Watch this space

For Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s 41-year-old Kiwi founder and chief executive, sending small satellites on compact rockets into orbit more frequently than any other launch provider in history, brings to fruition an intrepid goal that grew out of a childhood obsession with rockets and space in his hometown of Invercargill at the bottom of New Zealand’s South Island.

In 2009 thanks to seed money from New Zealand entrepreneur Mark Rocket, the first Kiwi to join Virgin Galactic’s space tourism programme and who changed his name to Rocket by deed poll, Beck was able to launch his first rocket, Atea 1 in 2009 from Great Mercury Island, near Auckland. Rocket was a 50 per cent owner of Rocket Lab, until exiting in 2011.

That launch is a quantum leap from where Rocket Lab is today, but Beck is quick to emphasise that the business is not about about building hardware.

“What’ we are trying to achieve is to improve life on earth,” he says.

“For me the definition of success is to create frequent access to space by deploying spacecraft that actually have a meaningful impact to the vast population on the planet.

“Small satellites are playing an increasingly important role in providing crucial services that benefit millions of people on earth,” he says.

“Frequent access to orbits is the key to unlocking the potential for these satellites, and Rocket Lab is the only small launch provider currently enabling this access.”

The deployed satellites will deliver everything from communication channels to educational, environmental, health and science research, weather forecasting to GPS, measuring radiation effects on spacecraft, photographing planets and stars and a raft of other services.

“Until now many small satellite operators have had to compromise on optimal orbits in order to reach space at an accessible cost,” Beck says.

The compact rocket design reduces the satellite launch price dramatically to under $US5 million, compared to infrequent dispatches from big and costly rockets funded by country’s governments that cost many more millions per programme.

‘The compact rocket design reduces the satellite launch price dramatically.’

Kick Stage

Rocket Lab successfully tested its ‘kick-stage releases’ on its Still Testing Electron launch vehicle in January. It coasted in orbit for 40 minutes, before powering up, igniting Rocket Lab’s restartable liquid propulsion, then shutting down and deploying a Dove Pioneer Earth-imaging satellite for launch customer Planet and two Lemur-2 satellites for weather and ship tracking company, Spire.

The kick stage uses a precision-pointing, cold gas reaction control system. With its own avionics, power and communications it enables the rocket to execute multiple burns so it can place small satellites into different orbits, ending the process where satellite rideshare customers were restricted to primary payload orbits.

By delivering the different satellites into their best-suited orbits faster and more accurately, satellite data is received and used sooner on earth, Beck says.

A green propulsion system on the kick stage put the large bits of rocket into a highly elliptical orbit, which cause the rocket to burn up after deploying its satellites. Satellites burn out when their time is up.

“We have a very strong environmental view about space junk,” says Beck.

“The difference between Elon Musk’s humanity star is that it’s there for a billion years whereas our rockets last for four months.

“What people don’t generally realise is that 1-1.5 per cent of a rocket’s total space is payload so 70 per cent of all junk in space is actually dead rocket bits left behind by the mere fact of putting satellites into orbit.”

Launch schedule

The November launch of the flagship Electron rocket, named It’s Business Time in a Rocket Lab competition, will carry a number of small satellites, including one for measuring radiation in the Van Allen belts to understand their impact on spacecraft. Another will monitor space weather. The payload will also include a ”drag sail” demonstrator that speeds up the deterioration of satellites after they are finished with, reducing space junk more quickly.

The launch comes after two postponements. The April 20 launch from Mahia Peninsula on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand was aborted after unusual behaviour in a motor controller during a “wet rehearsal”.

Then after weather delays in June and a downrange ground station problem in the Chatham Islands, the launch was again abandoned because of a motor controller problem. The motor controller has since been modified and qualification tested ahead of the November launch.

The December launch for NASA will take payloads for research and development in on-orbit science by educational institutions.

Beck says postponements are pretty typical in the industry.

“We don’t actually roll a vehicle out on the pad unless it is absolutely good. If we find something isn’t 100 per cent perfect then we don’t have ‘go fever’, which is a common thing in the industry.

“The motor controller is part of the electrical system. It’s a hideously complex piece of the launch system and we saw some behaviour that we didn’t like. It’s like sitting in the car when you see your engine check light is on. You’re not going to take it for a drive.

