Main Engine Cut Off - T+183: Peter Beck on Neutron, Going Public, and Eating Hats

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

Peter Beck, Founder, CEO, and CTO of Rocket Lab, joins me to talk about going public, their new, bigger launch vehicle, Neutron, updates to their Electron and Photon offerings, eating hats, and avoiding eating hats in the future.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 39 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Matt, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, and seven anonymous—and 498 other supporters.TopicsPeter Beck (@Peter_J_Beck) / TwitterRocket Lab | Frequent and reliable access launch is now a reality | Rocket LabNeutron | Rocket LabIntroducing Neutron - YouTubeEpisode T+182: Rocket Lab Neutron, Relativity Terran R - Main Engine Cut OffRocket Lab says SPAC deal will accelerate development of Neutron rocket - SpaceNewsRocket Lab Demonstrates New Orbital Maneuvering Capability with Most Complex Kick Stage Mission Yet | Rocket LabRocket Lab on Twitter: “But the mission's not over then! After customer payloads are deployed, Photon Pathstone will remain in orbit to build flight heritage across the spacecraft’s subsystems ahead of our CAPSTONE mission to the Moon for @NASA later this year.”Peter Beck on Twitter: “First Rocket Lab solar panels rolling off the Long Beach production line for Photon missions.”Peter Beck on Twitter: “The briefcase – this is what makes Photon a plug and play satellite. Attach this to any Kick Stage and it instantly becomes a Photon satellite. Launching on our next mission later in March.”The 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 back to Main Engine Cutoff. We've got another very special guest with us today, as you probably saw by clicking on this episode, Peter Beck, the founder, CEO, CTO of Rocket Lab. I think I got all of his titles correct. He's coming back on the show for the third time. We're going to talk about the big news that they've been rolling out over the last week. They are going public. They have introduced a big launch vehicle named Neutron. I would recommend going back an episode in the feed and listening to my thoughts on Rocket Lab's

Neutron that I just did last show. That would be better context for a lot of the things that we will be diving into here today. I've got a crazy long list of questions, so we'll see how much we can get through on Peter's time that he is graciously gifting us here on the show. But before we call him up, I want to say thank you to everyone out there who supports Main Engine Cutoff over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 537 of you. The numbers have been growing a lot recently. I'm so thankful for everyone that's jumping in, jumping in on headlines. If you have not gotten to that yet, you should definitely check out a show that I do every single week for everyone. Run through all

the stories of the week, big and little, give you some quick thoughts on it and keeps you up to date in, you know, 20 minutes a week or so. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but it's every story that matters in space. It's a great way to support the show and stay up on the news. And this episode of Managing Cutoff was produced by 39 executive producers. Thanks to Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Julian, and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Matt, the Astrogators at SCE, another Chris, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support. Thanks for helping keep this thing going. And your support helps me put a lot of time into this and get great guests like Peter Beck on the show. So

keep it up and I'll keep my end up and with that let's give peter a call peter beck welcome back to main engine cutoff this is your third appearance here so you're definitely high up the uh guest list of returning guests so thanks for coming back oh my intimate pleasure you've had a busy week talking to everyone so i'm surprised that you've had you've got one more conversation in you here you're on friday morning over there and thursday evening here and you're still still going after quite a week, I'm sure. How is this experience of quite the press week you have with all this big news? Yeah, I mean, it feels a little bit like I'm living in a reality TV show, but apart from that,

it's great. I'm looking forward to some rocket talk, so that'll be fun. Yes, definitely. I made sure to read as many of the interviews as i could to see like what things has he said what hasn't he said and i'm sure everyone's got their different slants so uh we've got a ton to talk about first though you had this epic video rollout and i want to talk about that for a little bit because it was one of the best unveiling videos i've seen i think in in recent space history uh particularly the moment of we're going to build a big rocket was this epic set piece of you in the fairing uh who who was doing the concepting of that video what was the team like that that worked on that

yeah i mean that there was uh from our internal comms team you know morgan bailey uh and muriel baker and and uh and james you know that they, they all put that together as a concept. And yeah, they did a fantastic job. It was, I insisted on the blender, but everything else was there. I take it you were a Will It Blend fan back in the day. I don't even know if this show is still on, but it seems like you were channeling

a little of that instinct there. Yeah, well, the original plan was to, was to, you know, make a smoothie out of it. And then the team wanted to switch in a different smoothie. So I didn't have to eat it. And I'm like, no, we're going to do this. We're going to do this properly. It was you that said you would eat the hat.

