Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck. Photo / Dean Purcell
Founder and chief executive Peter Beck felt a rush of pride when Rocket Lab was listed on the United States share market in August 2021. His dreams and schemes had come together as Rocket Lab USA became a leading player in the exciting aerospace industry.
When Rocket Lab joined the Nasdaq Composite Index, its market capitalisation climbed to more than $7.33 billion and it raised $1.14b.
By the end of the year, Rocket Lab had deployed 109 satellites into space from 22 lift-offs — after the Electron rocket first launched from Mahia Peninsula near Wairoa on its inaugural commercial flight in November 2018.
Electron has become the second most frequently launched rocket, delivering exclusive or rideshares and tailored orbits for commercial and government satellite operators.
Beck said in a video recording that the whole idea of Rocket Lab was about democratising space and making space available for everybody. "It's an exciting time.
"We are right on the tipping point of space being a commercially dominated domain rather than government dominated domain.
"We started with a blank sheet of paper and we wanted to launch under $5m every week. That's a pretty absurd statement in the aerospace industry when the average cost of a launch vehicle is $180m and the United States as a country went to space 22 times (in a year).
"We took a different approach and invested in lots of emerging technology. When we started 3D printing rocket engines we could see technology was going to play a very disruptive role in what we wanted to achieve," Beck said.
"You normally measure the time to build rocket engines in months. We needed to measure it in hours, so with 3D printing, we are able to print one rocket engine every 24 hours.
"We've been clear that we want to launch at least once a week over 50 times a year. So if successful, we will be launching more as a company than in most countries. For us, it's not so much the technologies that have been developed in New Zealand but more so the very clever and educated people with the New Zealand attitude of 'happy to push the boundaries'."
Rocket Lab has quickly become a major competitor in the space transportation business, and Beck's drive and determination have earned him the title of Visionary Leader in the 2021 Deloitte Top 200 Awards.
Beck, and his team of 500 plus, continue to redefine the space industry, with the rapid and cost-effective delivery of innovative, high-quality technology.
Rocket Lab is presently developing the larger, reusable Neutron rocket to rival Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9.
Asked what 2022 was in store for him, Beck said Rocket Lab had a year packed with many missions, including the first launch from New Zealand to the Moon for NASA. Rocket Lab had nearly $350m worth of satellite-carrying bookings.
Beck wants to move closer to building Photon satellite buses — an attachment to the rocket — to send to Mars and also to Venus "where we're going on a search for signs of extra-terrestrial life."
Born in Invercargill — his father Russell was the former director of the Southland Museum and Art Gallery and his mother Ann was a teacher — a curious Beck attended James Hargest College.
While his father developed a giant telescope for the Southland Observatory, Beck built go-karts, model aircraft and pulled an old Mini apart and rebuilt it part by part, hotting it up with a turbocharger. Even then, his goal was to build rockets.
Engineering ran in the Beck family. Russell was an engineer, his brother Andrew was a mechanical engineer and electrician, and his cousin David runs Beck Industries, started by David's father Doug in Invercargill, and specialising in Turbo Vac vacuum sweepers.
Instead of heading to university and earning a degree, Beck wanted to get more practical experience and started a toolmaking apprenticeship at the age of 17 at Fisher and Paykel in Mosgiel near Dunedin in 1995. After hours, he built a rocket-powered bike.
Beck was given lumps of titanium which were written off as apprentice-training projects. When he was 'promoted' to the design room, he completed simulations on rocket nozzles, optimising the flow for rocket fuels.
A former colleague said that one day Beck gave the bike a test run on the Fisher and Paykel grounds.
"He took off at an amazing rate and I don't even think he knew how he was going to stop the thing. He almost smacked it into a container and we were just standing around, mouths open."
He also demonstrated it to a bemused public in 2000 with a 140kph blast down Dunedin's Princes St. Not only did Beck create a rocket bike but also a rocket scooter and a jetpack that powered a pair of rollerblades.
"He's gone from that to putting stuff into space, it is just incredible," the colleague was reported as saying.
After six years working in Mosgiel, Beck moved north to Auckland and Industrial Research Limited, now part of Callaghan Innovation. Beck worked on precision engineering projects including high-temperature superconductor manufacturing.
