Peter Beck — We're scaling Electron faster than SpaceX scaled Falcon 9

0:00But the only thing my parents ever said to me is we don't care what you do as long as you have impact. For me, that was space. We were very practical kids. You would know if you built something that was rough, their whole family would go, that's a piece of shit, why'd you build like that? There was an expectation that everything that came out of the garage was beautiful. Electron, as far as a launch cadence, scaled faster than the Falcon 9. The team is just totally relentless. Nobody survives here if they just want to come here and work eight to five and cruise and then go home. I mentioned that the most stressful part of your life is launch day. I'm not even sure if you enjoy launch day. No, I completely do not enjoy launch day. Today I have a pleasure of sitting down with Peter Beck, the founder of Rocket Lab, founded in 2006. Over the past five years, you've gone from basically doing like six launches to I think last year you did 21 and it's the same thing with SpaceX. I think SpaceX was at like 31 launches in 2021, now they're at like 160, something like that. Something really fast, what is the biggest limiting factor to increasing launch cadence

1:02and master orbit? Well for Electron, quite often it's customer readiness. The factory out there is capable of one a week, as it stands, so over 15 launches a year, but it comes down to customer readiness and the market for dedicated small launch continuing to grow. I've seen so many startups pop up in the last two or three years just expecting Starship scale up. Is this something that's also going to be basically like really benefiting you guys? Well it's been like that for as long as I've been in this industry, right? So there's always been a tremendous growth in it. In fairness, it sort of goes and fits and cycles a little bit to all waves where it's tremendous amount of inch capital went into space startups and then it's sort of backed off a little bit. Then there was the rise of the SPAC where a whole bunch of those venture capitalists made their funds back again and thought, hey, the space thing's good, so there's another big

2:03wave of kind of investment into venture capital investment into space. The one thing I would say is consistent is there was always the promise of the democratisation of space. So for the longest time, I can remember everybody saying, well, space is about to democratise, meaning that it always used to be the governments who built the rockets and the governments who built the satellites. And I would say in the last decade, we've actually truly witnessed that, that complete democratisation of space. So there's a few launch vehicle companies now that are launching regularly, in fact way more than governments, rocket lab itself launches more than governments apart from I think the Chinese. So in the same deal in spacecraft, I mean, we send us spacecraft to the moon, to our spacecraft are on their way to Mars right now. These are typically government-dominated domains, historically at least. So in the last decade, a lot has moved.

3:06What do you think is the big reason that governments have been less effective at building like space programmes and making it so you can basically build a lot of rockets? Yeah, I think it's a couple of things. It's like anything where it's incredibly difficult requires a nation worth of, you know, talent and energy and you can't make any money at it, those are the things that governments are really good at. The moment that a few of those things aren't true, like you can make some money at it and it doesn't require a nation of energy to achieve it, then that naturally democratises into commercial entities and, you know, that's exactly what's happened with space. I think it no longer takes a nation to build a satellite, you know, a few college kids in a dorm can go and build a little satellite. I think on another podcast that I was listening to, you basically said New Zealand has this culture of not really wanting successful people or something to that effect. Is there like a big tall puppy syndrome situation happening? Yeah, I mean, there is a, you know, kind of that tall puppy syndrome in New Zealand,

4:10but I would say, you know, over time, I've realised that it's really just a construct of the New Zealand media. Actual mum and dad at home wants everybody to succeed, and I think that's true in most countries where, you know, if successful entities or people, you know, they get sort of beaten down. It's generally, you know, mums and dads at home are just super stoked to see someone when I think it's, like I said, it feels like, you know, to me, a largely a construct of the media. Elon started SpaceX with, it must have been like a hundred million dollars. You did not have that salmon out of cash just sitting in your, in your bank account. A hundred dollars? A hundred dollars, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Even on the wall back there, it says that you were like a billion dollar company in 2017. Yeah. You almost got to, I think, orbit before reaching a billion dollar evaluation, which is fucking nuts. How did you build the company differently because you didn't have that massive pile of cash? Yeah. Well, I mean, and that is what has created some of the magic in the company even today is we knew that we could never outspend our competitors.

5:12That was just never, ever going to be a thing. And you know, the reason why the, the Rutherford engine is named Rutherford in the Electron rocket, it's not after, whenever it's after Ernest Rutherford, but not for the many reasons people think. It's named after Ernest Rutherford because he had a very famous saying and that was, we have no money, so we have to think. I definitely align with that philosophy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. So, you know, I can remember at the start of rocket lab, I would go to wrecking or junk yards to machine and crawl over old machines and unscrew all of the Swage Lock fittings. And, you know, because we couldn't afford to buy the Swage Lock fittings, we could buy the ferals, which were $3, I think $3.20 each, but a fitting was like $50 bucks. So, you know, the first few, you know, vehicles and bits of infrastructure will use second-hand fittings because we just couldn't afford new fittings. And that kind of, I guess, hardship, you know, really submits, you know, part of the key cultures in this company, like, and if you look across the space industry, especially

6:17amongst, you know, companies that went public, most of them are toast. And, you know, that core kind of, you know, responsibility for, you know, good Stuart of Capital and value is, you know, exists here today. You know, every dollar, every second of the hour is valuable here, whereas other companies, you know, if they've got heaps of resources, then, you know, it's less valuable. And, if you look at it, it's like, if money could solve the space problems, then there would be a lot of success. Like, money does not solve this problem when I was trying to raise money for rocket lab to do the Electron project. There was, you know, Richard Branson out there with his Virgin Orbit. And, you know, Richard had $1.2 billion to do what we did with $80 million. And, you know, it doesn't matter how much money that was ultimately spent then, you know, that was a commercial and technical failure, whereas, you know, Electron with far less resources

7:23was the opposite. What do you think about deciding where to take and spend your energy and time in resources, like on scaling Electron versus building neutron and kind of try to build a full reusable vehicle? Yeah, well, I mean, so, so firstly, the launch part of the house only represents one-third of the company. Two-thirds is actually the space systems side of the house. So with regard to being spread everywhere, it is, it's like, you know, launch, launch by default only, you know, gets a, you know, a section of my time. But, you know, we've got an amazing team. And, you know, the Electron team are just, you know, they're just animals. So they're just, just banging those vehicles out and launching them and, like, they're just, so there's, quite frankly, there's very little involvement I have with the Electron team. Like, they're just, like I say, they're animals. They're just bang-animally. Were you, like, highly involved right at the start of the production of the Electron? Or? Yeah. I mean, and I came from a production background as well, so, you know, knew what good production looks like.

