Latest / What's Your Problem? / Going to Venus on the Cheap

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Going to Venus on the Cheap · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. When technology works really well, it turns incredible human
0:25
Speaker 1: accomplishments into things that are so boring and so cheap
0:29
Speaker 1: that we don't even notice them. We can light up
0:32
Speaker 1: the darkness at the push of a button, basically for free.
0:35
Speaker 1: We can talk to each other on magical video calls
0:38
Speaker 1: from the future, also basically free, also literally at the
0:42
Speaker 1: push of a button, And yet we complain if the
0:45
Speaker 1: video on our magic call gets a little glitchy. One
0:48
Speaker 1: fun thing to think about in this context is what
0:51
Speaker 1: is still cool and exciting and expensive but will become
0:55
Speaker 1: routine and cheap if the engineers and entrepreneurs working today
0:59
Speaker 1: are able to do what they're trying to do. Maybe
1:03
Speaker 1: the most interesting, compelling answer to that question is sending
1:07
Speaker 1: rockets to outer space. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is
1:17
Speaker 1: What's Your Problem, the show where entrepreneurs and engineers talk
1:20
Speaker 1: about how they're going to change the world once they
1:22
Speaker 1: solve a few problems. My guest today is Peter Beck,
1:27
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of rocket Lab, a company that builds
1:30
Speaker 1: rockets and satellites. Is problem, how do you make going
1:34
Speaker 1: to space cheap and boring? At least? How do you
1:37
Speaker 1: make it cheap because I mean it is still space.
1:42
Speaker 1: Peter founded rocket Lab to capitalize on the miniaturization of spacecraft.
1:47
Speaker 1: Satellites were getting smaller, he figured rockets should get smaller too.
1:51
Speaker 1: The idea worked. Rocket Lab now builds rockets that are
1:54
Speaker 1: just fifty nine feet tall, about as tall as four
1:58
Speaker 1: SUVs stacked end to end. Those rockets have now put
2:01
Speaker 1: more than one hundred satellites into orbit, and at some
2:04
Speaker 1: point in the next few weeks exactly when depends on
2:07
Speaker 1: the weather, another rocket Lab rocket. We'll take off from
2:10
Speaker 1: the company's launch site in New Zealand, and this rocket
2:13
Speaker 1: is going to send a small spacecraft to orbit the Moon.
2:16
Speaker 1: It's a sort of practice run for a Moon orbiting
2:19
Speaker 1: space station that NASA is planning, and it'll be the
2:22
Speaker 1: cheapest mission to the Moon ever. Part of the reason
2:25
Speaker 1: Peter told me it is also the latest mission to
2:28
Speaker 1: the Moon. The mission to the Moon here is about
2:31
Speaker 1: how do we take a small satellite and get it
2:34
Speaker 1: to these far off destinations that would normally require you know,
2:38
Speaker 1: a big rocket and one hundred million dollars. You said
2:40
Speaker 1: it normally costs around one hundred million. What's this one
2:42
Speaker 1: cost around ten million? Ten million? Great? So it's a
2:45
Speaker 1: ten x reduction, a tenth of the cost. You know,
2:48
Speaker 1: we have to use every single gram, like we're measuring
2:51
Speaker 1: this mission in graham of fuel, like a teethpoon of fuel,
2:55
Speaker 1: gram of everything, graham of everything. So you know, we
3:00
Speaker 1: we care about how much ice is built up on
3:02
Speaker 1: the side of the rocket. The rocket doesn't have any
3:04
Speaker 1: cameras on this one on a scent because we can't
3:06
Speaker 1: afford the mass of the camera because you a camera
3:09
Speaker 1: where it's like, no, I'm not carried a cabaret a
3:10
Speaker 1: space it's not going to get us to the moon.
3:12
Speaker 1: We haven't got two grams of camera mass. So it
3:16
Speaker 1: is incredibly incredibly high performance. And you know the engine,
3:20
Speaker 1: the trajectory that structures the tanks, those tanks. If if
3:24
Speaker 1: you ever got to hold one of those tanks, it's
3:25
Speaker 1: like a magic trick because you hold this tank that's
3:28
Speaker 1: about the size of a Swiss ball, you know those
3:31
Speaker 1: Swiss balls. No, I don't know what that is. It's
3:33
Speaker 1: it's like a giant ball that people do exercises on,
3:35
Speaker 1: like one of those bouncy round balls that like the
3:37
Speaker 1: guy at the office with the bad back sits on.
