Only SpaceX launches more rockets from U.S. soil each year than Rocket Lab. As a major player in the aerospace industry, the company is not sitting idly by. Its upcoming Neutron rocket will further boost its capabilities as it works to expand its identity beyond launch provider.
Rocket Lab, founded in 2006 by New Zealander Peter Beck, typically uses its lightweight Electron rockets to launch satellites into Earth orbit. Forged contract Works with NASA, U.S. Space Force, National Reconnaissance Office, Capella Space, Spire Global, BlackSky, Telesat and more. To date, Electron has launched more than 160 satellites into space. Now based in Long Beach, California, Rocket Lab is very good at what it does.
The company went public in August 2021 (trading on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol RKLB) and has The only commercial company capable of rocket launches from two continents, operating from New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Electron has flown four missions so far in 2024, with up to 20 missions planned in the coming months.
Rocket Lab’s progress is largely due to its smart innovation. These include the Electron, the first rocket made from all-carbon composite materials, and the Rutherford Engine, the first 3D printed and electrically pumped rocket engine.Rutherford family too The first 3D printed engine can perform multiple space missions. Rocket Lab initially wanted to use a helicopter to catch the fallen Electron booster, but after discovering the booster was unharmed after splashing in salt water, they switched to ocean recovery; The company is steadily getting closer to rocket reusability.As for Photon, it has proven to be a versatile and reliable satellite bus capable of deploying a variety of missions including NASA’s CAPSTONE cube satellitecurrently orbiting the moon.
The company is building a fully reusable medium-sized launch vehicle.Dubbing neutronthe rocket will include Unique “hungry hippopotamus” fairing design and the reusable Archimedes engine. Rocket Lab CEO and CTO Beck envisions Neutron as a “megaconstellation launcher” expected to launch in late 2024, though the next launch seems more likely.
Baker sees Rocket Lab as more than just a launch provider; he sees it as an end-to-end space company. This vision extends to manufacturing satellite and spacecraft components and managing space assets. I recently spoke with Baker about what’s going on at Rocket Lab and what’s next for the company.
George Dworsky, Gizmodo: What is your background?
Peter Baker: My background is unusual, to say the least. As you can probably tell by my accent, I’m not from the United States. I was born in a small town at the bottom of New Zealand, which is not known for its aerospace industry. In fact, it was zero before I started Rocket Lab. It was a very unconventional start. I joke among my colleagues that I’m the only non-billionaire Rockets CEO. Most of my competitors fall into this category. The most important thing for us is to create this capacity and do it first in countries and regions that we believe are severely underserved. So, yes, even though I am a mechanical engineer, my background is very non-traditional.
Gizmos: How do you foster a culture of innovation at Rocket Lab and encourage your team to think creatively about some of the more complex challenges that are often put in front of them?
Baker: We have an internal approach to developing technology, and part of that is making sure we fail fast on the small things. We don’t like to fail fast at big things but fail fast at small things. This means, for example, that we will do a lot of small tests at the component level, and then when it gets to the full system level, we don’t expect failures.
We are not afraid to take big steps in innovation. We are the first company to put a 3D printed rocket engine into orbit. Of course, not everyone can 3D print a rocket engine. When we launched the Rutherford Engine in 2015, the current state-of-the-art 3D printing technology was Cat, Prosthetic limbs and bottle openers, so no one really took us seriously about printing rocket engines.
We’re not afraid to take innovations or technologies that we think will be transformative and try them, as long as they produce big results. We don’t do things to try and get Wikipedia pages, but because we think they’ll yield significant results. As with our carbon composite rockets, we’re again the first company to put a carbon composite rocket into orbit, not for any other reason, but we can see that’s going to be huge for us now and in the future performance advantages. Going forward, this proved to be true.
The other thing I’ll tell you – and it’s probably the hardest – is to create something beautiful. This stems from my belief that if you create something that is at least aesthetically beautiful, the chance of it succeeding is significantly higher than the chance of not succeeding. If you make it nice, at least it looks good. If you do it and it’s ugly and doesn’t work, you’ve gained absolutely nothing – you’ve got something that doesn’t work and doesn’t look good. We truly care about quality engineering and building beautiful things, and innovation runs deep within our business. We’re willing to make big changes on things that we think will bring huge returns.