8:24But, no, I would say the team down there now is just, you know, they're just amazing. So that's a very, very light touch product for me, personally, because the team's just so good. Whereas Electron, you know, we're deep in development. So, you know, that's a very high touch area from an engineering perspective I'm involved with. And then, you know, across, across the whole rest of the space systems and organisations, I mean, you know, we've got a bunch of kind of business units that supply, you know, the vast majority of components that are in satellites, and, you know, those guys are killing it as well. I mean, we've developed, I would say, you know, a rocket lab operating system where, you know, the production team is really good at, you know, getting into these, like, hideously complex components, and figuring ways out to make, you know, figuring out ways to make them, you know, highly producible and, and highly reliable. What about your, like, culture enables you to be able to tackle these, like, massively difficult problems and do it in an efficient way? That's a great question.

9:24We often, we often kind of ruminate on that, and it comes down to the rocket lab hustle, and it's kind of hard to describe the rocket lab hustle in, like, one word, but it's more, you can easily, more easily describe it in, like, behaviours. So, a couple of years ago, we had this satellite, and it had this super thin wall titanium precious pressure vessel, and there's, like, two companies in the United States that produced these, you know, electron being welded thin wall titanium pressure vessels. And, you know, the supplier, just absolutely- Like, 100%. Like, yeah, it would, it would, it would be, you know, if you've got kids, you've got a number one, and then your number twos, and then there's, like, the number three. No, no, that was the supplier. Yeah, like, the supplier's like number three's everywhere. So, so that was just total disaster. And I think most companies would have stopped, whereas we just developed a technique to 3D print this titanium, you know, pressure vessel, and, you know, developed a whole

10:27bunch of welding processes ourselves. And, you know, we produce the tanks, you know, in time to meet the date for the launch vehicle and, you know, qualified them in acceptance tests of them and everything. So now, there's three suppliers in the United States who can build, you know, thin wall titanium tanks. And what's more is, because we 3D printed them rather than, you know, traditional forming them, we can make whatever shape or anything anybody wants at any time. So, I mean, it's, it's those kind of things where, I think, you know, historically, you had a barrier, and people go, oh, I don't know what we're going to do, we're going to stop, is where, you know, we'll just overwhelm the barrier, or we'll dig under it, or we'll fly over it. Like, it's just, it's just, like, that's just not acceptable to stop. Is there almost like a culture of just, fuck it, let's do it? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And, like, scary things, you know, they're scary, but, you know, we'll still go after them anyway. Like, there's a good reason there's only two, well, there was only two manufacturers of these things. It's because they're super scary and super difficult to make.

11:28And, like I say, I think most people would go, well, you know, we're not going to get into the thinwall titanium pressure, they saw manufacturing game, but for us, it's like, yep, like, fuck it, let's go, and let's, let's make it happen. And when you're kind of running into one of those problems where, hypothetically, if there was a bunch of suppliers that could just fulfill, you know, basically, reduce all your cognitive load and difficulty of making the thing, that would be great, but obviously, there really isn't. No, that'd be great. Oh, man, I'd wake up in the morning, just there would be a dream. It's like suppliers that deliver on time to budget at a reasonable price, that will be amazing. But, unfortunately, that is a very rare, it's very rare. What's the worst supplier experience you've ever had? I mean, it's just, we have people just, like, there's a whole team that just sits in suppliers, you know, buildings, just trying to juggle things along. I think it would be unfair for me to call out the worst supplier in the world. And to be fair, a lot of it is the industry.

12:29So, you know, the industry is, if you look at most sort of suppliers, they're all extremely low volume, extremely bespoke, difficult things. It's not like, you know, they're banging out close pecs, like these are really difficult kind of things. So in that environment, it sort of leads itself to having, you know, suppliers that take longer and, you know, don't deliver as good as you would expect. It's easier for RocketLab, where we have a certain amount of scale to just go and do something. And, you know, if it requires some cryogenic experts, we've got those over here, if it requires some electromagnetic experts, we've got that over here. So we're able to pull all those in, whereas if you're a little shop and you don't have all those expertise, then it does, you know, it becomes a lot more difficult. You can just do the same thing. It's a possible. Yeah, but that's kind of the, also, you know, the magic of the company is, as we have now, such a diversified group of folks that, you know, there's an expert for everything

13:30in the company. I know that you're very focused on trying to make as many parts of the rocket yourself as you can. How do you think about, like, at what stage it makes sense to just vertically integrate versus trying to use something off the shelf if there is some supplier, even if you... Oh, man. We would buy stuff off the shelf straight away versus doing it ourselves. Like, it's not a religion to be vertically integrated. It's just a necessity to achieve and deliver. You've been out this for now, like, 26 years. What's the example of rocket lab hustle? Well, I gave you that tank one there a moment ago, but I mean, it's just to find bias, you know, a set of behaviours. I would say that, you know, the team is just totally relentless, and they're just relentless against execution. So, you know, there's nobody here or nobody survives here if they just want to come here and work eight to five and cruise and then go home. That's just not the culture. We take on really difficult, meaty, important things that people care about.

