Rocket Lab CEO Sir Peter Beck shares how Neutron’s progress and why some investors are doubting his company’s ability to execute. Video / Corey Fleming
Rocket Lab’s initial Neutron rocket launch target of 2024 was ambitious, but the engineering team is set to meet its renewed launch target of mid-2025, according to the space company’s chief executive Sir Peter Beck.
“The programme is on track for that launch date,” Beck told Markets with Madison at its Mission Control in Auckland.
“But it only takes one small element to reset those sorts of things,” he warned.
“Rocket programmes you typically measure in decades, not in years.”
Since announcing its bold plan to build a medium-lift launch vehicle to compete with SpaceX in March 2021, Rocket Lab has built and tested a new engine called Archimedes, set up new facilities to make the rocket’s carbon composite components, and designed and started constructing a new launchpad in the United States.
“All of the really big, high risk items, we’ve kind of brought down.”
Rocket Lab staged a successful 'hot fire' of the Neutron's Archimedes engine at Nasa's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi in August. Photo / Supplied
The Neutron rocket would stand 43m tall, and 7m wide, allowing it to carry 43 times more mass to low-earth orbit than its existing small-lift launch vehicle Electron.
If launched in mid-2025, Neutron would be the fastest-ever commercially developed medium-lift rocket.
Despite the schedule slipping by about six months, Beck said it was still within its initial cost range of US$250 million to US$300m.
“A few hundred million dollars is crazy small to do what we’re going to do.”
Watch Sir Peter Beck discuss Neutron’s progress, and why some investors have doubts, in today’s episode of Markets with Madison above.
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Madison Reidy is the host and executive producer of the NZ Herald’s investment 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.
