Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: dot Com either everyone, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Bolkum, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to look at a topic that we've touched on in
Speaker 1: the past in related episodes. You know, we've talked about
Speaker 1: a fellow named Ellen Musk or Elon Musk, depending upon
Speaker 1: your pronunciation of his name. Always said yeah, but we've
Speaker 1: been hearing yeah. So um, Mr Musk, if I've been
Speaker 1: mispronouncing your name all this time, I do apologize very sincerely.
Speaker 1: But we did do a previous episode called tech Stuff
Speaker 1: looks at Elon Musk, and we published that back on
Speaker 1: March thirteenth, two thousand thirteen. So, you know, back in
Speaker 1: back in the days when we were young and idealistic
Speaker 1: and we looked at tech with bright fresh eyes. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I was ever idealistic even when I
Speaker 1: was young. Well, uh, I can't speak for you. Actually,
Speaker 1: I still consider myself both young and idealistic, so I
Speaker 1: don't know why I even framed it that way. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, during that old episode, we did mention
Speaker 1: his work in privatizing space. Yeah he um, he developed
Speaker 1: an interest. Some would argue it bordered on obsession with
Speaker 1: the idea of creating a private company that would get
Speaker 1: America really back into the space exploration game. And you
Speaker 1: may think, wait a minute, you know, NASA has been
Speaker 1: around and been working for for decades, what does he
Speaker 1: mean get back into it? And the reason, you know,
Speaker 1: his reasoning was that it turns out a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that we require, the stuff we use to
Speaker 1: get things up into space, come from other countries. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking a lot about the United States
Speaker 1: in this episode and part two. It's going to be
Speaker 1: a two partner. So just warning all of our friends
Speaker 1: from other countries. This is very US centric. But it
Speaker 1: also is an interesting example of how a private company
Speaker 1: can ache some pretty bold steps into an industry that
Speaker 1: for a long time was dominated by very, very large
Speaker 1: and very kind of closed off silos. Oh sure. Well,
Speaker 1: and also, as we will talk about, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of Musk's concept in starting up this company was
Speaker 1: for very American reasons. And that's with a like shake
Speaker 1: fist shaken in the air, kind of American sort of
Speaker 1: the America. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's a that's a loaded intonation. That's true,
Speaker 1: that's true. I I mean it. I mean it with
Speaker 1: a sparkle in my eye. I actually think that that
Speaker 1: he's done some incredible work. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who talk about his personality and his driving
Speaker 1: ambition and like his inability to imagine failure. I've actually
Speaker 1: seen that quoted a few times different people, that when
Speaker 1: he when he sees a goal, he can't imagine not
Speaker 1: achieving it, which I guess as long as you do
Speaker 1: achieve your goals is okay. So let's talk about space
Speaker 1: X and how it came to be. And it's really
Speaker 1: not that old of an organization. Oh no, it only
Speaker 1: really started up in two thousand one. Yeah, this was
Speaker 1: before there was an official organization of an official company.
Speaker 1: This was back when Elon Musk, who was freshly super
Speaker 1: duper rich from his work with PayPal uh I, started
Speaker 1: to think, what am I? What am I going to
Speaker 1: do with this money? I've made all this money and
Speaker 1: that's fantastic, but what do I do with it? And
Speaker 1: he started talking with another Internet millionaire named Adeo Ressi,
Speaker 1: and they were talking about the possibility of funding a
Speaker 1: space mission. They both had this fascination with space exploration.
Speaker 1: You know, they they both thought of it as this
Speaker 1: amazing thing. It kind of makes me think of like
Speaker 1: the kids who you know, like, what do you want
Speaker 1: to be when you grow up? I want to be
Speaker 1: an astronaut? Yeah, yeah, no, the whole Final Frontier kind
Speaker 1: of concept exactly. So I think for him, he was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: I might not be an astronaut, but I sure as
Speaker 1: heck can make sure I can fund someone to go
Speaker 1: up there. And so they started talking about what they
Speaker 1: could do, and they pulled in an aerospace consultant named
Speaker 1: Jim Cantrell to talk about it. Now, the original plan
Speaker 1: was not to form a company and privatize space in
Speaker 1: that way. They thought about buying all the components as
Speaker 1: if they were in NASA, essentially buying them from the
Speaker 1: existing infrastructure that's out there, putting it all together, and
Speaker 1: funding a private mission to Mars, which is a lofty
Speaker 1: and awesome goal. Yes, very good pun there is quite lofty.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't really intend it to be a pun.
