Off-Nominal - 155 - Unhinged Planetary Desire (with Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab)

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Jake and Anthony are joined by Peter Beck, Founder, President, and CEO of Rocket Lab, to talk about making rocket bikes, why he would do such a thing as make rocket bikes, what it was like to ride rocket bikes, and why he stopped making rocket bikes.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 155 - Unhinged Planetary Desire (with Peter Beck) - YouTubeRocket Lab Sets Launch Date for 50th Electron Mission, Prepares to Deploy Five Satellites for Kinéis | Rocket LabRocket Lab Completes Archimedes Engine Build, Begins Engine Test Campaign | Rocket LabRocket Lab Successfully Returns Spacecraft Capsule to Earth, Brings Back Pharmaceuticals Made in Space | Rocket LabRocket Lab Unveils Spacecraft Bus Lineup | Rocket LabRocket Lab to Establish Space Structures Complex in Baltimore County to Supply Advanced Composite Products Internally and to Broader Space Industry | Rocket LabFollow PeterPeter Beck (@Peter_J_Beck) / XRocket Lab (@RocketLab) / XFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hey, Jake. Happy, uh, I was going to say happy Thursday, but we're splitting the dateline today. I think it's Friday morning down there, right, Peter? Yep, yep. As usual, we hit a time. Nice. Look at you.

It really is Friday somewhere, huh? Yeah. It's quite early, though. Like, there's times of the year. We've always said, oh, we haven't really had anyone from the Southern Hemisphere on, and it's mostly because everyone's located in the Southern Hemisphere at a place in which our time slot just generally doesn't work. So we got to get the right time of the year when like daylight saving time maps up correctly

and it's a reasonable hour for everybody. So we did finally figure this out. This has been long awaited. You were on Wii Martians at least once, right? Is that correct, Jake? A couple years ago, we got to talk about the Venus mission and we talked a bit about that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been a while for that too, yeah.

So we're overdue both of us, Anthony, I think, for having this. And we look forward to it. We've just been dying to talk about mostly rocket bikes. So I feel like it has not been a public reckoning of the rocket bikes since Ashley Vance's book came out. So we've got to get into that. Yeah. We're going to have some hardball questions about rocket bikes. I hope you're ready for that.

Totally. Totally. I can tell you everything you need to know about a rocket bike. Yeah. Huh. Okay. Should we do some drinks first here, Anthony? Well, you got something good there?

Yeah, I'm in, I'm still in my white wine world, but I'm on to the Soave now. So I'm moving around the Italian Peninsula a little bit over the course of the summer. So I was like kind of in. Well, it's 8 a.m. Nobody told me that, yeah, I know, but I mean, nobody told me that we could be drinking in this, in this thing. I would have insisted on, on like a nice New Zealand Pinot Noir. That would be, it'd be great. At 8 a.m.

I love that. I love that energy that you're bringing to this. Yeah. It's Friday, Anthony. It's Friday. Even though I'm down in New Zealand, I kind of operate on US time anyway, so I'm up super early. So it's basically, you know, the same time as you, as far as I'm concerned. Okay, I love it. Do you have a brand you recommend? Do you have, like, a shout out for a New Zealand wine? Oh, Mission Estate. They're very good, very good wine. Mission Estate. Okay. Yeah. I need to go. I really want to visit New Zealand. And so having some wine recommendations will be important. Some clutch wine recommendations for sure.

There's like one New Zealand white wine that gets sold in stores in the Philadelphia area. It's no B-A-L-O or something. No-B-I-L-O. It's like a blue label, a Sauvignon Blanc of some sort. That's, I see it all over the place. So whoever that is, got a huge distribution deal on the East Coast of the U.S. So good for them. Awesome. I got a fun one today. This is a just a little craft beer called Bala de Plata, silver bullet beer. It's got this really cool label. It looked like a rocket. That's the only reason I picked it out.

So we went for that. Yeah. You picked the silver rocket on the show with Peter Beck. It's great. That's great, yeah. But I am ripping the brand otherwise, though. I got this shirt on there. Nice.

Nice. Yeah. And OG merchandise, I think. That's true. Are you drinking coffee or anything, Peter? Got nothing? No, no. No, you know, I can't drink coffee. It puts me to sleep, to be honest with you. I have like a millisecond, a millisecond high, and then I'm just instantly asleep, which is frustrating as well heck, because I love the smell of coffee. I love the taste of coffee. I love everything about it, but I just can't drink it.

Can you do like a tiramisu or something? Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah. The guy who's like, I would love to drink. Pino Noir at 8am is also the guy who's like, coffee will put me to sleep. We've already established it's not at a.m. That's true. Come on, make me sound bad.

Like, it is, you know, whatever time it is there. Body clock is not the same. I get it. Good, good. Well, we should start off with a question of, you know, obviously you're the rocket bike guy, but I assume these days you're making all the money from bike services. Is that fair?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, that'd be fair. Yeah. Like a rocket bike courier, like you can really get the packages around the downtown core really fast. The trouble with a rocket bike is that the most unique thing about that bike was you have no steering. So if you ever see a video of me riding it, you'll notice that I kind of kick frantically off the line and get it all stable, tuck my legs up, tuck all my arms in, and then make sure it's all stable and push the button because if you literally have any steering angle or any lean on,

it's just think of it like a bullet. It just goes in that trajectory. So, you know, wherever you point it, you go. And then once you lock it, you're basically just hanging on. So you have almost no control over its kind of direction. So it always looks extremely comical when you see me first start. because I'm kind of, you know, dangly legs, you know, sort of pushing this thing to try and get it up to enough speed that I can tuck in and then go. Desperately trying to make sure it's pointed in the right direction before, before you're committed.