3:41
Speaker 1: So they're about that size a little bit smaller than that,
3:43
Speaker 1: and they just they wait, they're all carbon composite with
3:46
Speaker 1: an incredibly thin wall, and you know, they don't look
3:50
Speaker 1: like you pick it up and it just feels like
3:52
Speaker 1: a magic trick because they are so incredibly light. A
3:55
Speaker 1: million little things to make everything as late and as
3:58
Speaker 1: efficient as possible. Yeah, and that's that's what gets us there. Good.
4:03
Speaker 1: We had to talk about Venus. We can't not talk
4:06
Speaker 1: about Venus. You're going to Venus quite like Venus. I
4:09
Speaker 1: think it's it's a very it's a very underestimated and
4:13
Speaker 1: understudied planet. I think it's underrated heat well noun of heat, no, no, no,
4:18
Speaker 1: I mean I think Mars must get so much attention
4:20
Speaker 1: because politically, you can put a footprint on the surface
4:23
Speaker 1: of Mars, so you know, it's you can take core pictures,
4:27
Speaker 1: you can take really cool pictures, all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah,
4:29
Speaker 1: so great politically, But actually, if you want to stand
4:32
Speaker 1: back and look at the closest analog to Earth, it's
4:34
Speaker 1: actually Venus. Both from a mass perspective from you know, Venus,
4:39
Speaker 1: has just Earth gone wrong in a massive climate change event,
4:42
Speaker 1: that's all Venuses. That's a scary way to think about it.
4:45
Speaker 1: I mean, this this is where this is where we
4:47
Speaker 1: will go is Venus. So what to learn? So there
4:50
Speaker 1: is this paper a few years ago that found this gasp, Yeah,
4:55
Speaker 1: that suggests at least possibly that sometimes associated with life. Right,
5:00
Speaker 1: So maybe there is or was life on Venus and
5:02
Speaker 1: you're going to go try and figure that out. I mean, really,
5:05
Speaker 1: one of the earliest memories, and I think the thing
5:06
Speaker 1: that got me into space was, you know, I was
5:09
Speaker 1: outside with my father one night and he pointed to
5:11
Speaker 1: the to the night sky and the stars and the
5:13
Speaker 1: sky and said to me, look, those are stars. They
5:15
Speaker 1: have planets orbiting them most likely, and you never know,
5:19
Speaker 1: there could be somebody looking back at you. And that
5:21
Speaker 1: was really the point in time for me. It's like, Wow,
5:23
Speaker 1: this is bigger than me. This is this is something
5:26
Speaker 1: that I need to do. So tell me one thing
5:30
Speaker 1: about going to Venus that you haven't figured out yet.
5:32
Speaker 1: That mission is a year or more off, right, So
5:35
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a million things you've got to figure
5:37
Speaker 1: out that you haven't figured out yet to do that.
5:38
Speaker 1: What's one, what's one problem you haven't solved yet? Well,
5:42
Speaker 1: I mean, at least on the surface, we've solved the problems.
5:45
Speaker 1: A lot of these things aren't problems until until they've
5:48
Speaker 1: become problems. So, I mean one of the biggest challenges
5:53
Speaker 1: is getting there is difficult. It's it's insanely hard to
5:57
Speaker 1: get there. But we're not just going to Venus where
6:00
Speaker 1: separating off a small probe and then that probe enters
6:05
Speaker 1: the you know, the Venetian atmosphere, and we have an
6:08
Speaker 1: iflometer on board that samples the atmosphere and looks for
6:12
Speaker 1: organic matter and and you know basically you know, phosphine
6:16
Speaker 1: and other other important elements and then sends its findings
6:19
Speaker 1: back to Earth. And you've only got like a couple
6:22
Speaker 1: of minutes, right, it's like falling through the atmosphere and
6:25
Speaker 1: sixty two hundred and sixty seconds. So four of doing
6:28
Speaker 1: mouth on the radio a bad idea, but they what
6:30
Speaker 1: has had four and a half minutes, four minutes twenty
6:32
Speaker 1: second best, So you've got to all the weight of
6:34
Speaker 1: Venus for that four minutes. Yeah, and if you want to,
6:38
Speaker 1: if you want to, you know, stack up in probabilities.