Speaker 1: But that's but I'm glad that I made one um
Speaker 1: for the sake of the show. Uh, And I do
Speaker 1: want to put in that there there were indeed a
Speaker 1: lot of private companies that were maybe not launching stuff
Speaker 1: into space here in the United States at any rate,
Speaker 1: but certainly helping create stuff for the exploration of space
Speaker 1: at this point, Like you know, if you remember from
Speaker 1: our A, T and T episodes, private satellites go back
Speaker 1: to the nineteen sixties and by the late eighties and
Speaker 1: early nineties here in the States that the government was
Speaker 1: not just allowing, but encouraging and enforcing commercial space endeavors
Speaker 1: and uh and we were actually kind of way behind
Speaker 1: Europe and all of that. So this kind of thing
Speaker 1: had been going on. Yeah. In fact, if you if
Speaker 1: you look at all the NASA launches, it's not that
Speaker 1: NASA was It's not like they had these enormous manufacturing
Speaker 1: plants where they were churning out the rockets and the
Speaker 1: engines and everything, and they were buying them up in
Speaker 1: private company. Yeah, largely in the US that would be
Speaker 1: Locked Martin or Boeing. Those would be the two big
Speaker 1: companies that NASA would get equipment from. And in fact
Speaker 1: that it's interesting because that's still sort of how things
Speaker 1: are today for the most part. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: how that's become kind of an interesting conversation around the
Speaker 1: whole SpaceX thing. Oh yeah, yeah, it's very much. NASA
Speaker 1: is very much threaded through everything that space X does.
Speaker 1: So what happened with this private plan to try and
Speaker 1: fund a mission to Mars, Well, they kind of hit
Speaker 1: a little bit of a stumbling block a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's imagine that you are on say Amazon dot com,
Speaker 1: and you see enormous launch rocket offered, and it's offered
Speaker 1: for you know, you could get seven of them for
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars, and you think, hey, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: I got this plan. I'm gonna need seven of these things.
Speaker 1: I got twenty million, let's put that in my cart.
Speaker 1: And then when you put it in your cart and
Speaker 1: you go and you check out, and then says, oh,
Speaker 1: oh you know what, I know what we said, but
Speaker 1: instead of seven for twenty million, each of these is
Speaker 1: now going to be twenty millions, So your your total
Speaker 1: has gone up. That's kind of what happened. When Musk
Speaker 1: and crew went to Russia to look at purchasing the
Speaker 1: launch vehicles they would have used for this mission. They
Speaker 1: ran into all this red tape, There was all this
Speaker 1: corruption they had to deal with. They talked about bribery issues.
Speaker 1: When they had Russians come over to UH to the
Speaker 1: United States, they would end up having to throw these
Speaker 1: like lavish parties and stuff in order to keep the
Speaker 1: Russians happy. And eventually Musk said, this is not how
Speaker 1: I want to do business. He said, I think I
Speaker 1: see where the real problem is with the space industry.
Speaker 1: It's not it's you can't just point a finger and
Speaker 1: say this enormous organization is inefficient and and and byzantinean
Speaker 1: and it's just enormous and no one knows what's going on.
Speaker 1: It's not just that, although that's probably a factor. It's
Speaker 1: also that the different entities this organization is dealing with
Speaker 1: aren't always on the up and up, or aren't are
Speaker 1: maybe perhaps are able to leverage their position as being
Speaker 1: this one company that produces the thing you need and
Speaker 1: kind of holding the whole industry hostage as a result.