And you found this out, Hal, what's the, what was the learning series for that? Yeah, there's a, yeah, there was, yes, no, there was, there was, the learning curve is steep. To put it lightly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, mostly, I mean, man, did you know when you got together with Ashley Vance that you were going to be getting into the depths of that story? Was this, were you prepared? Or did you like accept the interview and you were like, oh shit? Like I realize now that I'm going to get into all this backstory.

Well, to be honest with you, I stonewalled Ashley for years upon years. So the amount of information that he was able to extract is impressive, given that the amount of information. that I gave him. So, you know, I think, I think is, yeah, all credit to, you know, to Ashley to be able to, I think a lot of the information he got wasn't from me. It was he had to really work for it through, through external folks. That's interesting. He didn't bring that up.

He was on this show. No, he didn't, yeah. I'm curious, but so when he did come in, though, I would love to hear sort of like what it's like from yours. But when you bring a journalist in like that, like, what is that like to have does it, I mean, I guess you probably hope it doesn't change your behavior in any way to have an observer, but, you know, it always kind of does in a little bit. So I'm, I'm curious to see what does that like to kind of have someone who's, you know, paying attention to everything you're doing. And do you, do you learn anything from them about what they choose to write down? You know, I guess that's a question.

Right. look I'm I mean not not not really I mean so you know actually didn't you know didn't spend huge amount of time you know with us yeah and yeah I guess it's fair to say you you're always conscious you know when when you're when you're talking to folks but we what you what you see is what you get here there's there's no creation going on really I mean so So, and I mean, we're all, we're all, we are what we are, we are, we've got our faults. We, we, we do some stuff well. We do some stuff poorly and it is what it is.

And, you know, that's, that's just how it is. Yeah, yeah. How did you feel about the peers that were written about in that book? Like the set, you know, that he selected. Were you like, all right, this, I get the theme here? Yeah, I thought it was a good set. I would have liked to see Virgin Orbit in there, to be honest. Because, look, I remember when I started Rocket Lab Virgin Orbit was still Virgin Galactic at that point.

And I can remember going around all the VC firms. And the number one question I got, it's like, okay, you're from New Zealand. You have, your country has no industry. You're raising a relatively small amount of money to compete with this being virgin. and we were never, ever, the perceived winner in that small launch game. And, you know, Virgin Orbit raised exactly $1.1 billion more than we did to get to First Orbit. So, you know, it would have been great to see Virgin Orbit story in there because I think that that was kind of the missing element. Because everywhere I went to try and raise money, they were the preordained winners.

Hmm, that's really interesting So there's a little extra behind the factory purchase Is what you're telling us Just a little There's a little Good feeling behind it No comment Fair enough

Long Beach is nice I think is Yeah That's one of the ones in Long Beach right But I mean In it looks Truthful I think it's

It's pleasing that all of that work And all of that infrastructure And all of that capital Is now being put to work flat out on neutron and other things. So, you know, it's, it in one in one respect, it died in another respect, it was reborn. So yeah, um, so I think, you know, all of the, all of the people that work so hard there, um, should should certainly, you know, take, take solace in the fact that all of their work has not gone, you know, and in vain. Yeah, yeah. I do love that you got the money either

way. That's, that's lovely. That's a nice, that's a nice, so ironic win. I love it. It comes back around. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, Neutron is definitely a whole wing of the show we should probably get into because you had an interesting moment. You know, the last time we talked, it was early days for the world knowing about Neutron.

And now you're in the depths of it at this moment. So can you maybe back off that and just kind of give us an understanding for what the neutron setup is going to be when its thing is totally rolling? Like is that facility on California home of neutron production and all that? And then it would be heading over to wallops for launch or is there going to be, I know there's a new facility out in the Maryland area or something. I just kind of try to understand the map that you've got going. Yeah, 100%.

So firstly, I'd say that whenever somebody looks at a rocket program, everybody looks at the rocket. And I, you know, I would say that the rocket is probably 20% of the work and the capital. 80% of the work in the capital is everything else, the infrastructure around the actual rocket. So, you know, as you say, factories, launch sites, engine test facilities. So kind of the general just there is that, so Long Beach facility, the old virgin facility is now called the Engine Development Center or EDC. And that currently produces electrons, Rutherford engine, and all of the, all of the neutron Archimedes engines.

So that's, you know, an end-to-end production line just spitting all of those engines out. Then we have the Middle River facility where we have a very large automated fiber placement machine, which is, you know, think of it like almost like a 3D printer for composite. And instead of, you know, printing 0.1 of a millimeter at a time, you're literally laying down meters a minute of carbon fiber in big wide, you know, you have strafs.

Was it like the spinner wind-view things, right? No, no, no. So it's a tape winder, so a tape layer. So think of like a giant mold and then a CNC machine and head. And basically the head just zips in there, laying down, you know, fiber backwards and forwards and forwards. So very, very efficient, massively. And look, used tremendously in the aviation industry for making fuselages.

and tail planes and all those kinds of things. But like I say, you measure it in like meters of carbon fiber laid per minute. It's just awesome. So the middle river facility is really doing those large composite structures and some integration. Then the integration facility just outside the gate of wallops does the final assembly of the launch vehicle. And then spread around the various other facilities,

we have kind of component-level stuff in component level development. Like down here in New Zealand, there's a whole bunch of kind of TVCs and bits and pieces spread across there. And then, of course, in Mississippi,

we have the engine test facility. So that's where, you know, all the engines go to test. So it's kind of, it's kind of a little bit spread out, but actually pretty concentrated on the East Coast in a lot of respects.

And that's kind of the gist of it. Now, the lovely thing about, about Middle River, is, you know, it's an old Lockheed building that used to build Gemini's, I think it was. So it's right on, yeah, so it's right on the water. And the rocket literally rolls out onto the barge. The barge rolls up to, you know, just up the, up the, you know, up the sea to wallops.