14:30So, you know, I would just say it's engineering excellence and just, like, share dogged determination to execute. And, you know, when a lot of companies where it comes five o'clock in the problems not solved, a lot of people will go home, not here, like, you know, you can come to hear at this facility and you can drive past it any time in the night or the morning and there's lights on. Is there any really good story that you have of having to basically, like, sleep here and fucking some bottleneck that you had over the past couple of years? Oh, my God. There's so many. I mean, like in the customer room, there's beds and pillows, so, I mean, like, you know, for anybody to use. So, I mean, that happens all the time. One thing I can think of in this many years ago is that we had developed this rocket engine. It was a very unique rocket engine and we had a bunch of really important people coming over from the propulsion industry to look at this engine and we were doing the last test on a Friday afternoon and we thought, oh, we'll just do this one last test before we put

15:36the engine to bed because these guys would turn up on Monday. So we did this test and a hydraulic line was fatiguing. We didn't realise and it failed and the hydraulic line failed caused basically the valving sequence to be wrong and the whole engine exploded. And not only did it, it was so good, it was such a good, it's only a, you know, a 500-pound engine, so it's not a big engine, but it exploded so good that it just tore everything out of the test cell as well, like there was, we just stood, walked back in there after it all started out and I was just shitting off the walls and it was just total mess. And meanwhile, these guys had just taken off from the states and they were on their way in a land. They're going to land whether or not the engine is there. There's not even a test cell. So we're all standing around and like there wasn't one person that said, oh, no, or not one person said, well, that's uscruted, people just said, okay, well, there's some titanium back in the shop, I'll get back there now and I'll start machining and then the electricians

16:40are like, yep, okay, I've got some cat five cable, I'll start rewiring this and we'll do this and everybody just got to work. And the next day, I got a call from the guys that are coming to visit us and they said, well, actually we landed here on Saturday, Saturday morning, so we all feel good. So why don't we just come down to the test cell and we'll start work right now. Well, like, oh, no, you'll be a jet lag, you don't want to do that. I can, you know, wait until Monday, just wait until Monday because you'll feel much better trust me, this jet lag to New Zealand really hits you. So don't want you to be sleep deprived when you come. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly right. So we just, you know, everybody was just nobody slept at all and we just worked and worked and worked. And, you know, we would, we were rebuilding this engine and we knew there was a couple of things in the engine that were like, you know, we would have liked to fix it at some point in time, but they're risky, like if we, you know, we made some changes to an injector and, you know, it might not have worked, but we're like, oh, well, at this point, like, let's just go for it.

17:41So we made a whole bunch of changes to the engine and we changed, you know, what we thought, you know, some of the injectors and some of the parts of the engine, we thought and prove its performance. And then, you know, we got this whole engine back together and got it on the test cell in Monday morning and very important friends turned up and they're like, hey guys, how you going? We go, good, good. Right, ready for an engine test? And, you know, we hotfired that engine and that was the first time that engine had been hotfired since a rebuilt engine, you know, rebuilt test cell and a brand new engine with all these modifications. And I think most companies would have played it safe and just said, let's rebuild it exactly as it was. But, you know, we built this new engine and that new engine performed 13% better than the previous one, which in rocket engines perspectives a huge number over the course of a weekend. Yeah. And completely rebuilt the engine and that engine ran for the next nearly a month, just day after day doing hotfire, after hotfire and tweaking things and doing different experiments that everybody wants to do and all the rest of it.

18:41So, you know, that's a rocket lab hustle. I mean, it's, you know, I think a lot of people would go, well, you know, yeah, pretty much. What happens after that sort of event, like internally, how do people kind of react to being able to overcome something that feels insurmountable or impossible? That's a great question. Generally, there's the next big thing. So, you're just on to the next big thing. And, you know, there's been a couple of, a couple of these kind of really big things, like the capstone mission was a really big one, that was, that was a totally impossible project. I stole to this data and I know how we pulled it off, but that was a totally impossible project. Do you want to just walk through what that was? That was the mission to the moon. Yeah. So, you know, we had signed the capstone mission and we had to deliver the spacecraft to the moon and, you know, it's off an electron rocket. So, you know, going to the moon off a tiny little rocket is... Like, 79 million bucks. Yeah. Yeah, it was 10 million dollars. Yeah. But it, like, on paper, it closed, but in practice, it was the most ridiculously hard

19:47thing to, you know, we were measuring grams in that rocket. And, you know, there was like a three-hour debate whether or not we could afford the mass of the NASA stickers down the side of the rocket, because the mass of those stickers would, you know, put us over the edge. So, there was, it was the most ridiculously difficult engineering project. And, you know, we delivered that spacecraft to the moon with such perfect accuracy. It was incredible. But there were so many first there, there was a, you know, the rocket engine that was on the little spacecraft that took it to the moon was the highest performing engine that we ever built. And, you know, we had a separate tank of 11 herbs and spices that we would inject into the engine to just make it run super hot. So, you know, it was the most... It was the craziest, craziest project. And, you know, even today, you can ask people around the company what their best moment was at Rocket Lab and anybody working on Capstone or just about anybody will say Capstone,

20:50even though it was the most punishing and cruelest mission that we ever did. What's your kind of philosophy on chewing glass and enjoying taking on extremely difficult challenges with uncertainty on whether or not they can't even be successful? Yeah, well, I mean, I think that is the definition of a good start-up. But I would temper that with, yeah, okay, you're chewing glass, but also you can't just do that and not know the outcome or, you know, sometimes you have to force the outcome to be good. That's a fact. But also, I would say everything that we take on, we honestly believe we can do. Now sometimes our belief is unfounded, but generally, you know, we won't take on something that we just will not have a clue about how we can, how we're going to achieve. So, yeah, I think that's a fair statement, but I think I'd temper that with, like, don't be reckless with that, because it's like you build trust with the people that you're