“We don’t take risks and would rather take our time now, than have a big backlog of vehicles in production because of a recurring issue.”

Rocket stats

Beck said the Electron Rocket was designed mass production in mind from the start and the New Zealand launch site was developed for launches every 72 hours, a rate higher than anywhere else in the world.

Beck says the remote location on the Mahia Peninsula, presented unique challenges during the site’s development. Rocket Lab had to build roads, upgrade Internet capability to the whole region and work through the necessary regulatory requirements.

Launches from the site can access a uniquely wide range of orbital inclinations – from 39 degrees through sun-synchronous.

Rocket Lab has announced it will decide on its first US launch site before the end of the year.

Its launch vehicle is the world’s first fully carbon composite orbital model, making it light but strong.

It stands 18 metres tall, is one metre in diameter, weighs 10.5 tonnes, its avionics weigh less than 9 kg and it is capable of delivering payloads of 150kg to a 500km sun-synchronous orbit. The further away delivery is required the lighter the load and different inclinations, so it would be 220kg for a 39 -degree inclination.

The Electron rocket’s 3D-printed, electric pump-fed engines use a propulsion cycle consisting of two brushless direct current electric motors and lithium polymer batteries, unlike the usual gas turbine rocket engines that require complicated hardware and more fuel.

Its nine motors use liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene and generate 18 kN (ratio of the propellant’s burn area to the nozzle throat area) thrust on the first stage and one motor on the second stage. Each motor nozzle can be individually steered to keep the rocket on trajectory while computers make instant and minute adjustments to deliver a satellite to a precise orbit.

Rocket Lab says one space flight will use less fuel than a 600 km flight on a Boeing 737.

Beck says the company is always looking at improvements and making the launch vehicle lighter but it doesn’t make change for the sake of change.
“From day one our target has not been to get to orbit but to get to orbit with a fully mass-produced launch vehicle,” he says.
“We have optimised as much as we can optimise. From hereon in it might be about improving our up-front performance or making manufacturing performance impovements but we came straight out of our test programme with something that is commercially ready and highly manufacturable and that is testament to our team that developed the product.”

Funding

Though Rocket Lab had its origins in New Zealand the necessity of initially raising US$200 million (A$274m) to bring the company to market meant moving it close to its venture capital investors.

That required US company registration and a US base at Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles.

“Rasing venture capital takes a tremendous amount of skill,” Beck says.
“Investors like to see a passionate entrepreneuer so at the end of the day it is not really feasible to tell someone else to raise the money.
“ It’s one of those things you accept is part of your job, but I’ve really enjoyed that part.
“Tier One investors are sharing in very big visions and are well capitalised to execute on it.”
Beck says the most satisfying part of the journey has been to use that knowledge and contacts to help others to build large companies.
He invested, for instance, in his former Kiwi employee Craig Piggott’s Halter invention, a GPS tracking, and solar-powered cow collar. It self-herds cows and sends data about cow’s behaviour and health to farmers, saving them time and money.

“I am only interested in billion dollar opportunities and Craig’s was a really good one. His company is on a tremendous trajectory,” Beck says.
Rocket Lab has done several capital raisings. Its investors include Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, DCVC (Data Collective), Lockheed Martin, Promus Ventures and New Zealand’s K1W1. It can also draw from the New Zealand Government’s Callaghan Innovation funds but Beck says this is less than $10m.

Latest estimates value the company at around $US1.4 billion.

“The investors we have involved come from making very successful companies and you can’t achieve the kind of valuation and raise the capital we have without having a very good business case. The business is in good shape,” Beck says.

Awards

Beck has been named New Zealand’s Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2016 , been admitted to the NZ Hall of Fame, and awarded the Most Inspiring Individual gong in the Innovation in Design and Engineering category at the 2014 NZ Innovators Awards ceremony.
He says while the awards are fantastic and he is humbled by being recognised as an achiever at the end of the day he is measured on his execution, not the trophy in the cabinet.

Engineering family

Beck comes from a family of engineers.
His father Russell, built a large reflector telescope for the Southland museum, where he worked after an engineering job. As a child Beck attended meetings of the Astronomical Society at the museum with his dad, giving him an early taste for space, leading him to build his own telescope and tinker with rockets and jet propulsion on bikes, scooter and rollerblades.