And then we're right there at the pad. So from a logistics standpoint, really, really efficient. I was going to ask that because I was like, you know, it's obviously very close to Walps. I was like, can you, can you put that on a highway? I don't know if you can. It's totally too big for the highway, right? So, yeah, you got a boat to just go through the, through the bay or whatever, right? Yeah, exactly.

Well, you guys know how much I love marine assets. So I'm making sure that I get the maximum use out of air marine assets possible. I love it. We were talking on the pre-show about how big the U.S. is and how much space we've got. And the fact that you think that is close to wallops is hilarious. someone who has driven that length many times, it's not close to Walps. It's close if you zoom out.

It's not. Okay. But like in the grand scheme of rockets, in the grand scheme of rockets, it's a lot closer than Falcon is to his launch pot. It's a lot closer than Vulcan is to his launch pad. It's a lot closer than Saturn or shuttle ever where it's close for rockets. That's fair.

The L.A. rockets, they take boats on rivers for a long distance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. That's fair. I know that like New Zealand has such a rich heritage in like composites for for like sailing ships and stuff. Did you manage, is like, does any of that, that, that, you know, heritage and skill and talent, has any of that been able to be transferred into your operation in the United States?

Like, well, is there, if a New Zealand, a New Zealander who makes those ships came into your rocket family, would you let your rocket factory, would he be able to point out stuff that's like, oh yeah, that's how we do it? Like, is there any kind of like character to that that managed to transfer over? Definitely. So, I mean, I mean, even in my background, when I was working for a government research institute, it was in supporting advanced composite structures for the America's cupboats. Yeah. So even, you know, my grounding is kind of there. But yes, I would say that, look, New Zealand has an international reputation of doing very difficult

and unique things with carbon, you know, composite structure. structures. And look, the U.S. obviously has unique capabilities as well. So it's not unusual to see Kiwis running around, you know, our U.S. composite factories and facilities for sure. And so, no, yeah, I think it's a very seamless, you know, seamless integration there. Good, good. Let's keep carbon fiber theme for a minute because, so you've got, electron, big size difference here.

Are there, I'm curious to know, in the era that we're in now, where Starship is doing its thing as a stainless steel rocket, and there was a whole branch of its history that was going to be carbon fiber, and it's still like the one question

I want to ask Elon Musk of like the day that they decided to make that switch, or the day they like officially said, we're switching, we're trashing that big mandrel thing that Jake was talking about. We're going to stainless steel direction. And I feel like that's

explained in various ways throughout the years, but I'm curious in the life cycle of neutron design, you know, did you put up other options when you were thinking about a bigger rocket and what was it that said, no, what we started with the carbon fiber branch here is the right decision for something as big as neutron? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So here's the thing, like, there's no silver bullet in this, in this industry, right? Everything is an engineering compromise. Yes. everything is a compromise right so the advantage with stane the steel is yeah yep so thermally it's it's it's it's it's got some great resistance but the advantage with it is that if you want to iterate quickly you can just weld stuff together and move and change designs very very quickly now the downside with composites is you have to build the tooling to to you know to make the part so when you build the tooling it's very difficult to iterate on

on that kind of outer mold line, if you will, because it's new tooling. So that would make an iterative process very, very slow. Now, the disadvantage with stainless steel is it's four times heavier per unit strength than carbon fiber. So for the same strength, it's four times a weight. Now, the advantage with carbon fiber, obviously,

is it's four times lighter for the same mass. So there's pluses and minuses. Now, if I'm Elon and I'm looking at Starship, where you're going to be doing a tremendous amount of iterative design, then it's not feasible to build it out of composite because the time it takes to build the tooling would not be conducive to a highly iterative approach. Stain steel is wonderful.

But the challenge with the stainless steel is it's very, very heavy. So where that drives other trades is now you have to have extremely high performance propulsion systems. So you put all of the kind of compromise, if you will, now you've got heavy structures. You know, you just have heavy structures. So if you've got heavy structures, then you need higher ISP and higher thrust and higher performance out of your engine. And that's the trade you make. Now, the trade we made with Neutron is we know exactly the vehicle we want to build.

There is no iteration cycle that's required. So we're happy to go in and tool that thing straight away. Now, we end up with very, very lightweight structure. structures, incredibly lightweight structures. I mean, the upper stage, the whole upper stage five-metre diameter tank of neutron weighs the same amount as a Harley-Davidson. So, you know, everybody, you look at like... Oh, yes, it's not just the Americans at the weird unit of matters, everybody, all right?

Back off, get out of the dishwashers in my football fields. We got a new one, Harley-Davidson, so I love it. Exactly, exactly. And, you know, you think a centaur's light, and it really is an amazing thing. But, you know, the neutron upper stage makes, you know, centiards. look like an obese person. So, you know, it's... Looks like a...

He was trying to think of a big motorcycle and couldn't think of a bigger motorcycle than are the Davidson. A rocket bike, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what that means for us, though, is that if you kind of break it all down and you're trying to build a reusable rocket,

what is the bit that, from a reusability standpoint, is the most complex? and that's the propulsion system, it's engines. So what it enabled us to do is it enabled us to build engines that have a very, very benign operating point. Because our structures are so light, our performance out of our engines need to be very modest. And look, if you're sitting on an aircraft

and you're flying across the Pacific Ocean, hopefully coming to visit me in New Zealand one day, and you look out on the wing at that turbine, you do not want that turbine running on the ragged edge, riding the lightning. You want that turbine just sitting in a real comfortable place. And that's exactly what we've been able to achieve with Neutron, is those engines, their life will be measured not in seconds,

