Main Engine Cut Off - T+155: Peter Beck on the Pandemic’s Effect on the Industry and Rocket Lab’s Busy Few Months

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

Peter Beck, Founder, CEO, and CTO of Rocket Lab returns to the show to talk about how the industry is dealing with the pandemic, and to update us on their busy past few months, including their acquisition of Sinclair Interplanetary, flying missions to the Moon and beyond, and their work towards reusability.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 37 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Mints, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and six anonymous—and 357 other supporters.TopicsPeter Beck (@Peter_J_Beck) | TwitterRocket Lab | Frequent and reliable access launch is now a reality | Rocket LabRocket Lab (@RocketLab) | TwitterRocket Lab - YouTubeEpisode T+138: Peter Beck, Founder of Rocket Lab - Main Engine Cut OffRocket Lab executive says company is well positioned to weather crisis - SpaceNews.comRocket Lab Expands Footprint with New Long Beach Headquarters and Production Complex | Rocket LabRocket Lab to Acquire Satellite Hardware Manufacturer Sinclair Interplanetary | Rocket LabSinclair InterplanetaryRocket Lab Selected by NASA to Launch Pathfinder Mission to the Moon | Rocket LabRocket Lab’s Electron Launch Vehicle Certified by NASA | Rocket LabRocket Lab Debuts Fully Autonomous Flight Termination System | Rocket LabRocket Lab Opens Launch Complex 2, Confirms U.S. Air Force Payload as First Electron Mission from U.S. Soil | Rocket LabRocket Lab launches milestone tenth mission, completes major success for reusable rocket program | Rocket LabRocket Lab Successfully Completes Electron Mid-Air Recovery Test   | Rocket LabRocket Lab to Launch Dedicated Mission for Japanese Space Industry Start-up Company Synspective | Rocket LabThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOListen to MECO HeadlinesJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterBuy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off ShopMusic by Max Justus

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and we've got another special guest with us today. It's been a good couple of weeks for guests here and this one is returning to the show. Peter Beck is the founder, CEO, and CTO at Rocket Lab. He joined us about six months ago on the podcast to talk about what they've been up to back then with Electron and Photon and everything else that they've been working on. But he's coming back here in the midst of the pandemic because, unfortunately, launch operations are shut down for Rocket Lab for at least a couple of weeks here. But they've been up to a lot since we talked last time. They've been making a lot of progress on their reusability efforts. They've done a couple of really successful tests between the last show and now.

They've also won some important launches, the top of which being the launch of Capstone, which is going to the moon. It's a NASA mission to go to near rectilinear halo orbit. It's going to test a bunch of different technologies out for NASA that are going to be moon. It's a NASA mission to go to near rectilinear halo orbit. It's going to test a bunch of different technologies out for NASA that are going to be used in their Artemis program as currently planned. And Rocket Lab will be launching that with their photon satellite bus as well. They've also completed things like autonomous flight termination systems, and they've got a new launch site here on the east coast of the U.S. that should be up and running sometime pretty soon. And they've been launching a ton since then as well.

So we've just got a ton of topics to cover, as well as a little bit on the pandemic and its effect on the launch industry and the space industry at large. So I'm really excited to have him here on the show today. So without further ado, let's give him a call. Peter Beck, welcome back to Main Engine Cutoff. You are maybe the first return guest from a company that I've had. So it's good to have you back on. Oh, thanks very much. It's great to be on. You've had a hell of a six months since we talked last. We sort of talked right at the beginning of the reusability effort. There were some launch agreements that I was figuring you were going

to win that have since been announced. So we've got a ton to cover today. But I think maybe we should start with the current situation of the world. You've obviously been affected by the pandemic. You were gearing up for a launch that was shut down when New Zealand had their shutdown put into effect. It's a really weird time, but Rocket Lab seems well positioned for it. How do you feel like you've been making out so far with everything that's going on? Yeah, I mean, look, it's an unprecedented time. And we, yes, you did right. I mean, we had a vehicle on the pad ready to head into wet dress that we had to, you know, quickly push back in and safe and along with the payloads. So, you know, it all moves very, very quickly, especially in New Zealand here.

But, you know, I think we're like any, you know, any company that sort of has a product and is launching. It's kind of less devastating, but still really, really challenging. In New Zealand, it was a hard shutdown. So we had basically the only people that are allowed to work in the medical profession or providing food. So we've been working from home, and of course not everybody can be effective working from home,, we've been working from home and of course not everybody can be effective working from home, but I've been working from home for, you know, nearly a month. So, but,

you know, as of yesterday, New Zealand is opening back up a bit and we'll be returning to work come Tuesday next week and pushing the vehicle back on the pad. So it's been a painful month, but it's good to be moving forward. And then throughout this whole time, the unsung heroes in the Long Beach factory have just been pushing through and continuing to build engines and avionics and spacecraft, and, you know, they're just, you know, real troopers. Now, you did, I saw a couple of quotes from you through some articles that have been written

recently about, you know, the fact that you did close that round of funding pretty recently. I forget exactly when that was, but that, you know, you're one of the lucky few, much like the last show that I did was with Tim Ellis of Relativity, who at the end of last year, closed a big round of funding that is now helping them get through. So there are these companies that are well positioned leading into this kind of thing. Obviously, nobody could have foreseen this happening. But one thing that I'm curious about, I keep reading articles about how much this is going to affect the small launch industry and the small satellite industry. But I think for people on the outside, that might not really make a lot of sense in our head because it's like, well, some of these, you know, some of these other companies have yet to launch.

