It’ll cost US$50 million per rocket - Rocket Lab makes a 50 per cent margin on it.
It will put the Nasdaq-listed company squarely in the medium lift launch category, occupied by American competitor Northrop Grumman and the Soviets, according to a Deutsche Bank research report.
Notably, it puts Beck on the path to competing with Elon Musk’s heavy SpaceX F9, Falcon and soon-to-be Starship rockets, and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin New Glenn rocket that’s under development.
But Beck’s “master plan” was bigger than that - two-thirds of his company’s revenue came from space systems.
“Rocket Lab’s end goal here is not to be a rocket company, not to be a satellite company, but to ultimately deploy infrastructure in space.
“Whoever can put the services in space and maintain them, and deliver service from space, at the fastest rate, at the lowest cost, is going to win.”
He commended SpaceX’s diversification by deploying Starlink internet satellites into orbit.
Another emerging industry was manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space, which Rocket Lab had helped Varda Space Industries attempt.
“The biggest thing to happen to space has not yet happened,” Beck said.
One thing he was dubious about, though, was space tourism. While Musk wanted to move to Mars, and Bezos had been to outer space, Beck had zero desire to join them.
“I’m not convinced of the market and I think you can look at Virgin Galactic and it’s not a great business.”
Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit shut down this year - Rocket Lab bought its California headquarters cheaply in the bankruptcy auction.
Being in the space race was, in Beck’s words, “unforgiving”.
“My two competitors are the two richest people on the planet. It’s do or die. You have to build a profitable company to survive ... There’s no room for error.”
Beck is up against Space X founder Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, backer of space tourism venture Blue Origin and founder of Amazon, which is launching its Project Kuiper satellite network to compete with Musk’s Starlink.
“The best way I can describe it is like running through a maze at night and at every dead end, there’s literally a cliff to fall off. If you just run flat out and you fall off that cliff, then you’re dead,” the Rocket Lab founder said.
Measures of success in the industry were typically launch frequency and reliability.
Rocket Lab had launched 39 times, versus dominant SpaceX’s 273 launches.
Rocket Lab also recently lost a customer’s satellite - which Beck said was “devastating”. But he wasn’t going to let it get in the way of building bigger.
“Nothing is ever perfect in this game. It’s an assault on physics.”
Watch today’s episode of Markets with Madison above for the full interview and a look inside Rocket Lab’s high-security mission operations and control centre.
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Madison Reidy is the host of New Zealand’s only financial markets show Markets with Madison. She joined the Herald in 2022 after working in investment, and has covered business and economics for television and radio broadcasters.
