Peter Beck is the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab. His problem: How do you turn sending stuff into outer space into something that seems as boring and predictable as mailing a package?
Later this month, one of the company's rockets will launch the NASA-funded Capstone mission to the moon. A mission to Venus is also in the works. And the company has already sent over 100 satellites into orbit.
It's a conversation about space, but also about how technological change drives down prices -- and creates new possibilities.
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Pushkin. When technology works really well, it turns incredible human accomplishments into things that are so boring and so cheap that we don't even notice them. We can light up the darkness at the push of a button, basically for free. We can talk to each other on magical video calls from the future, also basically free, also literally at the push of a button, And yet we complain if the video on our magic call gets a little glitchy. One fun thing to think about in this context is what is still cool and exciting and expensive but will become routine and cheap if the engineers and entrepreneurs working today are able to do what they're trying to do. Maybe the most interesting, compelling answer to that question is sending rockets to outer space. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where entrepreneurs and engineers talk about how they're going to change the world once they solve a few problems. My guest today is Peter Beck, founder and CEO of rocket Lab, a company that builds rockets and satellites. Is problem, how do you make going to space cheap and boring? At least? How do you make it cheap because I mean it is still space. Peter founded rocket Lab to capitalize on the miniaturization of spacecraft. Satellites were getting smaller, he figured rockets should get smaller too. The idea worked. Rocket Lab now builds rockets that are just fifty nine feet tall, about as tall as four SUVs stacked end to end. Those rockets have now put more than one hundred satellites into orbit, and at some point in the next few weeks exactly when depends on the weather, another rocket Lab rocket. We'll take off from the company's launch site in New Zealand, and this rocket is going to send a small spacecraft to orbit the Moon. It's a sort of practice run for a Moon orbiting space station that NASA is planning, and it'll be the cheapest mission to the Moon ever. Part of the reason Peter told me it is also the latest mission to the Moon. The mission to the Moon here is about how do we take a small satellite and get it to these far off destinations that would normally require you know, a big rocket and one hundred million dollars. You said it normally costs around one hundred million. What's this one cost around ten million? Ten million? Great? So it's a ten x reduction, a tenth of the cost. You know, we have to use every single gram, like we're measuring this mission in graham of fuel, like a teethpoon of fuel, gram of everything, graham of everything. So you know, we we care about how much ice is built up on the side of the rocket. The rocket doesn't have any cameras on this one on a scent because we can't afford the mass of the camera because you a camera where it's like, no, I'm not carried a cabaret a space it's not going to get us to the moon. We haven't got two grams of camera mass. So it is incredibly incredibly high performance. And you know the engine, the trajectory that structures the tanks, those tanks. If if you ever got to hold one of those tanks, it's like a magic trick because you hold this tank that's about the size of a Swiss ball, you know those Swiss balls. No, I don't know what that is. It's it's like a giant ball that people do exercises on, like one of those bouncy round balls that like the guy at the office with the bad back sits on. So they're about that size a little bit smaller than that, and they just they wait, they're all carbon composite with an incredibly thin wall, and you know, they don't look like you pick it up and it just feels like a magic trick because they are so incredibly light. A million little things to make everything as late and as efficient as possible. Yeah, and that's that's what gets us there. Good. We had to talk about Venus. We can't not talk about Venus. You're going to Venus quite like Venus. I think it's it's a very it's a very underestimated and understudied planet. I think it's underrated heat well noun of heat, no, no, no, I mean I think Mars must get so much attention because politically, you can put a footprint on the surface of Mars, so you know, it's you can take core pictures, you can take really cool pictures, all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah, so great politically, But actually, if you want to stand back and look at the closest analog to Earth, it's actually Venus. Both from a mass perspective from you know, Venus, has just Earth gone wrong in a massive climate change event, that's all Venuses. That's a scary way to think about it. I mean, this this is where this is where we will go is Venus. So what to learn? So there is this paper a few years ago that found this gasp, Yeah, that suggests at least possibly that sometimes associated with life. Right, So maybe there is or was life on Venus and you're going to go try and figure that out. I mean, really, one