So they're still in the same situation they were before. Companies like yourself, you've got a ton of people on the backlog that you're obviously delayed to getting to. But, you know, you seem well-positioned. So what are these effects that are kind of maybe behind the scenes for us on the outside that could really harm a company that might not be so well-positioned? Yeah, it's a really good question. And I've been reflecting on this lately, even as much as the end of last year. Look, I can remember when I first raised the first you know, the first bit of capital for Rocket Lab out of Silicon Valley. And it was back in 2013. And, you know, I was the crazy guy on the street, right? Here's this Kiwi who thinks he can build a rocket company. And, you know, Elon had proven

that it could be done. But, you know is a is a human forcing function so um you know it was really tough to try and convince people that you know small launch was was something that was going to be valuable and um and you know we we had to execute execute flawlessly through the technology developments um and I guess you, sort of middle of last year, stuff was getting funded that I was just scratching my head at going, how on earth, how on earth can this get funded? And, you know, this doesn't make any sense. And not just in the small launch industry, but, you know,

other sectors of the space community. So I think everybody saw that space was hot and space is still hot. And I would say that there's been some unreasonable money going to some unreasonable ideas, which, by the way, is fantastic because that's how we really innovate and move forward. However, everybody knew that there was going to be

some kind of levelling of the field here at some point in time. I guess nobody assumed that it was going to be a global pandemic. There would be a number of other reasons that I would write down on a piece of paper before I would have written that one. And Rocket Lab's capital round was, you know, the one we did about a year and a half ago was a couple of things. It was make sure we had a big, you know, keg of dry powder

to weather whatever storm you get thrown. And generally, you know, that in my mind was, you know, dropping a vehicle on a launch pad or, you know, that in my mind was, you know, dropping a vehicle on a launch pad or, you know, wiping out some infrastructure or, you know, something, some major kind of anomaly rather than something like this. But nevertheless, I think if you own a rocket company, then you have to be prepared to be shut down for six months or more, whether, like I say, for an anomaly or for some other reason. So I think that's important. But the VC funding has dried up. Let's just not sugarcoat it here. I mean, I do a lot with VC both here in New Zealand but also in the US, and I'm an investor myself

and you know certainly I'm not making any investments right now as is no VC that I know it's very much a hunker down support the companies you do have and ride it out so if you don't have a product that generates revenue, you don't have a long runway. It's going to be a real tough time, which is really sad. Yeah. And I guess I get that part of the investment side of things where you might not be looking for the newest company with the newest idea and really focusing on whatever indeterminate time is between now and when things are back to some sort of normalcy. One of the things that I'm confused about personally, maybe you can help me work through it,

is a lot of the writing I've seen around, specifically here in the U.S., the Department of Defense, the Air Force, Space Force, and others, being really concerned about the supplier market. And that's launch providers like yourselves. You're part of the Orbital Services Program 4 that we'll probably talk about a little bit later on. But this general worry about the supply chain of defense contractors, that one seems kind of weird to me because a lot of these cases, launches notwithstanding, you are delivering products, right? You're on contract for certain component level things. How is that side affected or am I reading these wrong and that's not really one of the main worries here to try and try and go and buy some stuff that's that that

that's probably my advice there so and and i haven't tried to buy a star tracker recently to be honest with you well in all honesty this this is one of the fundamental reasons why we made this sinclair acquisition um is because uh you, we started off with our photon satellite platform. And our goal here is three months from someone coming to us with a sensor to getting them on orbit. Now, if you've got to wait six to 12 months for a star tracker, for example, you know, you can't deliver that service. So, you know, the Sinclair acquisition was really about securing the supply chain, not just for our platform, but for others. You know, it was really an eye-opener when we started to build our own satellites, how fragile the space supply chains really are. And we have at last count around about one and a half thousand suppliers for the

Electron launch vehicle. And a lot of those suppliers are very, very small businesses, you know, 10 or less people providing a really niche and special product. So, you know, the supply chain is inherently fragile. And once those, you know, take that example of, you know, there's 10 people in a little company that are doing something very special. Once that goes away, it can take years to recreate that knowledge or even that product and that expertise. And so I think, you know, the space industry is just an agglomeration of these really niche small suppliers that, you know, in an example like this, don't really have huge resiliency to,

you know, to shoulder something as massive as a pandemic. So I think, you know, the Air Force and the government is doing exactly the right thing in making sure that industrial bases is reserved for the future. Much like we did here is we haven't stopped ordering anything from our suppliers. We've just built stock just to make sure that those, those suppliers are, are still, still there for us. That's a, that's a really good example of what you're saying there with how much the funding helps to be able to have that in the bank, to make these orders, place deposits, that that's a really enlightening aspect because that, it does make sense when you consider, uh, I think it's easy to, to think of defense supplies, suppliers as like Boeing and Lockheed and huge

companies that are just massive, right? But you're right in that a lot of these, specifically the smaller end of the industry, is pretty niche and one-off. It's just crazy to me. Like you were saying, if I wrote down ideas of when the small launch, calling of the herd, would happen,

it was not pandemic in my mind. It was when someone like yourself gets the company, the launch pad starts launching, you know, 10, 11 rockets and people start realizing that they need shorter term launch contracts than anything that are kind of farther out ideas, you know, but it is what it is. So I would love to dive into Sinclair a little bit more as you're describing there. So for background, for people that aren't out there, you've recently acquired Sinclair and a planetary