Speaker 1: And that's when Musk said, you know, maybe we should
Speaker 1: look at some other alternative to just purchasing stuff from
Speaker 1: other people. What could we do instead of that? And
Speaker 1: in UH in two thousand and two, that's when he
Speaker 1: kind of came to the conclusion that instead of trying
Speaker 1: to to buy all this stuff out and uh and
Speaker 1: then have a private launch. Maybe forming your own company
Speaker 1: and building the stuff yourself is the better idea. So
Speaker 1: by two thousand two, Musk had decided that buying these
Speaker 1: components and then having a privatized mission just wasn't going
Speaker 1: to work, and so instead he looked at the possibility
Speaker 1: of creating a company that would build its own rockets,
Speaker 1: which is a big, big deal, especially to to do
Speaker 1: that here in America. So he founded a company called
Speaker 1: Space Explorations Technology, but everyone calls its space X. That's
Speaker 1: essentially the name now. It really no one refers to
Speaker 1: it by its old name. Now. According to The New
Speaker 1: York Times, Musk invested about a hundred million dollars of
Speaker 1: his own money into the company, so you could say
Speaker 1: that he was pretty determined to have this happen. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a huge investment. Keep in mind, that's one third
Speaker 1: of the money he made from his sale of PayPal
Speaker 1: to eBay. Now that whole sale was about one point
Speaker 1: five billion dollars, but three hundred million of it went
Speaker 1: to Musk. So he gets three hundred million dollars and
Speaker 1: immediately one third of it he invests in the take
Speaker 1: this thing. Yeah, that's that takes guts, and that's a
Speaker 1: huge No one has ever argued that Musk doesn't have guts.
Speaker 1: So one of the things he wanted was to have
Speaker 1: this new company lower the cost of putting stuff up
Speaker 1: into orbit, particularly small payloads such as smaller satellites, because otherwise,
Speaker 1: if you were a company and you had built a
Speaker 1: satellite for your business, whatever that business might be. Let's
Speaker 1: just say it's a telecommunications company and they've got a
Speaker 1: small satellite they want to put up in space. Normally
Speaker 1: you would have to wait until you could have that
Speaker 1: piggyback onto another payload because it's so small that the
Speaker 1: expense of launching it would be too great. Now, this way,
Speaker 1: Musk is hoping to bring price down to be more
Speaker 1: attractive to customers that are making these smaller satellites. You
Speaker 1: still might piggyback several together, but overall, the the price
Speaker 1: tag drops and then you don't have to you know,
Speaker 1: have all the you end up having an increase in innovation,
Speaker 1: is really what it comes down. Yeah, So he starts
Speaker 1: to look at how companies get stuff up into space,
Speaker 1: and like I said, in the US, you had Boeing
Speaker 1: and Locked. Those were your two companies that you could
Speaker 1: really work with if you wanted to try and get
Speaker 1: stuff up into space, and they built the rockets that
Speaker 1: were necessary to get payloads up there. At Boeing produced
Speaker 1: the Delta four rocket and Lockeed produced the Atlas five.
Speaker 1: And so you had a duopoly, meaning that there were
Speaker 1: only two companies who had to choose from. And by
Speaker 1: the way, Boeing and Lockeed work in partnership together in
Speaker 1: the United Launch Alliance or u l A. So when
Speaker 1: I say duopoly, you know, essentially you're it's it's similar
Speaker 1: to a monopoly that you just have these two entities
Speaker 1: that can determine exactly how much things cost. And UH
Speaker 1: they have all the contracts with lots of big customers
Speaker 1: like the United States military for example, which means that
Speaker 1: a lot of their stuff, although you know, certainly worth purchasing,
Speaker 1: was very expensive. Yes, so that meant that UH, an
Speaker 1: orderization like NASA or smaller companies that had these satellites,
Speaker 1: they had a real incentive to look around for an alternative.
Speaker 1: The problem was that for the longest time, there was
Speaker 1: no alternative. Right. Meanwhile, the Russian and Ukrainian space programs
Speaker 1: offered rockets at a lower cost, which was driving business
Speaker 1: out of America, his driving business overseas, and Musk wanted
Speaker 1: to reverse that trend by creating a real competitor in
Speaker 1: the United States that could be in the space industry
Speaker 1: and offer competitive prices to bring jobs and money back
Speaker 1: into the US. So that really was kind of the
Speaker 1: driving force of his sales pitch when he was going
Speaker 1: around getting investors early on in SpaceX UM. He also
Speaker 1: wanted to do more than just since satellites up. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's a money maker right there, because people are
Speaker 1: going to be producing these for various industries and they
Speaker 1: gotta get up there somehow, sure, and cargo as well
Speaker 1: for the for the space station. Absolutely, because we have
Speaker 1: astronauts aboard the International Space Station and occasionally they need
Speaker 1: to either say and stuff back that needs to be
Speaker 1: repaired or maintained, or it's the result of whatever experiments
Speaker 1: they've been doing, or they of course need more stuff
Speaker 1: to come up, you know, supplies, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So those would both be you know, money making endeavors.
