Speaker 1: Today we have a very special Shared Lunch episode. I'm
Speaker 1: literally at NASA and a very hot Virginia Wallops Islands.
Speaker 1: Behind me, there's Complex three, the brand new launch pad
Speaker 1: for the Neutron rocket that is expected to go to
Speaker 1: space by the end of this year. Today we're catching
Speaker 1: up with Sir Peter Beck on Rocket Labs progress.
Speaker 2: I'm a conservative engineer, where you know, when you know
Speaker 2: when Rocketlabs says we're going to do something, it's going
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: As well as Rocket Labs CFO Adam Spice and.
Speaker 3: I love growth's That's kind of what attracted me to
Speaker 3: Rocket Lab is like, there's no question that the growth
Speaker 3: opportunity here are saggering.
Speaker 1: And then also Shawn de Mallow hit of the Neutron program.
Speaker 4: You have to be in this constant sense of baranoia
Speaker 4: and your constant have to be on edge, very complex machine,
Speaker 4: you know, and it doesn't take much for it to
Speaker 4: go wrong before.
Speaker 1: We get started. Here's some important information.
Speaker 5: Investing involves the risk you might lose the money you
Speaker 5: start with. We recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor.
Speaker 5: We also recommend breeding product disclosure documents before deciding to
Speaker 5: best everything you're about to see and here is current
Speaker 5: at the time of recording.
Speaker 1: This is the furthest we've ever traveled for an episode.
Speaker 1: Rocket Lamb very kindly invited Cheersys along with a select
Speaker 1: group of NASA officials, senators, and even the Governor of Virginia.
Speaker 6: The most vibrant space industry complex in America. That is
Speaker 6: what we are building.
Speaker 1: To Wallops Island to give investors an inside look at
Speaker 1: the LC three launch pad. After fifteen hours in the
Speaker 1: air and four hours on the road.
Speaker 7: The day badged, we.
Speaker 1: Made it just in time for the official opening.
Speaker 7: Welcome everybody to LC three today.
Speaker 2: Mark's an extraordinary mastone not just for Rocket Lamb, but
Speaker 2: for the future of space access in America.
Speaker 7: Three two.
Speaker 2: With the opening of Pluche Complex three, we take a
Speaker 2: major step board in ensuring resilient and insured space access
Speaker 2: for the nation.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: And what better place to chat to Serit Peter Beck
Speaker 1: than from the top of the pad that neutron will launch.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the location, because it's you know, sort
Speaker 1: of difficult place to get to yep, but well not
Speaker 1: the MESA site. So what makes this a great site
Speaker 1: for the neutron launch pad in America?
Speaker 7: You've got really two launch sites on the East Coach.
Speaker 2: You've got Cape Canaveral, which everybody is aware of, a
Speaker 2: super famous place, and then you have what opside in
Speaker 2: Virginia where we are now. You know, the Cape is
Speaker 2: an incredible launch site, but it's very busy and you know,
Speaker 2: we're trying to stand up a high cadence launch vehicle,
Speaker 2: so it's much more difficult to come here because as
Speaker 2: you can see, we've had to build so much infrastructure,
Speaker 2: whereas a Cape there's so much existing infrastructure there. But
Speaker 2: the advantage with that is that we're at and you know,
Speaker 2: we're you know, we're really you know, pushing for a
Speaker 2: high cadence, so we don't have to wait in line
Speaker 2: for anybody.
Speaker 1: And we're pretty close to Washington d C. Here is
Speaker 1: that important? Has it been close to the Pentagon and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing.
Speaker 7: So it certainly helps.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have great access to to the Senators,
Speaker 2: you know, all of all of the folkes that you
Speaker 2: know help help the wheels go round.
Speaker 1: Can you talk us through some of what goes into
Speaker 1: developing our launch site?
Speaker 7: Like I said, it's a huge infrastructure program.
Speaker 2: You can see the diameters and the size of the
Speaker 2: tanks and the pipes and everything.
Speaker 7: It's you know, it's just huge scale.
Speaker 2: And when we're pouring all the foundations for this, we
Speaker 2: had all the concrete trucks in the wider region just
Speaker 2: lined up all down the freeway, just delivering load after
Speaker 2: load after load after load for a couple of days.
Speaker 2: So you know, there's a tremendous kind of you know
Speaker 2: scale projects.