In his first job as a toolmaking apprentice at the Dunedin factory of whiteware developers Fisher & Paykel then later working in its design office, with a supportive staff, the use of the company’s high-tech facilities and discarded titanium he tested and built small rockets after hours. He demonstrated his rocket-powered bicycle in a 140 kph blast down a main Dunedin street. After a stint at yacht production company he contacted the government-owned, Industrial Research Limited (now Callaghan Innovation), where he secured a job as a research engineer.

He recalls how it was the perfect stomping ground for a wannabe rocket man with government assets at his fingertips and great minds to collaborate with on materials, ranging from composites to superconductors, all relevant to the rocket industry.

After surveying the aerospace situation on a trip to the US with his wife Keryn, and realising it was no further ahead than he was he launched his first rocket in 2009 and the rest is history.

Production

With 2018’s satellite launch book full Rocket Lab is focusing on orders in 2020, 2021 with capacity all but full in 2019. It has six rockets in production at present, but Beck says they’re close to completing one vehicle a month. The company aims to get production up to one every two weeks next year. “They’re pretty aggressive timelines but historically we’ve delivered pretty well on those sorts of things,” Beck says.

“There are customers who have been waiting years for a ride.”

‘They’re pretty aggressive timelines but historically we’ve delivered.’

Other players

Rocket Lab and Space X are the only other private company that deliver satellites to orbit, but Rocket Lab is the only small launch vehicle provider.
“We are enjoying that moment as there is a huge demand in the market,” Beck says.
But he makes no bones about how hard it has been getting to this point.
“You have to raise tremendous amounts of capital and build incredibly complex things – things that governments and countries build, not commercial companies.
“But we moved first and fast and now what we see is a tremendous number of companies looking at start-ups and trying to get into the market.
“ It’s a cool thing to do right now but the barrier to the entry to the market is just enormous.
“You have to remember that Space X got launched on its 50th attempt then it blew it up. That is the reality of this industry and you are always improving.”

Expertise

Rocket Lab has more than 250 staff, adding to that number by three to five a week in the US and in NZ with the larger staff in New Zealand but the larger factory at Huntington Beach.

Sourcing the right talent for rocket development is difficult, Beck says.
“There is just huge innovation going on everywere and even though there is a lot of talent there are a lot of other companies wanting it so that’s always a challenge.
“If someone turned up with 50 people tomorrow and they all met the requirements we would hire them.
“We bring people from all around the world to work on this programme and quite a high number of them are Australian.
“Australia has very good aircraft and fit-out technicians, structural analysts, and electronic design and manufacturing engineers.

Rocket Lab backs PhD courses in advanced guidance control systems at Canterbury University and has internship apprenticeship and scholarship programmes.
“We invest heavily in these areas because those are the people that you ultimately need for the long haul,” Beck says.
He makes no apologies for his work being all-consuming.

“It’s difficult to change who you are. I am a driven person but I am only here a very short time on the planet and I’m lucky I have a very supportive family.”

He and his wife Keryn have two children.

Beck says his round the clock ethos also applies to Rocket Lab’s staff.
“We only hire the best because we are trying to achieve something here that is really significant,” he says.

“This is a place where if you want to be at the top of your game then you want to do something significant you come here, but if you want an eight to five job then you don’t.

“We have the most incredible group of passionate and intelligent people doing things that normally a government department would do”.

NZ’s role

Beck says that although New Zealand is small nation it has a very accessible government that really companies like his “to do incredible things.”

“New Zealand’s regulatory framework and regime is really set up to innovate whereas some countries have regulatory environment that are incredibly prescriptive and that constrains innovation.

“New Zealand has a strategic advantage in that sense so it is not surprising to see other businesses come to the country for that reason.”

He cites the example of its high-altitude base regulation that has as its primary purpose, creating and enabling a space industry.

“You look at same set of regulations in other countries and it is to regulate a space industry. The New Zealand government has the right approach.”

Beck also gives kudos to the FAA. He says it has been “incredibly innovative and supportive of Rocket Lab’s programme.

“We launch under an FAA launch licence in New Zealand. It [FAA] has really stepped forward to solve some of the bigger issues.”

“We’ve got some big years commercially over the next few years. There are 2400 spacecraft that need to be launched by 2020 and somebody has to launch them.

“It is just the beginning for us.”