21:53working with, and so if you fuck up, then that trust is broken. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would hope that if you went out to the industry and said, what is Rocket Lab known for, stand for, it's like, hardware is beautiful and it always works. And that might sound just like, yeah, of course, but that is not the norm in this industry. So, you know, when we take on stuff, we absolutely commit to delivering it. I mean, the Capstone project was, you know, NASA paid us $10 million and we were three times over budget. Now I think other companies would have just pulled out and it's like, the hell with that, we've made this commitment, we are going to deliver that and it is going to be successful and it was, it was flawless. Did that kind of basically give you a whole bunch of credibility for future missions? Yeah, I mean, I mean, with respect to interplanetary and even launch, I mean, NASA knows when they come to us, it will be done and it will work. I mean, just like the Escapade missions, you know, those Escapade spacecraft, deeply complex spacecraft, two spacecraft going to Mars, not just one, and deliver it on time

22:55on budget to NASA. I know Elon mostly spends his time trying to basically figure out whatever the biggest bottleneck in one of his companies is and then he goes to that bottleneck and he doesn't leave until it's sorted and then he just goes to whatever the next fire is and he says, basically like if things are going well, then you probably won't even hear from me. How interesting. How do you think the differences between, or maybe similarities between your and Elon's philosophy and management style and how you operate? Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably similar. Like I'm not adding value to anything that's running great. Like, you know, it might feel good, but I'm not adding any value to that whatsoever. Sure. Give the thumbs up and leave. Yeah, great. Like what a total waste of time. No, you know, certainly I think, you know, focus goes in areas where that aren't, that aren't going well or areas where, you know, it needs some, some decisions made or, and I think quite often, you know, the role of a CEO is just to make the decisions that nobody else wants to make. And, you know, I made sure that I was there for the first hotfire of our comedies because

23:59I, you know, I knew that there was going to need to be some risk decisions that were going to be made because you can analyse and analyse to a certain point, but at some point, you actually just have to press the button. And, you know, I just felt it was super unfair to put all those, those guys in the, in the position to, you know, make the decision to, to set the button. So if this blows up, like, I'm the guy to press the button. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, I don't need to say anything, I just sat there, but everybody knew that if there was a risk call that needed to be made, is it, are we okay to go? You know, I'd give them the thumbs up. So, so it's, it's things like that where I think, you know, you just, that's where you have to be there, right? There are even a few, you're not, you're not even useful, you still, you still have to be there. So, so yeah, I would say that, that, that, that is, that is true. And things that are going wrong and, and things that require, you know, big decisions with no information and, and then of course, you know, just, just pushing the company in the

25:04right direction. In the past, people have kind of joked about Elon time being maybe even years late on some projects. Yeah. And over time, he's kind of like course corrected to trying to get down to roughly 50% of the time, whatever the timeline is that, that he gives is going to be right. Yeah. That means by definition half the time it's going to be off, but that, because he's basically pulling in timelines like that, more things are able to happen. If you're doing, you know, this, this mission where you're sending something to Mars or seeing something to moon, how do you decide how to structure that, that timeline so that you know that you're actually going to be able to ship? So I, I guess, you know, you have to be 50% entrepreneurial and 50% engineer and as a public company, you can't just stand up there and wave your arms around because people do do that. Yeah, but you get in trouble with the network. Yeah, no, that's, I mean, that you have to be respectful to your shareholders and your investors that they're making decisions off of your timelines. You know, and sometimes you get it wrong, and that's unfortunate.

26:08But generally, you know, the thing that the dates and things that we try and put out there, we try and be right. Now we always, we do run green light schedules, meaning that, you know, when we put a schedule together, there's not some big fat in there that says that, you know, if this doesn't work, it might, you know, we build a bit extra time in here and build a bit extra time in here because engineers will take as long as you have allocated them to do a job. If you allocate all the fat in there, then you just, that is, that is your default best schedule. Whereas we've always run green light schedules from day one, where you put the schedule down in place that you think is, if everything goes right, and you know, if everything goes right, then that is the best time that you're going, you're going to achieve. And of course, not everything always goes right. But you can guarantee where you build fat in, it'll be the wrong place anyway. So, you know, that, that, that, that has been, you know, very effective for rocket lab. And yep, okay, sometimes we're late on some stuff. But it's not horrifically late. And, and, you know, it's still faster than if you had, you know, done a more traditional

27:12approach. If you do have a situation where things do go late, what do you do to basically make sure that whatever the new timeline is happens, or it happens as quickly as possible? Well, I mean, there's, there's nobody at, at rocket lab that doesn't feel the anxiety of something is, is not going well. Like, everybody here is super high performers and they want, you know, it's, it's very important for their own ego to, you know, to deliver beautiful stuff on time. So, so, you know, it's, it's self-policing in, in that respect. And like, the stuff we do is freaking hard. So, and some of it's never been done before. So, inevitably, you know, you, you, you have issues. And then, and I'd say one of the great things about the company is like, it's not a culture where if somebody has a bad day, everybody runs away and points at them and going, oh, no, glad that's not me, it's, it's the opposite, right? Everybody runs towards the problem and, and offers their help and assistance. So, you know, as far as a culture goes, it's, it's, you know, some cultures, it's, you know, everybody's standing on each other's throat to try and get ahead, not, not here.

28:16You know, everybody, everybody runs to the, runs to the, the thing that's on fire to try and put it out. How do you actually faster that type of culture? Well, I mean, I, I wish I could, I wish I could say that there's, there's like a, you know, a statement or anything. I mean, it's just the way the company is. It's just the way the company always been. You know, right back to that example, I gave you of that engine blowing up, you know, nobody's, you know, nobody's jumping around and screaming, everybody just gets to work. I remember you said we make the Ferrari of rockets and you really care about design and you really care about beauty, you really care about, like, function and all the stuff. What's your philosophy around building beautiful, amazing products that work? And then why does it matter to create things that are great? Well, it comes, it comes down to my belief that if you build something beautifully, then you've taken pride in what you've done. If you've taken pride in what you've done, then chances are you've, you've looked a little bit deeper than your own work. And if everybody is building beautiful things, if somebody doesn't build a beautiful thing

