Book Club Edition: Founder and CEO Peter Beck on The Launch of Rocket Lab

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Rocket Lab Founder and CEO Peter Beck, this time on Planetary Radio Book Club Edition.
Hello again, everyone. I'm Matt Kaplan with more of the human adventure across the solar system and beyond. Which nations launched the most rockets? The answer is the US., followed by China, followed by New Zealand. That third place performance is entirely thanks to a company called Rocket Lab. This amazing organization's birth and success are documented in a wonderful book by Peter Griffin called The Launch of Rocket Lab. It was our February selection in the Planetary Society's member book club, and it's why I welcome the company's leader for the conversation you're about to hear. Sir Peter, yes, he has been knighted, will tell us about his earliest adventures with rockets, including his rocket-powered bicycle, how he and a dedicated team have built and launched more rockets than just about anybody but SpaceX. How Rocket Lab has become much more than a rocket-builder and his dedication to exploration of the solar system. As always, the video of our live-streamed event is available at planetary.org. Are you new to Planetary Radio? You'll open up so much more of the cosmos when you subscribe in your favorite podcast app. In addition to the weekly show with host Sarah Al-Ahmed, you'll catch our monthly Space Policy edition. I'm here with the Book Club every third Friday.
Okay, let's get started with Sir Peter. My first task was just to hold up the book.
It's hard to pick up with one arm, as I told Peter a moment ago. There it is, The Launch of Rocket Lab. What a gorgeous book and what a fascinating tale it tells. And we will dive into that tale over the next hour or so, as we welcome our special guest, Sir Peter Beck, the CEO and founder of Rocket Lab. Peter, thank you so much for joining us. We're honored.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:19)
Oh, no, my absolute pleasure.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:20)
You are coming to us, I think, from your studio in New Zealand, correct? Correct.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:25)
No, today I'm in New Zealand.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:27)
You get around, I'm sure, bouncing back and forth between continents. Here's a quote from the beginning of the book. Somewhere between unlikely and impossible is where magic happens.
That's your quote. I think you found the sweet spot there. It appears to me.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:47)
Yeah. No, it's true. Yeah. No. I think that sums up the company quite nicely.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:53)
Here's another quote. I think that this is from author Peter Griffin, who put the book together in collaboration with you and others at the company. Its tale is not just about rockets and satellites, it's a narrative of human ingenuity, perseverance, and the unyielding drive to push beyond the boundaries of what's possible.
I couldn't agree more. I mean, that is very much how the book impressed me. It is absolutely gorgeous. The images, the print quality, and because of the story it tells and those images, I think that space fans who may not even have heard of Rocket Lab, there must be one or two left on the globe, will still enjoy this book. I know that our members have, because we've been hearing glowing comments about it for the last more than a month now. Are you happy with the way it turned out?

**SPEAKER_2** (3:45)
No, it's great. Yeah, no, that's fantastic if that's true. I mean, it was a project that initially started off as a relatively small thing and an idea where we thought, well, it would be nice to have a coffee table book of just images of beautiful hardware. Then as we started to fill that out, and as you mentioned, Peter Griffin wrote the book, and as Peter interviewed me and other members of the team, the book just grew legs and ended up in that as a weight lifting ornament that you just proved there.
It's like any good project, it starts off small and then just ends up much bigger than you expected.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:24)
Like rocket science.
Here's an astounding fact from the introduction to the book, your introduction. At the top of rocket launching nations is the United States, China and then New Zealand. With that last, entirely thanks to your complex on the, am I pronouncing it correctly, the Mahia Peninsula?

**SPEAKER_2** (4:48)
That's correct.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:48)
Yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:49)
That little spit out the side of New Zealand throws up a lot of rockets, that's for sure.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:54)
It has to be the most beautiful spot on earth from which big rockets are launched. I really would love to visit someday.
I hope to knock on the gate someday. Yeah.

**SPEAKER_2** (5:05)
It is truly gorgeous launch site. Even on a rough weather day, it still has a certain magic to it.