Julie Chang (2:31)

Looking at the strategy behind this why is the White House taking this approach?

Amrith Ramkumar (2:35)

It's important to note a lot of it does seem to be the President using his social media authentically himself. It doesn't seem like this is part of the broad campaign necessarily. In one example, he posted about med beds.

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Amrith Ramkumar (2:53)

These beds that are in hospitals that some people think can basically cure all illnesses or injuries and any malady you may have. And those have been promoted by conspiracy theorists. So he posted a fake Fox News segment featuring his daughter in law Lara Trump doing a segment about these beds and then he later deleted it. And so some of those things people have said can be harmful because people watching them could believe them and think they're true. And that's when you're in a difficult area. In general though, it does just seem to be an extension of his already rampant social media usage. He sees it as a way to get his message out, poke fun at people, maybe intimidate, maybe share stuff about policy. But that's the thing a lot of people in the tech space have issues with because the AI generated videos are getting so good that people can't tell the difference. So if you are talking about substantive policy issues, you could really mislead a lot of people. So it will be fascinating. I mean, the first Lady, Melania Trump and many lawmakers on the Republican side have been pushing for more guardrails, more protections around so called deepfake porn. And people are also very worried about using someone's likeness to make money commercially. But it does seem like people should expect to see a lot more of these videos and get good at detecting what's real and what's fake.

Julie Chang (4:10)

That was WSJ reporter Amrith Ramkumar. Coming up, a New Zealand newcomer is getting ready to take on space giants like Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. We'll tell you about Rocket Lab after the break.

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Julie Chang (4:51)

The space launch business is dominated by industry giants with deep pockets like Elon Musk's Space SpaceX and Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin, now a smaller company from New Zealand, is hoping to challenge them. Rocket Lab, founded by Peter Beck, is banking on its focus on reusability to propel it among the more well established rocket launchers. But is it a David among Goliaths or just chasing a pipe dream. WSJ space business reporter Micah Madenberg sat down with our colleague Peter Ciampelli for a look at Rocket Lab and the future of space launches.

Micah Madenberg (5:26)

It's safe to say that everyone listening has heard of Musk and Bezos. But Peter Beck, probably not. Who is he and how did he come onto the scene?

Peter Ciampelli (5:34)

Beck has been kind of space obsessed his entire life as he tells it. And about 20 years ago he founded Rocket Lab. Rocket Lab was created in New Zealand where Beck is from. Since that founding, the company has been on this like startup to kind of growth path. They developed an experimental rocket and then they raised money and they developed a bigger rocket, still small compared to many. And they've used that rocket to sort of build a launch business and they started a satellite business that has also grown. Beck has tried to infuse Rocket Lab with his kind of sensibility and desire for both form and function, if you will. In the space industry the margins on everything working are really thin, so you really to build functional products. But I was talking to Beck and he's like, well, we want things to be beautiful too because something that looks good is also a sign of quality and that it'll work.

Micah Madenberg (6:34)

So how did a newcomer to such a high cost industry get started?

Peter Ciampelli (6:39)

One of the really unique things about the Rocket Lab story in a way is of course that it emerged out of New Zealand. They still have a lot of facilities there, big workforce. They also have a lot of folks in the US now because a lot of their business is here. But after Beck started the company, he what startup founders and entrepreneurs do, which is go knocking on proverbial doors to try to convince investors and others to support what he's doing. And he was able to convince enough folks to fund, for example, like getting Electron, which is their current operational rocket, out to the launch pad and to start launching it. But for many years, for many decades, even the centers of space power in the world have been the United States, Russia, former Soviet Union, China. You know, New Zealand was not super well known for its space activity and Rocket Lab is now a publicly traded company. That's one difference between some of the other space companies that are out there and they are not profitable yet. They're growing their revenues, but they're spending a lot of money on their programs right now. A big one of course is Neutron, this forthcoming rocket that they're hoping to get to the pad soon.

Micah Madenberg (7:58)

Rocket lab and SpaceX have already faced off over small satellite launches. What is that small launch market that these two companies are competing in. And how do rocket lab and SpaceX compare?

Peter Ciampelli (8:09)

Just a little background. The launch market is generally segmented by vehicle size and power. You have smaller vehicles that can do smaller launches, medium sized vehicles that can go a little bit further and do a little bit more, and then the big ones, the big massive rockets that are designed to lift huge amounts of stuff off of Earth and in some cases send them very far away. So Rocket Lab, they have one operational rocket right now, it's called Electron, and it does small satellite launches. SpaceX uses its Falcon 9 rocket, which is much bigger than Electron, to also compete in the small launch market. What SpaceX does is basically offer at least a couple the ability for companies and academics and other people that want to get like a pretty small satellite into orbit, the chance to split costs and space on 1 Falcon 9 Rocket. Whereas Electron, the Rocket Lab rocket, you basically got to buy the whole rocket. So SpaceX, for most customers, it's cheaper. What Rocket Lab executives say sometimes is, look, SpaceX may be cheaper in the small launch market, but we can get you to where you want to go, when you want to go. One Rocket Lab executive compared it to waiting for a city bus. That would be the SpaceX shared mission versus Rocket Lab and Electron, which is sort of the uber more costly but more flexible.

Micah Madenberg (9:34)

So Rocket Lab's next product on the horizon is Neutron, which you mentioned earlier. It'll compete directly with Falcon 9, SpaceX's busiest reusable rocket. What can you tell us about Neutron?

Peter Ciampelli (9:45)

So Neutron, it's a bigger rocket for Rocket Lab. It would be their biggest, most powerful and most complicated to date. Here's why I say most complicated. What Rocket Lab is trying to do with Neutron is to get that partial reusability that SpaceX has already demonstrated with Falcon 9. The whole rocket isn't reusable, but the booster, the part of the rocket that starts the mission, comes back to Earth, lands on a barge or on Earth, and Rocket Lab is trying to do the same thing. It's a big challenge and it will be quite important and quite interesting to sort of follow the companies work on that.

Micah Madenberg (10:23)

And what will the launch market look like as Neutron starts flying?

Peter Ciampelli (10:26)

So SpaceX has been really powerful the last few years, but there's a bunch of companies that are really pushing hard to ramp up their own rockets. Jeff Bezos space company Blue Origin has their own partially reusable vehicle that they've been developing and want to fly more. There's United Launch alliance, there's Spokespace, there's Firefly Aerospace. And then, of course, there's SpaceX. SpaceX is the sort of dominant incumbent at this point, and many industry executives expect SpaceX to sort of make some changes to what they're offering looks like. And it's not exactly clear what that would look like, but the launch market will be changing quite a bit over the next few years as some of these new rockets come online.

Julie Chang (11:05)

That was WSJ space business reporter Micah Madenberg speaking with our Peter Ciampelli. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by me, Julie Chang with deputy editor Chris Zinsley. We'll be back later this morning with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening.

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