Name: Is Neutron almost ready? Peter Beck interview
Uploaded: 2024-12-28T12:50:30.000Z
Duration: 23 min 49 s
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I'm not going to touch anybody, I promise.

I'm standing on a rocket launching platform.

So LC-2 is dedicated for Electron and Haste missions, but from what you've just shown me Aaron, it's way too small for Neutron.

So that baby's going to launch next door.

Before we left for the United States, we came here to Rocket Lab's Mission Control in Auckland, New Zealand, where I spoke to Sir Peter Beck about the readiness of Neutron and why some may be doubting him and his company's execution.

I think there's a lot of suspicion within our industry and we always, you know, my CFO always reminds me that we have the best house on the worst street.

This is the engine that will fire Rocket Lab's next rocket, Neutron.

The space company dropped this hot fire hype video last month, showing the Archimedes being tested at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, calling down critics who suggested the company had complications hitting this critical development milestone.

Rocket Lab revealed its bold plan to build a bigger rocket in March 2021.

There's some things we said we'd never do, but we're going to build a big rocket.

The 43 metre high medium lift launch vehicle will be twice the height of its existing Electron rocket and almost six times its diameter, allowing Neutron to carry 43 times more mass to low Earth orbit.

Both rockets are made of carbon composite, but the key difference between them is reusability.

While Rocket with the ability to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and land on its launch pad to be refuelled and reflown.

Parts are already under construction and a machine has been built to automate the production of its carbon fibre components in the United States, where Neutron will launch from.

That timeline has now slipped slightly with Sir Peter Beck announcing this year that Neutron will now launch in mid 2025.

On that agenda, Neutron would still be the fastest ever commercially developed medium lift rocket.

Because at Rocket Lab, when we say we're going to do something, we do it.

Short interest in Rocket Lab rose 5% in the past month, according to Marketbeat, taking total short interest in the company to 19.8% of its float.

With less than a year to go till launch, we visited Beck in Auckland to ask for a development update and how he thinks about investors' emotional ties to Neutron.

You announced Neutron and was it March 2021?

You thought that you were going to be launching a rocket by now.

How would you rate the pace of the Neutron program so far?

And although, you know, we're, call it six months behind or slightly more, if you put that into context of a rocket program, you know, that's the way we roll.

But, you know, the progress of the team and the vehicle and the pad and the infrastructure and all the stuff that goes along with it has been pretty astounding.

We are going to talk about all of those details.

Is 2025 ambitious or is that realistic at this stage?

Well, I mean, we always caveat everything we say with it's a rocket program, right?

And, you know, the program's on track for that launch date and everything's good.

But it only takes one small element to, you know, to reset those sorts of things.

But as it stands today, no, we're feeling and looking good for that.

But like I say, caveat, it's a rocket program.

Like a bad day at the office generally means you have no office anymore.

So, you know, some of those things can see you back.

So tell us everything that has been done so far.

You have tested Archimedes with the hot fire.

You've got the water tower up, changed the skyline at Wallops.

A lot of people think of a rocket program and, you know, it's just the rocket.

But the rocket is actually a relatively small element.

And, you know, the pad infrastructure is just like we take all of the concrete in the larger region for days on end just to do one thing.

So these infrastructure projects are just massive.

And the amount of capital and time that goes into putting steel and concrete in the ground is enormous.

And then the factories itself, you know, we bought the Virgin Orbit factory and just converted that one large factory that used to make whole rockets.

It just makes engines now for Neutron and Archimedes.

And there's just so much infrastructure that goes in and around actually putting something on the pad.

The actual rocket itself, you know, it's a relatively small element, the tanks and what's not a relatively small element.

So, you know, these projects are just massive infrastructure projects.

So if you look at everything that's still yet to be done until you can actually assemble all the parts for Neutron, what is the most difficult and the sort of most precarious?

Well, I'd say all of the really big, high risk items we've kind of bought down.

I mean, you can break a rocket program into kind of three things.

One is infrastructure, which we talked about.

One is propulsion and the other is structures or tanks.

And, you know, propulsion, we really, we took a relatively different, well, we took quite a different path with propulsion, for example.

Normally you develop elements of an engine and you put them on an engine test stand and you test like a thrust chamber or a combustion chamber.

Then you might test elements of a pump, elements of a valve.

And then, you know, years later you bring them together and then years later from that, you actually put it on a production line and produce it.

I mean, we built 500 and something engines, we kind of know what we're doing these days.

So we built the production line for that engine, everything that, you know, that first engine that went on the stand, there was just no flight, you know, no industrial articles on there.

It was all flight, whether it be, you know, wiring looms, engine controllers, valves, you know, everything pumps.

It was, you know, it was built on a production line by production technicians and that is the engine that we intend to fly.

And, you know, that is an approach, you know, it's a little bit risky in the fact that if that engine had a fundamental issue or performed very badly, you know, then the program would be behind.

But on the flip side to that, you know, now we're banging engines out of a production line.

So the program, at least on the propulsion side, is now ahead.

So, you know, it swings in roundabouts in that sense.

Everyone always talks about the timeline for Neutron, but time is obviously money.

How much money have you spent on Neutron and how much of the expected total initial cost?

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Is Neutron almost ready? Peter Beck interview

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