6:40
Speaker 1: I mean, it's difficult to get there. Just if we
6:43
Speaker 1: even if we get to Venus will be you know
6:45
Speaker 1: that that's an incredible accomplishment for a private you know,
6:48
Speaker 1: not a non government get to get to Venus. If
6:51
Speaker 1: if we get to Venus and we and we successfully
6:54
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere with the probe, huge if we into
6:57
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of the probe and it survives and we
7:00
Speaker 1: actually get the data back to Earth because you know,
7:03
Speaker 1: it's it's a like a twenty what radio transmitting all
7:07
Speaker 1: the way back to Earth from the entering the atmosphere,
7:10
Speaker 1: and then that's a huge We get data, that would
7:12
Speaker 1: be amazing. If we actually find something like if the
7:15
Speaker 1: niphlometer actually picks up some form of organic then some
7:21
Speaker 1: sign of life, then that's when things get interesting. Well yeah,
7:25
Speaker 1: if finding alife on Vietis would be a big deal.
7:27
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm comfortable agree with that, but I should
7:30
Speaker 1: stress the probabilities of all of those things happening are
7:32
Speaker 1: very low. But if you have the ability, you have
7:36
Speaker 1: a rocket, you have a spacecraft, you have the ability
7:38
Speaker 1: to do it. I just felt that I just couldn't
7:41
Speaker 1: not try. Great, and you're spending your own money, you're
7:45
Speaker 1: spending the company's money, is that right? Yeah? Yep. And
7:48
Speaker 1: it's a public company now is the rationale that it's
7:51
Speaker 1: marketing or just like it's a good thing for the
7:54
Speaker 1: world and our company wants to do good things for
7:56
Speaker 1: the world. Well, I mean this is you know, this
7:58
Speaker 1: project has been running for many years, so that this
8:00
Speaker 1: is not like you know, surprise, it's a new expense. Yeah,
8:04
Speaker 1: and we're using old rockets, old motors, in old bits
8:08
Speaker 1: of qualifier hardware stuff you're found around the sharp stuff
8:11
Speaker 1: and send it to Venas I kept telling the team,
8:13
Speaker 1: this is a nights and weekends kind of project underlay
8:16
Speaker 1: fine Venus in our spare time that could be like
8:18
Speaker 1: your mitya exactly exactly. So you know, from net perspective,
8:23
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a huge huge outlay. But I
8:26
Speaker 1: mean even if we get to Venus, think of the
8:29
Speaker 1: capabilities that we've now created. I mean, if you think
8:31
Speaker 1: about the way that we do planetary science now it's
8:35
Speaker 1: one mission every decade with a billion dollar thing in
8:39
Speaker 1: front of it. Imagine if you can go to Venus
8:42
Speaker 1: and do real science, go to Mars and do real
8:44
Speaker 1: science for you know, ten to twenty million dollars. It's
8:48
Speaker 1: just it completely changes the game and planetary science going
8:53
Speaker 1: to other planets on the cheap I love it after
8:57
Speaker 1: the break. The problems peterback and Rocket Lab had to
9:00
Speaker 1: solve to get here, and the problems they'll have to
9:03
Speaker 1: solve to get where they want to go next. I
9:05
Speaker 1: mean metaphorically to get where they want to go next,
9:08
Speaker 1: because the literal where they want to go next his
9:10
Speaker 1: arviously space. Now let's get back to the show. Peterbeck
9:22
Speaker 1: grew up in rural New Zealand. When he was a teenager,
9:25
Speaker 1: he started building rocket engines and attaching them to basically
9:29
Speaker 1: a BMX bike. There's nothing better to test your conviction
9:34
Speaker 1: of your engineering than to put a league the side
9:36
Speaker 1: of it. Put a leg on either side of it. League, yes, correct,
9:40
Speaker 1: how fast did it go? So it would do zero
9:43
Speaker 1: two hundred miles an hour in a few seconds. And
9:48
Speaker 1: they lined me up against the newest Dodge Viper and
9:52
Speaker 1: I cleaned the Dodge Viper up in a quarter of
9:55
Speaker 1: a mile. Peter skipped college and worked as a tool
9:58
Speaker 1: and die apprentice at an appliance company. Bounced around for
10:01
Speaker 1: a while after that, and in two thousand and six,
10:04
Speaker 1: when he was around thirty years old, he founded his company,
10:07
Speaker 1: rocket Lab. Let's get to the point where you have
10:10
Speaker 1: money and you've started a company, What do you have
10:13
Speaker 1: to do to build a smaller, cheaper rocket. Well, I mean,
10:16
Speaker 1: I love your premise. You just find money and someone
10:19
Speaker 1: just gives you money. I think it's poor to realize
10:21
Speaker 1: that at that time, I was a crazy Kiwi running
10:24
Speaker 1: around Silicon Valley with a one tense scale blueprint of
10:27
Speaker 1: a rocket, in and out of boardrooms, trying to trying
10:30
Speaker 1: to convince people that, you know, that this small locked
10:33
Speaker 1: rocket was a real thing, and raising you know, a
10:36
Speaker 1: few million dollars, in tens of million dollars ultimately, and
10:39
Speaker 1: then finally hundreds of millions of dollars. But you know,
10:42
Speaker 1: I look today and you can just kind of say
10:44
Speaker 1: the word rocket and get written one hundred million dollars check.