Speaker 1: Launch pairs. They are expensive, clearly massive projects. Presumably you
Speaker 1: don't want a whole lot of them. Is he more
Speaker 1: in the pipeline or not?
Speaker 7: For now?
Speaker 2: I mean, the one upside is really cool because it
Speaker 2: gives us all that sort of mid inclination stuff.
Speaker 7: We can do a dog leg, which is a maneuver
Speaker 7: to do a sunynchronous launch.
Speaker 2: But you know, at some point in time, you know
Speaker 2: that we'll need to expand into other inclinations. But you know,
Speaker 2: right now we can serve as a tremendous portion of
Speaker 2: the market out of this pad.
Speaker 1: One of the things that was announced by the governor
Speaker 1: was that we're expecting a launch by Christmas.
Speaker 6: Before the end of this year. We will all gather
Speaker 6: and we will watch the first Neutron rocket lift off
Speaker 6: from Pad zero D right here together.
Speaker 1: And the governments. I think you said that he would
Speaker 1: bring the Christmas breath if it was on Christmas Day.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I mean we've we're pushing to get one
Speaker 2: down and out by the end of the year. You know,
Speaker 2: that's that's been the goal. You know, it's a green
Speaker 2: light program schedule and doing a try as hard as
Speaker 2: we can, but you know, the end of the day,
Speaker 2: we always caveat It's a rocket program, right, So we've
Speaker 2: got a couple of really big tests to go. If
Speaker 2: they go well, then we will be in good shape.
Speaker 2: If they don't, then it will be less good shape.
Speaker 2: But the reality is, like for a thirty forty year
Speaker 2: launch vehicle program, a few months here and there is
Speaker 2: totally irrelevant.
Speaker 7: So you know, we're obviously we're all.
Speaker 2: Shooting for a date, but but if it's you know,
Speaker 2: we're not going to put something on the pad that's
Speaker 2: not perfect, and we're not going to put something on
Speaker 2: the pad that's not ready to fly for some arbitrary date.
Speaker 2: The life cycle of the program, it's irrelevant.
Speaker 1: And the pace of delivery so far has been on
Speaker 1: the right.
Speaker 7: It's insane. It's totally insane.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at the most recent rocket developed,
Speaker 2: it was seven billion dollars in like ten years.
Speaker 7: Or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, the whole program for Neutron, including
Speaker 2: all this launch side, is three and fifty million dollars
Speaker 2: and we're four years so it's crazy.
Speaker 1: We'll head back to Sir Peter to talk Mars plans shortly,
Speaker 1: but first VP of Neutron, sewan To Mellow, tells us
Speaker 1: about the time frame and how he wound up leading Neutron.
Speaker 4: I've been with the company for a while, started around
Speaker 4: eleven years ago. I was working on the previous program,
Speaker 4: which is called Electron, and was really responsible for standing
Speaker 4: up that whole launch organization, right from selecting the early
Speaker 4: launch sites, building those, building the teams that operate the launches,
Speaker 4: and then really yeah, got Electron running from an operational
Speaker 4: and testin mission operation standpoint. In the last three years,
Speaker 4: got asked by Pete to lead the Neutron development program.
Speaker 4: Another opportunity to go build a rocket taking all the
Speaker 4: lessons learned from the past, so I couldn't pass that up.
Speaker 1: Right from the start, the hype around this project's been very,
Speaker 1: very large. The ambition for the timeline probably equally as large,
Speaker 1: like like what's what's your true feeling on that, Like
Speaker 1: when do you get confident that this is actually going
Speaker 1: into space or and how far away do you think
Speaker 1: that is from? Like sort of being quite solid on
Speaker 1: that timeline.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the confidence building for a rocket program
Speaker 4: is just continuous.
Speaker 7: There's never one specific thing and then you're you.
Speaker 4: Know, at least from my point of view, there isn't
Speaker 4: just one thing you do when you say it's going
Speaker 4: to be good. You have to be in this constant
Speaker 4: sense of paranoia and you constant have to be on
Speaker 4: edge to just keep building confidence, retiring risk. Very complex machine,
Speaker 4: you know, and it doesn't take much for it to
Speaker 4: go wrong. So every part of the way, every test
Speaker 4: we do, every integration activity, just raise that conference and
Speaker 4: you just have to constantly keep doing that till you're flying,
Speaker 4: till the second you're flying, and then once you start
Speaker 4: flying too, this conference built in flying over and over again.
