all our customers to a failure review board, and we are proud of that. Electron is a very instrumental vehicle and we keep a close eye on so many things during every flight. Every flight we have big data assessments using AI [artificial intelligence] to consume the data and look for any anomalies or anything outside the family. It's all part of making sure you don't fail. But it happens.
The last failure It was about 10 different things that all had to align and that we had to painstakingly reverse with thousands of hours of testing. The series of events that had to happen for that final anomaly is phenomenal. This is mainly the difficult part of the launch. No prisoners needed. There is no room for any kind of assumption.
Space.com: How do you see Rocket Lab in five or ten years?Hint: Production is production. I don't think anything has fundamentally changed. There are certainly a lot of technologies, like 3D printing. We were the first to put a 3D printed engine into orbit. Some companies have created an entire thesis around 3D printing a rocket. That makes no sense to me. There are a lot of buzzwords.
Metallics haven't changed since the 1950s. Aluminum has the same strength as stainless steel. What has changed is the rise of carbon fiber. We implement this exclusively throughout the launch vehicle. This gives us a real advantage in the field of lightweight constructions.
Hint: That's a long time to look forward to. But I do think that the large, successful space companies will be an example of what we are building. That is, you have your own launch. You have the option to build any satellite you want at scale. You can deploy infrastructure at scale. That's where it's all going.
The proof of that is Starlink straight away. SpaceX won't go away. If you want to compete with them, you'll have to build every satellite you need and take your own ride to space.