Speaker 1: But he also wants to send people up there, which
Speaker 1: is much more complex and expensive venture. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can design a spacecraft to carry cargo and not
Speaker 1: have to worry as much about things like life support
Speaker 1: systems because there's nothing alive necessarily in that cargo. I
Speaker 1: mean you might you might have some mice, or there's
Speaker 1: usually some microbes at the very least. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: doubt that. I doubt they're very concerned about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the microbe you know, the microbe supergroups are really poorly funded.
Speaker 1: But anyway they are, they are in fact microscopic, one
Speaker 1: might say. But uh, Musk really wanted to to you know,
Speaker 1: this idea of of sending people not just to the
Speaker 1: International Space Station, but further. He had a dream early
Speaker 1: early on of this being kind of a stepping stone
Speaker 1: toward getting people off Earth and onto other planets or moons,
Speaker 1: and the idea being that, you know, in order to
Speaker 1: do that, the first thing you have to do is
Speaker 1: solve the transportation problem. And so SpaceX so far has
Speaker 1: really focused on the transportation part of it, but they
Speaker 1: have not lost sight of this extended goal to get
Speaker 1: people onto the surface of Mars, onto the moon, maybe
Speaker 1: even have the foundation for further exploration, which is really hard. Yea,
Speaker 1: that right there is going to take I mean literally,
Speaker 1: it's gonna take a long time, Like it's gonna take
Speaker 1: a long time to develop the technology and it's gonna
Speaker 1: take a long time to get there. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the kind of stuff he says is necessary for
Speaker 1: that to ever be part of our future. So kind
Speaker 1: of a kind of an inspiring thing if you're really
Speaker 1: into space right now. It was really cool that he
Speaker 1: was thinking about that this early in the company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So meanwhile he was saying that, you know, it's necessary
Speaker 1: for this company company to exist because NASA has seen
Speaker 1: its budget cut multiple times over the last couple of decades,
Speaker 1: and so they have to do more with less, and
Speaker 1: so it would be good to have the option to
Speaker 1: work with a company that could potentially launch things for
Speaker 1: much less money than what their competitors could do. Right. Although,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, despite these budget cuts, the the U
Speaker 1: S shuttle program at NASA was going pretty strong during
Speaker 1: this period. There would be a five or six shuttle
Speaker 1: launches each year in two thousand and two thousand one,
Speaker 1: and two thousand two, which ain't too shabby, right, So
Speaker 1: we still at this point had a shuttle program which
Speaker 1: was nice. Yes, we will get more into the fate
Speaker 1: of that later. Yeah, But over the next few years,
Speaker 1: SpaceX started to work on developing that rocket technology. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a brand new company, so they started really hiring
Speaker 1: people either straight out of school or people who were
Speaker 1: former engineers at at NASA Laboratory Worries, and they first
Speaker 1: started developing a rocket called the Falcon one, which is
Speaker 1: a two stage vehicle. H Now, if you ever hear
Speaker 1: that the two stage vehicle or three stage whatever, and
Speaker 1: you wonder what that means. Those are the rockets that
Speaker 1: have segmented parts, right, and your first stage is the
Speaker 1: one that's closest to the ground when the rocket is
Speaker 1: standing upright. That first stage is designed to launch the
Speaker 1: rocket off the launch platform and at a certain altitude,
Speaker 1: detached from the rest of the vehicle and fall back
Speaker 1: to Earth, which will also trigger stage two, which will
Speaker 1: continue firing the rocket further out right and until it
Speaker 1: gets to whatever destination orbit it's supposed to go to. UH.