Speaker 4: There are some things you can never detect on the
Speaker 4: ground as much as you try to test. So it's
Speaker 4: equally important that once we're flying, we're learning from every
Speaker 4: flight and moving that board as well.
Speaker 1: How many neutrons are there in progress at the moment.
Speaker 4: So right now we're already building flight two, so build
Speaker 4: number two is started and in some cases we even
Speaker 4: have parts on the floor for the third neutron be built.
Speaker 4: You know, our goal is to build three next year,
Speaker 4: so we're going from one this year, three next year,
Speaker 4: five the year after that.
Speaker 7: So it's a you know, pretty steep steep curve.
Speaker 4: But we've invested in all the production infrastructure we need,
Speaker 4: so they'll just keep producing. And you know, while the
Speaker 4: first one is being built, I expect the second one
Speaker 4: to be halfway built.
Speaker 1: And if you were an in Vista in rocket Lab,
Speaker 1: how would you be thinking about this opportunity?
Speaker 4: Immense potential, right I think we're we're just about to
Speaker 4: get started. So we've seen a lot of growth already
Speaker 4: and then we're about to embark on this really you
Speaker 4: know next pick phase the company with this multitne rocket
Speaker 4: capable to go to atbit our own space applications.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of you know, exciting future ahead of.
Speaker 1: Us, even while the rockets are taken off and the
Speaker 1: business has to stay grounded so to go over the
Speaker 1: number we have talking to rocket lamps see if anem sprue.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, you know, even if you go back seven or
Speaker 3: eight years ago, wh Pete and I were talking, I mean,
Speaker 3: our our goal was to have a mix of thirty
Speaker 3: percent from launch, seventy percent from space systems, and of
Speaker 3: course space systems is representative of selling subsystems, full platforms, software,
Speaker 3: ultimately having our own applications down the road. So I
Speaker 3: think if we can, if we can kind of maintain
Speaker 3: the cur mix, we're out. I think that's a comfortable
Speaker 3: spot because launch is great. It's very enabling, it's very sexy.
Speaker 3: People love launch, but it's volatile, it's it's lumpy, and
Speaker 3: you know, unlike like space systems, where we can largely
Speaker 3: control our own destiny, because we're so vertically integrated. At
Speaker 3: the end of the day, we can't launch a rocket
Speaker 3: until somebody shows up with a payload. Yeah, so you
Speaker 3: do all this great work, have a rocket ready on
Speaker 3: the pad, it's frosty, ready to go, and then all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, the customer might say, oh, we got
Speaker 3: a problem with our radio. We gotta dmate, you gotta
Speaker 3: do so, and we don't get to recognize revenue and
Speaker 3: launch for the most part. And two you actually hit
Speaker 3: the button right. So launch is great, but it's it's
Speaker 3: less pres fickle exactly.
Speaker 8: It's a great, great term yea.
Speaker 1: And we know business has left these recurring revenues and
Speaker 1: that's it's very very exciting. Hey, we just touched earlier
Speaker 1: on like different growth and obviously these growth and these
Speaker 1: core business is still but one thing you mentioned was
Speaker 1: an acquisition in Munich, so I'd love to hear a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that, and also how much you
Speaker 1: expect acquisition to make up part of the growth story
Speaker 1: going forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in general, you know, Pete and I, you
Speaker 3: can never count on acquisitions to drive your growth because
Speaker 3: acquisitions are just a culmination of really fortunate events coming
Speaker 3: together and you can't plan for that. So we just
Speaker 3: we're always looking, well, we know we want this capability
Speaker 3: or this functionality or this exposure to a market, and
Speaker 3: so your baseline plan is always just do it yourself.
Speaker 3: And very fortunately, you know, because Pete is such an engineer,
Speaker 3: like he's an engineer's engineer.