that makes a whole bunch of different components for satellites. I'm curious if you, you know, how did this, you mentioned a little bit what drove the decision to make sure that you had the supply chain secured for everything that you need to do in the future with Photon and others. But how do you see the future of Sinclair turning out? Is it going to be something that still operates as an independent company

that you are kind of wholly owning as a subsidiary? Or do you intend Sinclair to fully be subsumed by Rocket Lab work in the future? No. So, you know, how the Sinclair thing really came about is we had already selected Doug's products. You know, how the Sinclair thing really came about is we had already selected Doug's products. You know, the Sinclair products, from our view, were a superior product. They're highly reliable and we like things that are beautiful. So we weren't going to go and spec products into any of our platforms that, you know, didn't meet the Rocket Lab quality bar. So, you know, we had a relationship with Doug for quite a while,

and it really just made sense. Doug and his team are just artists at what they do. But what we do well is taking really complicated systems and producing them at volume. You know, if you look at an electron, there's a lot of stuff in there that is way more complex than many of these satellite components. And we produce those on scale. We have the quality systems and the supply chain and everything there. So it was really a wonderful opportunity for both companies. You know, we get all the advantages of Doug's team and their experience and their wonderful products.

And their team gets our experience with kind of the might or the manufacturing and commercial might of Rocket Lab. So I'm a strong believer in people and great teams. And so I have no desire to change anything there at all other than give the Sinclair team access to all of the tools and the resources Rocket Lab has to grow and make better stuff. And, you know, one of the advantages of the acquisition for both parties is, you know, Sinclair now has an innovation platform that's almost unfair.

If, you know, the team wished to create a new star tracker or a new reaction wheel, they can just throw it up on an electron anytime they want. So we can iterate and build flight heritage on new concepts and new ideas at an unprecedented rate. So when did you start working with Sinclair in the timeline? Was it before you got into the kickstage work or was it really kickstage and photon when you started working with these components? It was really, really the kickoff of the photon program. Um, so as we, you know, um,

it's almost a look back and I think what's calling rocket lab, rocket lab, the right decision, because, um, at the time, at the time I liked the sound of it, but, um, but really, you know, the, the, the overarching goal here, but really, you know, the overarching goal here is, you know, to provide access to space and to use space for the benefit of humanity. And, you know, launch was the obvious first problem that needed to be solved. You know, there's no point in building a pizza delivery business if you can't actually deliver the pizza. So that was the bit that we needed to solve first. But, you know, Rocket Lab is very heavily into satellites now,

satellite manufacturing. We have a capstone mission to the moon, which is sort of like an extreme version of a photon satellite. We manage satellites for government customers. We manage satellites for government customers. And we have agreements with KSAT ground stations. So we work ground stations as well. So we really cover a big spectrum of things.

Obviously, launch is very obvious. But it's by no means exactly everything we do. So the relationship with Doug was, you know, as we ticked off launch, and we see small launch as a solved problem now. Yep, we need to continue to scale. It's a very clear path there, you know, but it's just a solved problem. The next problem we need to solve is the spacecraft element. You know, it shouldn't take as much time or money to get concepts and ideas and orbit as it currently does. So we really started that program in earnest last year. And that's when we first reached out to Doug and

started doing the trades, quite frankly, of, you know, who builds the best star trackers, who builds the best reaction wheels, and who do we want to spec into our products. That's interesting. So you went in looking for a partner there, not necessarily thinking that you would build this ground up, fully vertically integrated from the start? Generally, we like to. Like, Electron is about 90% all vertically integrated,

probably more so than any launch vehicle in the world. So generally that's our go-to. But, you know, things like Star Trackers and Reaction Wheels, you know, heritage is a big deal. And when you're trying to convince the customer that your platform is better than someone else's platform, but, you know, everything is new on it, is better than someone else's platform, but, you know, everything is new on it. We kind of took the approach that let's not take too much risk here and let's spec our platform out with a few elements

that are just best in class and we'll do the rest. And we have done the rest. You know, we have our own line of torqueroads, our own line of ACS systems, power systems. So, you know, we've built a lot of other stuff, but those two particular components are, you know, they're satellite jewelry. So it's better to start, you know, if you can't build it from scratch,

then maybe it's better to just buy it. Now, Sinclair is a Canadian company, so it seems like you're probably less worried than most about involving other nations in the program, considering the fact that you're working your way through the five eyes at this point. You got three of the five. Was there any concern there about, you know, if you've got any eye towards, obviously, Canada's not like buying engines from Russia or anything like that when it comes to the US Department of Defense. But if you're looking to sell photon to government customers, is there any additional overhead that

comes with having a Canadian company in this? Not really. I mean, like I say, I look at it as the people and, you know, the people make the best products. If we have to do assembly of those products or manufacturing of those products in America for particular customers, that's no big deal either. I mean, we've got a giant factory in Long Beach. We can do that. So, you know, I really look at, I guess I start at the highest order and, you know, who are the people? What is the product? And then, you know, sort of meeting the regulatory constraints, we'll do what we need to do to meet that let's talk about capstone you mentioned it a second ago um last

time we talked i think it was nearing the point at which it was going to be announced that uh capstone which is in a mission to go to lunar orbit it's actually going to use the same orbit as the intended orbit for nasa's and isa and JAXA's Gateway program, eventually the near rectilinear halo orbit, which is maybe the worst name for an orbit that exists. It seemed like a really good fit for Rocket Lab, for Photon itself. I would love to hear a little bit more of the background there of, you know, how long has that project been in the works? Was it something that kind of dropped into your plate or did you have an idea that this was uh underway for longer than that yeah i mean so there's there's all manner of projects going on at rocket lab um and this project was originally um uh funded an intern um and Hunter, who now works for us, and said,

okay, Richard, let's remove some constraints here and tell me what I can get to Venus. Because I'm wholly in love with the planet Venus, and I know that everybody loves Mars, and this is probably consistent throughout my whole life that I seem to fall for things that aren't in the norm. But that was their original plan. And, you know, also while you're doing that, tell us what you can get to the moon.