In 2006 he decided to establish Rocket Lab. "When I first started (the company) and I'd meet a technical problem, I would get so stressed out and I just wouldn't want to sleep. I'd work all night and try and solve the problem.
"These days I worry less about technical problems because I know if it's engineering, we can solve it. There have been so many times we've hit a brick wall where physics seem to be against you and we always find a way," he later said.
Internet entrepreneur Mark Rocket was the seed investor in Rocket Lab and became co-director from 2007-11.
Funding soon flowed from Sir Stephen Tindall's K1W1 Fund, Silicon Valley investor Khosla Ventures, Callaghan Innovation, Bessemer Venture Partners, Lockheed Martin, Data Collective and Promus Ventures, which operates a space fund called Orbital Ventures.
Rocket Lab developed the lightweight, carbon fibre, two-stage Electron rocket powered by the unique Rutherford engine. The engine, fabricated largely by 3D printing, uses battery-powered electric motors rather than a gas generator.
Electron is 18m tall, 1.2m in diameter and can deliver payloads of up to 300kgs to low-Earth orbit.
Manufacturing the carbon composite components of the main flight structure has traditionally required 400 hours.
In late 2019, Rocket Lab introduced a new robotic machine capable of producing all the Electron composite parts in just 12 hours — including cutting, drilling and sanding for final assembly.
It meant Rocket Lab could meet its goal of building the rocket in just seven days, and the company could send satellites into space at a far more frequent rate.
Rocket Lab has three launching pads — two at Mahia Peninsula, the first and only private launch site in the world, and the other at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, United States.
The Mahia site is licensed to launch rockets every 72 hours for 30 years.
Rocket Lab now has its headquarters in Long Beach, California with manufacturing facilities remaining in Auckland.
Since its Nasdaq listing, Rocket Lab has been busy expanding its space systems division. In mid-December, Rocket Lab bought Planetary Systems Corporation, a Maryland-based spacecraft separation system for US$42m ($61.65m).
Planetary Systems' cost-effective and lightweight hardware streamlines the process of attaching satellites to rockets and releasing them in space while ensuring they are protected during the journey to orbit.
Rocket Lab also bought Advanced Solutions for US$40m ($58.71m) — a Colorado-based maker of mission simulation systems, and navigation and control solutions. And back in April, it closed the purchase of Toronto-based satellite component maker, Sinclair Interplanetary.
Rocket Lab's latest acquisition is New Mexico-based SolAero, a global leader in space solar power products, for US$80m ($117m).
SolAero's solar cells and panels, and composite structural products have supported more than 1000 successful space missions over the past two decades.
The products have played key roles in some of the most ambitious space missions, such as supplying power to NASA's Parker Solar Probe and Mars Insight Lander, and cargo resupply to the International Space Station. SolAero's staff totalling 425 will increase Rocket Lab's team to more than 1000.
Rocket Lab's aim is for the space systems division to generate 40 per cent of its revenue by 2027 — a year in which it has forecast operating earnings of US$505m on turnover of $1.57b.
Rocket Lab is taking its own space mission to a new level by developing the larger, reusable, carbon composite mega constellation launcher, Neutron Rocket. It will stand 40m tall, measure 7m in diameter and deliver payloads of up to 8000kgs in low-Earth orbit and up to 1500kgs to Mars and Venus.
The first launch is planned for 2024 and commercial flights would begin a year later, and Neutron would be suitable for human space flight.
The first stage of Neutron will be powered by seven Archimedes engines burning methane and oxygen, and the second stage will be propelled by one vacuum-optimised Archimedes engine.
The innovative twist is that Neutron will carry the second stage inside its first stage.
After climbing above Earth's atmosphere, the first stage will open up its nose cone and eject the second stage with an attached payload.
The second stage engine will then ignite to complete delivery of the payload, the nose cone will close, and the first stage will descend to Earth and land back on its launch pad much lighter than when it began its trip.
Neutron will land on four solid fins integrated into the chassis.
This design also enables Neutron to launch from a free-standing posture — needing no expensive launch tower to keep it from toppling over.