not in minutes, but in hours, if not more. So that was the engineering compromise that we made. So we've traded lightweight structures, you know, put the challenge in the structures and taken all the challenge out of the engine. So does that mean like your, you know, your, you're coming to the end of the, well, maybe not the end, but you know, you're, you're deep into the development cycle for Archimedes. And do you find that that played out? Like, do you, do you find that the development of that engine because it didn't have to push so many boundaries? Like,

did it happen easily and quicker than, than it may have had you gone a different direction? Like, do you feel like that played out? Yeah, look, I mean, look, engine design is always complex. But, you know, we weren't worried. I mean, we were lucky to have, you know, whole bunch of the SpaceX Raptor team came and joined us to develop Archimedes. And, you know, they're not trying to do pre-burners at 11,000 PSI. And like, you know, okay, a chamber pressure is like 2,000 PSI. So that makes a, it's just a totally different, you know, our biggest challenge to date with Archimedes is actually getting the pre-burner to operate so cold,

not so hot, you know, because it's such a benign operating point that, you know, that was actually the challenge of the pre-burner elements was to get them to light and run reliably at such cold temperatures. Hmm. That's interesting. I don't even know what to do with that one, to be honest. Not smart enough to. But that's where you want to be right.

Like, that's where you want to be. You don't want to be worrying about melting your turbine off. Yeah, yeah. You want to be at the other point. into that design envelope. Does that also mean, though, that you have headroom there, and that's something that you and the team would plan to, like, eat into eventually if you want to get to reusable upper stage

or something that's more complex or human launch vehicles or, you know, things that would use up that other margin? Like, does that, is that something that you kind of keep in the back of your head? Is it something that you would plan on? Well, yes. I mean, we could, but it kind of defeats the purpose. I mean, what we're trying to build here is just an incredibly, you know, efficient, reusable rocket. And the moment you end up start cranking this thing up, then, you know, everything is a giant trade. And I want an engine that I can land, you know, the stage back and bring it back, walk up to it, do a couple of visual inspections and carry on.

That's where we need to be. The toy with the corona of rockets, basically. yeah yeah yeah I believe you but also see electron you know I think it was one of the early shows I was like you're gonna stretch this thing at all and you're like nah it's maybe like the height of it and I was like all right and then I was like well I don't think he was lying to me but certainly things changed an electron over time and you like that's a natural flow of things and it's oh look don't get me wrong like it it totally it totally will will change but I mean I guess the the the reusability and you know the the kind of reliable

to design ethos is fundamental. That's like the tent pole of this versus where Electron is coming from. Yeah. Exactly. So I'd be disappointed if we ended up with an engine that was a grenade and everything was just pushed to the absolute limits. That would be a failure of the program in my opinion. And but yeah, look, also everybody,

we always joke here at Rocket Lab. It's like nobody ever asked for more thrust. I mean, that's that, you know, of course everybody asked for more thrust. I mean, there's always other areas of launch vehicle that don't meet the performance that you, that you hope for. But, I mean, yeah, certainly modest improvements of those kinds of things are very easy gains. But, you know, we hope we hope we end up in that, in that, you know, designing the lope that we really want to be. Yeah, yeah.

So a lot of people are curious about the launch date, obviously. Is 2024 still on the table? Do you think this thing's coming up? or is there changes to that? Because I know I've heard that date and a lot of people are skeptical of it, but I might be skeptical of it too. So I'm curious to see what you think about it. I don't think Peter surprised that none of us believe launched dates,

Jake. Like, just generally across me. I'm mostly ignored dates, to be fair. So. Yeah, yeah.

No, look, we're already updated that. I think last earnings call. We're targeting for mid-25 now. Mid-25. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I still pretty soon. It is. It is. And look, we cite everybody. there's their dates, this is their targets, but it's a rocket program. And, you know, sometimes you, you know, you get Delta happy card,

happy, happy deck of cards and sometimes you don't. And I would say that, you know, as every day goes by, we get greater and greater visibility to that launch date and the probability thereof as we move further and further down the program. So, but, I mean, you know, also saying that you can get right to the very end and in all integrated stage tests and have an issue. So, you know, that's our target. That's where we think it's landing right now. But also, you know, I think we're always cautious that it's a rocket program.

One of the things we've been talking about on the show recently with like Artemis and Vulcan and some of these other vehicles that are out there is the way that manifests build out and how we've almost started joking that like the distance between the second and third launch is the most telling aspect of like an architecture like Artemis or Vulcan situation that they're in with the payloads shifting and needing engines and all this, that you might have, you might know we're not going to be able to get to our third launch until really far in the distance. So the second launch is going to be delayed a bit and it will fill that gap.

And like you kind of have this thing in early programs where stuff predictably happens at the first mission or two and it fills, it kind of obfuscates the fact that mission three is farther away. in the Rogelab world, even with Electron, early days, you were talking about, you know, when competitors are out there still talking about their first launch, you were really harping on, yes, but it's

this whole production line, it's the operations, it's flying with pace. So knowing that that's Rocketelab's situation over the years, what was it that came out of like the electron world and fed into neutron in terms of planning? Did you plan stuff differently this time having that

whole electron rep in your past? 100% and and you know we've we've been we've been very public with what we expect about the neutron launch cadence it's like 1 3 5 so it's it's in you know those are those a years like one and one and then three in the next year like that no nobody could expect to do better oh my god none it's an insanity like i mean 12 yeah yeah yeah so and and look um I I I feel like, like, you know, a bit of an old person in the industry now. You've even got the gray hairs to prove it. I mean, I can remember sitting on the stage at a space symposium, you know, proclaiming that how we were going to commoditize launch and all this. And man, like, there's nothing like the launch gods to bring a baseball bat to your face and kind of, you know, put you into reality.

And this is why, you know, like productionizing a rocket or productionizing anything to that matter, but a rocket especially is just vastly more complicated than putting your first one on the pad. And, you know, I look back at Electron and it's all that really unsexy stuff, like supply chain, ERP systems, MRP systems, work instructions, quality.