Tell us what we can get to Mars. And, you know, expand the design space and see what we can do. And, you know, Richard's a super smart guy, and he started working these very unusual trajectories and, you know, came up with some solutions that we could actually throw some decent sensor mass, because you have to remember that photon is a platform. We can take 35 kilograms to the moon.

So that's a 35-kilogram sensor or 25 kilograms to Venus as a sensor. So it doesn't sound like a lot, but 25 kgs buys you a lot of instrument. So that's where it really came from as we started to investigate, you know, what under a really high-performance, high-energy photon spacecraft platform, what could we get where? And really at that time, we didn't know that NASA was also working in the background, the Capstone mission. So, you know, it was really a wonderful, you know, joining of two programs.

Now, is the Capstone spacecraft itself going to be its own satellite or are you kind of refactoring this to become a photon-led mission or is this like you know photon as a kickstage sort of situation here? Yeah so we it is its own satellite and effectively our mission ends at the end of a TLI burn so at the end of the TLI burn you know we do a series of of eight orbital raising maneuvers and then one final TLI burn. And then after that TLI burn, we separate off the spacecraft and it continues on its ballistic transfer. So that's, I guess in theory, that's the end of the mission. However, that's not the end of the mission for us.

It would seem a waste to have a photon on a TLI trajectory and do nothing with it. Yeah, absolutely would. We would all be mad at you if you just let it float past the moon, for sure. Yeah, unfortunately, it's not that easy. There's quite some GNC trickery that needs to go in. We coast out to 3.2 million kilometers away, do a maneuver, and then kind of draw ourselves back in. So it's not like a super easy just

ballistic transfer, and all of a sudden, a few days later, you're there. We stooge off into deep space for a while and then do some maneuvers and some gravity captures and it all gets kind of funky. So really our goal there is to deliver the payload safely for our customer and that's our primary goal. Once we've done that and successfully done that, then it's playtime. So you said eight different burns to get up to TLI. Could you talk us through a little bit of the trajectory overall? I assume it's a pretty typical electron

launch up to some sort of parking orbit and then a series of elliptical orbit raising maneuvers? Correct. Yep. Yep. So we go into a relatively low altitude to begin with the first home and transfer. And then we continue to raise the orbit over a period of days and over eight burns until we position ourselves. Because, you know, this going to the moon is no joke. Seriously, it is no joke. Because it's not, you know, the way the whole trajectory works is the spacecraft is leveraging some of the moon's gravitational field also. So we have to be in exactly the right time and exactly the right space.

So, you know, the TLI staging of that TLI burn has to just be absolutely, you know, bang on. The delta V has to be just bang on. The orbital elements just have to be perfect and yeah it's it's it's no joke that's for sure this is a mission that's definitely going to push you know what what rocket lab has done so far but like you mentioned there's venus and there's mars there's also geosynchronous orbit. Is there any kind of look towards what you could put to maybe a geosynchronous transfer orbit or, I don't know, direct to geo with a very small amount of payload? Yeah, yeah, no, there is. We've done those studies, and it's in the tens of kilograms.

I think it's 20-something kilograms to a geo. And we can also do asteroid rendezvous, flyby, all sorts of stuff. But I guess the most exciting thing, and look, it's super exciting to go to the moon. This mission is super exciting. But I guess the thing that makes me giggle like a schoolboy is the fact that you can go and do these missions for sort of $10 to $20 million. and do these missions for sort of $10 to $20 million. I mean, the barrier to go into an interplanetary mission, normally you measure that in hundreds of millions of dollars just in launch alone.

So this is the most exciting thing about this program is we're building an interplanetary platform that is so inexpensive that going to the moon, going to Venus, going to Mars is affordable. You were probably the most excited person ever to watch the CubeSats that were on the InSight launch to Mars, I would assume? Yeah, no, that was a great program for sure. Yeah, no, that was a lot less mass overall. So, you know, what you're talking about here, it is pretty mind-blowing to think about, you know, such a low price point here for missions to all these crazy destinations. And you're obviously going to make tons of Venus scientists happy

who have been overlooked by rounds of NASA mission proposals, and you're talking about your love for the planet. So that's probably got some people's ears piqued on that one. Your work with NASA has led to them certifying officially Electron for some missions. It looks like you're hot on the heels of Category 2 certification. Was that related to Capstone, or was that a separate thing entirely for that certification?

No, we've actually been working with NASA for a while on this, ever since our VCLS mission. And, you know, we found that whole process like super helpful. You know, you think you're doing the best you can do and you think, you know, what you put in place is world class. But it's really great to, you know, have those, you know, the team there at NASA come in and actually review everything that you're doing. And, you know, I think everybody at Rocket Lab is, you know, very, very proud to get the, you know, the NASA cert.