So you definitely deserved that. At least a little bit of eating the actual threads there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it took about half a dozen takes so in the end like the majority of the hat was actually stuffed in the mouth at some point you were pretty haphazard with the way that you cut various pieces of the hat off and i was i was trying to figure out is there a reason that he cut these particular pieces of the hat off but it seemed like you were just trying to figure out, is there a reason that he cut these particular pieces of the hat off? But it seemed like you were just trying to be safe. Yeah, there was not too much strategy in that, that's for sure. All right, so we are going to talk a lot about the rocket, but let's start with the going public news first, since I will probably have less to ask you about on that front. The main thing is I want to talk about this whole SPAC thing.

You are now part of my new segment on the show where you can't spell space without SPAC. I've been saying it for the past couple of weeks because everyone's going SPAC. My main question for you is why did you decide that route versus more traditional fundraising? Being a company that has raised money in the old-fashioned ways quite a bit in the past, what was that main decision point for you? Yeah, the thing is that we were methodically walking down a path to going public anyway. And we were doing this for two reasons, going public for two reasons. One was obviously access to capital is great, but also we have quite an inorganic growth strategy as well. And,

you know, we tried to do some deals last year and we just weren't able to close them because we didn't have the, you know, that public currency. I mean, you're competing with, you know, large defense contractors and things like that that have a public currency and you don't. As a private company, it gets pretty tough. So, you know, as you saw from the investor deck, if you've looked at it, we've got a pretty aggressive list of things that we want to do and a little bit uncomfortable that we've, you know, Rocket Lab has kind of had a history of just doing it

and then talking about it. So in this sense, we have to kind of talk about it a little bit before we've done it, which is a little bit, you know, unconventional and weird feeling for us. But I think if you can see in that investor deck, basically, we've had the view from day one that if you can build an end-to-end space company where you own your own launch site, you own your own rocket, you own all your own satellite components in the supply chain, so that means you can build your own satellites. When it comes to actually playing in the space applications part of it, you can be very,

very powerful in there. So you would have seen now that the acquisition of Sinclair was very strategic, not just to grow a satellite division, but obviously you can see what we're trying to do here in the future. And there's a whole group of really amazing companies and teams that we would love to work with. And having that public currency really enables us to do so. And I think more broadly from a space company perspective,

if people are thinking that a SPAC is a route to just raise capital, then that is a very bad mistake because being a public company is no joke and being public really is no joke. So my biggest concern with any SPAC is, you know, asking the question first. And a lot of people are asking me now for my opinion and advice on this.

But, I mean, you know, if being public was, you know, in your strategy and that's just where you were going, then a SPAC is a great way to accelerate that for us um you know we we were already on that path and and decently far down it and uh you know we we didn't entertain any SPACs for quite some time um but it became obvious that uh you know this would accelerate our timeline here quite significantly that that that that was just the right thing for us to do. But if it's just to raise capital, and that capital raise comes with pretty significant consequences

and kind of controls that you won't get to have as a private company. And certainly, I think this even tests my own opinions on SPACs recently. Two or three shows ago, I had Megan Crawford of Space Fund on. We talked a lot about SPACs. And she, at the time, helped convince me that I was looking at SPACs and basing my opinion on the companies that had chosen to go that way at that point, which were a lot of companies that weren't flying hardware yet or were very far from that, or, you know, all the things that Rocket Lab, and I think Black Sky applies to this as well, that aren't, you know, you aren't doing those things, or you already have done those things.