Speaker 8: We don't have to buy stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it becomes a much more liberating thing and
Speaker 3: you can be much more choosy when you basically say, hey,
Speaker 3: you know Okay, well we need the technology, but you
Speaker 3: know there's probably it'll take us maybe six months longer
Speaker 3: and me be take ten million more of P and
Speaker 3: L Burned to do it organically. But then we don't
Speaker 3: have to spend two hundred million dollars and give it
Speaker 3: to a bunch of vcs and founders. So we tend
Speaker 3: to kind of do a mix. If you look at
Speaker 3: space systems, some of the initial pieces were in organic
Speaker 3: thre acquisitions, but we've grown those in a lot of
Speaker 3: organic ways as well, Like we've added you know, radios
Speaker 3: for example, and batteries and all these composite A lot
Speaker 3: of these different things were developed in house. The whole
Speaker 3: satellite manufacturing business was grown in house. We didn't buy
Speaker 3: a company to do that. So I think we find
Speaker 3: that balance. So i'd say will M and A be
Speaker 3: a continuing focus for us? Absolutely. I think when you
Speaker 3: talk about recent deal, so geost is a deal that
Speaker 3: we just closed. In fact, we were there earlier this
Speaker 3: week meeting with a team, great team, and then we're
Speaker 3: hoping to close you know, by the end of the year.
Speaker 3: Before then the year this minoric acquisition which does optical
Speaker 3: terminals to allow Constellation satellites to communicate with each other
Speaker 3: on orbit. And that's a team of around three hundred
Speaker 3: people in Munich will give us a really really helpful footprint.
Speaker 7: In your up.
Speaker 3: Would it be the fifth European business, first European business
Speaker 3: for us, which actually opens up a lot of opportunities
Speaker 3: because if you don't have a European kind of development
Speaker 3: and min manufacturing presence, you get boxed out of a
Speaker 3: lot of EASA program opportunities. In fact, if they have
Speaker 3: any choice, they're going to use European content. So now
Speaker 3: we're considered European to a certain extment because of that
Speaker 3: footprint there, which will and that means we can not
Speaker 3: only sell the minoric stuff, but all the other rocket
Speaker 3: labs sweet of stuff as quasi European.
Speaker 1: Revenues growing at a pretty incredible pace again at thirty
Speaker 1: six percent this year, I think yep. So when when
Speaker 1: do you expect to clear profit?
Speaker 3: In the conversations now, well, there's there's profit and then
Speaker 3: there's cash flow. Yep, And I think in our case,
Speaker 3: they're they're kind of detached at least for now.
Speaker 8: Neutron.
Speaker 3: Getting Neutron's first launch off is really key to driving
Speaker 3: to getting to adjusted depit a positive, so people kind
Speaker 3: of look at as P and L positivity.
Speaker 8: It's going to take a little bit.
Speaker 3: Long because after because we've been having this huge bubble
Speaker 3: of R and D spend that's been pushing us in
Speaker 3: a lost position for the last several years because of neutron.
Speaker 3: Once it goes into production, you've then it becomes cost
Speaker 3: to say there's revenue associated with it, So your P
Speaker 3: and L looks much much better. Cash Flow will be
Speaker 3: a little bit different because we continue to invest in
Speaker 3: Like right now as we speak, we're ordering the long
Speaker 3: lead parts for Tales two three. Right we're building out
Speaker 3: the barge which isn't required for the first flight yep.
Speaker 3: So that scaling infrastructure is going to continue to be
Speaker 3: a demand on cash through twenty twenty six. So I'd
Speaker 3: expect cash flow positivity no early than I would say
Speaker 3: early twenty seven. Right, But then that's when P and
Speaker 3: L cash flows start to merge more together because you
Speaker 3: will have passed that investment.
Speaker 8: It's a infrastructure investment bubble.
Speaker 1: At the moment, I've got Spacic sort of quite publicly
Speaker 1: burning billions. I think in cash to a chief dominance,
Speaker 1: you seem to be taking a different approach, moving towards
Speaker 1: this profitable path fastest certainly on the times you've just
Speaker 1: given me here with small small losses. Is this like,
Speaker 1: how intentional is this? And do you think it's something
Speaker 1: that will set yourselves apart? Hopefully it's very intentional.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: We don't have the luxury of having access to the
Speaker 3: kind of money that Elon can bring to the table, obviously,
Speaker 3: so we have to have a model that gets us
Speaker 3: to profitability and cash flow positivity. I mean, we're we're
Speaker 3: a living, breathing organism that needs to become self sustaining, right,
Speaker 3: so we're kind of moving from that kind of child,
Speaker 3: kind of youngster phase to now kind of becoming a
Speaker 3: self sustaining entity. That's one of the commitments that you
Speaker 3: make when you go public is that you're going to
Speaker 3: make returns for your shareholders, not just on you know,
Speaker 3: and of course share prices can move based on macro conditions, speculation,
Speaker 3: all kinds of waves, but ultimately to build an enduring,
Speaker 3: solid kind of financial base, you've got to become profitable.