And as you say, we're working now quickly to get the Category 2 cert because I think that says a lot about not just your company but your product that you can, you know, it's not just can you do it once, can you build this thing that works, but there's a deep dive into, you know, all of the systems, all the quality, the supply chain, everything, and, you know, to come out the other side of that is, like I say, we found it a really useful, really useful process. The last piece I want to talk about before we get into some of the reusability stuff

that you've been showing off recently is the autonomous flight termination system that you flew on. That was the last launch that it debuted on, right? No, last two launches. Oh, two launches ago okay got it um what was that like to get underway because i think you're the first after spacex to have integrated this officially right afts is a massive project we've been working afts since flight one. Um, and, uh, you know, if you recall flight one, we actually lost that vehicle due to no, no fault of the vehicles. It was a ground based, um, flight termination system that failed. Uh, so AFTS is dear to all of our hearts because, um, you know,

we lost our first vehicle over FTS and it's, it's, it. And it is a massive, massive project. We've worked, like I said, we've been working tirelessly with NASA and with our own teams and the FAA to finally field a unit. So it was a big milestone and a big party when we flew our first AFTS mission. And in New Zealand now, it's just completely standard. We have none of the big dishes and equipment that's, you know, so infamous with traditional flight termination. And right now we're going through the certification of that AFTS

on Wallop's launch range. So, you know, the vehicle is sitting there, the bed is built, and we just need to get through the certification, you know, the NASA certification for that, for our AFTS unit to operate out of Wallops, which, you know, the team is working super hard and they've made great progress,

even through COVID-19, to get through that certification. But there's a flight safety system. This is serious stuff. This is not a place to get wrong. So it's a bad day if it doesn't go the way you need it to go. Yeah, absolutely. Is there, I know it's, it's something that, um, sounds like it's maybe the last thing left before you can fly out of wallops, which is

a little bit later than you were hoping originally. Is there any, anything particular that's, that's really hard to nail down, uh, with this kind of system? I mean, fundamentally it's, it's very simple, right? Um, especially on electron because, um, you know, there's no, um, you know, there's no explosive termination. It's literally cutting some two 5-volt wires and the whole vehicle shuts down. So from

a hardware perspective and even from a software perspective, this is not a tricky thing. But to get the level of reliability that you need out of the software and the hardware, there's just a huge amount of qualification and code view and certification mapping to the current standards. And tailoring, there's just a huge amount of work to do. But yes, this is the last thing that is required before we can fly out of wallops i don't know how much it plays into it

but i know they've got uh some recent memories that might make them think this is a more important system than uh than others might so i don't know how much that is a factor here in in you know what could be amounted to a little bit of a delay here um hopefully the pandemic gives you a little cover to make up some of the schedule on the back end but um you know it's going to be exciting to see that because you've got a handful of missions from wallops that are really exciting capstone is one of them but you got a couple before that's on the pad itself so that's that's going to be really cool to see yeah no it's super exciting so the reusability efforts last time you were here on the show you were right at the beginning of of. Last time you were here on the show,

you were right at the beginning of that program and you've been making quick work so far. You've done the full atmospheric re-entry on that same mission where you debuted the autonomous flight termination system. Yep. From what you were talking about last time,

I think you thought that would take a launch or two more than it ended up taking or were you expecting success on one of your early missions like that? Yeah, I mean, look, it's such an unknown thing to do, and modeling that is very, very difficult. And I think we've taken quite a modeling-heavy approach to this, because it is really hard to gather data. So, look, when you're talking about ballistically reentering a stage, the probabilities of success were pretty low, to be fair. The model, don't get me wrong, you know, we weren't going to field anything

that we didn't think was going to work. But the boundary conditions and the fidelity of the boundary conditions and our understanding was low. And we're a really conservative bunch here at Rocket Lab. You know, we really cross our T's and dot our I's. But, you know, even in something like that, you get to a point and you just have to fly it. So the trick here for us is, is the re-entry corridor and having a really good control over that re-entry corridor is critical.

And, you know, I think, I think we were all surprised at certainly how successful that first flight of it was. And then we flew another flight exactly the same straight after it. And we kind of, we reached the point very quickly where it's just, there's no point in flying in more flights. We get two data sets that match very well. And really that those data sets that were able to validate all of our assumptions and predictions in the models. So we ended up at the end of that in a really, really good place. So the next step, you know, was to just move on and do the next block upgrades.

Now the main part of that was a reaction control system, some guidance and navigation changes, but I don't think you have had any aerodynamic services for that part of reentry, is that correct? Not yet, no. So we basically put a full control suite on stage one, so little baby reaction control thrusters as you mentioned, flight computer nav solution, GPS, IMUs, and telemetry. The telemetry was a bit of a trick.

We actually had to have a plane sitting out deep into the Pacific Ocean with a couple of our team on board, and we outfitted the plane with a bunch of antennas and RAF gear, and there was just enough room in the plane left for our two team members to sit there cramped in the corner. And it stayed on station for as long as we could. And during the launch, that's how we received the telemetry link. The second mission, the trajectory was a little bit different. So we're able to, we've got a big tracking station down on the Chatham Islands, which is an island sort of 500 kilometres east of New Zealand.