There are definitely distinctions there that's going to make me reassess this in the future. So I just kind of wanted to hear a little bit about that. Now, you do get quite a bit of cash on the books with this deal, eventually when it closes and everything gets through. Per the investor deck, you were kind of tied up against it. 40 some million of cash in the books is what I read in one of the footnotes. Was that a situation, you know, you made the acquisition of Sinclair, you had been flying a lot, but the pandemic obviously slowed things down in a lot of areas. Was that something that was worrying to you? Is there any particular reason that you felt like you were getting to that point? And was that a major pressure point that led you down to this

additional funding route? No, not at all. I mean, if you look historically, the company's only raised $270 million to do all of the things that we've done to date. So having 48 in the bank is plenty of gas in the tank for us. And you can also see that historically we've had no problems raising capital. And our last capital raise was in 2018. And one of the great things about having revenue is the requirement to go and tap into capital is relatively easy. And there's no shortage of opportunities for us to participate in the private market.

That was absolutely no bearing on any of our decisions to go public at all. In terms of future stuff, you've got this chart of projected revenue not bearing on any of their decisions to go public at all. In terms of future stuff, you've got this chart of projected revenue into the future. And at about two or three years down the line, your launch and space systems are roughly equal in terms of revenue. So it seems, obviously you have been a launch company.

Traditionally, you've got some of these acquisitions and new initiatives like Photon that it looks like are going to be taking on a lot of the importance within Rocket Lab's portfolio of things that make revenue. How do you foresee that kind of transition going from a launch focus company to a wider services in which it's kind of like Apple making all their money from the iPhone and then trying to expand to other lines that make money as well? There are mindset shifts that come with that. Is that something that has been top of mind for you? Is there particular strategies that you have in mind for, you know, approaching that kind of diversification of revenue?

Yeah, I mean, I think future space companies, you know, will look similar to Rocket Lab. Having a complete end-to-end solution, I think, is a really important element. And launch is lumpy from a revenue perspective. Customers don't deliver their satellites on time and launch slips out and there's weather delays and it's always lumpy. And space systems is far more predictable. Space systems is far more predictable. But as a company strategy perspective,

if I showed you the pitch deck from the very first round of funding that we raised out of Silicon Valley, the last slide on that pitch deck looks pretty much the same as the last slide of this pitch deck in the fact that our intention here was always to position ourselves to be an end-to-end play hence the reason why we developed the photon and hence the reason why the photon you know the kick stage looked dramatically like a satellite from day one so you know it's it this this has all been part of the plan uh from from day one uh and and also you know the diversification and growth into

space systems was really to enable not only to build really cool stuff for our customers, but also ultimately to build our own satellites in the future. But we're kind of pretty conservative, methodical engineers. And our approach here was, well, the first thing we need to do is we need to get a launch vehicle and get access to space. So that's where Electron came in. At the moment, like the nanosecond that Electron became a regular, reliably launching vehicle, we announced Photon. And you can kind of see the methodical walkthrough of where we're going to go. And obviously, the new launch vehicle neutron just uh bolsters that i

mean i think we've we've been pretty pretty okay at picking market niches and um i'm sure we'll get to neutron but um we think that's the you know the next big market niche to go within launch let's get to neutron then this is all the good stuff um you have now you've been kind of coy about a lot of technical details. So I'm sure there's some stuff that you don't want to talk about or aren't ready to talk about. Generally, I'm curious to start, you know, you've released some renderings alongside the rollout here. Are those should we look at that more like concept art? Or is this, you know, engineering concepts that you have in works? You know, is this like, crazy concept cars that you see at auto shows? Or are they more like

this is probably what the vehicle is going to look like where is it at on that spectrum yeah so i mean uh the the it's a little bit chicken and egg because of the funding excuse me the funding funding enables the development of the program and and and you know so on and so forth uh so we've had this had this kind of you know ticking around in the background but i would say we've had this kind of ticking around in the background, but I would say we've spent more time here really understanding the market and where the market's going. And I would say we've been in a very fortunate position where we're able to launch the very first of many constellations on electrons and we build these really strong relationships with our customers.

