It’s rocket science
NEED A SATELLITE LAUNCHED? TAKE $ 5M TO THIS SMALL BUSINESS.
Peter Beck has curly hair, a boyish smile and a casual manner. The New Zealander looks a decade younger than his 40 years and didn’t attend university, so you’d never guess he’s about to transform the way humans use space.
His Auckland-based Rocket Labs enables any organization to launch satellites or cargo into Earth orbit, at down- to- earth prices. With the light but powerful rockets he’s designed, and using his own launch site in New Zealand, Beck can launch a rocket for less than US$ 5 million. (If you have a smaller payload to deploy, you can opt to have it ride-share and pay less.)
His order book is filled for two years, even though, as he explained this month at EY’s World Entrepreneur of the Year conference in Monaco, Rocket Labs has conducted just one official test launch of its 17- metre Electron rocket, and has two more to go before commencing commercial operations.
Beck will start with one launch a month, but can scale on demand. The hard part of rocketry is the engine, and he’s come up with a battery-powered engine that can be 3D-printed in just a day.
As New Zealand’s 2016 EY Entrepreneur of the Year, Rocket Labs may be the first startup to win such a prestigious award before its business model has yielded any revenue. His imminent success should inspire any Canadian entrepreneur who’s ever been told their project will never work.
Beck grew up at the south end of New Zealand’s South Island, where the stars shine like searchlights. It’s no wonder he says “there is something about space that has always attracted me.”
Like many kids, he began experimenting with homemade rockets, with engines and combustion chambers, created a rocket- powered bicycle that went 160 mph, and even built a rocket pack to propel him forward on a scooter. How fast was that? “Faster than I could control,” he says.
The education system didn’t know what to do with him. At 13, one teacher let him build rocket engines on weekends in the metalworking lab. He won lots of science fairs, but school officials wanted his parents to discourage his obsession. “They said I was wasting my talents,” Beck says.
He had planned to go to university. But he served a tool- and- die apprenticeship with an appliance manufacturer, and stayed on, designing robotic production tools.
Beck never went back to school. “My career was all about trying to leverage myself to be in a position to achieve my dream of building rockets.” He designed systems for racing yachts, and worked on advanced materials for a New Zealand government lab. At the same time, “all these companies let me work on rocket engines with their software, vibration tables and diagnostic tools,” he says. “Everything started to take a giant leap.”
In 2005, he visited the U. S. to see NASA and commercial organizations such as Virgin Galactic, meeting the real rocket scientists he had corresponded with for years. But he came away disappointed. No one was focusing on small, onetime- use rockets, and their engines were no better than his. Moreover, there was no spirit of innovation: while satellites were getting smaller, the space industry was still building giant rockets — and trying to improve efficiencies by making them reusable. But, Beck notes, retrieving and refurbishing rockets can cost US$ 20 million.
On his flight home, Beck decided to create his own rocket-launching busi- ness. He believed his system could revolutionize satellite launches. More organizations would be able to launch weather satellites, observation cameras and sensors, or even provide Internet access from space.
Raising money from a private investor who was also a space buff, and leveraging government grants, Rocket Labs launched its first missile in 2007. When l ocal broadcasters wanted to cover the event, Beck insisted t heir parent companies show the launch too — wrangling international coverage.
Beck worked for years without a salary. To stay afloat, Rocket Labs performed contract R& D on propulsion and guidance systems for the U. S. Defense Department’s advanced research agency and other international organizations. “That’s how we built our credibility and reputation,” he says, “so I could try to raise capital.” When he decided Rocket Labs was ready, he went to Silicon Valley to pitch the same venture capitalists who funded the buildout of cyberspace. He came away with US$ 6 million. To date, the company has raised $ 150 million — suggesting a valuation of more than US$1 billion. “One of my proudest moments was creating the financial model that passed the due-diligence process” of the world’s toughest VCs and accounting firms, says Beck.
He feels he’s about to realize his dream. He’s lined up such clients as NASA, U. S. satellite- data company Spire and Moon Express ( a privately owned moon shot from Silicon Valley). And he counts three competitive advantages over any potential copycats.
His production technology builds high-performance rocket engines 20 microns at a time — “precision you couldn’t get any other way.” His location in the uncrowded skies of the South Pacific provides more launch opportunities. And he’s got all the infrastructure, from a favourable New Zealand regulatory system that was put in place just for him, to tracking stations on remote Pacific islands.
“My definition of success will be that space has become a domain no different than building infrastructure anywhere else,” says Beck. “The domain of the few will become a domain for the many.”
SOMETHING ABOUT SPACE THAT ALWAYS ATTRACTED ME.