Peter Beck | |
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 Beck receiving the Pickering Medal, 2020 | |
| Born | 1976or1977(age 46–47) [1] Invercargill, New Zealand |
| Nationality | New Zealand |
| Title | CEO and CTO of Rocket Lab |
| Children | 2 [2] |
| Parent |
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Peter Joseph Beck is a New Zealand entrepreneur and founder of Rocket Lab, an aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider. Before founding Rocket Lab, Beck worked in various occupations and built rocket-powered contraptions.
Beck grew up in Invercargill, New Zealand [3] with two brothers: Andrew and John. His father, Russell Beck, was a museum and art gallery director and gemologist, [4] and his mother was a teacher. [5] As a teenager, he spent time turbocharging an old Mini and launching water rockets. [2] Beck did not attend university. [1]
In 1995, Beck became a tool-and-die-maker apprentice at Fisher & Paykel company. While working there, he taught himself and used the company workshop to experiment with rockets and propellants. Using these tools and materials, he created a rocket bike, rocket-attached scooter, and a jet pack. Later, Beck moved into product design department and bought a cruise missile engine from the United States. [2] He then worked in New Plymouth as a project engineer on a yacht. [6]
He later worked at Industrial Research Limited between 2001 and 2006, [2] working on smart materials, composites and superconductors. [6] While working there, he met Stephen Tindall, who later became an early investor at Rocket Lab. [7] While his wife worked as an engineer in the United States, Beck traveled to Minnesota and met with a rocketeer that he had contacted beforehand. After this travel, he founded Rocket Lab. [6]
While contacting potential investors, Beck met New Zealand internet entrepreneur Mark Rocket, later becoming a key seed investor to Rocket Lab. [2] Among other early investors into Rocket Lab was Stephen Tindall, Vinod Khosla, and the New Zealand Government. [7] Three years later, in November 2009, Rocket Lab successfully launched the multi-stage rocket Ātea-1, becoming the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space. [2]
Around 2013, Rocket Lab moved its registration from New Zealand to the United States, and opened headquarters in Huntington Beach, California. [2] The company then developed and first launched the Electron rocket unsuccessfully in May 2017. [8] The rocket's first successful launch happened in January 2018, deploying two CubeSats and the Humanity Star. [9] In May 2022, the company attempted to recover an Electron booster with partial success. [10] As of October 2023, the company has successfully launched in total 37 similar missions out of 41 attempts. [11]
In 2015, Beck received the New Zealander of the Year Award in the Innovator of the Year category. [12] In 2019, he was appointed as an adjunct professor for the University of Auckland. [13] Both Rocket Lab and Beck are awarded the Pickering Medal by the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2020. [14]
Damien Peter O'Connor is a New Zealand Labour Party politician who served as Minister of Agriculture, Minister for Biosecurity, Minister for Trade and Export Growth, Minister for Land Information and Minister for Rural Communities in the Sixth Labour Government. He previously served as a cabinet minister in the Fifth Labour Government. He had been a member of Parliament since 1993 and represented the West Coast-Tasman electorate. He is now on the Labour list.
The Warehouse Group (TWG) was established by Stephen Tindall in 1982 and is the largest retail group in operation in New Zealand. It is a corporate conglomerate that comprises The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Torpedo7, Noel Leeming, 1-day, and TheMarket.
The New Zealand Initiative is a pro-free-market public-policy think tank and business membership organisation in New Zealand. It was formed in 2012 by merger of the New Zealand Business Roundtable (NZBR) and the New Zealand Institute. The Initiative’s main areas of focus include economic policy, housing, education, local government, welfare, immigration and fisheries.
Sir Stephen Robert Tindall is the founder of New Zealand retailer The Warehouse, The Warehouse Group, and the Tindall Foundation.
Peter Paul Posa was a New Zealand guitarist most famous for his instrumental "The White Rabbit", which was released in 1963. The song is a guitar instrumental that sold 100,000 copies.