Beck said: "The composite material, as we used for Electron, is really important because when you talk about launch vehicles it's all a maths equation.
"So if you take maths out of all structures, then everything else becomes easier. The lightweight structure makes propulsion and re-entry easier.
"What drives cost in a rocket is not actually the materials and parts but the operations.
"If you return it back to the place it was launched, then you save a tremendous amount of cost.
"The same goes with bearings and the nose cone — let's just keep them together.
"The Archimedes engine doesn't have to go full throttle because of our proprietary composite material that makes the rocket that much lighter," said Beck.
"Typically, people complain that composites are expensive and slow to build. If you're doing it in a traditional sense, that's true. But we are adopting an automotive fibre placement machine and printing metres in a minute — it's a rapid way of building high-performance structures.
"Weight or lightness in a launch vehicle is supremely good in every way — the lighter you can make it, the fewer problems you have. Neutron has a very large base diameter and this gives a really good ballistic co-efficient, meaning when we re-enter the atmosphere we have a lot of area — and we let the atmosphere take care of the work. Think about standing on a roof and throwing off a tennis ball or umbrella. The tennis ball plummets to the ground and the umbrella gently floats down. That's the advantage of building such a lightweight vehicle. The thermal loads on re-entry are far reduced."
Beck said the priority for Neutron would still be cargo. "We need to develop a little bit more for human space flight. If we are honest, there is only one customer for space flights right now and that's Nasa.
"But if the space flight market grows, then we are making sure we are poised to take advantage of it."
So Beck and Rocket Lab are taking New Zealand entrepreneurs, innovators and the country to a place they have never been before.
Rocket Lab is having a makeover as it sports a new logo.
The new logo replaces the original design by founder Peter Beck on the back of a napkin.
"One of our values at Rocket Lab is to be ever-evolving. It's this mindset that led us to evolve Electron into a reusable rocket," a company statement said.
The original logo has flown to space on the Electron rockets 23 times from the Mahia launch pad.
"We've worn it with pride every day across our global facilities but now, after 15 years and many exciting achievements and innovations, it's time for an update.
"As we welcome new companies into the Rocket Lab brand, including Advanced Solutions Inc., Planetary Systems Corp, and SolAero Technologies, and we expand further into space systems and evolve our launch capabilities, we wanted something that looks to the future.
"The refreshed logo retains the heritage of our widely recognised and respected existing brand identity while modernising our look to reflect our proven track record of rapid and agile innovation.
"It acknowledges our successful history and looks to our future . . . and what an exciting future it's shaping up to be."
• Attended Invercargill's James Hargest College
• 1995: began a toolmaking apprenticeship at Fisher and Paykel in Mosgiel.
• Moved to Auckland to work for Industrial Research Ltd on precision engineering projects.
• 2006: founded Rocket Lab, an aerospace manufacturer and satellite launch service provider
• 2009: Rocket Lab launched Atea-1sub-orbital sounding rocket into space from Great Mercury Island — the first company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space
• 2010: Rocket Lab awarded a US government contract from the Operationally Responsive Space Office to study a low-cost space launcher to place CubeSats (satellites) into orbit.
• 2016: Rocket Lab opens the world's first and only private launch site on the Mahia Peninsula
• 2018: First commercial flight of the Electron rocket took place on November 11; Rocket Lab launches its first mission for NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) programme.
• 2021: Rocket Lab USA lists on the Nasdaq valued at US$4.8 billion ($7.04b) with gross cash proceeds of US$777 million ($1.14b)
• 2021: Rocket Lab selected to launch NASA's advanced composite solar sail system on its Electron launch vehicle
• 2022: Rocket Lab USA announces it will open a new space systems complex in Littleton, Colorado.
• 2010: Awarded the Meritorious Medal from the Royal Aeronautical Society
• 2010: Awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand's Cooper Medal for early-career research excellence
• 2015: Recognised as New Zealand Innovator of the Year in the Kiwibank awards
• 2016: EY Entrepreneur of the Year (NZ)
• 2019: Adjunct professor of aerospace engineering by Auckland University, though he never attended university
OPINION: Tensions are likely to become more evident next year.