00:37:16 · Peter Beck, Ty Morse
[00:37:16] S0: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, in a previous life, among other things, I was a production design engineer, so I know what good production really looks like. And I would say it's taking a product from, you know, an R and D standpoint into full volume production is a whole different set of skills and a whole different set of pain. And, you know, there's times during the Electron scale up that it was just incredibly, incredibly painful because, you know, it was difficult to, you know, get all that DNA built within the company. But, you know, I look back now, and it's like, it's just such a core strength across the whole organisation. You know, and I think any... Every startup goes from that, right, to developing their their first widget or thing and then scaling it. I mean, those scaling challenges are real. [00:38:07] S1: This, like, idea of production hell, and, you know, you finally have the thing that works, and then suddenly the biggest fire is no longer making the thing work, it's just scaling the production of the thing that works. What was it like kind of going through production hell, like, for rockets?
00:38:07 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:38:07] S1: This, like, idea of production hell, and, you know, you finally have the thing that works, and then suddenly the biggest fire is no longer making the thing work, it's just scaling the production of the thing that works. What was it like kind of going through production hell, like, for rockets? [00:38:21] S0: Yeah, it was just like that. Like, you didn't ask anybody there, it was just like that. It's production hell. But I would say that it's not as hellish as it could have been because we designed that vehicle from day one to be produced. So, it's not like a bunch of engineers got together and said, 'Let's just see if we can make a rocket.' It's like, 'Let's see if we can make a rocket that will be producible.' So, you know, Electron, as far as a launch cadence, scaled faster than the Falcon nine. So, from first flight to 50 flights, you know, we were faster than a Falcon nine, and from 50 flights to 100 flights, as long as we keep doing what we're doing, we'll be faster as well. So it it was designed very intently to be producible. And then you can say that for just about, you know, certainly Neutron, it's even better, but for all of our other satellites and products as well.
00:38:21 · Peter Beck, Ty Morse
[00:38:21] S0: Yeah, it was just like that. Like, you didn't ask anybody there, it was just like that. It's production hell. But I would say that it's not as hellish as it could have been because we designed that vehicle from day one to be produced. So, it's not like a bunch of engineers got together and said, 'Let's just see if we can make a rocket.' It's like, 'Let's see if we can make a rocket that will be producible.' So, you know, Electron, as far as a launch cadence, scaled faster than the Falcon nine. So, from first flight to 50 flights, you know, we were faster than a Falcon nine, and from 50 flights to 100 flights, as long as we keep doing what we're doing, we'll be faster as well. So it it was designed very intently to be producible. And then you can say that for just about, you know, certainly Neutron, it's even better, but for all of our other satellites and products as well. [00:39:10] S1: How do you kind of think about designing something initially that is gonna be, like, expendable? And then when do you decide to make the call on, like, let's work on this massive new project in order to make reusable rocket? And, like, how do you actually, again, shift the company culture back or not necessarily shift the company culture, but shift back into the gear of just building the first iteration of that thing?
00:39:10 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:39:10] S1: How do you kind of think about designing something initially that is gonna be, like, expendable? And then when do you decide to make the call on, like, let's work on this massive new project in order to make reusable rocket? And, like, how do you actually, again, shift the company culture back or not necessarily shift the company culture, but shift back into the gear of just building the first iteration of that thing? [00:39:29] S0: Yeah, mean, it's that hard, really, you know, because we do a lot of new stuff all the time. And, you know, we spent quite a lot of time with Electron, Electron's reusability program, learning so much. So, I'd say, you know, the muscle memory was there pretty strongly already. But no doubt, you know, we took a lot of learnings from Electron and then, you know, and a lot of the team from Electron and ported them directly over to Neutron. So, yeah, I mean, Electron is a great product, but if we look at, like, you know, how we've gone about Neutron, it's so much better from a production standpoint. [00:40:10] S1: What about it is better?
00:40:10 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:40:10] S1: What about it is better? [00:40:11] S0: Well, it's just firstly, it's less mass sensitive than Electron. Like, Electron, every gram counts. So, you know, you have to do a whole bunch of things that are from a production standpoint that are suboptimal, but from a mass perspective are critical. Whereas Neutron, don't have that same constraint. And, you know, it's just really nice stuff, like all of the fluid systems are just built completely off the rocket and then just assemble in as, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom systems, whereas, you know, on Electron, you're literally having to bend tubes, you know, to pipe stuff in. And then same with electrical systems, you know, the whole electrical system, the complete electrical system is built off the rocket, and then just one day it gets installed in the entire rocket, whereas you're not, you know, know, not pulling cables up and down the rocket like you are in Electron. So there's just there's just a whole bunch of stuff that we could do with Neutron, which is way better. [00:41:03] S1: I think you asked Ashley, that you wanted to, like, meet Elon or have dinner with him. And then I think in, like, 2017, you actually did have dinner with him. What was that dinner like? And I remember you said in an interview with him that it may not have been useful for Elon to know that you guys were, like, as serious as you were.
00:41:03 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:41:03] S1: I think you asked Ashley, that you wanted to, like, meet Elon or have dinner with him. And then I think in, like, 2017, you actually did have dinner with him. What was that dinner like? And I remember you said in an interview with him that it may not have been useful for Elon to know that you guys were, like, as serious as you were. [00:41:21] S0: Well, you'd have to ask Elon, but but, yeah, no. I mean, we had we had kind of... At that point, we'd launched a few, and and the thing I took away from that is, like, these companies are the same. Like, same problems, same everything. Rocket's big, mine's small, same, same. Like, it was very, very similar. But, I mean, yes, for sure, sometimes it's better to just remain off the radar than on the radar. [00:41:51] S1: If you could go back and not do that dinner, would you? [00:41:53] S0: No. I mean, we would have scaled anyway, and so we would always be on the radar. [00:42:00] S1: When you look out today and you think about the biggest bottlenecks in your mind, what are they?