of the earliest memories, and I think the thing that got me into space was, you know, I was outside with my father one night and he pointed to the to the night sky and the stars and the sky and said to me, look, those are stars. They have planets orbiting them most likely, and you never know, there could be somebody looking back at you. And that was really the point in time for me. It's like, Wow, this is bigger than me. This is this is something that I need to do. So tell me one thing about going to Venus that you haven't figured out yet. That mission is a year or more off, right, So I'm sure there's a million things you've got to figure out that you haven't figured out yet to do that. What's one, what's one problem you haven't solved yet? Well, I mean, at least on the surface, we've solved the problems. A lot of these things aren't problems until until they've become problems. So, I mean one of the biggest challenges is getting there is difficult. It's it's insanely hard to get there. But we're not just going to Venus where separating off a small probe and then that probe enters the you know, the Venetian atmosphere, and we have an iflometer on board that samples the atmosphere and looks for organic matter and and you know basically you know, phosphine and other other important elements and then sends its findings back to Earth. And you've only got like a couple of minutes, right, it's like falling through the atmosphere and sixty two hundred and sixty seconds. So four of doing mouth on the radio a bad idea, but they what has had four and a half minutes, four minutes twenty second best, So you've got to all the weight of Venus for that four minutes. Yeah, and if you want to, if you want to, you know, stack up in probabilities. I mean, it's difficult to get there. Just if we even if we get to Venus will be you know that that's an incredible accomplishment for a private you know, not a non government get to get to Venus. If if we get to Venus and we and we successfully into the atmosphere with the probe, huge if we into the atmosphere of the probe and it survives and we actually get the data back to Earth because you know, it's it's a like a twenty what radio transmitting all the way back to Earth from the entering the atmosphere, and then that's a huge We get data, that would be amazing. If we actually find something like if the niphlometer actually picks up some form of organic then some sign of life, then that's when things get interesting. Well yeah, if finding alife on Vietis would be a big deal. I mean, I'm comfortable agree with that, but I should stress the probabilities of all of those things happening are very low. But if you have the ability, you have a rocket, you have a spacecraft, you have the ability to do it. I just felt that I just couldn't not try. Great, and you're spending your own money, you're spending the company's money, is that right? Yeah? Yep. And it's a public company now is the rationale that it's marketing or just like it's a good thing for the world and our company wants to do good things for the world. Well, I mean this is you know, this project has been running for many years, so that this is not like you know, surprise, it's a new expense. Yeah, and we're using old rockets, old motors, in old bits of qualifier hardware stuff you're found around the sharp stuff and send it to Venas I kept telling the team, this is a nights and weekends kind of project underlay fine Venus in our spare time that could be like your mitya exactly exactly. So you know, from net perspective, you know, it's not a huge huge outlay. But I mean even if we get to Venus, think of the capabilities that we've now created. I mean, if you think about the way that we do planetary science now it's one mission every decade with a billion dollar thing in front of it. Imagine if you can go to Venus and do real science, go to Mars and do real science for you know, ten to twenty million dollars. It's just it completely changes the game and planetary science going to other planets on the cheap I love it after the break. The problems peterback and Rocket Lab had to solve to get here, and the problems they'll have to solve to get where they want to go next. I mean metaphorically to get where they want to go next, because the literal where they want to go next his arviously space. Now let's get back to the show. Peterbeck grew up in rural New Zealand. When he was a teenager, he started building rocket engines and attaching them to basically a BMX bike. There's nothing better to test your conviction of your engineering than to put a league the side of it. Put a leg on either side of it. League, yes, correct, how fast did it go? So it would do zero two hundred miles an hour in a few seconds. And they lined me up against the newest Dodge Viper and I cleaned the Dodge Viper up in a quarter of a mile. Peter skipped college and worked as a tool and die apprentice at an appliance company. Bounced around for a while after that, and in two thousand and six, when he was around thirty years old, he founded his company, rocket Lab. Let's get to the point where you have money and you've started a company, What do you have to do to build a smaller, cheaper rocket. Well, I mean, I love your premise. You just find money and someone just gives you money. I think it's poor to realize that at that time, I was a crazy Kiwi running around Silicon