00:56:00 · Peter Beck
[00:56:00] S0: Yep. Well, it's a complex question, and the answer is as soon as possible because that ensures survival. If you're making money, you will live. If you're not making money, eventually you will die. So, it's survival. Now, you have to play that carefully because, okay, Rocket Lab could be profitable instantly if we just stop developing Neutron. But Neutron unlocks an entire, you know, massive opportunity with us building our own constellation and ultimately deploying our own infrastructure in orbit. It's all about risk versus reward. So, you know, do you want to have a little company that's profitable and, okay, may survive, or do you want to have a much bigger impact and make some investments in these much bigger capabilities? So, we're very black and white and unimpassionate about these sorts of things for us. You know, we don't make decisions based on, you know, feelings and those kinds of things. It's very much impassionate. You know, we're trying to build profitable, we're trying to build value, which ultimately builds longevity. But, you know, we do also, you know, happy to make, you know, make the decisions and take the risk to make big investments like Neutron, where we can see the outcome of that investment is just going to be, like, orders of magnitude of scale of company.
00:57:22 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:57:22] S1: One of the things that Elon did is he just kept on working on basically this idea of launch cost up to orbit or, like, mass to orbit and then getting the cost down. And then eventually, he basically just filled his own supply where now, like, Starlink is the best business in space. [00:57:37] S0: Yep. [00:57:37] S1: Period, end of story. How do you kind of think about figuring out which business to build in space when you're just absorbing all of your own supply? [00:57:45] S0: Yep. Well, for the longest time, I've always said it's gonna be really blurry in the future of what is a space company and what is not a space company, especially the big ones, like the big space companies of the future, they're gonna be blurry. And I think if you looked SpaceX right now, what is it? Is it an AI company? Is it a telecommunications company? Or is it a space company? But the one thing that's sure as shit, if you have the ability to put infrastructure in orbit, and you have the ability to make that infrastructure that is in orbit, then your ability to deliver a service or a solution down on earth is vastly superior to anybody else. That experiment has been run, that experiment to us is always super obvious, and I think, you know, that is clearly where we're tracking. And, you know, I think if we have this in another interview in ten years' time, there's gonna be a select few of really large space companies that provide critical part of infrastructure and backbone in orbit, and a 100% of them are gonna have their own ride to their... Ride their own rocket. A 100% of them.
00:57:45 · Peter Beck, Ty Morse
[00:57:45] S0: Yep. Well, for the longest time, I've always said it's gonna be really blurry in the future of what is a space company and what is not a space company, especially the big ones, like the big space companies of the future, they're gonna be blurry. And I think if you looked SpaceX right now, what is it? Is it an AI company? Is it a telecommunications company? Or is it a space company? But the one thing that's sure as shit, if you have the ability to put infrastructure in orbit, and you have the ability to make that infrastructure that is in orbit, then your ability to deliver a service or a solution down on earth is vastly superior to anybody else. That experiment has been run, that experiment to us is always super obvious, and I think, you know, that is clearly where we're tracking. And, you know, I think if we have this in another interview in ten years' time, there's gonna be a select few of really large space companies that provide critical part of infrastructure and backbone in orbit, and a 100% of them are gonna have their own ride to their... Ride their own rocket. A 100% of them. [00:58:50] S1: If you had to fast forward five or ten years out, and you said, you know, just best guess today what the vast majority of your launches, like what payload they're carrying, what would that be? Like, what is that business that you create?
00:58:50 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[00:58:50] S1: If you had to fast forward five or ten years out, and you said, you know, just best guess today what the vast majority of your launches, like what payload they're carrying, what would that be? Like, what is that business that you create? [00:59:02] S0: Yeah, we don't talk about that. Oh. No, look, I mean, we don't talk about it for a number of reasons. One, it's just too early. So, you know, there's no I'm a very methodical person, so I like to finish one thing before I start the next, and the most important thing is to get neutron to orbit and get that vehicle scaled, then we have the capability to deploy whatever infrastructure we need. You know, we've been methodically building capability in our Space Systems division to the point now whether you want to go to Mars, whether you want to go to the moon, whether you want to do national security, the most exquisite thereof, we can do it all. Like, piece of cake. There is nothing we cannot build now in orbit. So, you know, we've put all those building blocks You've in [00:59:50] S1: basically building optionality? [00:59:51] S0: 100%. The only thing left we've got left to do is to get a neutron finished. Then we can talk about what infrastructure we'll end up building in space.
00:59:51 · Peter Beck, Ty Morse
[00:59:51] S0: 100%. The only thing left we've got left to do is to get a neutron finished. Then we can talk about what infrastructure we'll end up building in space. [01:00:00] S1: In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg and Paul Graham were talking together on stage, and I think Facebook had just gone public, and their stock was down, like, 50% or something like this. Mhmm. And Paul was asking him basically the question of do you like it when everything is working or do you like to be underestimated? And Mark basically said I love being underestimated and people not really knowing what I'm capable of. What is your favorite state? Is it being underestimated? [01:00:24] S0: It's like everything working. 100%. No. Screw that. Yeah, no, I don't need to be felt as the underdog or anything like that. No, I like everything humming and working. Absolutely. [01:00:35] S1: What does the scale up of Neutron look like?
01:00:35 · Ty Morse, Peter Beck
[01:00:35] S1: What does the scale up of Neutron look like? [01:00:37] S0: Yeah, so we'll do a first launch, and we'll do a splashdown of that, and that'll give us a good, really good sense of, you know, where we're at with the program. And then all going well, if the program's going well, then we'll slip the barge under the next one and we'll try and stick a landing. And then, you know, Neutron will scale a lot faster than even Electron scaled because we've just put in place, you know, both from a design perspective, but also just from a manufacturing and infrastructure perspective, we're just so far further ahead than we were with the likes of Electron. I the design decisions that we made, the carbon composite structure using AFP, Automated Fiber Placement Machine, like, it's just nuts how quick we can make a tank or make structures with that machine. It's just... Yeah. And how cheap we can do it. So so, you know, we've we've chosen various kind of, you know, paths that that are just infinitely scalable. [01:01:32] S1: I remember Starship initially, it was gonna be this, like, carbon fiber, basically, structure, and then they swapped it to, like, a special alloy of steel. [01:01:40] S0: That's done. Yeah. [01:01:41] S1: Yeah. Are you doing anything new on, like, the material side?