Rocket man to take on the world
A Kiwi with his eyes on space is the winner of this year’s grand prize
Rocket Lab founder and chief executive Peter Beck says it’s a “great honour” to represent New Zealand on the world stage at Monaco, after winning the New Zealand leg of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year award.
Beck says the award is great recognition of a new industry.
Following the ceremony last week, he says “we’re not there yet — we’ve got a test flight programme to get through and a big backlog of commercial customers.”
The company plans to launch test flights from its private launch pad at Mahia on the East Coast before the end of the year.
Beck says the time for reflection will come once the commercial programme is successfully under way. Commercial launches are planned from early to mid-2017.
“Space is in a really exciting period right now,” he says. “What we’re witnessing is the switch between a government dominated
Space is in a really exciting period right now Peter Beck
domain to a commercial dominated domain and we’re right at the pointy end of it.”
Rocket Lab was formed nearly a decade ago and its production base near Auckland Airport is buzzing with activity as it gears up for launch on an as-yet undisclosed date.
The 1 million-horsepower Electron rocket will be fired from Mahia where there is little air traffic, unlike sites in the United States where skies are crowded. Beck says the only commercial flight they will have to work around is one to Chile.
Beck, 39, comes from a family of engineers and tinkerers.
While he was at high school in Invercargill, he pulled apart an old Mini and rebuilt it part by part, hotting it up with a turbocharger. But even then, his goal was to build rockets.
A toolmaking apprenticeship at Fisher & Paykel gave him hands-on engineering skills and access to top-ofthe-line machinery and materials after hours.
In 2001 he got a job in Auckland at Industrial Research (now Callaghan Innovation) which had its base at Balfour St in Parnell and continued working on his passion — rockets.
He set up Rocket Lab in 2006 and it was at IRL that he met backer Sir Stephen Tindall, who through K1W1 Ltd and other vehicles, has invested over $150m in a large number of startup and early-stage businesses.
The New Zealand Government has invested $25m over five years and there is also massive Silicon Valley funding and backing from aerospace company Lockheed Martin.
While there is growing international competition in the commercial launch business, Beck says his advantage is always building the business around small launch vehicles.
The small satellite business is growing fast, he says.
The company now has more than 100 skilled engineers on board and uses cutting edge technology and materials to construct both the rockets and the Rutherford engine propulsion system.
Beck will now represent New Zealand, competing against more than 60 national winners for the coveted title of EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year in Monte Carlo next June.
He says the event has “turned into something quite serious now — it’s a great honour to represent the country now.”