Speaker 3: But we're also making sure that we make the right
Speaker 3: kind of initial investments so that we're teed up for
Speaker 3: that long term growth. Yet you endure some relatively intense
Speaker 3: short term pain for the long term gain. And I
Speaker 3: think we've endured quite a bit of pain, you know
Speaker 3: over the last you know, certainly four years as being
Speaker 3: a public company to make sure that we are.
Speaker 8: Positioned to grow.
Speaker 1: One thing that so pay to see it in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four was the one thing that has always been
Speaker 1: a throddle on this business is talent. We can navigate
Speaker 1: enough engineers, so it's just interested in what you're thinking
Speaker 1: about staff growth, also for out doing the specific anything
Speaker 1: like Australasian this UIs well.
Speaker 3: Actually New Zealand has been a bit of a secret
Speaker 3: weapon for US because unlike in the US, if you,
Speaker 3: if you know, to work on US programs like Neutron,
Speaker 3: you've got to be a US person right right, whereas
Speaker 3: because of itar but New Zealand's not bound by I TAR.
Speaker 3: So actually in New Zealand we can bring talented engineers
Speaker 3: from Canada, from the UK, all over Europe and the
Speaker 3: rest of the world, most of the rest of the
Speaker 3: world that we.
Speaker 8: Can't do that here in the US.
Speaker 3: So actually New Zealand it's been a been actually a
Speaker 3: blessing for us in a lot of ways. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 3: to be able to launch as frequent as you can
Speaker 3: have this this ability to kind of lure talent from
Speaker 3: the rest of the world hugely positive for us. So
Speaker 3: I think that, but talent is always going to be,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of a challenge. I mean, we went
Speaker 3: from competing with the likes of you know, Virgin and
Speaker 3: Astra and Relativity and abl and those all got wiped out.
Speaker 8: So that's become less of a thing.
Speaker 3: And now you've got some other disruptive defense tech companies
Speaker 3: like Anderil for example, are super hot, and so you
Speaker 3: know there's a constant and tug of war for talent.
Speaker 8: But so far, you know, we're growing very fast.
Speaker 3: I mean, just to put in context, when I joined
Speaker 3: in May of twenty eighteen, I think there were twenty
Speaker 3: five employees in Huntington Beach. Now we have over eight
Speaker 3: hundred Long Beach. I think we had about one hundred
Speaker 3: people in New Zealand. Now we have about nine hundred
Speaker 3: people in New Zealand. So I don't think talent acquisitions
Speaker 3: are our biggest challenge.
Speaker 1: So you're moving into the satellite constellations, you know, this
Speaker 1: is another place you'll be competing with space, so you know,
Speaker 1: how much room do you think there is for that?
Speaker 3: So constellations it's a broad umbrella, right, So it's basically
Speaker 3: we think of it an application. So what are the
Speaker 3: functions that are going to be done from space that
Speaker 3: you know delivering services and data? So you can think
Speaker 3: it'll range from things that are very well known, like if,
Speaker 3: for example, you know you've got things like startling out
Speaker 3: delivering broadband to consumers. Right, you have direct to mobile
Speaker 3: right where people now directly connecting their cell phones to
Speaker 3: the from space based constellation assets. You have Earth observation,
Speaker 3: like taking images for various purposes, whether that's for weather
Speaker 3: or for national security, or for commercial applications. So there
Speaker 3: are many, many, many dozens of these vertical applications from space,
Speaker 3: and so you know, competing with SpaceX, the question would be, well,
Speaker 3: are we really going to develop a consolation to do
Speaker 3: fixed broadband to the consumer masses? I don't know, hard
Speaker 3: to say, right, I think we're we're not going to
Speaker 3: get into an application where we're going to be at
Speaker 3: such a huge capital disadvantage. And if you look at
Speaker 3: right now like that that fixed broadband is really you've
Speaker 3: got you've got Elon, and you've got Kuyper coming in, right,
Speaker 3: So you've got Starlink and Kuiper. So we've got to
Speaker 3: be careful, Like we've always been very careful about how
Speaker 3: we attack a market. And you know, do you want
Speaker 3: to go head on with somebody who's got unlimited capital?