Speaker 1: And then you might have multiple stages depending upon the
Speaker 1: design of the rocket, but this particular one was a
Speaker 1: two stager UH and it had a Merlin engine for
Speaker 1: its first stage, and the second stage had a kestral
Speaker 1: engine designed by a guy named Tom Mueller, and mueller
Speaker 1: Head gained Musk's attention because he had he had taken
Speaker 1: on a d I Y project. You know, the kind
Speaker 1: of thing like you know when you're in school and
Speaker 1: you just you're really interested in something and you just
Speaker 1: want to build a version of it for yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just decided to do it. You just decided to
Speaker 1: go out there and build a thirteen thousand pound forest
Speaker 1: liquid fuel rocket in a friend's warehouse. Yeah, that's fifty
Speaker 1: eight newtons you know in case. Yeah, I know, some
Speaker 1: people like the toy with cars. This guy was just
Speaker 1: building a rocket that would have an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: force behind it. So today, yeah, he was. He took
Speaker 1: d I Y to a level that is beyond my reckoning.
Speaker 1: But today Mueller is the vice president of propulsion Development,
Speaker 1: Big shock. So they start working on this Falcon one project.
Speaker 1: By two thousand three, they would open a testing facility, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the small town of McGregor, Texas. And this is
Speaker 1: where all of their equipment and vehicle parts are proven
Speaker 1: as safe as possible or scrapped and taken back to
Speaker 1: the drawing. Right. And then we had another terrible news story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also in two thousand three over at NASA, disaster befell
Speaker 1: the Shuttle program this year. That was when the Columbia
Speaker 1: orbiter would break apart during its re entry and and
Speaker 1: all seven members of its crew would be lost. When
Speaker 1: it had launched, pieces of insulating foam had broken off
Speaker 1: of the main engines external fuel tank and damaged the
Speaker 1: heat protection tiles on the left wing of the craft.
Speaker 1: And y'all, re entry is serious business. An orbiter will
Speaker 1: be moving at some seventeen thousand miles per hour, that's
Speaker 1: some eight thousand kilometers per hour, and exposed to friction
Speaker 1: based heat of approximately three thousand degrees fahrenheit a k
Speaker 1: a thousand six d fifty degrees celsius. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous time, certainly, but um so so not.
Speaker 1: NASA would wind up grounding the Shuttle program while it
Speaker 1: investigated this disaster and and started planning safeguards for the future.
Speaker 1: And certainly the folks over at SpaceX we're taking very
Speaker 1: careful note obviously. Yeah. I mean, if their plan was
Speaker 1: to eventually put people up into space, and I don't
Speaker 1: mean for this to be a spoiler for part two.
Speaker 1: But that's something that SpaceX has yet to do. They
Speaker 1: haven't they haven't launched demanded mission yet. But if they
Speaker 1: do wish to do this, they have to obviously take
Speaker 1: these things into account and and you know, personal safety
Speaker 1: has got to be paramount and there in their estimation
Speaker 1: when they're building these things. Keeping in mind that. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing about astronauts is they talk about, Hey, you
Speaker 1: need to ask us what if the risk is worth it?
Speaker 1: Because many of us are ready to sign up. As
Speaker 1: soon as something is shown to be uh, to be
Speaker 1: working in working condition, I'll sign up. And I'm thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: you are a different kind of person than I am. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's inspiring, but not me um so. So, in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, facing further budget cuts and continued fallout
Speaker 1: from this Columbia disaster, then President George W. Bush announced
Speaker 1: the NASA Shuttle programs eventual retirement. It was set out
Speaker 1: a few years from from this announcement, right, I don't
Speaker 1: think it was specified quite yet. We'll get there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was one of those things that made a lot
Speaker 1: of people very sad, because, of course, space exploration is
Speaker 1: one of those things that is often very inspiring, particularly
Speaker 1: to young people who see this this uh incredible endeavor
Speaker 1: to learn what we do not yet know, and it's
Speaker 1: it's got adventure wrapped up in it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't deny it. Oh yeah, yeah, well you know, But
Speaker 1: NASA shuttle program would regain its feet the next year,
Speaker 1: in two thousand five, they would send a single shuttle
Speaker 1: up for the first time since Columbia's loss. And and
Speaker 1: over the next six years, the Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor
Speaker 1: shuttles would become active again, largely collaborating with the European
Speaker 1: Space Agency on projects to build, maintain, and also crew
Speaker 1: the International Space Station. And you know, I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about all of this NASA stuff because even though
Speaker 1: it's not directly at this point related to SpaceX, you know,
Speaker 1: public American opinion about space exploration is so tied to
Speaker 1: what's going on with NASA UM and and also you
Speaker 1: know they do vi all of their stuff from the
Speaker 1: commercial space industry, so it's very much a part of
Speaker 1: of what's going through SpaceX's mind right now. Absolutely. I mean,
Speaker 1: this this is such a huge interconnected web, right You've
Speaker 1: got this thing where it's not just it's not just
Speaker 1: the scientific endeavor, the loss of that that you have
Speaker 1: to take into account. I mean, that is already an
Speaker 1: enormous thing, but on top of it, it's business. Right.