10:47
Speaker 1: Well maybe yesterday, I don't know about today. It's changing
10:49
Speaker 1: fast out there, right, Well, it's changing fast. But but
10:52
Speaker 1: I mean it's a different, completely different world. I don't
10:56
Speaker 1: mean to minimize the work you did, no, no, no,
10:58
Speaker 1: no, no no at all. So once you've got the money,
11:00
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was easy to build a rcket. Yeah,
11:02
Speaker 1: PiZZ k. So So I mean, I think the best
11:06
Speaker 1: way to describe building a rocket and building a rocket
11:08
Speaker 1: company is running through a maze at night and it
11:11
Speaker 1: every did end. There's a guy with a shotgun, because
11:14
Speaker 1: if you run down one of those did ends too far,
11:17
Speaker 1: you consume too much resource and too much money and
11:20
Speaker 1: time to be able to turn back, and you're dad
11:23
Speaker 1: and you die. You did. So what was there a
11:26
Speaker 1: moment early in the lafe for your company when you
11:28
Speaker 1: almost died? Oh? Heaps, troll me one, tell me one. Well, um,
11:36
Speaker 1: probably prior to the electron program m once we would
11:39
Speaker 1: raise the funding for them. The electron is the small
11:42
Speaker 1: rocket you built it to just say, correct, well, before
11:44
Speaker 1: we were before you had a roquet up and running
11:47
Speaker 1: a small rocket. Yeah, but there's there's a myriad of
11:50
Speaker 1: times where you know, the wrong decision or the wrong
11:53
Speaker 1: engineering solution would have would have ended in you know,
11:57
Speaker 1: a terminal case for the company. And you see that
12:00
Speaker 1: in rocket companies all the time. I mean there's a
12:02
Speaker 1: last count that was like a hundred over one hundred
12:04
Speaker 1: small small rocket companies trying to build small rockets, and
12:07
Speaker 1: their rise and fall very very quickly as they run
12:10
Speaker 1: down the wrong the wrong paths. So clearly rocket science
12:14
Speaker 1: is hard, right, It's like the cliche hard thing. But
12:17
Speaker 1: that we compare is your things against. But i'd love
12:19
Speaker 1: to hear you talk about, you know, why rocket science
12:22
Speaker 1: is hard, and in particular, why is it hard to
12:26
Speaker 1: do what you sent out to do to send small
12:28
Speaker 1: rockets to space. You're battling physics all the way there,
12:31
Speaker 1: and if you're only a fraction of a percent out
12:34
Speaker 1: on engine performance, a fraction of percent out on a
12:37
Speaker 1: trajectory or anything like that, then you just get nothing
12:39
Speaker 1: to orbit. You've just created a ten million dollar firework.
12:44
Speaker 1: So that's why it's hard. And let me ask a
12:46
Speaker 1: dumb question, why not just make it a little bigger,
12:49
Speaker 1: put a little extra fuel in there so you have
12:50
Speaker 1: some margin on that side. So we call it the
12:53
Speaker 1: spiral of doom. And it's fairly obvious. So if you
12:56
Speaker 1: have a rocket that's a little bit heavy, or you
12:58
Speaker 1: just want to put a little bit of payload in there,
13:00
Speaker 1: a satellite on board, then you have to add more fuel.