Speaker 3: And you know, sometimes you do if you really think
Speaker 3: your technology is that differentiated. But you got there's a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of factors that go in. So will we
Speaker 3: have an application? I believe we'll have an application, you know,
Speaker 3: in focus in the not too distant future. But we're
Speaker 3: gonna have to be very cognitive. What's real practical? Because
Speaker 3: back to your point of profitability, right, Like I and
Speaker 3: I'm Pete and I always had this little bit of
Speaker 3: a tug of war from time to time about you know,
Speaker 3: healthy ten Yeah, healthy tension about like leaning forward to
Speaker 3: invest for the future versus how do we get to
Speaker 3: profitability sooner?
Speaker 8: Right?
Speaker 3: And so clearly embarking on an application unless you acquire
Speaker 3: somebody who's already got that momentum. If you do it organically,
Speaker 3: that's a that can be a fairly expensive proposition.
Speaker 1: What was your background before either the spice background.
Speaker 8: Or is this I come from a semi conductor background.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you've had some good choice of the industry.
Speaker 3: Growth is not yeah, not been lacking growth and I
Speaker 3: love growth. That's that's kind of what attracted me to
Speaker 3: rocket Lab is like, there's no question that this the
Speaker 3: growth opportunity here are as saggering. I mean when I
Speaker 3: think about, like again, having been at you know, Intel
Speaker 3: when the Internet was just taking off, Broadcom when that
Speaker 3: was proliferating, and all the different connectivity technologies, I have
Speaker 3: never been in a company with more opportunities coming like
Speaker 3: the it's a target rich environment like you, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean some of the places you're hunting for, Hey, where
Speaker 3: can we go to find that next little bit of growth?
Speaker 8: That's not our problem. We have opportunities coming in everyweth.
Speaker 1: Lots of opportunity means lots of keen investors watching closely.
Speaker 1: As a public company, the Rocket Lab faces constant scrutiny
Speaker 1: from shareholders and the market. We asked Sir Peter, what
Speaker 1: that pressure feels like behind the scenes.
Speaker 7: Look that the pressure is real.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, there's there's there's so many people
Speaker 2: that own the stock and and I know both Adam
Speaker 2: and I feel a deep sense of responsibility to you know,
Speaker 2: to do right by the shareholders and create value.
Speaker 7: And you'll be lucky to date to create some value.
Speaker 2: And you know, people are just so nice, but it
Speaker 2: all comes down to execution. And you know, every person
Speaker 2: in this company understands that, you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: the company of stockholders themselves, so you know, we all
Speaker 2: feel it and we will push and work super had
Speaker 2: Funny enough, and it wasn't that hard for us to
Speaker 2: to to move from being a private company to a
Speaker 2: public company because you'll notice that a lot of space
Speaker 2: companies are extremely aspirational and they make, you know, really
Speaker 2: wild and outlandish claims.
Speaker 7: Maybe it's the kind of the key we are.
Speaker 2: We've always been very kind of reserved and we're you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a conservative engineer where you know conservative people, so
Speaker 2: you know, when you know, when Rocket Labs says we're
Speaker 2: going to do something, it's going to happen.
Speaker 7: So we don't don't get out in front of our skis.
Speaker 2: And I think that's where a lot of public companies
Speaker 2: can get in trouble writers is make these forward looking
Speaker 2: statements that they have that are aspirational rather than realistic.
Speaker 1: Once you have rockets any customers. So you've got some
Speaker 1: customers lined up and what's like a customer profile for
Speaker 1: a rocket of the size of like.
Speaker 7: Oh, so tremendous different type of customer profile.
Speaker 2: So we have, you know, customers that are looking to
Speaker 2: put up constellations. Obviously Neutron as an ideal vehicle for
Speaker 2: national security. This year we're onboarded onto the NSSL program,
Speaker 2: that's the National Space Launch Program. That program is exquisite
Speaker 2: in the fact that there's only five launch providers onboarded
Speaker 2: onto that and they launch the most important national security
Speaker 2: missions for the government. So it's a real feather in
Speaker 2: your cap to be to be on boarded onto that.
Speaker 2: So we have a good range of both commercial and
Speaker 2: government customers for the product.
Speaker 1: So just touch on the fence sector a little bit.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you'd have to have completely in
Speaker 1: the sand to not appreciate that that's a very growing
Speaker 1: and active part of the market.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's always been. You know, about half half of
Speaker 7: our business.
Speaker 1: Always makes that question how much it makes up roughly.