Valley with a one tense scale blueprint of a rocket, in and out of boardrooms, trying to trying to convince people that, you know, that this small locked rocket was a real thing, and raising you know, a few million dollars, in tens of million dollars ultimately, and then finally hundreds of millions of dollars. But you know, I look today and you can just kind of say the word rocket and get written one hundred million dollars check. Well maybe yesterday, I don't know about today. It's changing fast out there, right, Well, it's changing fast. But but I mean it's a different, completely different world. I don't mean to minimize the work you did, no, no, no, no, no no at all. So once you've got the money, I'm sure it was easy to build a rcket. Yeah, PiZZ k. So So I mean, I think the best way to describe building a rocket and building a rocket company is running through a maze at night and it every did end. There's a guy with a shotgun, because if you run down one of those did ends too far, you consume too much resource and too much money and time to be able to turn back, and you're dad and you die. You did. So what was there a moment early in the lafe for your company when you almost died? Oh? Heaps, troll me one, tell me one. Well, um, probably prior to the electron program m once we would raise the funding for them. The electron is the small rocket you built it to just say, correct, well, before we were before you had a roquet up and running a small rocket. Yeah, but there's there's a myriad of times where you know, the wrong decision or the wrong engineering solution would have would have ended in you know, a terminal case for the company. And you see that in rocket companies all the time. I mean there's a last count that was like a hundred over one hundred small small rocket companies trying to build small rockets, and their rise and fall very very quickly as they run down the wrong the wrong paths. So clearly rocket science is hard, right, It's like the cliche hard thing. But that we compare is your things against. But i'd love to hear you talk about, you know, why rocket science is hard, and in particular, why is it hard to do what you sent out to do to send small rockets to space. You're battling physics all the way there, and if you're only a fraction of a percent out on engine performance, a fraction of percent out on a trajectory or anything like that, then you just get nothing to orbit. You've just created a ten million dollar firework. So that's why it's hard. And let me ask a dumb question, why not just make it a little bigger, put a little extra fuel in there so you have some margin on that side. So we call it the spiral of doom. And it's fairly obvious. So if you have a rocket that's a little bit heavy, or you just want to put a little bit of payload in there, a satellite on board, then you have to add more fuel. If you add more fuel, you need more tank to hold the fuel because you've added more inert mass and tank. You have to add more fuel. Because you've added more fuel, you have to add more tank, and quickly you can have a very big racket. Yeah, or a rocket that doesn't even work. Yeah, this is why it's incredibly hard. And on small launch vehicles, it's way way harder than a big rocket. And I can say that with my hand on my heart from from a position of authority right now, because I'm building a big rocket and I've built a small rocket, and you know, you just take one component, one pressure transducer. It's just a little pressure measuring device on a little rocket that represents you know, point one percent of the total mass of the rocket. On a big rocket, it represents point woo. So the problem is that there are devices that you need to put on any rocket, whether it's small or big. And if it's a small rocket, the devices take up a bigger percentage of the total mass you've got to play with. Not everything scales down, exactly right, Not everything scales down. So so what do you mean? Is that just a lighter trail and error? So I get way, it's horror. Yeah, how do you make it work? Well, you can actually reverse the spiral of doom and make it a spiral of joy if if you can make things light. And you know, we were a very very first to build an all carbon composite rocket, so you know, carbon composites are incredibly light, and if you have a light structure, then you don't need as much feel or you can carry more satellites to all But and you know that was one of the technologies that we pioneered. Both that and you know the rocket engine Rutherford, So the three D printing of that engine and the electric turbopump on that engine. So these are all key technologies that make Electron like the preeminent small launcher and then in the market right now, So let's talk about three D printing the engine. Tell me about three D printing the engine, Like, why did you do it? Yeah? Did it not work at the beginning. I'm interested in things that don't work and then you figure out how to make them work. Well, I mean, you love the rocket industry because almost nothing works fres time, that's the reality, because the margins are so slip you know, yes, yeah, because everything is always almost failing, even when it worked. So, I mean, we first announced the Rutherford engine back in two thy fifteen, and we had a three D printed one, and everybody just like, what's this guy up to? Like three D printing a rocket engine? Seriously, And this was at a time when three D printing was used for bottle openers at trade shows and cats prosthetics, it was it seemed like a gimmick, right, some gimmick to present gimmick. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah. So why did you do it and why did it not work at first? And how did you make it work? Well? I mean so metallic three D printing for us was an obvious technology that it's great to make really really complex things at relatively small volumes, and the space industry is always small volumes. If you can combine a number of really really complicated parts to get it, and you can print it in a material and have a printing process that ensures that the material retains its strength, then you're onto a winner. So we took a big gamble because you know, when we started it, it was certainly a weird kind of approach. And you know, we we printed the engine, and we went through lots of iteration, lots of material science, and you know, it's at the point now we've we've put two hundred and seventy rather engines in orbit, and you know, we print one one engine every twenty four hours or less. If you're following traditional processes, it would be. You know, you wouldn't produce an engine every twenty four hours. You produce an engine a month. Oh wow, it's not like ten percent faster or fifty percent past. It's an order of magnitude fast. It's just unfair faster, is what it is. Unfair. Yeah, it's completely unreasonable. So did your first test flight work? I'm looking for a little failure here. You keep telling me how hard everything is, But so far in this story everything is working. What's the thing that didn't work? Well? Look, I mean we like to fail fast, but it's it's it's important to fail fast on you know, a component level and subsystem level. I really don't like to fail at full scale level rock at that you lauge to fail. No, So you know the very first test flight, you know, we got through all of the high risk events, you know, launch stage separation, ignition, battery jettison, faring separation, all the high risk events, and ultimately that launch vehicle was brought down for one little tick box on a piece of ground software on the flight termination system from a third party. So even if you have your whole rocket and have everything perfect, it was one person just didn't take a tick box in a piece of software providing the flight termination services, and the vehicle was terminated. What has terminated me? In that context? You had to blow it up because the software that was supposed to tell you whether you had to blow it up or not didn't work right correct? And that was your first launch, first launch, and we were through, like I say, through all the high risk events and just cruising on home to all. But so you know, there was a less than sort of a minute or more to go until we're in orbit. So yeah, no, we're all in the control room and we, like I said, we watched the very first launch go flawlessly, and then we're standing there in the engine just shut down. Is there any there might not be? But is there any bigger a lesson from that or is it just the kind of thing that always goes wrong and there's nothing you can do about it. No. I think the lesson is that there is a million ways for a launch vehicle or a rocket to fail, and you have to be over each one of those million ways. Yeah, it's like it's like it should never work, it should never work. It's like if a rocket gets to space successfully, that's like, well, how does that even happen if you sat there and you wrote all of the things on a piece of paper that have to work every time, including things like weather and all the other constraints that have to be perfectly aligned. It's a minor miracle that a rocket ever launches, any rocket ever launches. And yet I mean, when I think about what your company is trying to do, am I right to think that that ultimately what you want to solve? Right? As I understand your company, you want, like going to space to be this boring, routine, cheap thing like whatever, sending something ups or something. I mean, is that a fair way to think about what you're trying to do? Yeah? I think I think, um, externally, at least it looking routine is what you want. You want need to think it's easy, and you to know that it's still hard. Well, the reality is it is. I mean, and I was, I was that young, bright eyed entrepreneur that would sit on all the launch panels with you know, with all the incumbent launch providers and say, oh, launch is going to be a commodity and it's and you just it's going to be ups and all the rest of it. The reality is, as we've talked about as launch is incredibly hard, and yeah, there's a bunch of things that can can make it easier. Um and you know, systems get better and better, but it always is an incredibly difficult technical feat. Do you think it will never be like sending a package UPS? Do you think it's just the laws of physics are so demand. I think it's so hard to get things to space that it just will never be this kind of Every week we're sending up a rocket. It's cheap and easy to come and get on board. You think that's just we're not going to get there now. I wouldn't say that, but I think for the end customer it probably feels like that. But behind the scenes, behind the scenes, UPS feels hard too. Right that they get all our packages here at Christmas, that's also