13:03
Speaker 1: If you add more fuel, you need more tank to
13:05
Speaker 1: hold the fuel because you've added more inert mass and tank.
13:09
Speaker 1: You have to add more fuel. Because you've added more fuel,
13:11
Speaker 1: you have to add more tank, and quickly you can
13:15
Speaker 1: have a very big racket. Yeah, or a rocket that
13:18
Speaker 1: doesn't even work. Yeah, this is why it's incredibly hard.
13:22
Speaker 1: And on small launch vehicles, it's way way harder than
13:25
Speaker 1: a big rocket. And I can say that with my
13:27
Speaker 1: hand on my heart from from a position of authority
13:30
Speaker 1: right now, because I'm building a big rocket and I've
13:31
Speaker 1: built a small rocket, and you know, you just take
13:35
Speaker 1: one component, one pressure transducer. It's just a little pressure
13:38
Speaker 1: measuring device on a little rocket that represents you know,
13:42
Speaker 1: point one percent of the total mass of the rocket.
13:46
Speaker 1: On a big rocket, it represents point woo. So the
13:50
Speaker 1: problem is that there are devices that you need to
13:54
Speaker 1: put on any rocket, whether it's small or big. And
13:57
Speaker 1: if it's a small rocket, the devices take up a
13:59
Speaker 1: bigger percentage of the total mass you've got to play with.
14:02
Speaker 1: Not everything scales down, exactly right, Not everything scales down.
14:06
Speaker 1: So so what do you mean? Is that just a
14:09
Speaker 1: lighter trail and error? So I get way, it's horror. Yeah,
14:12
Speaker 1: how do you make it work? Well, you can actually
14:13
Speaker 1: reverse the spiral of doom and make it a spiral
14:16
Speaker 1: of joy if if you can make things light. And
14:20
Speaker 1: you know, we were a very very first to build
14:22
Speaker 1: an all carbon composite rocket, so you know, carbon composites
14:26
Speaker 1: are incredibly light, and if you have a light structure,
14:29
Speaker 1: then you don't need as much feel or you can
14:31
Speaker 1: carry more satellites to all But and you know that
14:34
Speaker 1: was one of the technologies that we pioneered. Both that
14:38
Speaker 1: and you know the rocket engine Rutherford, So the three
14:41
Speaker 1: D printing of that engine and the electric turbopump on
14:44
Speaker 1: that engine. So these are all key technologies that make
14:48
Speaker 1: Electron like the preeminent small launcher and then in the
14:51
Speaker 1: market right now, So let's talk about three D printing
14:55
Speaker 1: the engine. Tell me about three D printing the engine, Like,
14:58
Speaker 1: why did you do it? Yeah? Did it not work
15:02
Speaker 1: at the beginning. I'm interested in things that don't work
15:04
Speaker 1: and then you figure out how to make them work. Well,
15:06
Speaker 1: I mean, you love the rocket industry because almost nothing
15:08
Speaker 1: works fres time, that's the reality, because the margins are
15:11
Speaker 1: so slip you know, yes, yeah, because everything is always
15:15
Speaker 1: almost failing, even when it worked. So, I mean, we
15:20
Speaker 1: first announced the Rutherford engine back in two thy fifteen,
15:23
Speaker 1: and we had a three D printed one, and everybody
15:26
Speaker 1: just like, what's this guy up to? Like three D
15:28
Speaker 1: printing a rocket engine? Seriously, And this was at a
15:31
Speaker 1: time when three D printing was used for bottle openers
15:34
Speaker 1: at trade shows and cats prosthetics, it was it seemed
15:38
Speaker 1: like a gimmick, right, some gimmick to present gimmick. Yeah yeah, yeah,
15:42
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah. So why did you do it and
15:44
Speaker 1: why did it not work at first? And how did
15:46
Speaker 1: you make it work? Well? I mean so metallic three
15:49
Speaker 1: D printing for us was an obvious technology that it's
15:51
Speaker 1: great to make really really complex things at relatively small volumes,
15:56
Speaker 1: and the space industry is always small volumes. If you
15:59
Speaker 1: can combine a number of really really complicated parts to
16:02
Speaker 1: get it, and you can print it in a material
16:06
Speaker 1: and have a printing process that ensures that the material
16:09
Speaker 1: retains its strength, then you're onto a winner. So we
16:12
Speaker 1: took a big gamble because you know, when we started it,
16:15
Speaker 1: it was certainly a weird kind of approach. And you know,
16:18
Speaker 1: we we printed the engine, and we went through lots
16:21
Speaker 1: of iteration, lots of material science, and you know, it's
16:24
Speaker 1: at the point now we've we've put two hundred and
16:26
Speaker 1: seventy rather engines in orbit, and you know, we print
16:31
Speaker 1: one one engine every twenty four hours or less. If
16:34
Speaker 1: you're following traditional processes, it would be. You know, you
16:36
Speaker 1: wouldn't produce an engine every twenty four hours. You produce
16:39
Speaker 1: an engine a month. Oh wow, it's not like ten
16:42
Speaker 1: percent faster or fifty percent past. It's an order of
16:44
Speaker 1: magnitude fast. It's just unfair faster, is what it is. Unfair. Yeah,
16:49
Speaker 1: it's completely unreasonable. So did your first test flight work?
