Rocket Lab chief opens up about Neutron delays, New Glenn’s success, and NASA science

arse, You mentioned ESCAPADE. How is your relationship with Jeff Bezos? I heard there was some tension last year because Rocket Lab was being asked to prepare the satellite for launch even though it was clear New Glenn was not going to build a window to Mars.

Signal: I know you want me to say yes, yes there is, but the honest truth is absolutely zero. I know David (Limp, CEO of Blue Origin) well. we are very good friends. Jeff and I were texting back and forth during the launch. To be honest, there is no one there. And you know they gave us a great ride. They were emphasizing numbers. it was awesome. Yes, of course, it would have been great to get there early. But it’s a rocket program, right? No one can show me a rocket program that launched exactly on time. And yes, it might be obvious that it might not be able to launch on the first (window), but we knew there were always other ways. In the worst case, we’ll have to go into storage for a while. These missions are years long. So what’s a little while longer?

arse, Speaking of low-cost science missions, I know Isaacman is interested in commercial planetary missions. Many $4 billion planetary missions are not sustainable. If NASA remains as committed to the commercial development of satellite buses and spacecraft as it did to commercial cargo and crew, what might planetary exploration look like a decade from now?

Signal: I think it will be very exciting. One of the reasons why we did CAPSTONE was to prove that you can go to the moon for 10 million dollars. Now, we lost a lot of money on that mission, so ultimately that didn’t prove to be true. But it wasn’t a crazy amount of money, and yet we got there miles cheaper than anyone else. And ESCAPADE, we have good margins, and it’s a true success, right? Touching wood to date, as if we still have a long way to go, but the success lies in the fact that the spacecraft was built, delivered, launched and commissioned.

This is the thing. Take your billion dollar mission. How many $50 million missions, or $100 million missions, can you do? Imagine how much science you can do. I think one of the reasons the public gets upset about some of these science missions is that they happen once a decade, and they have billion-dollar price tags attached to them. It’s momentarily exciting when they occur, but they are very far apart. At the end of the day, NASA has to capture the public’s imagination, because the public is funding it. So it should seem relevant, relatable to mom and dad at home. And you know, when mom and dad are at home and it’s hard, and then they just hear billions of dollars and, you know, years of excess and everything else, how can they feel good about it? Whereas, if they can spend a lot less and deliver it on time and have a constant stream of really interesting missions in science, I think that’s great for public justification. I think it’s great for planetary science, because obviously you’re iterating on your results, and it’s great for the whole community to have a series of missions. And also, I think it’s much better for American space supremacy to explode all the time rather than repeatedly around the solar system.