So we're able to put another mobile dish down there and track both with the with the airplane and that ground asset to give us even more fidelity of data and and imagery so it was it was um it was it was really good but um it was quite quite the logistical nightmare mind you nowhere near as you know the scale of logistical nightmare as the the drop test we recently did that was a whole nother level yes i that's the next one up. But I do want to ask about the atmospheric controls, because I think most people listening will be familiar with grid fins that are on Falcon 9. Obviously, a very important part of its approach, and it's doing propulsive landing, so there's

probably some differences there. Is that something that you don't need at your scale? Or is it something that because you'll be proceeding to a parachute-assisted recovery, you don't need that final aerodynamic control in that part of the atmosphere? What is it that lets you not have to worry about that? Well, we've taken a bit of a different approach here. And there just isn't the propellant or the mass margins in a small vehicle to do propulsive landing at all. All you do is you take a small launch vehicle and you make it a large launch vehicle. So our approach here had to be an approach that had a very small impact to payload.

So our approach here is instead of trying to to fight the atmosphere we're teaming up with the atmosphere and try and get it to do as much of the work as possible there are some recovery elements that we really haven't announced or shown in any of our any of our stuff yet that are critical to that being successful. So although there's no grid fins, you know, and we still are, we still do have mechanisms to deal with the atmosphere, or not even deal with it, I would say partner with the atmosphere to do all the work for us um so we kind of trade propulsive landing we use the atmosphere to our advantage but what that means is you you end up paying for it and downrange logistics so hence

you see the helicopter and the boat and and we're downrange to start with we're not we're not actually trying to return it back to the launch site yes and this was probably the coolest video to come out in a while here you've you've done the official mid-air recovery tests here um i would love to hear some background on this because there's an amazing video that people can watch if they want the specifics of this uh is this a system that you've developed internally, entirely? Or is it a little different? Because there's this YouTube video that's floating around out there from PDG Helicopters, and they did work with Airborne Systems and Lockheed Martin a couple of years back. That looks very similar. Is there a crossover here? Or is this convergent evolution? No, it's definitely convergent evolution.

You know, we, the recovery team here, look, actually, you know, I said it when we announced recovery, you know, hooking the thing out of the sky is not the hard bit here. And, you know, I'm not saying it's trivial, but it's really not the hard bit. And there's plenty of examples through history, right back to corona, where mid-air capture has been demonstrated. As you point out, you know, Lockheed had a mid-air recapture program at some point. So, you know, this is, you know, we're really not trying to break new ground here. You know, I guess the techniques are similar. The techniques are similar. I think we looked at what everybody asked it, of course, but we also did a lot of our own testing and our own development. And, you know, so I think things do ultimately converge.

But you probably saw from the video that, you know, our pilot, Ned, he's a spectacular pilot. You know, we bought that helicopter, you know, for, you know, during launch day operations, we fly all our staff in and out of the launch range because it's just faster and easier and cooler. Not to be discounted for sure. Oh, no, no. I mean, yeah, i love my black helicopter but um but never

nevertheless um you know we also part of the part of that justification was was this work and um so we'd spent quite a bit of time um testing and uh and you know picking things and and uh really the the key to it all is um having a spectacular pilot clearly but but also the um you know the actual hook mechanism at the bottom and making us a really really stable platform that you know you can fly with under the helicopter and you can throw it around and it just sits rock solid you know if you if you watch that video you'll see a sort of an orange thing on the bottom of the hook it's a bit of an aerodynamic shape to it but um you know, if you watch that video, you'll see a sort of an orange thing on the bottom of the hook. It's got a bit of an aerodynamic shape to it. But, you know, all testament to the recovery team.

You know, that thing, you can fly that around and throw it around and it just sits there rock solid, which is what you need when you're trying to, you know, trying to capture something like this from the sky. So this was close to your launch site? Was it just offshore or what was the specifics there of the range that you used? No, well, we ended up quite deep into, you know, off the coast, sort of nearish Auckland, but at Great Barrier Island off the coast there. Surprisingly enough, it's remarkably hard to find a piece of airspace where someone can allow you to drop a rocket out of the sky and try and capture it at the same time. People seem to get, you know, less enthused about that. And even harder to find one that has a piece of land nearby that you can put the rocket down afterwards.

Exactly, exactly. So we ended up, you know, off the coast for quite a distance. you know, off the coast for quite a distance. And it was a really, really amazing thing that kind of happened. So, you know, we had a small recovery vessel to fish the stage out of the ocean and have another, you know, as many goes as we need if required. We had one helicopter that was doing the filming. We had one helicopter that was doing the filming. We had one helicopter that was carrying the test article and dropping, and, of course, one helicopter that was capturing, you know, the device,

and a couple of super yachts. And not that any of us pretend to own a super yacht, but through a series of fortunate occurrences, it just so happened that a newly formed friend was in town that owned a couple of superyachts and offered to take us out on them and we can watch it while we're having lunch. So it was crazy we we had these you know these these these super yachts and helicopters and it was it was just the most absurd thing um but super fun super fun there's like some sort of fire fest or festival documentary

that you can create off of this day of dropping rockets and with a super yacht and all this kind of stuff it's definitely going to show up on netflix at some time yeah i'm pretty sure yeah it was one of those rare occasions that you get home and you go yeah well that was a day i wasn't expecting yeah you've done all the modeling you've done all the you know the guidance and trajectory and you've never imagined this day that you're out there on a super yacht dropping stuff from a helicopter no no it's one of those things that you just don't plan for um so is this something that you're planning to do um from both launch sites or is this new zealand for now until you get it right and then it would make its way to both launch sites or do you foresee uh you know

not having to need it at your wallop site yeah there's a number of things that go into that trade. You know, the cost of logistics is important. And, you know, we've modelled that and understand that very well in New Zealand because we've launched a lot. And we already have boats out in the water anyway when we're doing a launch for monitoring the range. And, you know, we already have a helicopter

