WEBVTT - TechStuff In Spaaace(X) - Part One 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:07.520 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from stuff 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:15.080 dot Com either everyone, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:18.640 Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Bolkum, and today we're going 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:20.840 to look at a topic that we've touched on in 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.720 the past in related episodes. You know, we've talked about 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:29.480 a fellow named Ellen Musk or Elon Musk, depending upon 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:32.599 your pronunciation of his name. Always said yeah, but we've 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:37.479 been hearing yeah. So um, Mr Musk, if I've been 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.680 mispronouncing your name all this time, I do apologize very sincerely. 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:43.360 But we did do a previous episode called tech Stuff 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.199 looks at Elon Musk, and we published that back on 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:50.199 March thirteenth, two thousand thirteen. So, you know, back in 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:53.000 back in the days when we were young and idealistic 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:56.720 and we looked at tech with bright fresh eyes. I'm 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.080 not sure if I was ever idealistic even when I 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:03.280 was young. Well, uh, I can't speak for you. Actually, 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.160 I still consider myself both young and idealistic, so I 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.120 don't know why I even framed it that way. But 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.440 at any rate, during that old episode, we did mention 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:15.319 his work in privatizing space. Yeah he um, he developed 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:19.480 an interest. Some would argue it bordered on obsession with 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:23.400 the idea of creating a private company that would get 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:28.280 America really back into the space exploration game. And you 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:30.440 may think, wait a minute, you know, NASA has been 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.800 around and been working for for decades, what does he 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:36.360 mean get back into it? And the reason, you know, 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:38.560 his reasoning was that it turns out a lot of 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.240 the stuff that we require, the stuff we use to 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:45.039 get things up into space, come from other countries. So 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:47.320 we're gonna be talking a lot about the United States 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:49.600 in this episode and part two. It's going to be 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:52.520 a two partner. So just warning all of our friends 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:55.160 from other countries. This is very US centric. But it 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.560 also is an interesting example of how a private company 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:04.120 can ache some pretty bold steps into an industry that 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:07.360 for a long time was dominated by very, very large 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.600 and very kind of closed off silos. Oh sure. Well, 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:12.760 and also, as we will talk about, I think a 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:16.200 lot of Musk's concept in starting up this company was 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:20.320 for very American reasons. And that's with a like shake 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:22.800 fist shaken in the air, kind of American sort of 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.239 the America. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I don't I 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.320 don't know that that's a that's a loaded intonation. That's true, 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.400 that's true. I I mean it. I mean it with 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:37.080 a sparkle in my eye. I actually think that that 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.040 he's done some incredible work. And there are a lot 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:44.280 of people who talk about his personality and his driving 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.600 ambition and like his inability to imagine failure. I've actually 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.919 seen that quoted a few times different people, that when 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.000 he when he sees a goal, he can't imagine not 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:58.160 achieving it, which I guess as long as you do 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:01.919 achieve your goals is okay. So let's talk about space 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:04.480 X and how it came to be. And it's really 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:08.000 not that old of an organization. Oh no, it only 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:11.400 really started up in two thousand one. Yeah, this was 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:14.800 before there was an official organization of an official company. 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:19.120 This was back when Elon Musk, who was freshly super 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:23.359 duper rich from his work with PayPal uh I, started 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:24.639 to think, what am I? What am I going to 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:27.040 do with this money? I've made all this money and 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:29.720 that's fantastic, but what do I do with it? And 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:34.000 he started talking with another Internet millionaire named Adeo Ressi, 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:36.800 and they were talking about the possibility of funding a 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:40.960 space mission. They both had this fascination with space exploration. 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:42.920 You know, they they both thought of it as this 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:44.880 amazing thing. It kind of makes me think of like 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:46.840 the kids who you know, like, what do you want 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:47.840 to be when you grow up? I want to be 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:50.800 an astronaut? Yeah, yeah, no, the whole Final Frontier kind 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:54.640 of concept exactly. So I think for him, he was thinking, well, 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:56.280 I might not be an astronaut, but I sure as 0:03:56.280 --> 0:03:58.120 heck can make sure I can fund someone to go 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:01.600 up there. And so they started talking about what they 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:04.520 could do, and they pulled in an aerospace consultant named 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.640 Jim Cantrell to talk about it. Now, the original plan 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:10.760 was not to form a company and privatize space in 0:04:10.800 --> 0:04:14.480 that way. They thought about buying all the components as 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:18.520 if they were in NASA, essentially buying them from the 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:22.120 existing infrastructure that's out there, putting it all together, and 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:26.440 funding a private mission to Mars, which is a lofty 0:04:26.440 --> 0:04:30.560 and awesome goal. Yes, very good pun there is quite lofty. 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:32.720 I didn't I didn't really intend it to be a pun. 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:35.240 But that's but I'm glad that I made one um 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:38.520 for the sake of the show. Uh, And I do 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:40.320 want to put in that there there were indeed a 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:44.000 lot of private companies that were maybe not launching stuff 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:46.240 into space here in the United States at any rate, 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.400 but certainly helping create stuff for the exploration of space 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:51.880 at this point, Like you know, if you remember from 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.280 our A, T and T episodes, private satellites go back 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.800 to the nineteen sixties and by the late eighties and 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.719 early nineties here in the States that the government was 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:05.120 not just allowing, but encouraging and enforcing commercial space endeavors 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:07.560 and uh and we were actually kind of way behind 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:10.600 Europe and all of that. So this kind of thing 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:12.480 had been going on. Yeah. In fact, if you if 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:14.880 you look at all the NASA launches, it's not that 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:17.960 NASA was It's not like they had these enormous manufacturing 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:20.279 plants where they were churning out the rockets and the 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:22.520 engines and everything, and they were buying them up in 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:25.240 private company. Yeah, largely in the US that would be 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.479 Locked Martin or Boeing. Those would be the two big 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:31.920 companies that NASA would get equipment from. And in fact 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:36.360 that it's interesting because that's still sort of how things 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:39.240 are today for the most part. And we'll talk about 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:42.240 how that's become kind of an interesting conversation around the 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:45.479 whole SpaceX thing. Oh yeah, yeah, it's very much. NASA 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:47.640 is very much threaded through everything that space X does. 