Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck has been made a knight. Photo / Dean Purcell

Fisher & Paykel Appliances apprentice turned self-taught rocket scientist Peter Beck staged his first serious launch from Great Mercury Island, off the east coast of the Coromandel, in 2009.

“Ātea-1″ looked like an overgrown firework and the Rocket Lab founder had to enlist local boaties to help search for it after splash-down. But it reached an altitude of 150km, or 50km above the Karman line that separates Earth from space, a Southern Hemisphere first for a private company.

The youngster’s innovative use of propellant, among other smarts, caught the attention of US government agency Darpa (the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, an outfit that has helped keep the US military ahead of the play but, as Beck has pointed out, also delivered dual-use technologies we all use every day, from the internet to GPS).

Others soon backed Beck, from Sir Stephen Tindall to ACC’s investment arm to a clutch of Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

Fast forward to 2024 and Rocket Lab (Nasdaq market cap: US$2.2 billion) is the second-busiest private rocket launch outfit on the planet – and the only serious competition to Elon Musk’s SpaceX – as it launches its Electron Rocket with increasing frequency from two launchpads at Mahia and a new facility at Wallops Island in Virginia, United States.

Its growing space systems business put Nasa’s Capstone satellite on track to the moon, and will design and build two spacecraft that will orbit Mars for Nasa in 2025, while a third – an inhouse Beck passion project – will pierce Venus’ atmosphere the same year on a research mission.

And Rocket Lab’s giant, crew-capable Neutron rocket is due for its first test flight from Virginia next year – cementing the Invercargill-raised Beck’s position at the aerospace industry’s top table.

His firm now employs 1800, including 750 in New Zealand, and continues to grow at pace. It recently opened a high-tech plant in Auckland to make reaction wheels, which orientate satellites. And in October, Beck’s firm bought SailGP’s Warkworth plant, taking on its 50 staff and redeploying them from making yachts to carbon composite components for rockets.

In June last year, Beck was at Buckingham Palace to join King Charles III in the launch the “Astra Carta” – a set of sustainability principles aimed at private space operators.

Satellites launched by Rocket Lab are tracking methane emissions and preparing for a space junk cleanup.

But Beck’s thoughts were more down to Earth when he spoke to the Herald about his knighthood.

“It’s a huge, humbling honour to get,“ he told the Herald from Rocket Lab’s facility at Long Beach, California (where his firm added to its already huge facility by taking over Sir Richard Branson’s neighbouring Virgin Orbit manufacturing facility after it went bust in May last year). He had just returned from several days at Nasa’s giant Stennis Space Centre in Mississippi, where Rocket Lab has leased a 93,000sq m to test the Archimedes engine that will power the 43m-tall Neutron as it delivers a 13-tonne payload into orbit (for contrast, the Electron can carry about 350kg).

“I certainly hope that engineers and entrepreneurs in New Zealand also take this as a win. Hopefully it’s inspirational.”

Beck – who will stick with simply “Peter”, day-to-day – has already been trying to make it easier for others to follow in his footsteps. As a member of a business council advising the Government, he’s helped usher in reforms that have boosted the local venture capital industry.

Education and training are other points of focus.

“We [Rocket Lab] have our scholarship programmes where we provide funding for university students. We also have our intern programmes. Our intern intake this year is enormous, both in NZ and in the US, and we have our apprenticeship programmes in NZ,” he said.

The hard-driving founder sees a “lost generation” of school leavers with the decline of trades-training programmes, and he stresses that “you don’t have to be a rocket scientist” to gain a Rocket Lab apprenticeship. He said as the programme was launched, “what we build here are basically aircraft, so the majority of people on the floor are aircraft technicians. So we’re looking for aircraft technicians and composite technicians and laminators – really a lot of jobs in the trade”.

Beck said: “More directly, it’s about getting alongside entrepreneurs. I sit on the investment committee of Outset Ventures [an Auckland-based venture capital firm] and get to see the earliest-stage deep tech companies and then having the opportunity and the ability to back some of those entrepreneurs personally, which has been a great thrill.”

Via Outset, Beck has put millions of dollars into Kiwi startups including Heartlab (now gaining traction with its AI system for analysing cardio scans) and Astrix, which is developing new, more power-efficient solar power for small satellites, as well as providing mentorship and, in Astrix’s case, an office and testing space. Rocket Lab’s huge presence has also helped create an ecosystem of smaller aerospace companies around New Zealand.

“The plan was always to go to university,” Beck said.

He never got there, at least as an undergrad.

And he wouldn’t change anything. “I live life without regret,” he said.

“I did a trade and F&P put me in a design office and I was lucky to also go to Industrial Research [a precursor to Callaghan Innovation] where I got to get involved in some pretty serious projects.”

And he did eventually make it onto campus.

“Auckland University gave me an honorary professorship which was incredible [he was made an Adjunct Professor in Aerospace Engineering in 2019] and I get to give back at the university in that sense. Maybe I’ll pick up some classes when I retire.”

With the first Neutron under construction, and the jaunts to Mars and Venus to be planned, that won’t be any decade soon.