Sir Peter Joseph Beck is a New Zealand entrepreneur and founder of

Rocket Lab Rocket Lab Corporation is a Public company, publicly traded aerospace manufacturer and List of launch service providers, launch service provider. Its Rocket Lab Electron, Electron orbital rocket launches Small satellite, small satellites, and ha ...

, 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 Invercargill ( , ) is the southernmost and westernmost list of cities in New Zealand, city in New Zealand, and one of the Southernmost settlements, southernmost cities in the world. It is the commercial centre of the Southland Region, Southlan ...

, New Zealand, 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 whom 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 specific interdisciplinary branch of mineralogy. Some jewelers (and many non-jewelers) are academically trained gemologists and are qualified to ...

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

turbocharging In an internal combustion engine, a turbocharger (also known as a turbo or a turbosupercharger) is a forced induction device that is powered by the flow of exhaust gases. It uses this energy to compress the intake air, forcing more air into the ...

an old

Mini The Mini is a very small two-door, four-seat car, produced for four decades over a single generation, with many names and variants, by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors British Leyland and the Rover Group, and finally ...

and launching

water rocket A water rocket is a type of model rocket using water as its reaction mass. The water is forced out by a pressurized gas, typically compressed air. Like all rocket engines, it operates on the principle of Newton's third law, Newton's third law o ...

s. Beck did not attend university. In 1995, Beck became a tool-and-die-maker apprentice at company

Fisher & Paykel Fisher & Paykel Appliances Holdings Limited () is a major appliance manufacturer founded in 1934. It is a subsidiary of Chinese multinational home appliances company Haier and is based in East Tāmaki, New Zealand. Originally an importer of do ...

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

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

s. Using these tools and materials, he created a

rocket bike A sports motorcycle, sports bike, or sport 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 comfort, ...

, rocket-attached scooter, and a

jet pack A jet pack, rocket belt, rocket pack or flight pack is a device worn as a backpack which uses jets to propel the wearer through the air. The concept has been present in science fiction for almost a century and the first working experimental d ...

. Later, Beck moved into product design department and bought a

cruise missile A cruise missile is an unmanned self-propelled guided missile that sustains flight through aerodynamic lift for most of its flight path. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large payload over long distances with high precision. Modern cru ...

engine from the United States. It was while he was working at Fisher & Paykel that he met his wife, Kerryn Morris, also a designer. He then worked in

New Plymouth New Plymouth () 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, in Devon, from where the first English settlers to New Plymouth migrated. The New Pl ...

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 sail- or marine propulsion, motor-propelled watercraft made 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 ...

. 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 commercialisatio ...

between 2001 and 2006, working on

smart material 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 magneti ...

s, composites and

superconductors Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in superconductors: materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic fields are expelled from the material. Unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance decreases ...

. 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 Bayswater Primary School then Takapuna Grammar School and ...

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

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

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 Rocket (né Stevens) is a New Zealand entrepreneur, aerospace executive, and the founder and CEO of Kea Aerospace. He was a seed investor and co-director of Rocket Lab from 2007 to 2011. Rocket became the first New Zealander to reach spac ...

, later becoming a key

seed investor Seed money, also known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor puts capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' suggests ...

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 billionaire 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 ...

, and the

New Zealand Government The New Zealand Government () is the central government through which political authority is exercised in New Zealand. As in most other parliamentary democracies, the term "Government" refers chiefly to the executive branch, and more specifica ...

. Three years later, in November 2009, Rocket Lab successfully launched the multi-stage rocket

Ātea-1 Rocket Lab Corporation is a publicly traded aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider. Its Electron orbital rocket launches small satellites, and has launched 63 times as of April 2025. A sub-orbital Electron variant called HASTE (Hype ...

, 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, United States. The city was originally called Pacific City, but it was changed in 1903 to be named after American businessman Henry E. Huntington. The population was 198,711 as of ...

. The company then developed and first launched the

Electron rocket Electron is a two-stage, partially reusable orbital launch vehicle developed by Rocket Lab, an American aerospace company with a wholly owned New Zealand subsidiary. Servicing the commercial small satellite launch market, it is the third most l ...

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

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of small satellite with a form factor of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit,, url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5418c831e4b0fa4ecac1bacd/t/5f24997b6deea10cc52bb016/1596234122437/CDS+REV14+2020-07-3 ...

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 2023, the company has successfully launched in total 37 similar missions out of 41 attempts. As of May 2024, Rocket Lab had attempted 47 launches, with 43 being successful.

Honours and awards

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, but the term is gen ...

for the

University of Auckland The University of Auckland (; Māori: ''Waipapa Taumata Rau'') is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Initially loc ...

. Both Rocket Lab and Beck were awarded the

Pickering Medal 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 i ...

by the

Royal Society Te Apārangi The Royal Society Te Apārangi (in full, Royal Society of New Zealand) is a not-for-profit body in New Zealand providing funding and policy advice in the fields of sciences and the humanities. These fundings (i.e., Marsden grants and research fe ...

in 2020. In 2023, Rocket Lab and Peter Beck were featured in Ashlee Vance's new book, "When the Heavens went for sale". In 2024, a documentary called " Wild Wild Space" was released by HBO, portraying the rivalry between two companies,

Astra Astra (Latin for "stars") may refer to: People * Astra (name) Places * Astra, Chubut, a village in Argentina * Astra (Isauria), a town of ancient Isauria, now in Turkey * Astra, one suggested name for a hypothetical fifth planet that became t ...

and Rocket Lab, and their respective founders, Chris Kemp and Peter Beck. In the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours, Beck was appointed a

Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit The New Zealand Order of Merit () is an order of merit in the New Zealand royal honours system. It was established by royal warrant (document), royal warrant on 30 May 1996 by Elizabeth II, Monarchy of New Zealand, Queen of New Zealand, "for th ...

, for services to the aerospace industry, business and education.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beck, Peter 1970s births 21st-century New Zealand businesspeople Businesspeople awarded knighthoods Businesspeople in aviation Chief executives in the manufacturing industry Chief executives in the technology industry Chief technology officers Knights Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit Living people Manufacturing company founders New Zealand chief executives New Zealand company founders New Zealand engineers New Zealand expatriates in the United States New Zealand manufacturing businesspeople New Zealand people in transport People from Invercargill Rocket Lab Technology company founders Year of birth missing (living people)