Speaker 1: If NASA ends up scrapping this whole program and there's
Speaker 1: no replacement, there's nothing that takes the Space Shuttle's place
Speaker 1: in that time, and there are fewer contracts out there
Speaker 1: for a company like SpaceX, right, or for Lockheed or
Speaker 1: for Boeing. I mean, you've got this enormous industry that
Speaker 1: relies upon this demand, and if the demand goes away,
Speaker 1: then that's a problem. Meanwhile, that also meant that NASA
Speaker 1: had to outsource a lot of work to Russia. Whenever
Speaker 1: Russia was sending up capsules to the International Space Station,
Speaker 1: they had to rely upon that. And again it it
Speaker 1: illustrated that there needed to be some sort of new
Speaker 1: entity to allow UH the United States to be able
Speaker 1: to operate independently of other nations. This is also the
Speaker 1: time two thousand five, That's also the time when SpaceX
Speaker 1: would buy a stake in a company called Surrey Satellite
Speaker 1: Technology Limited to the company that builds small satellites. So
Speaker 1: now they've got a stake in a company that actually
Speaker 1: is trying to send stuff up into space. Moving on
Speaker 1: to two thousand six. On March two thousand six, my
Speaker 1: wife had a birthday. But more importantly, in the context
Speaker 1: of this particular episode, SpaceX had a test launch of
Speaker 1: the Falcon one launch vehicle also known as a rocket,
Speaker 1: but launch vehicles what they call it in the biz.
Speaker 1: And so the launch vehicle, uh, you know it, it
Speaker 1: took off. Unfortunately, a fuel line ruptured and caused a
Speaker 1: fire and massive failure of the rocket, and all launch
Speaker 1: data aboard the rocket was lost as a result of
Speaker 1: this launch failure. Now, despite the failure, SpaceX landed a
Speaker 1: developmental contract with NASA, and it's called a Commercial Orbital
Speaker 1: Transportation Services or COTS contract worth a cool two D
Speaker 1: seventy eight million dollars. Now, SpaceX's role would be to
Speaker 1: create the launch vehicles that would shuttle crew and cargo
Speaker 1: to and from the International Space Station. So this particular
Speaker 1: first launch, you can actually see the video that was
Speaker 1: shot during their their test launches, and uh, it is
Speaker 1: unfortunate that they lost all the data. As I recall,
Speaker 1: I read one report where Musk and Mueller had a
Speaker 1: rather tense discussion after this. I would imagine Musk as
Speaker 1: someone who cannot envision failure. Seeing a test vehicle fail
Speaker 1: was probably a pretty rough rough especially failed that spectacularly. Um,
Speaker 1: but hey, there's a there's another test flight coming up, right. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did pick themselves back up, and on March twenty
Speaker 1: two of two seven they would send another Falcon one
Speaker 1: which ended in failure. Yeah. The rocket it successfully launched
Speaker 1: off the platform, but when it got to the stage
Speaker 1: separation part where the first stage and second stage we're
Speaker 1: supposed to separate, they didn't disconnect properly. So the second
Speaker 1: engine the of the of stage two, it ignited, but
Speaker 1: then seven minutes thirty seconds into the launch, the engine
Speaker 1: shut down prematurely. The rocket did not make it into orbit,
Speaker 1: but it did retain the data from the launch, so
Speaker 1: SpaceX could actually take that data and be able to
Speaker 1: look to improve for so they called it a partial success.