for the operations, for launch operations anyway, so it's very well understood. And, you know, the flight rate out of the New Zealand launch site will probably always be more than the flight rate out of the Wallops side. So it's not, you know, it's not immediately obvious whether it will be both practical and economical to do it out of wallops. And we haven't really looked at it, to be honest with you. That's kind of a secondary problem to solve. The primary problem to solve is, you know, can we do this at all? Is this feasible at all? And then, you know, obviously the economic stack-up, we believe the economic stack-up in New Zealand,

we haven't really had a deep dive into whether or not the economic stack-up in LCT, but if they do, you know, I think Elon once said it's like a bag of gold falling from the sky. You're just going to let it sink to the bottom of the ocean. So, you know, we would certainly go after it. So on the topic of, you mentioned a thing that you were taking part in, the board at home heads of rocket launch companies tweeting at each other,

a ceremony that happened in the last week or so. You mentioned on that that there's about a 10% payload hit for recovery on Electron. Is this a case where you are adding hardware to Electron, or is there any bit here of reengineering any pieces of what you were flying previously? A bit of both. So, you know, in a small launch vehicle, you just can't have big systems. I mean, it just makes it inviolable. So, like I was saying before, we let the atmosphere do the majority of the work.

So, you know, we'd set a target early on, 10% is really, you know, the trade space we wanted to operate in. Nothing ever kind of, you know, I've never been in a program where you come under mass. So, you know, that's kind of like an urban legend. So we'll see where we really end up, but it certainly can't be more than 15%.

Otherwise, we start to eat too much into the payload for it to be viable. So you said a bit of both in that there might be some re-engineering. Is this a case where you would have expendable and reusable configurations, or are you expecting to find a commonality here? No, absolutely. There will always be expendable and reusable configurations or are you expecting to find a commonality here? No, absolutely. There will always be expendable and reusability cases for sure. You know, with a small launch vehicle, you know, it's ideally suited for, you know, for many, many payloads.

But ultimately, if you're flying a microsatellite and it's a dedicated ride, one way that you can help offset the cost of that dedicated ride, because it's never going to be as cheap as a rideshare. It's just not, you know, it just never is because it's a totally different service. But if you can offset that by, you know, filling up any excess capacity with some CubeSats or things like that. And that really helps the customer out. So, you know, you need that flexibility to take full use of the vehicle's performance on some missions and on others, you know, use it in a recovery mode. Are there any specific components that you have in your mind as things that you're worried about maybe not worried about but that you're cognizant of uh any sort of requalification before the second launch is there things in your mind that you're you kind of got pegged as well we might

need to rework that once we get it back yeah and and so then the next set of the next phase of the program is we're recovering the booster so we're doing a high velocity ballistic re- phase of the program is we're recovering the booster. So we're doing a high-velocity ballistic re-entry of the booster and slowing it down with parachutes, recovering it, dunking it in the ocean and fishing it out. That's the next goal for the team. So that's when the rubber's going to hit the road. When we fish that stage out of the water, we'll really see how much work is in front of us.

Obviously, we have the stage instrumented now, and we have a pretty good idea where things are getting too hot or things are failing. But until you actually have that physical hardware back in your hands, I think that will be the real reckoning of how much work we have in front of us. But from the ballistic re-entries we've done today, which, by the way, you know, that is the worst ever environment

you can put this thing through. Like, there is no deceleration at all. It's just bring it in as hot as you can. But, you know, we still had telemetry right to impact. We still had, you know, systems fully functional, so tanks were pressed and, you know, some systems were offline, as you'd expect. But, you know, generally, you know, the health of the vehicle looked pretty good. Do you have any video? Yeah, we did. We had a camera feed and a video feed all the way in. Unfortunately, you know, there was some debris occurring on the lens,

so it was just kind of a foggy view. You don't really see much at all. It reminds me of some of the early days of SpaceX where there was one that got totally scrambled. I remember the video feed was all crazy, and there was this big crowdsource effort to, like, reconstruct what we could see out of it. I remember that. I remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah that yeah yeah yeah well hopefully we can see something pretty soon uh because i'm sure that

was a pretty amazing sight to watch as this thing comes you know hauling ass back into the atmosphere yeah yeah you know unfortunately the the video is is remarkably boring it's just sort of like an orange and blue fog you say remarkably, and everyone listening right now is like, I want to see it. They're very mad at you right now. Other than the Venus scientist, everyone is mad at that statement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So before we get out of here, we're running on limited time here,

I wanted to talk a little bit about the current manifest that you've got in front of you once things get back to normal. You just announced a new launch contract that I thought was pretty interesting with sincepective who up until this had a slot on a vega rideshare mission that has been delayed vega had an incident last year they had still haven't returned to flight yet and now french guiana shut down with the pandemic um so how long you know you you announced it just past week or so but could are you able to say how long you've been in conversations with them? Because it's incredible to have such a responsive ability to sign a contract and be on a manifest within six months from the date that it's announced. So I'd love to hear a little background if you're able to give us any thoughts on the timeline there.

timeline there? Yeah, I mean, the timeline's short. I think our record to date is five weeks. So we had a CubeSat come to us and they needed to be on orbit, desperately needed to be on orbit, and we're able to get them manifested, get it licensed and get them on orbit in, I think it was like five and a half weeks. That's been our record. Now, we had to pull some favors on that one. There's no arguments there. A lot of people use that as an opportunity to determine what the art of the possible was. So there's probably a paper written about that somewhere. But nevertheless, this is the whole point of our service, right, is responsive access is critical. And look, if I'm honest with you, what we see from our customers most right now, especially our commercial customers, is they kind of fall into a couple of categories. One is they've booked a rideshare mission and it hasn't gone on time or it hasn't gone at all. And this is even pre-COVID-19.