29:19and it becomes really, really obvious. And you know, generally, if you build beautiful things, if they work, it's very rare that you build something that is just beautifully executed and beautifully thought about. It's just a piece of crap. It doesn't happen that often. Whereas I'd say if you build a piece of crap, it's like it's a, it's a, it's a miracle or it's a win if it works. So, and I honestly believe it takes no longer to build something beautiful and nice than it does to build, you know, throw something together, it's a piece of crap. Especially by the time you spend all the time, you know, you know, going back and rebuilding bits because the clearances went right or, you know, code wasn't right or whatever. So, so I don't think it takes, it takes any longer, but we used to have a saying on the wall that make everything you do a work of art, because, you know, if it doesn't work and looks like crap, you've got nothing, but if it doesn't work and looks beautiful, at least it looks beautiful. So, so, you know, this, it's a, it's an ingrained culture and it doesn't, it doesn't apply

30:24to hardware, it's like code, it's software, it's the facilities you're in, it's like, you know, we're here to build beautiful things, we're not here to, you know, make crap. Who are the people or things that have, like, inspired you on that kind of philosophy and trying to create beautiful products? I don't know, it's probably, it probably just my upbringing, like, you know, as a child, where that's what we were always expected to do, you know, we were, you know, very practical kids, we were building go-karts and building these kinds of things. And whether it was my father or my brother or anything, like, you would know if you built something that was rough, like, the whole family would go, that's a piece of shit. Why didn't you build like that? So there was like, you know, an expectation and a pride that, even then that came out of the big garage was beautiful. How do you marry those two philosophies of you both are going to junkyards to find some

31:25little piece of, you know, something that you can kind of salvage? Yep. For a few hundred bucks, while also like creating initial prototypes, while also understanding that the finished version is going to be, like, the scorchest thing. Yeah, well, I mean, if you clean a fitting, it looks exactly like a brand new fitting. So you're not compromising anything in that respect. And so you're putting a new feral on it, so that's a bit that's doing the work. So I think, you know, they're not separate things. And, you know, a piece of art that's done by an artist that sells for $500 versus something that sells for $5 million, I mean, they're still beautiful. So you don't need to equate like a price tag to beauty and quality of engineering. I remember you mentioned that the most stressful part of your life is launch day. Yeah. I'm not even sure if you like enjoy launch day, but I do completely do not enjoy launch day.

32:25What was it like 2009 when you guys launched your first rocket or test and then also, you know, 2017 when you tried to make the first more well attempt? The first flights are a little bit different. I mean, you want everything to go well and you're willing everything to go well and you've done everything you can to make everything go well. But it's a logical kind of understanding that it may not go well. Probably won't go well. Yeah, so, yeah, so flight ones, that's not so bad. That's not so bad, because that's a test. It's worse later on and the more you do, the worse it gets, because, you know, it's still an extremely complicated vehicle and system and stuff, you know, even for the best of this stuff goes wrong, right? You know, whole country's vehicles are new. Yeah. Well, all countries vehicles also fail now and again, so it does happen. But I don't know, it's just, I feel an immense sense of responsibility to our customers,

33:30to our shareholders, you know, people buy a rocket to deliver their payload or but they don't buy a rocket to deliver their payload to the ocean. So, you know, I just feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to, you know, to make sure that their experience and their mission is delivered exactly right. And I think, you know, that's part of the rocket lab culture is every single person in this company takes the delivery of their thing or the insolution incredibly seriously. So, you know, whether it's a reaction wheel to a customer or an entire spacecraft or a entire mission, you know, we really care here. Like when we deploy a satellite into orbit, you know, I think most people would think that our job is done, yes, and we all just go home. But everybody's hanging off, hanging off, waiting for the customer to tell us, we've had a successful contact of our spacecraft. You know, it's not our part of the mission, but we just want that mission to be successful so badly that, you know, I don't think anybody in mission control, you know, has a

34:31sigh of relief until where customer comes back to us and said, yep, we've made contact with our spacecraft and the whole thing is successful for everybody. It really sucks when our customer forgets to tell us because there's like a hundred people sitting back here going, oh, did the customer make contact or not? Even though our mission is over. What was the most stressful day of the last 20 years? Oh, man, you know, for me, it's like, you know, when something has gone wrong, I mean, like a launch anomaly is just, like this place is a morgue, like it is, you know, if you're like a psychologist, you come in here, you make a killing because, you know, after a launch failure, it's just, it is just really tough, really, really tough because everybody is so invested in all of that. There's this wonderful line, which is like entrepreneurship in his best form is basically going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. And I feel like every company that succeeds over time is, becomes very good at basically

35:35experiencing failure, learning from it quickly and then moving on and just focusing on the next thing. Yeah, no, I'd say that's absolutely true, yeah. And, you know, failure happens in all forms and like there's big public failures and then there's like, you know, someone's been working on this piece of hardware for the last three months and it goes to the vibe table and forced bits, like, you know, they still gotta go home and they're like, yeah, that didn't work. If it wasn't, if it wasn't for the prize of the space industry, I doubt anybody would do it because it's just, and when I say the prize, I mean, the prize is like if you work on a launch vehicle seeing a rocket fly, like, you know, people will just absolutely work their ass off and then a rocket will fly and they're like, yeah, yeah, let's go do it again. Like it's just like this, there's a adrenaline hit that you get that keeps everybody going. If there wasn't that kind of, you know, almost climax of a vent, then whether it be a rocket or a spacecraft being launched or whatever, I'm not sure everybody would do this job because it is, you know, it is, it is just, it's just constantly tough.

36:40But first like 12 years of the company, you're basically an R&D organization where you just needed to design something that actually worked and, you know, show that it worked. And then in like 2018, you make the first orbital success launch and suddenly that shifts. And I remember you mentioning that basically once you have a product that works, now the job is to go and sell it and like actually get customers and actually start scaling that up. What was it like transitioning from a company culture of just designing, developing, iterating to something that's actually scaling up rocket production and shipping? Yeah, that's a good, that is 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&D standpoint and into full volume production is a whole different set of skills and a whole different set of pain. And you know, there was times during the electron scale up that it was just incredibly, incredibly

37:44painful 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 organization. You know, and I think any, every startup goes from that right to developing their first digital thing and then scaling it, I mean, those scaling challenges are real. This 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? Yeah, it was just like that. Like, you know, seeing anybody there is 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 9.

