The 47-year-old Kiwi billionaire taking on Elon Musk

A potential roadblock to those ambitions emerged last week when president-elect Donald Trump announced Jared Isaacman, a financial technology executive who is close to Musk and has gone on two SpaceX missions, was his pick to be the new head of NASA. Isaacman has built a $US2.2 billion fortune, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index. That mostly consists of his stake in his company Shift4 Payments, which has provided SpaceX with $US27.5 million in funding.

Musk quickly congratulated Isaacman on his social-media platform, X. Still, Beck brushed off concerns about any potential bias.

“I can’t imagine that all those conflict rules and processes that have been longstanding and part of the fabric of US democracy are going to get ignored,” he said.

Souped up

It’s been a big year for Beck personally, too. In June he received one of the top civilian honours in New Zealand. An award that allows him to use the title “sir.“it

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Becoming Sir Peter, not to mention a billionaire, is a lot for a former dishwasher engineer with no university qualifications.

Beck and his two older brothers grew up with mom Ann and dad Russell in Invercargill, New Zealand’s southernmost city. The brothers spent their time mucking around in Russell’s workshop, creating inventions with his milling machines, lathes and welding gear.

In 1995 the appliance manufacturer Fisher & Paykel, which is based in New Zealand and specialises in high-end dishwashers and washing machines, offered Beck an apprenticeship in the nearby city of Dunedin. Beck went on to spend the next seven years at the company before moving to a government research institute in 2003.

While the skills he developed at work have been valuable, it was what he was doing when he wasn’t working that ultimately lead to the creation of Rocket Lab.

Initially the young Beck’s hobby was souping up cars. But he told Bloomberg News journalist Ashlee Vance for his 2023 book When the Heavens Went On Sale that the cars didn’t provide enough power or speed.

“So that’s when I started building jet engines,” Beck said. “But they still didn’t produce enough power. And, you know, that’s when I moved into rockets.”

He built a rocket-propelled bike, a scooter and then the aforementioned backpack that he built one Christmas.

Commercial reality

In 2006, his passion for rockets got a shot at becoming a commercial reality. Beck joined forces with a wealthy New Zealander who provided $US300,000 for a 50 per cent stake in what would soon become Rocket Lab, according to Vance’s book. The company’s mission was to deliver the world’s first cheap, reliable rocket.

Three years later it achieved that with the successful launch of Ātea-1.

While the company was founded in New Zealand, it moved its headquarters to the US in 2013 and Beck says it’s US-centric. It went public in mid-2021 via a special purpose acquisition company.

Beck has no shortage of challenges ahead. Although SpaceX has made the reuse of Falcon 9 boosters routine, Rocket Lab has yet to deliver on its earlier ambitions to send its Electron rockets back to space. It likely won’t try in the near future, Beck said.

“It’s a prioritised project,” he said. “We have a finite amount of resource and that resource is way better spent working on Neutron.”

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A lot is riding on the bigger rocket. After previously saying it would be ready this year, Rocket Lab now is aiming for sometime in 2025. The company has already lined up business for the Neutron, announcing last month an agreement for two launches starting from mid-2026 for an undisclosed customer.

Beck has faith the company will continue to do well in Trump’s America, even though his great competitor Musk has the ear of the president-elect. The new adminstration’s focus on efficiency will benefit Rocket Lab, he said.

“We will never be finished and we’ll never be satisfied,” he said. “We’ll continue to just grow and grow and grow. And that’s part of my DNA but it’s also part of the company’s DNA.”