Morgan Connaughton: Rocket Lab Vice President of Marketing and Communications on 50th launch

Rocket Lab is entering a league of its own --reaching 50 space launches in the shortest space of time. 

Its latest electron rocket launched this morning from the Mahia Peninsula, is taking a French satellite into orbit. 

Rocket Lab’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Morgan Connaughton, told Heather du Plessis-Allan “A lot of rockets don’t get past ten – and we're talking globally here – it's a massive deal.” 

Connaughton said “To get there faster than anyone else... it puts us up there with the best rocket companies in the world – it's us, and Space X.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Five or three, two one.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
But this morning rocket Lab successfully launched its fiftieth mission
using their Electron rocket. It makes rocket Lab the fastest
get this, the fastest commercial space operator to reach fifty launches,
faster than even Elon Musk SpaceX. Morgan Connaisant is the
vice president of Marketing and Communications at rocket Lab and
joins me. Now, Hay Morgan, Hello, it's fifty. A big

(00:28):
deal in the space industry. Is that like a milestone,
you guys celebrate.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
It's bigger than you might realize. Getting to one launch
by a monumental in the space industry, Getting to two
or three is a big deal. A lot of rockets
don't even get past number ten. So to get to
fifty and we're talking, you know, globally here is a
massive deal. And to get to fifty faster than everyone else,
it really puts us, you know, up there in rare
if idea with the best space companies in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Who are the best ustin.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
SpaceX it and how many.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Have Elon Musk done fifty as well?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Definitely more than Testy, but they're into a couple of
hundreds now. But the difference is is how fast we've
got there. So what we've done is is, you know,
proven we're able to create a completely new rocket for
a scratch scratch scale, it really quickly, and obviously that
growth trajectory is now you know, shooting forces the moon
scuz to punt. And you know, elix Tum's not our
only rocket. We're building Neutron, which is a much larger,

(01:21):
larger rocket designed to compete directly with SpaceX. So that
puts us in a really good spot to you know,
be be a really serious contender and large launch as
well a small.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
So how how quickly did you guys do it?

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Seven years and twenty seven days off by.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
A day or two, okay, and how how quickly did
Elon Musk do it?

Speaker 1 (01:43):
A couple of years longer than that?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Really, so it's actually quite significant, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
That's it really is. And I think, you know, typical
Kiwis we tend to think, you know, we punch above
our weights, put ourselves on the back a little bit
and just carry on and get the job done. You know,
we don't often stop to pause realized just how significant
you know, New Zealander's achievements are on the global scale.
And Rocke leads no different to that, and you know,
I don't want to turn our own horn, but you know,
this really is a big deal. And you know I

(02:11):
had to text my mum this morning and say, by
the way, something massive happened. She's super good job, love,
I'm busy.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Classic. That's also a good thing, though, isn't it Because
all of our mums are like that in New Zealand,
which means that we just keep grounded because we're like,
it's a big deal for us, but pretty much no one,
I'll say.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
And look, you know, it's it's kind of a beautiful thing. Really.
There was time when a launch stopped the whole company.
It was massive news and it was all we could
think about for months. And now the team popped into
mission control. We all watched it lift off, you know,
an hour later we were back at work doing the
next thing, and it's it's kind of just business as usual.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Morgan, who gets to name the rocket?

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Well, it's a team effort. So sometimes our customers put
forward great names. So this mission was called no Time
to Loose and the customer was a French set light
company and they're from to Loose, so that was great
name from them. But otherwise we just we put it
out to the team and best name wins.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, it is it an excellent name. What's it doing
up there? By the way.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
So these are Internet of Things satellites, which basically satellites
that provide low bandwidth Internet from space down to sensors
on the ground. An example of that might be a
farmer having a Internet connected sensor in a water trough,
you know, far back in the outback. You normally have
to drive three hours to check whether or not the
cattle have water, but instead he can just log into

(03:30):
his phone that sensor in the water troughs senter ping
up to a satellite, said nut and full of water.
You don't need to drive three hours today. And that's
just one of thousands of examples of how you can
use those IoT satellites.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
What do you reckon is the future for space industry
for New Zealand? How big does it get?

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Well, it's it's a multi trillion dollar industry really in
the next next decade or two. I think the real
benefit here and opportunity in the space sector is there's
no actually so much from Launch, believe it or not.
Despite it being in our name, Launch is really just
the keys to space. You really need three things to
do anything useful in space. You need the ride, which

(04:09):
is the rockets we've got. You need the satellites, which
is the hardware and the infrastructure, you know, the stuff
in orbit that makes it go. But the real important
but here is the data that you're actually getting down right.
Everything else is just a tool and a ride. So
that data might be Internet services, it could be whether
it might be different communications direct to cell phone Internet,

(04:29):
it might be disaster relief, it could be any number
of things. And that's really the real benefit, both from
a commercial standpoint and also the opportunity to make life
better for us all down here on Earth.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah, brilliant stuff. Hey, well done, and thank you so
much for your time. Morgan Morgan connors and vice president
of marketing and Communications Rock and Lab. For more from Hither, Dupless,
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