Gizmos: Looking ahead to the next decade of space technology innovation, what role do you think Rocket Lab will play in this area?
Baker: If we play well, we can make big plays. A few years ago, our view of the space industry was unique, and we started to see some followers. But we always believe that the large aerospace companies of the future will be more than just a launch company or just a satellite company. They will be a merger of the two and things will get blurry.
At the end of the day, no one in the space industry goes home and salivates over how nice the rocket they bought is, or how nice their satellite is to look at – they salivate over the fact that they have something in orbit that generates revenue. You know, everything before this is just a necessary evil. So if you can eliminate all the junk between your idea and generating revenue from the rails, you can deliver tremendous value to your clients. Our view is that the big space companies of the future will be a combination of launch companies and infrastructure companies. When I say infrastructure, I mean the companies that can build satellites, operate satellites, and launch satellites.
We’re starting to see more players entering the space space – I would say players that are less traditional in the space context. They don’t want to know about the thermal bias on the satellite’s radiator. They don’t need to understand this stuff – they just need a signal from space, and the easier you make it, the more successful you’ll be.
Gizmos: What are the most critical emerging technologies in the aerospace industry? How does Rocket Lab fit into or drive these specific trends?
Baker: I think you’re starting to see some very interesting trends. One is a space internet, but I think it remains to be proven whether that’s feasible, but there’s definitely a lot of capital flowing into it. I think another interesting one is direct to mobile; having constant connectivity with direct to mobile through space infrastructure is very interesting. The other is space pharmaceuticals.
As for how we participate in these things, we have an impact on everything. Now, I would say to you, obviously we build and launch rockets, we build and launch satellites. Two-thirds of our revenue comes from our satellite manufacturing segment or our satellite components segment. Through these, we are deeply involved in the game with all of these elements.
Gizmos: What specific technologies do you hope to develop over the next ten years?
Baker: The most important thing to realize about the aerospace industry is that it is a cottage industry full of small shops. So, in the aerospace industry, wherever you look, it’s high-end. The development of technology is one element, the other element is scaling these technologies within an industry because they are so customized and unique. That’s really where most of the challenge lies.
I don’t think there’s a huge hole in technology development, except in the area of advancement. I guess the reason I chose propulsion is that we’ve been burning dinosaurs since the beginning of the space age. By the late 1950s, we had achieved the maximum performance possible by burning fuel. What we’re doing is increasing the pressure in the combustion chamber and increasing the size of the engine, and that’s because we’ve reached the chemical equilibrium of combustion. There is nothing left to give. For me personally, the biggest innovation that will lay the foundation for the most substantial change in the space industry will be the revolution in propulsion. Now, I don’t know what that revolution will be, but we’re trying our best to think about it. Until we get rid of burning propellant, we’ll just have to make bigger rockets.
Gizmos: Why is 3D printing so important to Rocket Lab?
Baker: It’s all about manufacturing – it enables some geometries that would be impossible with other manufacturing technologies. For us, it also makes the innovation cycle very, very fast, we can try new designs quickly and iterate faster. 3D printing is really ideal because the large volumes in the aerospace industry are like a thousand things, and that’s not even a sample run in most other manufacturing areas.
Gizmos: What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs and innovators looking to make their mark in the space industry?
Baker: Well, that sounds a bit like a CEO, but it needs to be said: do things that people want and people need. The aerospace industry is littered with failed businesses, where technologists come up with a great technology, build a business around it, and then try to figure out how to build a viable business around that cool technology.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the aerospace industry, where someone would create a new type of solar panel, spend their entire life working on it, and raise a ton of money. Ultimately, the market is small and no one cares.
So my advice is, if you’re going into the aerospace industry, think about the technologies that people really need, not the technologies that are really cool. Instead, think about technologies that have scale, and pursue those technologies, because there’s nothing worse than creating something for an industry that is extremely niche in nature.
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