These are all the things that nobody ever sees, but the things that make a production line go. and your first rocket you have all of your engineers pouring over it in the most extruciating detail taking care of absolutely every little thing knowing everything there is to know about the design of how something should be and then on your 20th rocket you have technicians reading work instructions and some of those technicians can be brand new that have just arrived and are in training but yet everything has to be flawless and providing, you know, creating a production system to allow that and is so difficult.

But also really transferable. So, you know, the production system we develop for electron is what we use in our space systems and it's also what we're using for neutron. So a lot of that base infrastructure, well, all of that base infrastructure is kind of built. So we feel very, very, very privileged to have that. but when you're going from zero as a new rocket company, it is, I would say,

you know, if I could, if I could go back in time and give myself one piece of advice, it would be prepare for how hard this is. Yeah. Yeah, it is, I fully believe,

I have no problem believing anything you just said there. Like that is such a hard, hard issue. I mean, it's documented. it's training it's like a culture it's it's getting people to it's to have a system that can accommodate people who make or quit or are slow or like you know you have to have something that's

robust to to or drink wine at 8 a.m. on Fridays you know yeah yeah you know what if your CEO drinks wine at 8 am. on a Friday you know does the system still work in time you have to have all that right yeah totally unfair you guys are creating a persona that you know what I can only drink I can only drink one glass of wine. I'm anybody's after one glass of wine. You know, that's fun. I mean, there's probably time for someone behind the camera here to go and grab one for you

before you get to the end of the show. I'm just going to say that one out loud there. With how good the set looks, they got time to do all sorts of stuff. The lighting's great. This is the best lighting anyone's out on the show. So, we are professional YouTubers. So, you know. It's all down to James.

He runs all of the, you know, the live streams. And I think, you know, talk about you guys know, right? You guys know what it takes to put a live stream together. And there's a tiny little team here at Rockalab that produce all of our live streams, and they do a great job. Shout out to the people running the tech. Yeah. One thing you were getting at, and I'm curious about, is like the thing that when you think

back, you wish you did different with electron out the gate. And what if any of those are still lingering? like is there a thing that is on electron that the engineers are like man if we could just solve this one thing or tweak that or I wish we made a different decision here what are the things that bugged you in the team with what's the electron tech debt yeah that's a good way well look to be honest with you I don't I I don't look at things like that because all the decisions we made were made at the right in the you know with the right information at the right time. And look, I'm sure there's, you know, I can think of a number of things that I would,

I would love to have a better yield or we could have, we could have done differently. But honestly, I think the team did an amazing job because the first electron that flew and the number 50 that's on the pad right now, if I stuck, you know, if you guys stood in front of those two vehicles and looked at it, they don't look any different. Like, there's not, there was no massive redesigns of any system. There was no minimum viable product just to get to the pad to show some investors we could do it kind of a gig.

That thing was built for production on day one. You did make 50. Yeah. So yeah. That's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, so yeah, look, there's always things that with infinite time and infinite capital you

could streamline and whatnot. But I think that has been some of the magic and the success of Rocket Lab is, you know, we have we have a core fundamental belief here is build beautiful things. And it's very, it's kind of like Archimedes as well. Like we could have put a copper chamber, billet copper chamber on a test stand and made some fire a year ago. And great, look great for an investment, you know, pitch or anything like, no, we put the engine on that stand that is in production.

So, and that's the difference, right? And that's what makes it important. So the Archimedes engine that's there now is going to look the same as the Archimedes engine that's going to go in orbit. So this kind of our approach here is like focus on the engineering, focus on the end goal, and don't get kind of polluted by kind of perverse, you know, fake goals on the way through. Hmm That's interesting I like the classification of fake goals

I'm going to start from thinking that framework That's a good one Have you had any fake goals crop up that you're like no that's I realize now that's a fake goal we should stop doing that plan Is there anything that's come up in the past Oh look I'm I'm sure because You know

Sometimes you know, sometimes you want you want to achieve something and feel like you're achieving something. And this is the challenge, right? And this is why I say Neutron right now is it's the best part of the program. Because, you know, for like the first year in a bit, it's just all in, you know, in, you know, in CAD land, right? Yeah. You know, we're designing the rocket. And before we can make any of the toolings, the design of the rocket has to be finished.

So you have to be very, very mature in your rocket design before you cut talling for a composite rocket. So, you know, it feels like nothing happened. I mean, probably it does for the rest of the world on the outside, like nothing happened for a year on neutron. But actually, it all happened in the first year. It's just no hardware. And, you know, right now I say we're in the best time

because all of the stuff is in our hands and we're testing hardware flat out. And look, it's super exciting to see hardware turn up. and all full of, you know, hope and promise, and you think it's going to be perfect. And then you actually, now I'd say we're kind of in this honeymoon period where that is the case, but we're also learning what isn't perfect. And, you know, what are the iteration cycles we need to do on particular pieces of things? So, you know, we're transitioning out of the hardware, kind of,

or not hardware, the kind of honeymoon period into what is generally a pretty brutal period where you know, you learn that actually that bit's not performing the way you want it to and you've got to go back and fix it and so forth. So, you know, I'd say everybody working on the program, enjoy right now because it's all downhill. Yeah, once you get into that integration stuff, it can go really off the rails, right? Yeah, but the good news is then it goes uphill very quickly because once you're integrating and on the pad, then, you know, there's definitely a trough out, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah.

So should we talk about some not rocket stuff? I always make a joke that we have to stop calling Rocket Lab a rocket company because you're doing lots of other stuff now, maybe even more stuff than you are rockets. So I have a duty as a planetary rep on this co-host duo to ask about a couple of things. Actually, I want to start with, Escapade because are you still involved with the the bus for that and everything?