16:53
Speaker 1: I'm looking for a little failure here. You keep telling
16:55
Speaker 1: me how hard everything is, But so far in this
16:56
Speaker 1: story everything is working. What's the thing that didn't work? Well? Look,
17:00
Speaker 1: I mean we like to fail fast, but it's it's
17:03
Speaker 1: it's important to fail fast on you know, a component
17:06
Speaker 1: level and subsystem level. I really don't like to fail
17:11
Speaker 1: at full scale level rock at that you lauge to fail. No,
17:15
Speaker 1: So you know the very first test flight, you know,
17:18
Speaker 1: we got through all of the high risk events, you know,
17:20
Speaker 1: launch stage separation, ignition, battery jettison, faring separation, all the
17:25
Speaker 1: high risk events, and ultimately that launch vehicle was brought
17:28
Speaker 1: down for one little tick box on a piece of
17:31
Speaker 1: ground software on the flight termination system from a third party.
17:36
Speaker 1: So even if you have your whole rocket and have
17:38
Speaker 1: everything perfect, it was one person just didn't take a
17:42
Speaker 1: tick box in a piece of software providing the flight
17:45
Speaker 1: termination services, and the vehicle was terminated. What has terminated me?
17:49
Speaker 1: In that context? You had to blow it up because
17:52
Speaker 1: the software that was supposed to tell you whether you
17:54
Speaker 1: had to blow it up or not didn't work right correct?
17:58
Speaker 1: And that was your first launch, first launch, and we
18:01
Speaker 1: were through, like I say, through all the high risk
18:03
Speaker 1: events and just cruising on home to all. But so
18:06
Speaker 1: you know, there was a less than sort of a
18:08
Speaker 1: minute or more to go until we're in orbit. So yeah, no,
18:11
Speaker 1: we're all in the control room and we, like I said,
18:14
Speaker 1: we watched the very first launch go flawlessly, and then
18:19
Speaker 1: we're standing there in the engine just shut down. Is
18:21
Speaker 1: there any there might not be? But is there any
18:24
Speaker 1: bigger a lesson from that or is it just the
18:27
Speaker 1: kind of thing that always goes wrong and there's nothing
18:29
Speaker 1: you can do about it. No. I think the lesson
18:31
Speaker 1: is that there is a million ways for a launch
18:35
Speaker 1: vehicle or a rocket to fail, and you have to
18:37
Speaker 1: be over each one of those million ways. Yeah, it's
18:40
Speaker 1: like it's like it should never work, it should never work.
18:42
Speaker 1: It's like if a rocket gets to space successfully, that's like, well,
18:46
Speaker 1: how does that even happen if you sat there and
18:48
Speaker 1: you wrote all of the things on a piece of
18:50
Speaker 1: paper that have to work every time, including things like
18:53
Speaker 1: weather and all the other constraints that have to be
18:56
Speaker 1: perfectly aligned. It's a minor miracle that a rocket ever launches,
19:00
Speaker 1: any rocket ever launches. And yet I mean, when I
19:02
Speaker 1: think about what your company is trying to do, am
19:06
Speaker 1: I right to think that that ultimately what you want
19:08
Speaker 1: to solve? Right? As I understand your company, you want,
19:10
Speaker 1: like going to space to be this boring, routine, cheap
19:13
Speaker 1: thing like whatever, sending something ups or something. I mean,
19:17
Speaker 1: is that a fair way to think about what you're
19:19
Speaker 1: trying to do? Yeah? I think I think, um, externally,
19:23
Speaker 1: at least it looking routine is what you want. You
19:27
Speaker 1: want need to think it's easy, and you to know
19:29
Speaker 1: that it's still hard. Well, the reality is it is.
