Peter Joseph Beck is a New Zealand entrepreneur and founder of

Rocket Lab 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 also ...

, an aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider. Before founding the company, Beck worked in various occupations and built rocket-powered contraptions.

Early life

Beck grew up in

Invercargill, New Zealand Invercargill ( , mi, Waihōpai is the southernmost and westernmost city in New Zealand, and one of the southernmost cities in the world. It is the commercial centre of the Southland region. The city lies in the heart of the wide expanse of t ...

with two brothers: Andrew and John. His father,

Russell Beck Russell Joseph Beck (21 February 1941 – 10 February 2018) was a New Zealand archaeologist, museum curator, and artist. He has three children, one of them is Peter Beck, founder of aerospace company Rocket Lab. Biography Beck came from an ...

, was a museum and art gallery director and

gemologist Gemology or gemmology is the science dealing with natural and artificial gemstone materials. It is a geoscience and a branch of mineralogy. Some jewelers (and many non-jewelers) are academically trained gemologists and are qualified to identif ...

, and his mother was a teacher. As a teenager, he spent time

turbocharging In an internal combustion engine, a turbocharger (often called a turbo) is a forced induction device that is powered by the flow of exhaust gases. It uses this energy to compress the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to pr ...

an old

Mini The Mini is a small, two-door, four-seat car, developed as ADO15, and produced by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors, from 1959 through 2000. Minus a brief hiatus, original Minis were built for four decades and sold during ...

and launching water rockets. Beck has never attended university. In 1995, Beck become a tool-and-die-maker apprentice at

Fisher & Paykel Fisher & Paykel Appliances Holdings Ltd () is a major appliance manufacturer which is a subsidiary of Chinese multinational home appliance manufacturer Haier. It is a multinational corporation based in East Tāmaki, New Zealand. Originally a ...

company. While working there, he self-taught himself and used the company workshop to experiment with rockets and

propellants A propellant (or propellent) is a mass that is expelled or expanded in such a way as to create a thrust or other motive force in accordance with Newton's third law of motion, and "propel" a vehicle, projectile, or fluid payload. In vehicles, the e ...

. 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 comfor ...

, rocket-attached scooter, and a

jet pack A jet pack, rocket belt, or rocket pack is a device worn on the back which uses jets of gas or liquid to propel the wearer through the air. The concept has been present in science fiction for almost a century and became widespread in the 1960s. ...

. Later, Beck moved into product design department and bought a cruise missile engine from the United States. He then worked in New Plymouth as a

project engineer Project engineering includes all parts of the design of manufacturing or processing facilities, either new or modifications to and expansions of existing facilities. A "project" consists of a coordinated series of activities or tasks performed by ...

on a

yacht A yacht is a sailing or power vessel used for pleasure, cruising, or racing. There is no standard definition, though the term generally applies to vessels with a cabin intended for overnight use. To be termed a , as opposed to a , such a pleasu ...

. He later worked at Industrial Research Limited between 2001 and 2006, working on

smart materials Smart materials, also called intelligent or responsive materials, are designed materials that have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli, such as stress, moisture, electric or magnetic ...

, composites and

superconductors Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a superconductor. Unlike ...

. While working there, he met

Stephen Tindall Sir Stephen Robert Tindall (born May 1951) is the founder of New Zealand retailer The Warehouse, The Warehouse Group, and the Tindall Foundation. Early life and education Tindall attended Takapuna Grammar and has a Diploma of Management from the ...

, who later becoming an early investor at Rocket Lab. While his wife worked as an engineer in the United States, Beck traveled to

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

and meet 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, later becoming a key

seed investor Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develo ...

to Rocket Lab. Among other early investors into Rocket Lab was Stephen Tindall,

Vinod Khosla Vinod Khosla (born 28 January 1955) is an Indian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas suc ...

, and the New Zealand Government. Three years later, in November 2009, Rocket Lab successfully launched the multi-stage rocket Ātea-1, becoming 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. The company then developed and first launched the

Electron rocket 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 mar ...

unsuccessfully in May 2017. The rocket's first successful launch happened in January 2018, deploying two

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSats ...

s and the

Humanity Star ''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 ...

. In May 2022, the company attempted to recover an Electron booster with partial success. As of October 2022, the company has successfully launched in total 28 similar missions out of 31 attempts.

Accolades

In 2015, Beck received the New Zealander of the Year Award in the Innovator of the Year category. In 2019, he is appointed as an adjunct professor for the

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

. Both Rocket Lab and Beck are awarded the Pickering Medal by the

Royal Society Te Apārangi The Royal Society Te Apārangi (in full, Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi) is an independent, statutory not-for-profit body in New Zealand providing funding and policy advice in the fields of sciences and the humanities. History The R ...

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