We're a supplier of satellite components into the mega constellations, so we understand where all that is. And it became just blatantly clear that this medium class is a really obvious place for a launch vehicle to survive. And if you have a launch capacity that's say you know for example say twice of neutron you don't get any credit from your customer for a vehicle that has a whole lot of empty space in it but they don't pay they don't pay for that empty space it's just you have to absorb that in your cost overheads and structure so um so you know if we look even if we look

historically um the most successful launch vehicle in history is the Soyuz. It's an eight-tonne class vehicle. So we really felt that if we look at what's going forward within the marketplace and where everything's going with distributed leader architectures, this kind of class would be ultimately ideal. Now, answering more directly the question, is this concept up or, you know, a solid lockdown design? It's kind of somewhere in the middle. So we know, you know, we're very clear on the fundamental requirements of what the vehicle needs to do. I would say that you should hang out for a little bit longer to see some of the more nuanced details of our reusability. I think people will be surprised with how we're approaching that. But what I will say is that there are areas that we're keen to innovate on and other areas that we're just not.

Really, the majority of the innovation within the program is around reusability. But not just refurbishability, but reusability in the true sense of the word. So that's really, you know, in this vehicle design, the number one kind of constraint. You know, for Electron, it was manufacturability. That was what we laid the gauntlet down in the beginning. That's what drove a lot of the design decisions uh material decisions and things like that whereas with

neutron it's reusability so um some areas are completely rigidized like avionics for example and gnc and flight computers that they are just electron products um you know high heritage and vehicle size agnostic so you know there's there's zero work to do there in innovation um and then more more along some of the propulsion systems there's a little bit more um trade going on there because uh you know with propulsive landing um i'm sure a number of your viewers or listeners will be very cognizant with the concept of suicide burns and also the trade between deep throttling and the right level of thrust landing. And I think we have taken a bit of a different approach there to really optimize that. I don't like a whole bunch of engines. You know, I haven't flown don't like a whole bunch of engines.

You know, I haven't flown Electron for a long time now. Nine engines is great if one stops. That's the only occasion that nine engines is great. Other than that, it's just nine times the amount of acceptance testing, nine times the amount of manufacturing, nine times the amount of everything. So, you know, our drive here uh is is to minimum number of engines on the bottom possible but also trading that with how how are you going to to um provide that thrust requirement for propulsive landing interesting that's an interesting take on it i i assume that i will not get an answer to this, but are you open to or considering the idea of unique engines

for landing burns versus the ascent engines? I would say unique configurations rather than, you know, fundamentally moving away from crazy propulsion, you know, moving into kind of crazy propulsion schemes. But certainly, we're doing some pretty deep trades and some alternative configurations. Alternative configurations is a good phrase. So we'll go with that. You mentioned a bit at the beginning, the thinking that went into choosing the size and shape of

Neutron. I would love to hear a little bit about like the internal team dynamics that were surrounding that decision. Was this something that you woke up one day and realized that you should eat the hat and make a bigger launch vehicle? Was this something that there was a portion of the company that was excited about? How did that process go of realizing that Neutron was right for Rocket Lab? I would say it's kind of been a discussion here for over a year and a half, especially as we've flown more and more customers

and provided more and more components into mega constellations and really see the forward momentum in the direction that everybody kind of expected. You know, up until then it's kind of this is what's going to happen versus this is is what is happening um so uh it's it's really getting conviction that you know the direction that everybody is heading um with with respect to you know size and format was consistent and you And I'd say we've kind of reached a point now where there's this kind of like, I call it the bicycle,

where you converge on like the best design. And the best design for a bicycle is a triangle frame, right? There's nothing more efficient. You can come out with any kind of wacky frame design you want, but ultimately there is a convergence point. And I think that we've reached that convergence point and that convergence point is is now you know clear enough to us that that we think actually there is a really uh unique opportunity in the market now to to address that and um you know going forward i think that that type type of class of vehicle offers the best

potential price and also the most amount of flexibility not just in terms of delivering satellites to orbit but you know other more exotic things you chose a four and a half meter fairing uh and that's consistent with the body size per the initial concept i'm curious how you chose that specific size and um you know if there's room for doing some sort of hammerhead fairing in the future kind of like you're now offering with electron other launch vehicles terran one has done the similar thing it was announced with an inline fairing and eventually uh upsized should we draw any takeaways or is it more of a like well how how do you fit mega constellation planes into a fairing four and a half meters is enough