Speaker 2: Off, Yeah, so about some on the launch side, it's
Speaker 2: about fifty percent commercial, fifty percent government, and then of
Speaker 2: that government, it's about thirty percent defense and twenty percent
Speaker 2: civil civil being like NASA and those kind of organizations.
Speaker 7: So yeah, the government is a big part of our.
Speaker 1: And if some of the talk going on at the
Speaker 1: moment is about Golden Dome, Golden Dome, I was just wondering, like,
Speaker 1: is Rocke lay I've got a front seat in this?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, so the Golden Dome is a missile defense system,
Speaker 2: So if another country launches a missile attack, this is
Speaker 2: supposed to detect it and eliminate the threat.
Speaker 7: So you know, that's a very difficult thing to do.
Speaker 2: If you've got a missile, you know, being launed from
Speaker 2: the other side of the world and coming in, it's
Speaker 2: a very difficult thing to try and press detect and
Speaker 2: then then you know, neutralize. So and a lot of that,
Speaker 2: a lot of that's that that came ability, you know,
Speaker 2: especially the sensing capability is in space. So so yeah,
Speaker 2: we we think we're well positioned to be a really
Speaker 2: good contractor and provider to that.
Speaker 1: And there's a new John likely be a big part
Speaker 1: of that as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's there's a lot of launch that
Speaker 2: needs a lot of spacecraft and satellites that need to
Speaker 2: be launched, so so Neutron to be a part of that.
Speaker 2: We have our Hayes launch vehicle that's doing hypersonic so
Speaker 2: sub orbital tests.
Speaker 1: So I think we heard Mars about five times today.
Speaker 1: We heard Venus. I think you touched on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it came up another couple of times. But with regards
Speaker 1: to Mars, firstly, their ambition so interesting, like you know,
Speaker 1: how you feel about that and how realistic of that
Speaker 1: is and what's the time frame. But the other thing
Speaker 1: that came up was the idea of people in this
Speaker 1: rocket and that's something that I don't think has been
Speaker 1: hugely on Rocket Labs radar, but like how you feel
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 8: At the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, so Mars is obviously the planet
Speaker 2: of destination, and you know there's a number of really
Speaker 2: really important missions.
Speaker 7: You know the Mars Sample return mission previously.
Speaker 2: Now there's the Mars tele Telecommunications all Bitter program.
Speaker 7: And look, we're great at building Martians spacecraft.
Speaker 2: We've got two Escapade spacecraft that are about to go
Speaker 2: to Mars here shortly, so we really know Mars well
Speaker 2: and we were able to build things that operate in
Speaker 2: Mars and no problems at all.
Speaker 7: Just about everything on the surface of.
Speaker 2: Mars right now has some rocket Lab technology on it,
Speaker 2: So Mars is a friendly place to us, and you know,
Speaker 2: the administration and the President is made as aspirations clear
Speaker 2: that we go into Mars and Neutron is a perfect
Speaker 2: vehicle to go and do that. And then on the
Speaker 2: human spaceflight element, you know, we've always intended to be
Speaker 2: for Neutron to be human spaceflight rateable, so when you
Speaker 2: fly humans, you have to have different safety factors on
Speaker 2: tanks and different kind of levels of redundancy in the vehicle,
Speaker 2: and we designed that in from day one. Now we
Speaker 2: don't have any human spaceflight programs currently or anything like that,
Speaker 2: but if the opportunity arose that was required that you know,
Speaker 2: there was an additional capabilities or service is required for
Speaker 2: human spaceflight, then we weren't going to build a vehicle
Speaker 2: that wasn't able to do it.
Speaker 7: So we baked it in from day one.
Speaker 8: You know, for the.
Speaker 1: Future, rocket Lab has no shortage of big goals, but
Speaker 1: the multi billion dollar question now, will Neutron make it
Speaker 1: to the pad before the end of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: We put that to Shaun to Mallow, how did you
Speaker 1: feel about the December deadline that the government it's.
Speaker 4: A deadline, all right, but no, it's it's good. We're
Speaker 4: aggressively marching towards it. And if there's anything that can
Speaker 4: do it, it's Rocket Labs.
Speaker 7: So I'll get it done.
Speaker 8: And that's us from Virginia.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Sir Peter Beck, Adam Spice, Shawn to Mallow,
Speaker 1: and the Rocket Lab team for having us. You can
Speaker 1: watch Shared Lunch on YouTube or follow the podcast on Apple, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for tuning in.