That's still all all go for you. It's been changed a lot. I'm trying to keep up. Yeah, we built the whole thing. So no, Escapade is, oh man, there's photos of it online. It's the most beautiful spacecraft, seriously. I mean, whenever I get, whenever I go to headquarters, I literally walk straight past my desk, gown, a clean room gown and just go straight to Escapade in the clean room.

Because, you know, that thing's going to Mars. The team has designed and built the most beautiful spacecraft. And so, yep, that is, you know, we are on track to deliver that for launch. And, you know, it's launching on, you know, the Blue Origins first vehicle. So we are, like I say, we are on track to deliver that spacecraft. We got to get that picture up there, Anthony D.C. I'm working on it. Two of them, yes.

This is the one you're talking about. This is a big old. I don't know. This is the one that's on the site, but maybe this isn't recent enough. Yeah. I can't actually see it. Oh, you can't. There you can't.

There are you. Yeah. Yep. Yep. There's better pictures than that, though. Yeah. All right. I'll keep Googling.

Jeez. We'll keep Google. That's awesome. I mean, I'm curious. So you got that and we have Venus. I think Venus is scheduled for, I would say, next year, right? That's kind of where we're at with that one or at the end of this year, early next year. Yeah.

Well, look, Venus is a passion project, and, you know, it's a nights and weekends thing. And, of course, the challenge with Venus is that, you know, we've got half a billion dollar SDA contract to deliver. We've got MDA Global Stars spacecraft to deliver. We've got the two, the two Escapade spacecraft to deliver, a whole bunch of VADA spacecraft to deliver. So, you know, it's always the, it's always kind of the, you know, the poor uncle to all of the real work. So it's a different, it's a huge passion of mine. And, you know, we continue to work on it. But we have to, we have to run the business first.

And it kind of, so look, if it happens next year, that'll be great. If it doesn't, Venice isn't going anywhere. And, you know, we'll get to it. But we have to deliver the, you know, the projects first. So I'm curious, though, because the, you know, those are two missions that go to domains that most of your other stuff is, you know, sticking around Earth, the kind of thing, right? I mean, you've got some components on things like, I think you've got solar panels on psyche, is that I think are out there out to your stuff.

But, I mean, but the bigger question is, you know, what are you learning from, you know, exploring the solar system, as you're building those systems to, to work in those environments, I'm curious to know if there's any kind of back loop between systems going back to, you know, quote, quote, the real work that you say, right? Yeah, as you're going back and building these other satellites and rocket stuff, I'm kind of curious to know, like what, technologically, you know, from an engineering standpoint, what's going back and forth between those kind of things? Because they kind of seem like different domains and it's a topic I'm kind of engaged. Yeah. So what I will say is,

if you can build two spacecraft to go to Mars and operate around Mars, you can pretty much build anything. And that's kind of, that's kind of the, you know, one of the reasons why I was so keen to do the project, apart from like an unhinged kind of planetary desire, really. And we really focus on doing the difficult stuff. I mean, if you look at all of our spacecraft and all of our programs, they're all crazy difficult. So Escapade, great example.

Take VADA. I mean, that is a platform that hosts a capsule. We are responsible for all the trajectory and propulsion and targeting to reenter that capsule and landed in

the desert. Ridicously hard thing to do. it's a spacecraft that has a big ball of propulsion on board and a whole bunch of power to run their factory. That is not a basic bus, really difficult. The MDA Global Star mission, like very, very long lifespan operating in an incredibly difficult radiation environment. This is not your small sat bus, right? These are half-ton things wallowing in the worst radiation you can imagine that require an uptime of, extremely high. So once again, really difficult. So we never, you know, Capstone to the Moon was another

great example, crazy difficult. So, you know, we do this, this really difficult stuff because we're really good at that, you know, that really difficult stuff. But what it does mean is, is you kind of right. It's like, you know, you do these difficult things and then, you know, everything else becomes, you know, relatively, you know, simple after that. And, you know, what I'm trying to to build here is an end-to-end space company. And I think that the large space companies of the future are not going to be a company that just focuses on launch or just focuses on building satellites. The large space companies of the future are going to look like Rocket Lab where a customer

comes to you and says, hey, I want some telecommunications over Brazil. And you go, okay, and you build the satellite, you deploy the satellite, you operate the satellite and you just provide that service. Because anybody who wants to provide a service from space have to become, like, domain experts in how to build a satellite and how to launch a rocket and how to operate in space. And, like, the barrier there is extraordinarily high. And I think you can look at the Starlink example, right? I mean, nobody can compete with Internet from space unless you have your ability to build

your own satellites, your ability to launch them on your own rocket. and at scale. And, you know, we're trying to, and we're arguing, we've built the same kind of model there is we can go to Mars. So if you want to do a comm satellite and low Earth orbit, like no deal at all, no big deal at all. That's piece of cake. And we'll have Neutron online shortly,

and we can deploy those in mass with Neutron. So I really think that that is what we're trying to build and that's what all large space companies of the future are going to look like. I think we will quickly remove this idea of just a launch company or just a satellite-like company. Yeah, yeah. Emphasis on the lab. Yeah, the future rebrand just dropped the rocket. Yeah, that's great.

Do you know the story with the name Rocket Lab, how it came about? Well, I think from reading the book wasn't there like, it kind of had a start in sort of like that you worked for that think tank or whatever it was and you were really kind of kicking around lots of ideas and stuff weren't you and then you're barren with lawyer no I mean as I was sitting on the plane on you know back from my rocket pilgrimage in America starting rocket lab you know shows how how kind of innovative I am in that respect to the naming convention but you know what am I doing rockets rocket and I was worried that I'm this, this Kiwi from a country, there's no, no rocket experience. I have no

aerospace degree. I needed something that would, that would give us a little bit of credibility. So pull something in laboratory, it all of a sudden it sounds like, like sciencey and techie. And so, so, ah, rocket lab. Yep, that works. And that, that was, that was the name. I have a very Canadian analogy to that, that exact thinking. So I used to live in Edmonton, Alberta. And back when Alberta was becoming a province, they were trying to pick the capital of this province. And all the cities were sort of applying. So Edmonton got the job.