yeah i mean uh and and uh you know we did a bunch of analysis um with some out of mold lines and stacking configurations our strong desire is to keep a uh you know a consistent diameter across the vehicle um you know there's a number of engineering reasons why we want to try and do that. And look, if we have to hammerhead or increase diameters, then we will. I mean, the one thing I will say is that we relax the diameter constraint. People may or may not be aware that a lot of launch vehicles in america are 3.7 meters in diameter so they can fit under the bridges between california and on the way to the launch site that to me is the dumbest trade that you can possibly make i mean fancy designing

your rocket around a bridge um but but you know it is it is the you know the reality of it so um those kinds of trades we've opened up and said, well, if we had to build the rocket at the launch site, we'll build the rocket at the launch site. Let's not constrain ourselves because the larger diameter you go, you know, the more efficient you can get with your structures with respect to wall buckling and things like that. So, so, you know, there's areas that we've certainly, you know,

unlocked constraints around. I'm curious if on the reusability side, two things specifically. One is your propulsive landing is not something that's in Rocket Lab's barn of abilities right now, but considering how good your team is, it's not something that I don't think you can do. But what are the expectations around that in terms of, okay, well, the first 10 launches, we're not sure exactly how many we're going to get back. So we're building in a little bit of manufacturing buffer before we get this really nailed down. What is the expectation approach there and how do you manage manufacturing upfront versus what your long-term manufacturing needs would be for Neutron?

what your long-term manufacturing needs would be for Neutron? Yeah, and that's a fantastic question. So our approach here is to kind of take the learnings that we've had from Electron and with respect to launch cadence and manufacturing cadence and add a bit of fat to it because, you know, a larger launch vehicle is just more logistics. So that's kind of been our approach here. I mean, you know, number one, the mission objective will be, of course,

to deliver a customer satellite to orbit. And, you know, if we take a bit longer to get the thing to the ground in one bit, then so be it. But it is, it's certainly um you know the situation you don't want to end up in is is obviously scaling a large manufacturing facility and then having to scale it all back um to deal with the hump so you know our approach here is is to kind of have a lower cadence um rather than uh invest you know a huge amount into into manufacturing that you're only going to have to turn off six months or a year later.

So we're kind of dealing to that with the cadence that we're looking to shoot right out of the gate. In terms of upper stage, is that something that is within the reusability realm or how does that shake out in your head? Not at this point in time. You know, certainly I've learned never to say never.

You're done eating hats, that's for sure. I'm done eating hats, yeah, really. But, you know, the majority of the cost in launch vehicles is in stage one. So, you know, stage two would be great to get back. launch vehicles in stage one. So, you know, stage two would be great to get back, but I think our approach here is to let's get stage one well and truly sorted, and then with the architecture that we're trying to follow here with stage one,

it should lend itself to future innovations. But, you know, the velocity re-entry is, you know, there's a lot to trade there for sure. I want to talk about the launch site a little bit. You, in a Space News article, said that you'll be launching from Pad 0A which is currently where Antares

rolls out from. Is this something that would coexist or is there plans with Antares very infrequent flight rate. Really, they're just flying Cygnus. I don't know if you've had talks with Northrop Grumman. It's an eight-ton launch vehicle. You could fit Cygnus on top of this thing.

How does that happen? What is their deal there at pad zero A? Yeah, I mean, zero A from day one has been designed as a multi-user space pad, a space port and pad. So, you know, thankfully the guys at Mars and at the state and everybody, in fact, had intended that. So, as you mentioned, the entire flight rate is pretty low. So there's a lot of pad just sitting there doing nothing for long periods of time.