19:32
Speaker 1: I mean, and I was, I was that young, bright
19:36
Speaker 1: eyed entrepreneur that would sit on all the launch panels
19:39
Speaker 1: with you know, with all the incumbent launch providers and say, oh,
19:43
Speaker 1: launch is going to be a commodity and it's and
19:45
Speaker 1: you just it's going to be ups and all the
19:47
Speaker 1: rest of it. The reality is, as we've talked about
19:50
Speaker 1: as launch is incredibly hard, and yeah, there's a bunch
19:53
Speaker 1: of things that can can make it easier. Um and
19:56
Speaker 1: you know, systems get better and better, but it always
19:59
Speaker 1: is an incredibly difficult technical feat. Do you think it
20:02
Speaker 1: will never be like sending a package UPS? Do you
20:05
Speaker 1: think it's just the laws of physics are so demand.
20:09
Speaker 1: I think it's so hard to get things to space
20:10
Speaker 1: that it just will never be this kind of Every
20:13
Speaker 1: week we're sending up a rocket. It's cheap and easy
20:15
Speaker 1: to come and get on board. You think that's just
20:16
Speaker 1: we're not going to get there now. I wouldn't say that,
20:18
Speaker 1: but I think for the end customer it probably feels
20:21
Speaker 1: like that. But behind the scenes, behind the scenes, UPS
20:24
Speaker 1: feels hard too. Right that they get all our packages
20:27
Speaker 1: here at Christmas, that's also miraculous, right, I don't think
20:30
Speaker 1: they'd say it's exactly Yeah. Yeah, So you start out
20:33
Speaker 1: with this idea of small rockets. There's just one big
20:37
Speaker 1: idea of small rocket. Now jump to whatever number of
20:42
Speaker 1: years later, you're doing big rockets, famous reversal, but also
20:47
Speaker 1: building spacecraft, satellites and little interplanetary probs. So now you're
20:52
Speaker 1: kind of trying to do sort of everything. I mean,
20:54
Speaker 1: it's that yeah, because I mean, if you if you
20:58
Speaker 1: just do launch, that's great, you solve launch, awesome, that's
21:01
Speaker 1: a that's a noble thing. But you know, if you
21:05
Speaker 1: want the space industry, in this space economy to grow
21:08
Speaker 1: like we all we want it to and as some predict,
21:12
Speaker 1: then you have to solve much much more than launch,
21:15
Speaker 1: because the space industry, you know, you know, following your
21:17
Speaker 1: thesis of industrialization, the space industry is a subscale industry
21:22
Speaker 1: full of very very small niche providers that are used
21:26
Speaker 1: to building one or two or teens of well maybe
21:30
Speaker 1: at an extreme hundreds of something a year, just little components,
21:33
Speaker 1: little pieces that go in a satellite or a rocket
21:36
Speaker 1: like so you have the sort of brilliant master craftsmen
21:38
Speaker 1: making really just a few kind of perfect parts that
21:41
Speaker 1: are extraordinarily expensive like that and extraordinarily difficult and all
21:46
Speaker 1: the rest of the yes, which is which is how
21:49
Speaker 1: the space industry is today. Now, if we want to
21:51
Speaker 1: fast forward where we're truly a space driven economy, then
21:55
Speaker 1: that can't that can't be like that. We have to
21:57
Speaker 1: scale and this is kind of the other part of
22:00
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do. Here is if you look
22:02
Speaker 1: at you know, the acquisitions and also our internal developed programs,
22:06
Speaker 1: it's all about not just building one or two unique things,
22:09
Speaker 1: but building you know, those things at scale. And if
22:12
Speaker 1: you have those those things at scale, and satellites at
22:15
Speaker 1: scale and launch at scale, now we can talk about
22:17
Speaker 1: industrializing space. Once that happens, it'll get cheaper. Certainly, is
22:21
Speaker 1: cheaper the most important, will get more consistent, more reliable
22:25
Speaker 1: or is it mostly cheaper that that's doing. Yeah, I
22:27
Speaker 1: think prices will will definitely drop. But I think to
22:30
Speaker 1: me what's more interesting is capability. You know, capability is
22:35
Speaker 1: the real needle mover here, because if you can reduce costs,
22:37
Speaker 1: then more can happen. That's a fact. But if you
22:40
Speaker 1: can actually put some new capabilities on orbit and create
22:44
Speaker 1: infrastructure in orbit, that's when you'll see the payoff. Can
22:47
Speaker 1: you give me a specific example of a thing that
22:50
Speaker 1: a capability that it just isn't there today that you
22:53
Speaker 1: could imagine getting once you get to sort of scaled
22:56
Speaker 1: up full scale industry. I think you're seeing a real
22:59
Speaker 1: time right. I mean, there's there's a lot of companies
23:01
Speaker 1: that are working very very hard to deliver Internet from space.