Xero is a New Zealand–based technology company that provides cloud-based accounting software for small businesses. The company has offices in New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Xero's products are based on the software-as-a-service model and sold by subscription, based on the type and number of entities managed by the subscriber. The products are used in over 180 countries.
Rocket Lab USA, Inc. is a publicly traded aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider that operates and launches lightweight Electron orbital rockets used to provide dedicated launch services for small satellites. The company plans to build a larger Neutron rocket as early as 2024. Electron rockets have launched 44 times from either Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand or at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops Island, Virginia, United States.
The Huljich family are a very high net worth family located in Auckland, New Zealand, worth at least NZD$444 million in 2021 following the sale of their stake in Pushpay for that amount. Their business interests are varied, and include property, new business startups, finance, movie-making and philanthropy. They are of Croatian descent.
Planet Labs PBC is a publicly held American Earth imaging company based in San Francisco, California. Their goal is to image the entirety of the Earth daily to monitor changes and pinpoint trends.
Electron is a two-stage, partially recoverable orbital launch vehicle developed by Rocket Lab, an American aerospace company with a wholly owned New Zealand subsidiary. Electron was developed to service the commercial small satellite launch market. Its Rutherford engines are the first electric-pump-fed engine to power an orbital-class rocket. Electron is often flown with a kickstage or Rocket Lab's Photon spacecraft. Although the rocket was designed to be expendable, Rocket Lab has recovered the first stage twice and is working towards the capability of reusing the booster. The Flight 26 (F26) booster has featured the first helicopter catch recovery attempt.
Siouxsie Wiles is a British microbiologist and science communicator. Her specialist areas are infectious diseases and bioluminescence. She is based in New Zealand.
Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 is a commercial spaceport located close to Ahuriri Point at the southern tip of Māhia Peninsula, on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island. It is owned and operated by private spaceflight company Rocket Lab and supports launches of the company's Electron rocket for CubeSat nanosatellites. The facility officially opened on 26 September 2016 (UTC). With the launch of Electron on 25 May 2017, it became the first private spaceport to host an orbital launch attempt, and the first site in New Zealand to host an orbital launch attempt. With the Electron launch of 21 January 2018, it became the first private spaceport to host a successful orbital launch.
Ann Brower is an environmental geographer from New Zealand. A survivor of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, she successfully lobbied for a law change to the Building Act, which was passed in 2016 as the Brower Amendment. Brower was promoted to full professor at the University of Canterbury in December 2021. In 2022 she won the Charles Fleming Award for Environmental Achievement.
Paige Therese Satchell is a footballer from New Zealand who plays for the London City Lionesses in the Women's Championship. She has played for the New Zealand national team in the under-17, under-20, and senior levels, including at the 2023 World Cup. She was a traveling reserve for the New Zealand team at the 2016 Summer Olympics and was a squad member for New Zealand at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Humanity Star was a reflective passive satellite designed to produce visible, pulsing flares. The satellite was launched into orbit by an Electron rocket on 21 January 2018 and entered into the atmosphere on 22 March 2018. The reaction to Humanity Star was mostly negative by astronomers, as it interfered with their observations.
Jadranka Travaš-Sejdić is a New Zealand academic, and as of 2018 is a professor at the University of Auckland.
Laura Martin Wallace is a geodetic principal scientist who works between the University of Texas at Austin and GNS Science in New Zealand. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2018.
The Pickering Medal is awarded annually by the Royal Society Te Apārangi to a person or team "who, while in New Zealand, has through design, development or invention performed innovative work the results of which have been significant in their influence and recognition both nationally and internationally, or which have led to significant commercial success".
Archimedes is a liquid-fuel rocket engine burning liquid oxygen and liquid methane in an oxidizer-rich staged combustion cycle. It is designed by aerospace company Rocket Lab for its Neutron rocket.
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