A lot of pads just sitting there doing nothing for long periods of time. So from our perspective, we know what it takes to build launch pads and utilizing a piece of incredible infrastructure that is used so infrequently, it just makes perfect sense, especially to accelerate timelines to get this done. And so really, it's definitely a coexist model for sure in terms of the um inclinations that you can hit from wallops island you can clearly do mid inclination for a lot of mega constellations that's their initial planes and then the iss is achievable from there i've seen a map at some point on the internet that showed an SSO capable dogleg from wallops

what is the range of azimuths that you're looking at there yeah we're looking at all those as missing actually the the SSO out of wallops is um is pretty nice uh because you go out and sort of um down the side as you you don't actually end up um going going, you know, crossing over any other countries or land. So it's actually a really nice trajectory and, yeah, and completely doable. So, you know, SSI out of there is 100%.

Do you have any idea on exactly what, like, the payload hit would be for that and for neutron specifically yeah it's it's yeah i mean the the uh gnct is running running that uh analysis at the moment i think the dog leg um pulls out about two tons of payload um uh but look it's early trajectory and there's a lot of optimization to be done there but um but uh you know well i think it's it's not not necessarily the the dog leg two pulls out the two tons i think um the reduction in performance including sso means we lose about two tons so it becomes you know sort of five or six tons to sso rather including dog leg um but you know the majority of that of course is, is just more energy in terms of trajectory to the CSO. Right. And then the trade at that point would be like, well, is the extra ton or whatever we'd get flying from somewhere that's direct to SSO, is that really worth it?

Do we have enough flights that would require that? And I guess for that reason, are there plans or considerations for flying this out of New Zealand as well? Or right now, the market that you're targeting is really served well by wallops yeah i mean certainly plans um uh you know our priority is to get the vehicle um into service as quickly as we can and obviously zero eight uh affords us to do that um new zealand is an amazing launch site because we just have absolute flexibility over over range calendar and inclination um so uh you know i'm sure at a point in time um we can um you know we'll do something down there but i think um you know if if even a fraction of what

is intended to play out plays out um with respect to you know the growth of the space industry and the mega constellations and the constellations more generally launch slots are becoming going to become really a contested and or constraining element to building out an infrastructure i mean obviously already the cape is struggling to get enough slots available. There's 12 slots out of Wallops. We have 120 slots available every year out of New Zealand. So at some point, things just become too constrained. The wonderful thing about the New Zealand side is that we can release that pressure

and make available just a tremendous number of launch slots to orbit, which I think a lot of people don't kind of internalize. It's very easy to say, you know, I'm going to launch every week or I'm going to, you know, do all those kinds of things. But actually, one of the biggest constraints and the thing that drove us down to New Zealand in the first place, I think a lot of people think that we've got a launch site in New Zealand with Pizza Kiwi. I think a lot of people think that we've got a launch site in New Zealand with Pizza Kiwi. It was just access to an unlimited number of, essentially unlimited number of launch slots. And, you know, as we go forward as a space economy, that's going to be something that's in, you know, scarce and in demand.

I have an insane amount of questions here that I know we're not going to get through all. So now I'm going to start picking and choosing because you're on tight time. We got to talk about the human spaceflight cargo resupply that was mentioned in a couple of documents as well for Neutron specifically. Is human spaceflight something that you're leaving the option opens for? And, you know, the similar size class vehicles, Soyuz 2, Long March 2F, these are crewed vehicles that fly in this range so clearly you've built the right size for human spaceflight. Is this more of an open-ended thing or do you have plans in mind for a Rocket Lab specific solution here? Well I mean that that's why I wanted to get all that out because I only want to eat that hat once. So if you're going to do that, then get all out there.

But more seriously, as you point out, this is a class that is very successful in human spaceflight and certainly don't want to prohibit that in the future. Certainly don't want to prohibit that in the future. So, you know, right from day one, you know, we said, you know, internally, look, let's ensure that this is an option for us. So, you know, as the vehicle's development continues, we're making sure that the vehicle is human spaceflight certifiable. It won't be certified as we, you know, immediately out of the chute. But there's a lot of things for human spaceflight with respect to redundancies and safety factors that are just incredibly painful to go back and do. Tank wall thicknesses, for example, tank safety factors. The last thing you want to do is to go back