miraculous, right, I don't think they'd say it's exactly Yeah. Yeah, So you start out with this idea of small rockets. There's just one big idea of small rocket. Now jump to whatever number of years later, you're doing big rockets, famous reversal, but also building spacecraft, satellites and little interplanetary probs. So now you're kind of trying to do sort of everything. I mean, it's that yeah, because I mean, if you if you just do launch, that's great, you solve launch, awesome, that's a that's a noble thing. But you know, if you want the space industry, in this space economy to grow like we all we want it to and as some predict, then you have to solve much much more than launch, because the space industry, you know, you know, following your thesis of industrialization, the space industry is a subscale industry full of very very small niche providers that are used to building one or two or teens of well maybe at an extreme hundreds of something a year, just little components, little pieces that go in a satellite or a rocket like so you have the sort of brilliant master craftsmen making really just a few kind of perfect parts that are extraordinarily expensive like that and extraordinarily difficult and all the rest of the yes, which is which is how the space industry is today. Now, if we want to fast forward where we're truly a space driven economy, then that can't that can't be like that. We have to scale and this is kind of the other part of what we're trying to do. Here is if you look at you know, the acquisitions and also our internal developed programs, it's all about not just building one or two unique things, but building you know, those things at scale. And if you have those those things at scale, and satellites at scale and launch at scale, now we can talk about industrializing space. Once that happens, it'll get cheaper. Certainly, is cheaper the most important, will get more consistent, more reliable or is it mostly cheaper that that's doing. Yeah, I think prices will will definitely drop. But I think to me what's more interesting is capability. You know, capability is the real needle mover here, because if you can reduce costs, then more can happen. That's a fact. But if you can actually put some new capabilities on orbit and create infrastructure in orbit, that's when you'll see the payoff. Can you give me a specific example of a thing that a capability that it just isn't there today that you could imagine getting once you get to sort of scaled up full scale industry. I think you're seeing a real time right. I mean, there's there's a lot of companies that are working very very hard to deliver Internet from space. That's one of those technologies. If you can be anywhere on the planet and you know, stream the world's encyclopedias to a device, then I think that fundamentially does change humanity at that point. So I started the show today by talking about how technology makes things cheap and boring. But this thing Peter is saying here it adds a really big crucial piece to that idea. Once technology is cheap and boring, then people can build exciting new things on top of it. You know, when semiconductors got cheaper, we didn't just get cheaper pocket calculators and mainframes. We got laptops and iPhones and cars that can almost drive themselves. And the same thing is likely to be true with space. If rockets and satellites become as cheap as Peter hopes, people will build new things on top of them, things we can't even imagine yet, things that are not boring at all. Skill more to come on a show today, and by more to come, I mean, of course the lightning round. Now let's get back to what's your problem. I want to close with just a very quick lightning round, a bunch of quick questions, but not too many. Now that you're building a big roquet, Are you going to use it to go to space? Personally? Yeah? No, easy car. I mean I have tremendous respect for any astronaut, but spaceflights is incredibly difficult and I know too much, so it would not be enjoyable trip. What's one piece of advice you'd give to somebody trying to solve a hard problem. Break it into first principles, break it, break it into the laws that don't bend, like laws of physics, and start with the first principles and the then construct it from there. Good. Do you have any advice for somebody who wants to start a company but didn't go to college, Just do it. I mean, choose the biggest, the biggest idea. Don't bother building a little company. Go after the really big ideas, because whether you build a little company or a big company, the pain and the stress is all the same, So you might as well just do a big company. Go after things that have real impact, things that you're very passionate about. And what's the worst that can happen. I mean, you're not going to die. You might fail, but that's fine. Rocketman or Major Tom Rocketman, great anything else? You want to say, I should have had a coffee before this interview is It's getting diving Deep Diving Deep with Peterbeck, founder and CEO of rocket Lab. Quick programming Note, the show will be on hiatus for the next couple of weeks. Weekly episodes will start up again on Thursday, June twenty three. Today's show was produced by Edith Russolo, edited by Robert Smith, and engineered by Amanda ka Wong. I'm Jake Goldstein and I'll be back later this month with another episode of What's Your Problem