38:47So from first flight to 50 flights, you know, we were faster than a Falcon 9 and from 50 flights to 100 flights as long as we keep doing what we're doing will be faster as well. So 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. How do you kind of think about designing something initially that is going to 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, we're not necessarily shift the company culture, but shift back into the gear of just building the first iteration of that thing. Yeah, I mean, it's not that hard really, you know, because we do a lot of new stuff all the time. And, you know, we've spent quite a lot of time with electron, and electrons are usability program learning so much. So I would say, you know, the muscle memory was there pretty strongly already.

39:49But 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 just so much better from a production standpoint. What about it is better? 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 or a critical, whereas neutron, we 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 assimilant, as it is, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, systems, whereas, you know, on electron, you're literally, you know, having to bend tubes, you know, to, you know, to pipe stuff, pipe stuff in. And then same with the electrical systems, you know, the whole electrical system, the complete

40:49electrical system is built off the rocket and then just one day it gets installed in the entire rocket, whereas, you're not, you know, you know, pulling cables up and down the rocket, like you are in an electron. So, there's just, there's just a whole bunch of stuff that we could do with neutron and it's way better. 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. Well, you'd have to ask Elon, but, but, you know, I mean, 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, as rockets, big minds, small, same, same. Like, it's, it was, it was very, very, very similar. I mean, yes, for sure, sometimes it's better to just remain off the radar than on the

41:50radar. If you could go back and not do that dinner, would you? No, I mean, we would have, we would have, we would have scaled anyway. And so, we would always be on the radar. When you look out today and you think about the biggest bottlenecks in your mind, what are they? We always have a challenge of feeding talent to the machine, you know, the bar to get into rocket lab is extraordinarily high. And I think, you know, everybody says, every CEO says, oh, we've got the best team in the world and all the rest of it. I mean, there is a lot of people that are from a lot of other space companies that, that you would respect that just don't make the grade at rocket lab. So, so the bar is extraordinarily high and we make no apologies for that. And then even when you're in, you know, through the bar or under the bar or over the bar or whatever, no, the bar no longer involved. Like the expectations are super high, super high. And this place is not for everybody, that is for sure.

42:51So we're just growing so fast, like keeping great talent fed to the organisation is, I'd say, one of the biggest throttles. How do you actually like maintain that bar? Like, I know Jeff Bezos has this idea of he wants to constantly improve the bar over time so that any new hire is basically like the best hire that they've made in the history of the company. And then over time, it just becomes like this impossibly high standard of quality of human. How do you kind of maintain that? Yeah, well, that's a great question because sometimes, you know, a manager will just be so overwhelmed with how much they've got to do that, just want to pulse, just give me a pulse. And, you know, the recruiting process just, it's pretty rigid about, you know, that. And also, I would say that generally, you know, enough managers have made enough bad hires where, you know, this person is not exactly what I need and they're not quite bored into the mission and the culture, but, you know, hey, they'll be fine.

43:51And then, you know, they're not putting in the hours or they're working from home all of a sudden. And they get self-selected, I mean, so, you know, it's ultimately not successful. If you had to think about the perfect day for Peter Beck, what is that actually involved? Like what do you do during that 24 hour period? Perfect day. I don't think there is such a thing. I mean, the reality is, the reality is that I'm the chief engineer and the CEO. My job is to fix it. That's pretty much it, right? And also, you know, think forward and grow the company and all those kinds of stuff. So the perfect day would just be to successfully, you know, solve a whole bunch of problems. That's when I go home at the end of the day, the happiest. It's like, yeah, we're finding that all that or this is a great idea. Let's go after that. Those are the best days. When you like, you know, you grind on a problem and you just still don't find a resolution,

44:54those are the tough times. What have been the favorite days for you so far? I don't know. To be honest with you, I'm not a very retrospective person. It's just like, what is the next day going to throw at me? So I mean, look, I mean, there's always great days when we have a really successful launch. I mean, I think one of them, one of the more impactful launches for me was, yeah, first NASA launch because, you know, as a kid growing up, my dream was to go and work for NASA. And I had like this little space shuttle that used to sit on my desk at home, you know, and then it sat on my top of my computer when I was, you know, started my career at work and that space shuttle still sits on my desk today here at Rocket Lab. And that was that was kind of the thing I would look at like, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do that. And, you know, when we actually, you know, got to launch a NASA mission and there's a whole bunch of people in mission control wearing NASA t-shirts and high-fiving us and doing it successfully, that was, that, that meant a lot, it's like that, that was a big tick.

45:55I think the first time that you came to America, you like went and talked to a bunch of VCs and there was this day where you came out of a very successful meeting with, I don't know if it was Vinod Kostler or, yeah, and you just like went home and like bought an American flag. I did. Yeah. You know, I went to Whole Foods. Okay. There's a near a supermarket I can find. Yeah. Would it feel like coming to America always different about that, like Silicon Valley? Just, just so invigorating and exciting because the great thing about America is anything is possible. Like if you've got a dream and, and, and you, you've got the energy to go and do it, you can do it. And that is, that is the magic of America and, you know, how crazy was it that a guy from the arse end of a little country can turn up to America and raise a bunch of money to go and build a rocket, like it's nuts. And that is, that is, there's amazing thing about America and also Silicon Valley and venture capital and like, there's, there's nowhere else in the world you can do that.