23:05
Speaker 1: That's one of those technologies. If you can be anywhere
23:07
Speaker 1: on the planet and you know, stream the world's encyclopedias
23:11
Speaker 1: to a device, then I think that fundamentially does change
23:15
Speaker 1: humanity at that point. So I started the show today
23:19
Speaker 1: by talking about how technology makes things cheap and boring.
23:23
Speaker 1: But this thing Peter is saying here it adds a
23:26
Speaker 1: really big crucial piece to that idea. Once technology is
23:31
Speaker 1: cheap and boring, then people can build exciting new things
23:35
Speaker 1: on top of it. You know, when semiconductors got cheaper,
23:39
Speaker 1: we didn't just get cheaper pocket calculators and mainframes. We
23:43
Speaker 1: got laptops and iPhones and cars that can almost drive themselves.
23:47
Speaker 1: And the same thing is likely to be true with space.
23:50
Speaker 1: If rockets and satellites become as cheap as Peter hopes,
23:53
Speaker 1: people will build new things on top of them, things
23:55
Speaker 1: we can't even imagine yet, things that are not boring
23:59
Speaker 1: at all. Skill more to come on a show today,
24:04
Speaker 1: and by more to come, I mean, of course the
24:06
Speaker 1: lightning round. Now let's get back to what's your problem.
24:18
Speaker 1: I want to close with just a very quick lightning round,
24:21
Speaker 1: a bunch of quick questions, but not too many. Now
24:24
Speaker 1: that you're building a big roquet, Are you going to
24:26
Speaker 1: use it to go to space? Personally? Yeah? No, easy car.
24:33
Speaker 1: I mean I have tremendous respect for any astronaut, but
24:38
Speaker 1: spaceflights is incredibly difficult and I know too much, so
24:44
Speaker 1: it would not be enjoyable trip. What's one piece of
24:47
Speaker 1: advice you'd give to somebody trying to solve a hard problem.
24:50
Speaker 1: Break it into first principles, break it, break it into
24:52
Speaker 1: the laws that don't bend, like laws of physics, and
24:56
Speaker 1: start with the first principles and the then construct it
24:59
Speaker 1: from there. Good. Do you have any advice for somebody
25:01
Speaker 1: who wants to start a company but didn't go to college,
25:04
Speaker 1: Just do it. I mean, choose the biggest, the biggest idea.
25:06
Speaker 1: Don't bother building a little company. Go after the really
25:09
Speaker 1: big ideas, because whether you build a little company or
25:12
Speaker 1: a big company, the pain and the stress is all
25:13
Speaker 1: the same, So you might as well just do a
25:15
Speaker 1: big company. Go after things that have real impact, things
25:18
Speaker 1: that you're very passionate about. And what's the worst that
25:21
Speaker 1: can happen. I mean, you're not going to die. You
25:24
Speaker 1: might fail, but that's fine. Rocketman or Major Tom Rocketman,
25:32
Speaker 1: great anything else? You want to say, I should have
25:36
Speaker 1: had a coffee before this interview is It's getting diving
25:39
Speaker 1: Deep Diving Deep with Peterbeck, founder and CEO of rocket Lab.
25:48
Speaker 1: Quick programming Note, the show will be on hiatus for
25:52
Speaker 1: the next couple of weeks. Weekly episodes will start up
25:55
Speaker 1: again on Thursday, June twenty three. Today's show was produced
25:58
Speaker 1: by Edith Russolo, edited by Robert Smith, and engineered by
26:02
Speaker 1: Amanda ka Wong. I'm Jake Goldstein and I'll be back
26:05
Speaker 1: later this month with another episode of What's Your Problem