Speaker 1: It made it succeeded in part of the mission parameters,
Speaker 1: not all of them, because it didn't make it into orbit,
Speaker 1: but because they were able to retrieve the data and
Speaker 1: see exactly what went wrong, they could address it at
Speaker 1: least learn from it. Right. So two eight, SpaceX Lands
Speaker 1: and NASA launched services contract that could be worth up
Speaker 1: to about one point six billion dollars when it's all Sadden.
Speaker 1: This is all about again sending stuff up to the
Speaker 1: I S. S to to kind of resupply it. So right, right,
Speaker 1: And on August two they would do a third test launch,
Speaker 1: which also ended in failure. Yeah, three times in a row,
Speaker 1: so this had to be tough for everyone at SpaceX. Now,
Speaker 1: in this case, the Stage one section, uh it's separated
Speaker 1: from Stage two. There the two came apart, but then
Speaker 1: Stage one's engines flared up at the last second after separation,
Speaker 1: which meant that the disconnected Stage one collided with the
Speaker 1: Stage two rocket that also had the payload on it
Speaker 1: and sent it out of control. Yeah. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you imagine that you've got a car that you're
Speaker 1: towing behind you, and then suddenly the towing uh apparatus
Speaker 1: comes loose and then somehow the car actually behind you
Speaker 1: accelerates and slams into you. That's kind of what happened.
Speaker 1: It was not good, um, but however, again they learned
Speaker 1: more from that and on sept n eight, so within
Speaker 1: the same year, they had a couple of months later
Speaker 1: they completed a successful test launch that got the Falcon
Speaker 1: one into orbit, yeah, which is again it's the speed
Speaker 1: of it that's that's really impressive to me. It's a
Speaker 1: private company building this stuff, you know, and not relying
Speaker 1: on other other companies to provide things like engines. They're
Speaker 1: building all of this, putting it together and launching it,
Speaker 1: and to be able to do that so relatively quickly
Speaker 1: is really impressive to me, because I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know if any of you out there listeners, if you've
Speaker 1: never gone to a space center to see how big
Speaker 1: these things are, if you ever get the opportunity take it,
Speaker 1: it is awe inspiring. It is you see how tiny
Speaker 1: you are in relation to some of these rockets, and it,
Speaker 1: I mean, the first time I ever saw it absolutely
Speaker 1: took my breath away. So to think of a company
Speaker 1: being able to turn that around so quickly, it's pretty phenomenal. Also,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that one of the things they wanted
Speaker 1: to do was design a rocket like then one. Design
Speaker 1: a rocket that could be used multiple times. And usually
Speaker 1: you launch these things, they separate out and you retrieve
Speaker 1: the stuff and you scrap it. You don't use the
Speaker 1: launch vehicle a second time. But that's their whole goal,
Speaker 1: is they want to be able to use the same
Speaker 1: launch vehicle for multiple missions, not just not just the capsule,
Speaker 1: not just the part that holds the cargo and the
Speaker 1: possibly the crew, but the entire launch vehicle, which is
Speaker 1: pretty ambitious considering the way that they were always dealt with.
Speaker 1: And it's another thing that would have driven the price
Speaker 1: of a launch far, far down because you don't have
Speaker 1: to build. So very important for them to have this
Speaker 1: successful launch, and I'm sure there was a lot of
Speaker 1: celebrating in Mudville that night. So it was the first
Speaker 1: privately funded liquid rocket fuel vehicle to ever go into orbit,
Speaker 1: So pretty amazing well done, and that same year. The
Speaker 1: story is amazing to me too. Gwen shot Well, who
Speaker 1: was the seventh SpaceX employee, she was the former VP
Speaker 1: of business Development, becomes the president and chief Operating Officer
Speaker 1: of SpaceX. So Gwen shot Well is the president, Musk
Speaker 1: is the CEO, and she is a phenomenal person. You
Speaker 1: need to read some of her interviews or watch some
Speaker 1: of her interviews. Very articulate, very uh, very enthusiastic, and
Speaker 1: very ambitious as far as the space industry goes. I mean,
Speaker 1: just like Musk very much on We're going to put
Speaker 1: people in Mars by I mean, that's it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of of of gumption to say something like that
Speaker 1: and to mean it. You know, it doesn't come across
Speaker 1: as it's you know, like, this is a plan we
Speaker 1: have and maybe it will happen. You really believe it?