And the way they did it is in their application, it said, where are you going to put the legislature? And so they were still like naming the streets. It was like a very small town. And so instead of the middle of their town being like, you know, like main street or whatever, and then going like first, second, third, they made the middle a hundredth and a hundredth. And then it made, so the legislature address was going to be like whatever, whatever 100th Avenue. And that made the city look a lot bigger than it actually was.

There you go. Not. It was too often. It was name it after the guy picking or, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah, then if it works. Yeah. Um, a small tangent question on the planetary stuff just because I, I have you on the horn here and I want to take the opportunity. Mars, Venus, Moon, all of those have some degree of planetary protection requirements. And I'm really curious to hear a perspective from a service provider.

How is it working with those policies? Because they're kind of a weird mishmash of not quite clear things. And it's not super clear who's in charge of them half the time. And it seems like an interesting requirement to work with. And I'm just kind of curious to know, you know, how did that impact your design decisions? and is it easy to work with? Was it difficult? I don't know.

I want to hear your perspective on that. Yeah, look. So it's pretty easy for us because they're, you know, at least the capstone and the Mars missions, NASA. So we just follow the NASA planetary standards. Yeah. And I don't know. Call me a geek, but I think it's quite cool.

I love the fact that when I go into the clean room to go and look at, you know, Escapade, I have to go through an extra layer of planetary protection. that I don't put peat germs on Mars. I think that's just cool. So, no, and look, I think it's responsible. So, look, maybe there's other members of the team that have to experience it that I don't. But, you know, I think that is, I think that's fine. I mean, I think the interesting one is going to be Mars sample return.

It's going to be interesting because, you know, we, of course, you don't want to bring anything to Mars equally well, if you're bringing something back, you know, it should be dead, right? But, you know, I think that's a new, that's kind of a new thing. So I think planetary protection is kind of inverted in that sense. So that'll be a really interesting one to follow. Yeah. I know it's a it's a it's a it's a I don't say a policy but it's a practice that's been undergoing a lot of changes over the last like few years you know call it call it five years or so planetary protection's been it's had a lot of eyes on it mostly because there's lots of different things happening one of those being people like you are getting into the space and

and you know even if it's a NASA mission it's never been like that before right and and and you've got yeah Mars Samp return the that's going to be the you know that's that on the list of like places to go and things to do, that's the highest level of stringent requirements you're going to get, right? And we've never done that before. So there's lots of like stuff happening in that world. And so I was just kind of curious to see what you think of that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was going to say lightning.

I wasn't plugging your satellite bus. But if you want to play it. You got, you got, you got to go. No, I was going to lightning around things I've been thinking about with regards to various rocket lab projects over the years. one is there was a thing like a year or two ago where Rocket Lab got some sort of

agreement with NASA to look at payload return from low Earth orbit or something like that and I feel like I never got full resolution on this was I having a fever dream or was this actually a thing that happened you might have been confused because we had a space act agreement with NASA and we still do

on the Venus reentry reentry probe on the heat shield So using, you know, some of their new materials for our, for our probe for the Venus mission. So that's the only thing I can think of that that might be aligned there. You know, obviously we do the VADA reentry stuff, but the paperwork seem more interesting on that one than the space side things. Thing hung up there for a couple of months. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. look in in in you know

all credit to Vada you know they're doing they're they're pushing the boundaries and doing new stuff and and um so you know I think I think you know there was there was a lot of learning that had to be done there and and you know they managed to get through it um next random Anthony's bugged

about this thing I I maybe this is my failure of imagination of how big neutron is actually going to be and I need to just let you let me know next time you're in Virginia and I will drive down it's very close as Jake said so that'll be a quick drive. I cannot figure out the size of the faring on this thing.

Something about it, I feel like it looks too small, but maybe I'm just not sure of where the second stage ends and the faring technically begins. There's like a tube part of this. So can you give us some estimates or comparisons between what the effective area would be in there versus some of the other competitors in that five meter class at the moment? It's all, it's all, you know, on par with all five meter class.

So you're exactly right. So you have to understand that we no longer have fairings. We have a nose cone. Because the fairings aren't jettisoned, the nose cone is just an aerodynamic inconvenience. And so, you know, it just needs to do the job of a nose cone. So, yes, no, a lot of the payload is buried sort of deeper into the interstage. well that's probably quite an old image too

you always say that every time I talk about images you always say oh one's out of date I know but we more about building the rocket than creating images but yes you're actually you're actually right that is you know it is buried within that interstage a bit

because you know from an engineering perspective we want to keep the opening of those the actual items were opening to the lowest mass possible because, you know, we've obviously, you know, the larger the shell that you have to open, the more challenge you have with stiffness and location. Yeah. So like I say, they're just an aerodynamic inconvenience, and we just need to actuate them as, you know, actuate the minimum amount possible.

So the most efficient way is to, you know, suck the payload down a little bit. But is this like comparable with the short farings on Falcon 9 or Vulcan 9 or Vulcan? or I guess old Atlas 5, like the shorter farings, but not necessarily the extended Falcon 9 fairings or their super long Vulcan fairings? Yeah. Yeah, no, I have to, I have to, I get back to you on that exactly where we landed, landed on that. But I mean, it's all kind of customer driven anyway. And you have to, you know, a lot of the constellation is all pretty short stack anyway. Yeah. It's mass limited first in a lot of the cases.

