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.
Early life
Beck grew up in
Invercargill, New Zealand with two brothers: Andrew and John. His father,
Russell Beck, was a museum and art gallery director and
gemologist,
and his mother was a teacher.
As a teenager, he spent time
turbocharging an old
Mini and launching
water rockets.
Beck did not attend university.
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
A sport bike (sports motorcycle, or sports bike) is a motorcycle designed and optimized for speed, acceleration, braking, and cornering on asphalt concrete race tracks and roads. They are mainly designed for performance at the expense of comfo ...
, rocket-attached scooter, and a
jet pack. Later, Beck moved into product design department and bought a
cruise missile
A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...
engine from the United States.
He then worked in
New Plymouth
New Plymouth ( mi, NgÄmotu) is the major city of the Taranaki region on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It is named after the English city of Plymouth, Devon from where the first English settlers to New Plymouth migrated. ...
as a
project engineer on a
yacht.
He later worked at
Industrial Research Limited
Industrial Research Limited (IRL) was a Crown Research Institute of New Zealand that was established in 1992 and merged into Callaghan Innovation, a new Crown entity, on 1 February 2013. IRL provided research, development and commercialisation s ...
between 2001 and 2006,
working on
smart materials,
composites and
superconductors.
While working there, he met
Stephen Tindall, who later became an early investor at Rocket Lab.
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.
Business career
While contacting potential investors, Beck met New Zealand internet entrepreneur
Mark Rocket
Mark may refer to:
Currency
* Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina
* East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic
* Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927
* Finn ...
, later becoming a key
seed investor to Rocket Lab.
Among other early investors into Rocket Lab was Stephen Tindall,
Vinod Khosla, and the
New Zealand Government
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.
Three years later, in November 2009, Rocket Lab successfully launched the multi-stage rocket
Ä€tea-1
Rocket Lab is a public American aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider, with a New Zealand subsidiary. The company operates lightweight Electron orbital rockets, which provide dedicated launches for small satellites. Rocket Lab al ...
, becoming the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space.
Around 2013, Rocket Lab moved its registration from New Zealand to the United States, and opened headquarters in
Huntington Beach, California
Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County, California, Orange County in Southern California, located southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. The city is named after American businessman Henry E. Huntington. The population was 198,711 duri ...
.
The company then developed and first launched the
Electron rocket unsuccessfully in May 2017.
The rocket's first successful launch happened in January 2018, deploying two
CubeSats and the
Humanity Star.
In May 2022, the company attempted to recover an Electron booster with partial success. As of October 2023, the company has successfully launched in total
37 similar missions out of 41 attempts.
Accolades
In 2015, Beck received the
New Zealander of the Year Award in the Innovator of the Year category. In 2019, he was appointed as an
adjunct professor
An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and
the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, however the genera ...
for the
University of Auckland. Both Rocket Lab and Beck are awarded the
Pickering Medal
The Pickering Medal is awarded annually by the Royal Society Te ApÄrangi 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 i ...
by the
Royal Society Te ApÄrangi in 2020.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beck, Peter
Living people
People from Invercargill
New Zealand businesspeople
New Zealand engineers
New Zealand expatriates in the United States
1970s births