Speaker 1: When none not even a sales pitch. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, this is what we're doing. Oh by
Speaker 1: the way, guys, we're going to Mars and anyone want
Speaker 1: to go. So she attended school and majored to mechanical engineering.
Speaker 1: She went into the auto industry for a while and
Speaker 1: then later went to the aerospace industry. She met with
Speaker 1: Elon Musk in two thousand two, had had like lunch
Speaker 1: with him and immediately was thinking this is kind of
Speaker 1: a cool organization. So she came on as the seventh employee.
Speaker 1: Shot Well is credited as being largely responsible for some
Speaker 1: of the biggest deals SpaceX has landed in its history,
Speaker 1: and she's also on the company's board of directors. So
Speaker 1: if you've never heard about her, because I think most
Speaker 1: of the time when we hear about SpaceX, we tend
Speaker 1: to hear about Musk mask he's so closely identified with
Speaker 1: the organization understandably so. And he's also kind of a
Speaker 1: one man show a lot of the time. He's a
Speaker 1: very dynamic personality. This is true. But but shot well,
Speaker 1: she she has a lot of responsibility for the success
Speaker 1: of the company, I would say, and uh, I hope
Speaker 1: maybe I'll be able to do an episode about her
Speaker 1: in the future tech stuff that would be great. Now,
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, we are less than one year
Speaker 1: away from its first successful test. SpaceX launches a low
Speaker 1: earth orbiting set, a light called the Razak SAT. That's
Speaker 1: are a Z A K S A T, and it's
Speaker 1: a Malaysian satellite and it has a high resolution camera
Speaker 1: on it. Pointed, the purpose of it was to point
Speaker 1: at Malaysia and to provide high resolution images of Malaysia.
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing about Malaysia, it gets cloudy a
Speaker 1: lot and a lot. Of the the dedicated UH satellites
Speaker 1: that get satellite imagery of various regions, they're dedicated for
Speaker 1: enormous areas. Right, So the satellite actually goes through an
Speaker 1: orbit that makes makes it pass over different parts of
Speaker 1: Earth taking pictures along the way. Well, if that means
Speaker 1: that this you know satellite only occasionally passes over your country,
Speaker 1: and your country is often under cloud cover, then you
Speaker 1: might not really have very many pictures exactly. So by
Speaker 1: having a dedicated satellite with a dedicated camera, the hope
Speaker 1: was to be able to get much better images because
Speaker 1: it'd be concentrating on a smaller region. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: this was the first mission where a SpaceX rocket actually
Speaker 1: took a working payload up into space. Uh. Follow up,
Speaker 1: the satellite failed after operating for only a year, but
Speaker 1: it still was a proof of concept that SpaceX could
Speaker 1: actually do business. Yeah. So at that time, because they
Speaker 1: had had this success, keep in mind they had a
Speaker 1: successful test and one successful launch of the Falcon one
Speaker 1: carrying a payload, they retire the Falcon one to to
Speaker 1: focus on building a more powerful vehicle. Yes, and we
Speaker 1: will talk all about that more powerful vehicle in our
Speaker 1: next episode where we will continue the story of SpaceX.
Speaker 1: It's it's funny because we're getting up to the year
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, and you'd think, you know, we just
Speaker 1: covered two thousand one through two thousand nine, and how
Speaker 1: can two thousand, two thousand fourteen have enough for a
Speaker 1: second episode. Let's get so much. Yes, it picks up
Speaker 1: so much, and we're really excited to talk about this
Speaker 1: in our next episode. Meanwhile, guys, if you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, maybe there's another
Speaker 1: company you want to hear about, or a specific kind
Speaker 1: of technology, or maybe you're just wondering, Hey, what was
Speaker 1: tech like in the year nineteen SI no reason, just
Speaker 1: let us know. Will be glad to look at that
Speaker 1: and consider it for an episode and maybe even do one.
Speaker 1: But in order for you to let us know, you
Speaker 1: gotta gotta contact because just shouting it out the window
Speaker 1: does not work. So send us an email or addresses
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler, or handle it.
Speaker 1: All three is text stuff H. S W and we'll
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Speaker 1: and bousands of other topics. Does it has to Works
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