46:59Like, I mean, if you look at Europe and, you know, why, why is Europe not as entrepreneurial as, as America? And it's, it's because you don't, it's not that culture of belief in the culture of we can give it a go and we can make it successful and ra ra. You know, it's, it's a very much a subdued culture. It's like, well, don't screw that up and that might fail and all that rest of it. And I think, you know, if you look at the historical developments and why they always come from America, it's because people can just have a crack. And even if it turns to custard, the crazy thing is you can go back to exactly the same person and have a crack on something totally different again and they'll back you. And that, that is, that is their magic of America. When you were on the flate over, what were you thinking? Well, I knew nothing about how near this work. I knew nothing. I mean, so I gave myself three weeks to come home with a check, will be run out of town. And that was my, that was my philosophy. And coming from New Zealand, everybody told me, it's like, oh, Silicon Valley, venture capital, that's like a shark tank. And then you're just going to get eaten up and spit out and ripped off and it's like, nah,

48:02not at all. That wasn't your experience? No, no. I mean, quite the opposite. And, you know, I spent the first week just figuring out how the game is played. Because I knew absolutely zero. So this is where I went round a bunch of, you know, start-ups and tried to figure out how the game is played. And, you know, in the second week was figuring out who I wanted to talk to in the third week was I only pitched to three VCs in the end. There's only three VCs that, that, you know, I felt I wanted to work with and I felt that would get it. And we came home with a check. What did Vinod said to you in that meeting? Well, Vinod had invested in Skybox, which was an imaging company that was ultimately bought by Google for half a billion dollars. And Vinod had felt, and that whole team had felt the pain of launch. Like, they were launching off Russian ICBMs. So, you know, when I turned up and said, I'm going to build a rocket. There was zero question about whether there is a market or not. Absolutely zero question. Like, we 100% understand there's a massive market here.

49:05The only question I guess was, you know, could I pull it off? And I didn't come there with a dream and only that. I came there with, you know, a successful flight, a sounding rocket to space and a whole bunch of stuff. And I came with a complete one-tenth scale set of plans for the whole rocket, blueprints, and I rolled them out all along the partners desk in the boardroom. This whole one-tenth scale blueprint of the rocket, and I had a pump in my hand. And it's like, here's how we're going to do this guys. So yeah, I mean, it's lucky enough to convince Vinod that it's worth a go. Was there any moment in your head where you weren't sure whether or not the money was going to be there or this was something like a problem that was tackled or at all? Well, at the risk of sounding arrogant, no. Because I think if you believe that, then you wouldn't wake up in the morning. Like, I mean, I think a successful entrepreneur is an optimist to their core.

50:10Because if you're not, then like, if you're everybody else is telling you it can't be done and you believe it can't be done, then it's never going to be done is it? So no, I think you have to temper that with the reality of some of the things. And I think this is where maybe the balance is good, is like half of my brain is completely entrepreneurial just wanting to go for it. And the other half is like this conservative engineer. So you fuse those two things together, you get what you get. What's been the biggest evolution of your own kind of internal philosophy on how you operate the business and just operate day to day with the past couple of years? It would be interesting to ask somebody else that question because in my mind, it feels like exactly the same. I don't feel like I've changed my management style or people, my expectations of people or the way around the business has changed at all. You know, there's certain things that change because they have to,

51:11like you're a public trader company, so you have to do some things differently. But I would, you'd have to ask somebody else because at least to me, it just feels like this is the way that it's always been done. SpaceX and Elon decided to go public. And for a very long time, for more than 20 years of the company, he was like, I don't even know SpaceX will ever go public. Yeah. Because he didn't know that public market investors were the type of folks that would be interested in experiencing failure like that. How do you make the decision to go public in the first place? Well, for us, it was always part of the plan because it's for a selfish reason and a non-selfish reason. So, you know, the selfish reason is, you know, the only thing my parents ever said to me is, we don't care what you do as long as you have impact. So, choose something in your life that you can have impact and, you know, contribute to the human history, basically. So, you know, for me, that was space.

52:11And I think that you can have a meaningful impact. But I measure impact and not just like a blip in history. I measure impact and, you know, a long, consistent, you know, thing over a long period of time. Like an enduring thing. Totally enduring. And one of the reasons why I was very, very adamant to take the company public was a public company, it's a, like, if you do it right, that is a fact. Like, many generations of, you know, Rocket Labor can go by and this company can be successful for a very long time and by default have impact and then I've done what I was supposed to do. So, that's super important. And also being a public company, it really enforces the diligence and, you know, the rigor to be successful. If you're a private company, especially if you're a private company and you don't have problems raising capital, then, you know, you're just, you're just fat and happy for ages until you're not. And there's no like extreme pressure.

53:13Yeah, no fortunate or extreme pressure to develop a product, to get it profitable, to make the company sustainable. Like, you know, there is, there's a lot of checks and balances and a lot of pressure as a public company to make sure that those things become true. And those things ultimately, you know, create longevity. And then, you know, as a spin off, then they also, you know, create value. So, you know, I had a lot of investors invest in the company and, you know, want to return that value back to them. And, you know, any venture capitalists that invested in the company, we've made their whole fun back, which is great. And also, you know, the staff have done really well and all of our investors. So, you know, our obligation is to continue, you know, to grow the value of this company, which I think is important as well. So, like I say, I kind of view it as slightly selfish that I'm trying to, I want to build this company that way, way outlives me and can go on and have, you know, a long, long impact. Is there any decisions that you make with that kind of understanding

54:15of this, like, multi decade year in this, basically, until the day that you die, understanding the back of your mind that you might not make if you weren't planning on trying to create this super enduring institution? Well, I mean, if you look at this, there's a lot of space companies out there where if they have founders and leaders die, I think you'd have to question whether or not that company would continue. I think Elon's one of them. I think the, like, keeper of the soul of those companies is Elon and the second that he leaves. Yeah, well, I mean, there's more than that as well. I mean, there's others there as well. And I just didn't want to be one of those companies. Like, that, what a, what, I mean, I want this thing to go on for a friever. So, you know, that's kind of, you know, a critical point. And I'm also a realist to like, you know, there'll be a point in time where, you know, there's other people that can run this company better than I can or I just get too old and I'm, you know, I'm like that guy trying to log into his laptop and not been able to do it because it's, so, you know,

