Peter Beck: Rocket Lab

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach
by Ashlee Vance
Published 8 May 2023

(Planet) A Planet image of one of the Chinese missile silos—aka bouncy houses of death—spotted by Decker Eveleth. (Planet) Peter Beck on his rocket bike. (Rocket Lab) Peter Beck during his rocket pilgrimage in the US. (Rocket Lab) Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket awaiting launch. (Kieran Fanning) Rocket Lab’s launch complex on the Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand. (Rocket Lab) Rocket Lab’s production line in New Zealand. (Rocket Lab) Rocket Lab’s Darth Vader–inspired Mission Control center in Auckland. (Rocket Lab) Rocket Lab’s CEO, Peter Beck, at the company’s launch site in New Zealand. (Rocket Lab) Chris Kemp and Adam London at a party held inside Astra’s Orion building.

…

Beyond that, Astra had hired one of Google’s top executives to build an automated software system that would unite all of the company’s operations from the test stands to the rocket to the launcher.* Chris Kemp and Peter Beck never feuded in public, but the men did not really care for each other. Kemp had visited Rocket Lab and Beck while scouting launch companies on behalf of Planet Labs and had been given the royal treatment. Beck had flown Kemp by helicopter to Rocket Lab’s launchpad on the Māhia Peninsula. He had also revealed a great deal about Rocket Lab’s technology and future plans, hoping to win a number of launch contracts from Planet. After the trip, Kemp did tell Planet that they should use Rocket Lab, and the companies had formed a partnership. Once Kemp started Astra, however, Beck viewed the visit to New Zealand in a new light, seeing Kemp almost as a spy on an intelligence-gathering mission.

…

For people who already fancied themselves as the next Elon Musk in their dreams, the call to action was loud and clear: Get yourself a team and some money. Let the great rocket race begin. The Peter Beck Project Chapter Eight Big, If True Elon Musk called in the early part of the evening. Or at least my evening. It was November 2018, and I was staying in Auckland, New Zealand, for a couple of weeks, renting a house in a nice suburban neighborhood. My day had been spent hanging out at the main factory of Rocket Lab, a maker of small rockets, and my thoughts had been on the company and its founder, Peter Beck. One of Musk’s assistants, however, had contacted me after my Rocket Lab visit to say that Elon would be calling any minute, which required a change of focus.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism
by Aaron Bastani
Published 10 Jun 2019

‘SpaceX Is about to Launch Its Monster Mars Rocket for the First Time – Here’s How It Stacks Up Against Other Rockets’. Business Insider, 4 January 2018. SpaceX. ‘SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System’. YouTube.com, 27 September 2016. Birth of a Private Space Industry End, Rae Botsford. ‘Rocket Lab: The Electron, the Rutherford, and Why Peter Beck Started It in the First Place’. Spaceflight Insider, 2 May 2015. Spacevidcast. ‘SpaceX Reaches Orbit with Falcon 1 – Flight 4 (Full Video Including Elon Musk Statement)’. Youtube.com, 28 September 2008. SpaceX. ‘Orbcomm-2 Full Launch Webcast’. YouTube.com, 21 December 2015.

…

‘Rocket Startup Sees Big Future in Military Launch’. Space News, 1 July 2018. Gush, Loren. ‘Rocket Lab Will Launch Its Small Experimental Rocket Again this December’. The Verge, 29 November 2017. Knapp, Alex. ‘Rocket Lab Becomes a Space Unicorn with a $75 Million Funding Round’. Forbes, 21 March 2017. Lo, Bernie and Nyshka Chandran. ‘Rocket Lab Nears Completion of World’s First Private Orbital Launch Site in New Zealand’. CNBC, 28 August 2016. ‘Rocket Lab Reveals First Battery-Powered Rocket for Commercial Launches to Space’. Rocket Lab USA, 31 May 2015. Pielke, Roger, Jr. and Radford Byerly, Jr. ‘The Space Shuttle Program: Performance versus Promise’.

…

One such company is Rocket Lab. Founded in New Zealand in 2009, it was the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to send a booster rocket into space. Now based in the United States, its stated mission is to remove the barriers to mass space commerce by providing frequent, low-cost launch opportunities on its Electron booster rocket. While bigger players have their eyes fixed on manned missions to other planets, the fact that smaller outfits are capable of innovating in this area – albeit exclusively with smaller payloads – is remarkable. As the sector grows it will be companies like Rocket Lab that become the backbone of an incipient industry.

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
by Eric Berger
Published 2 Mar 2021

It has shown that private companies and private capital, working alongside the government, can do amazing things in space. Entrepreneurs have had an easier time attracting funding for all manner of space ventures after investors witnessed the success of SpaceX with its Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets. “It helped the whole industry,” said Peter Beck, whose successful Rocket Lab company has launched more than a dozen small Electron rockets from New Zealand since 2017. “It proved that a private company could successfully deliver cargo and satellites to orbit. And not just for launch, but for spacecraft as well, they showed that a commercial company can play in a domain that had typically belonged to the government.”

…

SpaceX demonstrated that private capital can do meaningful things in space. And regulators have learned from SpaceX what commercial launch is all about, and they have a political mandate to help rather than hinder. But the new companies have gone slower. Only one private company with new technology, Rocket Lab, has actually reached orbit. It took eleven years and seven months to do so. Firefly was founded in January 2014, and as of Fall 2020 had not reached orbit or even attempted a launch. Virgin Orbit began to get serious about building a small orbital rocket in December 2012, and it, too, had not reached orbit by late 2020.

…

See also Omelek site Redstone Arsenal, 56 Reduced-gravity flight, 141–42 Reingold, Jennifer, 86 Relativity Space, 248, 251 Rémy Martin, 27–29, 145 Renaissance Hotel, 12–13 Ressi, Adeo, 9–10, 12, 237 Reusable launch systems, 230–34 Richichi, Jeff, 168, 231–32, 262 Ride, Sally, 50, 99–100 Riley, Talulah, 216 “Risk tolerance,” 245 Rocket Boys (Hickam), 153 Rocketdyne, 32, 33, 126. See also Aerojet Rocketdyne Rocket Lab, 236, 245 Rocket reuse, 230–34 Role models, 99, 100 Romo, Eric, 155, 261 Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, 55, 58, 67, 169. See also Omelek site Rotary Rocket, 142 Roth, Ed, 184 Sales, 95–116 Scaled Composites, 39–40 Scorpius, 79–80 Sea Launch, 125, 126 Seal Beach, 53 Searles, Rachel, 21, 22 Sea salt spray and corrosion, 121–23, 233 Sensors, 124, 136 September 11 attacks (2001), 98–99 Sexism, 51, 62 Sheehan, Mike, 185, 190–91, 193, 195–96 Shotwell, Gwynne, 255–56 at Aerospace Corporation, 102 Air Force and, 61–62 background of, 99–101 at Chrysler, 101–2 Falcon 1’s Washington, D.C. debut, 105 Flight One failure, 120 Flight Four launch, 202–3 success, 210–11 hiring of, 95–98 Lockheed Martin and, 112–13 at Microcosm, 50, 95, 96, 102 Omelek site, 54–55 Quake parties, 17–18 sales, 17, 54–55, 96, 97–98, 103–4, 106–7, 112–14, 115, 116, 216, 220 222 Shotwell, Robert, 202–3, 210 Sloan, Chris, 262 Slosh baffles, 127–28, 138, 140 Society of Women Engineers, 100 Solar sails, 10, 164 Soyuz, 93 Space and Missile Defense Command, U.S.