and revise all the tank walls and structures to meet a human rating. That would just be horrible. So doing that up front is important. And it was pointed out to me by one of our board members, Mike Griffin, that generally if you design a vehicle to fly humans, it's going to be a pretty reliable vehicle for everything else. So that's kind of the mantra that we're following here is that,

you know, I think, you know, we try to build a reputation of building really good, reliable stuff. And, you know, we feel that on all aspects of this size, you know, that's kind of the appropriate path to follow too. A couple of months ago, a SpaceX agreement was announced between you and NASA that I asked about at the time, but apparently you said there was no updates that you can give on this. But now I'm wondering how much this ties in here. At the time, but apparently you said there was no updates that you can give on this. But now I'm wondering how much this ties in here. At the time, this little line was from the Space Act Agreement announcement. You were working with Ames and Langley and Armstrong for flight software, aerothermal analysis, decelerator design, also allowing for payload return from the

International Space Station, entry systems for small spacecraft, and a flight testbed to mature EDL technologies. Can you talk at all about any of that stuff, what you're looking at there? Is this more towards reusability and reentry of Electron and Neutron, or do you have something up your sleeve to actually get payload back from the ISS? Yeah, so, I mean, more generally, Rocket Lab is interested in re-entering um and in in a wide

range of kind of areas so um you know the first area that we're working with the team there um on is is actually uh venus probe entry so nasa has a tremendous amount of expertise and knowledge and you know obviously re-entry but also um interplanetary reentries and interfaces. So that's one element that we're working with the team there on right now is with our Venus mission. Really, they have a lot of expertise in probe design and thermal materials. So that's the bulk of the work there. We have worked with some folks uh as well on um stage re-entry through um through

the electron program and and we'll do the same with um with neutron but i would say that more generally you know rocket lab has it has an interest in in re-entering stuff so uh partnering with the the best folks in the world was world was certainly a no-brainer. Yeah, all right. I'm going to jump back to some market-based stuff that you were talking about with megaconstellations. There's a lot of commercial megaconstellations in the works right now. Of course, Starlink, but we'll set that one aside because I don't think you're going to win any launches away from SpaceX for those. There's Telesat, OneWeb is mostly spoken for at this point,

plenty of other commercial ones. But what I find particularly interesting, considering that Rocket Lab is much beloved by the Department of Defense from a lot of the missions that you've flown for them already, there's a lot of Constellation projects underway there with DARPA's Blackjack program,

Space Development Agency. You mentioned Mike Griffin a second ago, so that's some tie-in there. Space Development Agency is working on kind of the early days of Constellation along with Missile Defense Agency. Both for Neutron and maybe Photon, is that a market that you think that you could really peel off as a specialist in that way, both launch vehicle sizing, but maybe Photon as part of that architecture for those DoD customers. Yeah, I certainly think it creates

an interesting opportunity there. But more broadly, also for our commercial customers, if you look at our historical customer base, it's kind of like 50% commercial and 50% government. And, you know, products like Photon are obviously, you know, great utility for US government, not just on the defence side, but of course also in NASA civil. And we have a really cool project where we're putting a propellant

depot or gas station on orbit, you know, on the back of a photon. So, you know, there's a lot of utility across both commercial and government customers. But, I mean, I think, you know, all governments, in fact, not just the US government, but all governments are kind of realizing the fragility of space infrastructure and the need to kind of build much more enduring infrastructure in orbit through kind of a distributed layering network. So if we can be a part of that and help those assets get on orbit to keep us all safe, then we're happy to do that. All right. We could probably talk for three hours about the amount of stuff that I wrote down, but the last thing before we get you out of here is to check in a little bit on Capstone, because that's coming up pretty soon here. This is the mission to go into near rectoline rectilinear halo orbit crazy name um you've had a handful of things fly recently you had this kick stage that you strapped double the propellant tanks to that ended up getting a satellite to 1200 kilometer circular orbit uh you've got you tweeted out today this