And, you know, our vehicle is more expensive. And, you know, we don't try and compete with rideshare because, you know, you don't expect your Uber to cost the same as your bus ticket. And we just can't provide a service for the same price as a bus ticket. for the same price as a bus ticket. However, when you kind of look at the problem holistically, if you're burning cash as a company or your satellite's not generating revenue for you because it's sat on a vehicle or the shelf for six months while a rideshare vehicle goes,

all of a sudden it becomes a very economic trade to just fly on a dedicated vehicle where you have complete control over all but schedule everything and just get on get on with business um so we have like i say we have two kinds of customers generally recently and that is you know the customer that's booked on a ride share and it just hasn't gone and they're sick of waiting and they just need to get stuff up and get on with their business um and the second kind of customer is a customer that's been sold a dream on what we affectionately call at Rocket Lab, fantasy rockets,

where it's very easy to offer a wonderful price, a wonderful ride and, and you know, great performance margins and everything when you haven't flown. That's a very luxurious position. However, at some point in time, you can't keep delaying your customers and delaying your customers and not flying and not flying and not flying or misinterpreting your schedules to the point where it has a really detrimental effect to your customer. And so that's really the other kind of customer we see is someone, and they generally got their hair on fire, that they've been sold a dream,

and they figured out the dream is still at least a year or two away, and the dream might not even work. So at that point, they just need to get on with their business. And yeah, so that's what we see. Now you are hitting an interesting spot here. This last question for the day, just because I feel like it's an awesome time

for Rocket Lab and the industry at large, because you've got about a full three years on everyone else even remotely close to your payload range in terms of launch, getting to the pad or airplane, I guess, in some cases, actually lighting an engine for the first time. It does look like this is the year that there will be another small launcher online. We saw last week or two weeks ago, Virgin Orbit won a contract of part of the Orbital Services Program for the US Space Force. So there's some motion, you know, for a while you've had the run on the place. Do you feel like that's going to shift your business in any way? Or do you feel like it's going to solidify, you know, the few

winners in the market versus the giant market that exists out there right now with all the fantasy rockets? How do you feel like this will shift things in the next year or two? Yeah, I mean, I've always said that there's probably only room in the market for a couple of players. And, you know, the market will grow. And, and there'll be there'll be more opportunities. But, but I think, yeah, I mean, someone else will build a vehicle and bring it to market. And I think that's a very good thing. Competition is a really good thing for everybody. It inspires innovation.

And so we welcome anybody to, you know, to bring a platform. But I guess, you know, the one thing that we caution is that, and look, maybe people do this way better than we did, but, you know, it was three years ago that we did our first flight. And, you know, this year we're, you know, we're producing one rocket every 30 days, comes off the production line. If it wasn't for COVID-19, I'm sure we would have been hitting our one-a-month cadence.

But man, that is way harder than building your first rocket. Like it is so much harder. Building one where you have your only customer is yourself and you can choose when you launch, you can choose where you launch and you don't have to worry about the accuracy or the smoothness of the ride. That's relatively easy in the scale of Relativity here. However, to do it over and over again, to have the production facilities in place, you know, the launch and integration and, you know, the whole customer

service piece is, you know, I would say it's two-thirds extra on top of our business. I mean, put it this way, we went to orbit with less than 100 people. We have 550 people now to go to orbit, you know, and build rockets at the frequency that we're building now. So it's kind of like a 5x increase in people alone to just do it, to bring a service to market. So I think we'll be cheering everybody on like everybody else. I think, you know, anybody who can bring a launch vehicle even to the pad deserves huge respect, irrespective of whether it works or not.

Just bringing something to the pad is 90% of the effort. But once you've got a vehicle to orbit, it's a whole other hill to climb. And, you know, boy, I wish I knew how hard it was going to be after first flight. I don't certainly, you know, yeah, P systems, how hard can that be? And, you know, all this other kind of stuff that you just think is trivial is not. It's really not. Well said, Peter, and amazing insight as always. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's a pleasure to talk with you, and I hope pretty soon we'll see you out here on the east coast of the US, and we can celebrate being out of pandemic world and watching a rocket go to space. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Look forward to

it myself. Thanks again to Peter for coming on the show. It's always a pleasure talking with him. And hopefully in the not too distant future, I can take a trip down to Wallops to see a launch in person, hang out in person, maybe do another show there, following up on some of the stuff that we talked about here today. But I really got to say, I cannot do this kind of stuff without your support over at mainenginecutoff.com support. There are 394 of you, almost 400, supporting this show every single month. And it really makes this kind of stuff possible. And once we're back into travel mode, it's going to make traveling down to launches

like that possible as well. So if you want to help make this show bigger and better, head over to mainenginecutoff.com support and lend a hand there. This episode was produced by 37 executive producers. Brandon, Matthew, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Mintz, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, the Everett Astronaut, Frank, Julian, and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Adam, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making this show possible. I could not do it without your help. So for now, that is all I've got for you. I'm hoping you're enjoying these shows, trying to keep busy here while everyone is at home. So until next time, thank you all for listening. As always, email me, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com, or hit me up on

Twitter at WeHaveMiko, and I'll talk to you soon.