100%. 100% and um you know it's like any of these design points um everything is a trade right everything is a giant trade off so you know you can you can very easily find yourself in a situation where for um you know a payload that represents 3% of the market you you remove 20% of the rocket's performance so um you know all of those trades and decisions around those kind of things are very very much you know customer lead and and uh and also So being grown up about, yeah, there will be some, some mission, that might be a 3% of a particular category of missions that we just, we just can't do.

And that's fine because they represent, you know, 3% of the total market and someone else can do those. I feel like you're doing fine in the NRO department anyway, so I feel like they'll be fine with it. Yeah. They would be happy if the entire rocket was a faring. That's kind of what the rat, you know, so, you know, they'll figure out what to do with it.

all right so what's you're talking you're talking some trash about this drawing can you tell us can you describe with words what what is new now you're saying this is out of date what's what's the current neutron looking like these days well it's looking pretty pretty similar that um strikes are slightly different um can a slight the fairings are definitely slightly slightly different i mean they're all just sort of sort of tweaks um One thing I would say is you notice the upper stage, this is cool. So you notice that the second stage is actually really tiny compared to the first stage. And that's, I guess that's a bit of a hint at the design element here is like put all the, the most amount of energy you can into the first stage because the first stage is a bit they're reusing.

So with a non-reusible upper stage, you have like a really competing set of requirements, right? It has to be the highest performance and the lowest cost. Now generally those two things, you know, collide. They don't converge. So what that means is for it to be the lowest cost, you need it to be the really, really small and efficient. And, you know, that's the thing that you always see is like the upper stage compared to the first stage looks, looks really small because the first stage is just doing so much work as it should, because that's the bit that we're bringing back and reusing again and again.

Doesn't that put you into the area, though, where reentry and recovery starts to get harder, right? There's a tipping point somewhere in there where if you've got too much velocity in the first stage, it makes your work a lot harder. So how do you actually dial in that balance? The Vulcan problem, yeah. The Vulcan problem. What do you always call it? It's like the groundlit upper stage, Jake's theory on.

SLS and, you know, Delta to some extent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, look, as I mentioned, everything is a trade. And, like, if all the engineers are sitting in the room of, you know, leaders of every discipline and they're all unhappy, then I know I've done my job exactly right. They all think the others should be solving their problem. 100%.

That's how you know you've reaped optimum design point. But, but, yeah, so the interesting thing about Neutron as well is we don't have a deceleration burn. And we've been able to do that from the learnings from from electron, because obviously, electron has no burn at any point. So, you know, we've really mastered how to reenter these kind of things without kind of doing these deceleration burns and kind of scrubbing off the velocity in that sense. So neutron is unique in that factor as well. okay all right

when can I come down to visit when are you in Virginia next is my main my final question of like let me plan I'm I'm I'm all over the states all over the world all of the time so so yeah I mean look if we if we can if we can get a calendar sync that would be

that that'd be great but but yeah I mean mid 2025 I'm there for sure I think is. Yeah, mid-2020-5. I always tell Jake, like, when you go to see something there, it's great because it's like, it's like minor league Kennedy in the way that everything's a little closer and a little easier to access and like the press site is arguably too close and it's really loud. Even first electron I saw from there, I was like, damn, that thing's got a kick to it.

You know, I didn't know. I've seen Antares from there before, but I didn't know what it would, no one, I don't don't think at that point anyone had seen other than the team had seen an electron from that close because the New Zealand site you're pretty far out there although there's you're going to bring some launch photographers there I don't know people were asking if if you've selected the photographers that are heading down or that's still a process yeah I'm not sure if if we haven't or not but no it'll be now looking forward to that it'll be it'll be um be good opportunity yeah some good picks cool around space needs to take a note out of the out of there

it's another one that's the the only thing that beats out how far you can watch an electron from New Zealand is how far you watch an Aryan 5 or 6 from French Guiana it is like from people that have been it's forever away so yeah right

they're solving that at Wolffs Neutron are we going to be able to stand that close for Neutron at Wallops yeah I mean that's a big ass rocket we're going to be like two miles away from that thing yeah yeah I mean all of the all the Hazard Arks

are all within within limits. So, you know, I think... That's going to be the best. Yes. Hell yeah. Good. That's the shit. Well.

Well, this has been fun. We appreciate hanging out. Yeah. Always great to hang out and get some questions to ask. We kept Jake's planetary, we scratched his itch a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

I just want to see them fly. I can't wait. Yeah, no. Yeah. Yeah. and I love Escapade is going to be an awesome mission It's going to be really cool

What are you going to visit next When Escapade's out the door What's the thing you're going to go? Europa Yeah When he goes into work He said he goes and visit Escapade What are you going to do now?

Well we always Yeah this is the thing is we always have to have one Interplanetarian mission in the clean room right Just for your Like morning ritual Yeah yeah my morning ritual Yeah No, I think it's, look, it's inspiring.

It's super inspiring. And, you know, it's hard to explain until you actually stand there and you go, man, this thing's going to another planet. That's cool. That's real cool. Yeah. Nailed it. Nice.

Perfect ending. All right, y'all. What do we got next week, Jake? Is next week Vulcan Week? I think next week is Vulcan Week. Yeah. So we're doing a bit of a bit of a tour of Rocket executives. We're going to have someone from ULA.

Come on. Mark Pellar is coming on. And we're going to talk about Vulcan. And we're going to ask them all the same questions about production. The difference between the second and third launch. That's the big one. Mark's great. Mark is great.

So that'll be great. I'll look forward to watching that show. Yeah. We're excited to have them. So cool. All right. Well, Peter, thanks so much for coming on. This has been great.

We appreciate the time. Good luck with Launch 50. Thanks very much.