briefcase thing that can that is the difference between a photon and a kick stage, if I understood your tweet correctly. You have Pathstone that is flying pretty soon. That's the Pathfinder for Capstone. That's the interplanetary version. Can you give us a little update on where things stand with photon, photon interplanetary, and Capstone mission that's coming up pretty soon? Yeah, absolutely. photon interplanetary and capstone mission that's coming up pretty soon yeah absolutely and and kind of uh you know once again more broadly um what we're trying to do with with capstone is of course deliver for our customer um you know the the spacecraft to exactly the position that they

require but but also at the same time build a platform that is capable of doing much much more um and you know i think i've said this before but the the difference between our kind of venus um you know interplanetary mission and the mission that's flying uh here later this year with capstone is is a probe on the top like um you know we've invested heavily in things like ranging radio so that we can do you know deep space um navigation uh and you know not not actually not required for like the capstone mission but um but those kinds of things and also uh you know the hypercurry and and and you know on orbit um propellant storage for considerable amounts of time you know the team has spent a long time now um making sure that

that we can um you know we can live with very long you know durations and all that with the propulsion system so um you know the capstone mission is super important but um in in these pathstone uh missions that we're doing uh you know in between are really about um utilizing we have a we have basically uh you basically a test platform that flies every month or so to orbit. So if we've got any extra capacity on the side of the vehicle, then we just bolt stuff to it in a completely do-no-harm way. Once the customer has delivered,

we've delivered the customer satellite to orbit, we just stooge around and get heritage on things and try new things out. It's just a great way of reducing the risk for these missions and for maturing and developing new technologies. Are there any corresponding upgrades on the first or second stage to be able to fly Capstone, or is this something that with the handful of upgrades you're making to the kick stage and photon that you're, you know, that's within the realm of possibility at this moment?

You know, we're always looking to kind of, you know, improve the performance and reliability of the vehicle. So there's just rolling change coming into Electron. I mean, it's a pretty, pretty kind of solidified product now, but, you know, there's always things that we can do that generally either increase production cadence or increase reliability or decrease cost or increase performance. You know, I think we did a change recently

where we had kind of a dual vent and relief valve on the top of stage two. And it was just, you know, it was nice, but actually it just meant that production had to double the amount of components they had to build. And actually the system by its own design was passively safe. So even if you take the worst case scenario um it always fails safe so the requirement for having dual redundancy on that particular system was just kind of overkill so you know that's a good example where um we'll take you know in that in that sense we took one of them off um and uh and you know it halved the amount of production for that particular product

reduce the cost of the vehicle which ultimately is good for the customer increase reliability because we didn't have two of them now because you know things can fail in a good way in a bad way and and increase the performance of the vehicle because we weren't lugging you know five kgs of vent relief valve tree to to orbit so you know there's stuff like that that's just, you know, ongoing improvements that we do all the time. So, you know, the, you know, it's kind of, I wouldn't say there's any massive block upgrades. Probably other than actually recovery,

we've got one more kind of decent upgrade, block upgrade from a recovery perspective. But apart from that i mean the vehicle's super stable well i'm excited to be able to take a drive down to virginia pretty soon to both you know if the if the world be willing actually hang out and talk to you in person for a little bit and uh see some launches from not too far away so i'm excited for that thank you so much again for coming back uh third time here and with the amount of questions i have maybe a fourth is in the cards at some point down the line oh look at any time i i thoroughly enjoy it so yeah anytime thanks again to peter for coming

on the show it is always a pleasure talking with him he's super open and likes to get into the details the way that we all do so uh if you appreciate him coming on the show head over to twitter and hit him up on twitter he's at at PeterJBeck with underscores between the Peter J and Beck parts. You can find him on Twitter. Just let him know. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing some time with us. I think it's a cool way to show that, you know, this kind of stuff does get to people's ears eventually, and maybe it'll keep them coming back in the future like we talked about.

But for now, that's all I've got for you. Thank you all so much again for listening. Thanks for the support at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. Head over there if you want to help out the show and get headlines in your life. If you've got any questions or thoughts, hit me up on Twitter at wehavemiko

or in email anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. And if you want, jump in the Off-Nominal Discord as well and we can chat on there. But until next time, thanks for listening and I'll talk to you soon.