55:18you know, everybody that comes to this company knows that you have a finite period of time at Rocket Lab. And that finite period of time might be that you just get exhausted and you want to do something else. Or there's other younger, better people that are, that are better than you and you'll be replaced. And the same goes for me, like, there'll be a point in time where there's a better person to run this company. And, and, you know, I want to make sure that, that when that happens, this thing doesn't stop. If you have a whole bunch of cash in your bank account, it's pretty easy to graph, you know, how long do we have as far as runway goes? Yeah. But when do you want to be like a profitable business so that you just are like operating off of, you know, you're able to make these big bets and you're completely like with the understanding that your other bet that you've made have succeeded and are able to fund them? Yep. Well, it's a complete 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, you have to play that carefully because, okay, you know, Rocket Lab can be profitable

56:20instantly 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 and all. But it's all about risk versus reward. So, you know, do you want to have a little company that's profitable and, okay, it 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 unpassionate about these sorts of things for us. You know, we don't make decisions based on, you know, feelings and in those kinds of things. It's very much compassionate. 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 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.

57:22One of the things that Elon did is he just kept on working on basically this idea of launch cost to orbit or like a mass 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, period of story. How do you kind of think about figuring out which business to build in space and you're just absorbing all of your own supply? Yeah. Well, for the longest time, I've always said it's going to be really blurry in the future of what is the space company and what is not a space company, especially the big ones. Like the big space companies of the future, they're going to be blurry. And I think if you looked at space leaks right now, what is it? Is it an AI company? Is it a communications company? Or is it a space company? But the one thing you're sure is shit. If you have the ability to put infrastructure in orbit and you have the ability to make that infrastructure that it is in orbit, then your ability to deliver a service or a solution down on Earth is vastly superior to anybody else.

58:24That experiment has been run, that experiment to us is always super obvious. And I think that is clearly where we're tracking. And I think if we have this another interview in 10 years' time, there's going to be a select few of really large space companies that provide a critical part of infrastructure and backbone in orbit. And 100% of them are going to have their own ride to their own rocket, 100% of them. You had to fast forward five or 10 years out. And you said, if 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? Yeah, we don't talk about that. Oh. No, I mean, we don't talk about it for a number of reasons. One, 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

59:25whatever infrastructure we need. 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, peace of cake. There is nothing we cannot build now in orbit. So, you know, we've put all those building boxes in place. You basically building optionality. 100%. The only thing that we've got the lift to do is to get a neutron finish. Then we can talk about what infrastructure will end up building in space. 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. 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? It's not everything working. 100%. No, screw that.

1:00:27Yeah, no, I don't need to be felt as the underdog or anything like that. I like everything coming and working. Absolutely. What is the scale of a neutron look like? Yeah, so we'll do a first launch and we'll do a splash down of that. And that'll give us a really good sense of, we were 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 neutron will scale a lot faster than an even electron scale. Because we've just put in place 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 an electron. I mean, the design decisions that we made in carbon composite structure using AFP, automatic 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, in how cheap we can do it. So, you know, we've chosen various kind of paths

1:01:30that are just infinitely scalable. I remember the Starship initially, it was going to be this carbon fiber basically structure and then they swapped it to like a special alloy of steel. Just don't see it. Are you doing anything new, unlike the material side? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, so it's a complicated, so a rocket is a giant engineering compromise. Like if we're having a design review and all the subsystems are in a room together and one of them is happy, then something's gone wrong. Like everybody should be equally as miserable because everything is a giant engineering compromise. And, you know, carbon is, you know, strength to weight ratio is just vastly superior to any other material, like it's four times better than stainless steel, for example. You know, for the same strength, it's one quarter of the weight. So, but with that comes other challenges. And, you know, we've been able to solve these challenges through a lot of this automation, AFP machines. So, you know, the structures of neutron

1:02:31are just absurdly light, which is, you know, which enables you to, you know, take pressure off other areas like rocket engines. Their rocket engines don't have to be, like, on the limit of grenades. They can be back right off and just sort of, you know, relatively unstressed engine. And that's because, you know, we've have structures are so light that, you know, we can back some performance off the propulsion. But it's been biggest unlock over the past, like 20 years that you wouldn't have expected, like most unexpected thing that have happened. Well, there's lots of things. There's both from a technology standpoint and also, I would say, capital, because there's a big one, because we've always had in this position where we have vastly less resources than our competitors. And, you know, even as a public company that is true, but as a public company, we've been able to harness the, you know, the capital access that we have.

1:03:31And just look how fast this business has grown. Like, year on year, it's just crazy. Not just organically, but in organically, we're able to acquire capabilities and grow those as well. So, you know, the kind of, you know, the line here is fairly vertical with respect to that. So, you know, going public was a great capital unlocker for us to go and, you know, really, really grow. I mean, we went public with one product and now we have hundreds and we're building, you know, complete, as a prime contractor for the US government on national security. So, a lot of that was unlocked by, you know, having that ability to access that capital. I've gotten this overwhelming sense of just relentless optimism from you and from just the team in general. What is the importance of having just extreme optimism? Well, I mean, I think, I think, you know, I mean, it's absolutely critical, but I think what a boring person, if you're always down. I mean, like, would you want to work with somebody

1:04:33who's just, like, took the negative side of the angle? I mean, never. But the thing is, most people aren't, it's like, you just constantly have a smile on your face every time I see you. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm having fun. So, it's not, it's not, it's not anything other than that. But, no, I think, I think there's a lot to be optimistic about, like, this is, we're doing fun stuff and we're doing big stuff that's important. So, I'm not sure how you could be, you know, but an optimist in this industry. And it probably, to be fair, it probably does attract optimists because, you know, the rocket gods are trying to crush you every chance they get. So, you have to, you know, you have to be a little bit, a little bit sunny side up.