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:52.280 So what happened with this private plan to try and 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.080 fund a mission to Mars, Well, they kind of hit 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:58.000 a little bit of a stumbling block a little bit. Yeah. 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:01.880 It's imagine that you are on say Amazon dot com, 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:07.120 and you see enormous launch rocket offered, and it's offered 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:08.960 for you know, you could get seven of them for 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:11.839 twenty million dollars, and you think, hey, you know, I'm 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:14.039 I got this plan. I'm gonna need seven of these things. 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:16.920 I got twenty million, let's put that in my cart. 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:19.560 And then when you put it in your cart and 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:21.760 you go and you check out, and then says, oh, 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.279 oh you know what, I know what we said, but 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:27.000 instead of seven for twenty million, each of these is 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:29.920 now going to be twenty millions, So your your total 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:32.680 has gone up. That's kind of what happened. When Musk 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:37.479 and crew went to Russia to look at purchasing the 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.320 launch vehicles they would have used for this mission. They 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:42.719 ran into all this red tape, There was all this 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.360 corruption they had to deal with. They talked about bribery issues. 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.720 When they had Russians come over to UH to the 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.520 United States, they would end up having to throw these 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:55.000 like lavish parties and stuff in order to keep the 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:58.640 Russians happy. And eventually Musk said, this is not how 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.440 I want to do business. He said, I think I 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.839 see where the real problem is with the space industry. 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:07.240 It's not it's you can't just point a finger and 0:07:07.279 --> 0:07:13.040 say this enormous organization is inefficient and and and byzantinean 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:15.640 and it's just enormous and no one knows what's going on. 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:19.200 It's not just that, although that's probably a factor. It's 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.600 also that the different entities this organization is dealing with 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:26.280 aren't always on the up and up, or aren't are 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.880 maybe perhaps are able to leverage their position as being 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:34.440 this one company that produces the thing you need and 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.600 kind of holding the whole industry hostage as a result. 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:39.840 And that's when Musk said, you know, maybe we should 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:44.120 look at some other alternative to just purchasing stuff from 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.280 other people. What could we do instead of that? And 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:49.400 in UH in two thousand and two, that's when he 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:52.920 kind of came to the conclusion that instead of trying 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.760 to to buy all this stuff out and uh and 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:59.080 then have a private launch. Maybe forming your own company 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.160 and building the stuff yourself is the better idea. So 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.840 by two thousand two, Musk had decided that buying these 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:09.680 components and then having a privatized mission just wasn't going 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:12.440 to work, and so instead he looked at the possibility 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.600 of creating a company that would build its own rockets, 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.920 which is a big, big deal, especially to to do 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:22.280 that here in America. So he founded a company called 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:26.960 Space Explorations Technology, but everyone calls its space X. That's 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.800 essentially the name now. It really no one refers to 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:33.360 it by its old name. Now. According to The New 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:36.800 York Times, Musk invested about a hundred million dollars of 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:39.280 his own money into the company, so you could say 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.600 that he was pretty determined to have this happen. I mean, 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:45.840 that's a huge investment. Keep in mind, that's one third 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:48.200 of the money he made from his sale of PayPal 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:51.920 to eBay. Now that whole sale was about one point 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:54.480 five billion dollars, but three hundred million of it went 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.320 to Musk. So he gets three hundred million dollars and 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.200 immediately one third of it he invests in the take 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.920 this thing. Yeah, that's that takes guts, and that's a 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:08.240 huge No one has ever argued that Musk doesn't have guts. 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.160 So one of the things he wanted was to have 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.120 this new company lower the cost of putting stuff up 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:19.679 into orbit, particularly small payloads such as smaller satellites, because otherwise, 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:21.480 if you were a company and you had built a 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.280 satellite for your business, whatever that business might be. Let's 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:26.440 just say it's a telecommunications company and they've got a 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:29.880 small satellite they want to put up in space. Normally 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:33.120 you would have to wait until you could have that 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:37.560 piggyback onto another payload because it's so small that the 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:41.120 expense of launching it would be too great. Now, this way, 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:44.360 Musk is hoping to bring price down to be more 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:47.880 attractive to customers that are making these smaller satellites. You 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:52.480 still might piggyback several together, but overall, the the price 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.280 tag drops and then you don't have to you know, 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:58.760 have all the you end up having an increase in innovation, 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:02.600 is really what it comes down. Yeah, So he starts 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.280 to look at how companies get stuff up into space, 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:08.240 and like I said, in the US, you had Boeing 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.280 and Locked. Those were your two companies that you could 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:12.920 really work with if you wanted to try and get 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:15.560 stuff up into space, and they built the rockets that 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:18.840 were necessary to get payloads up there. At Boeing produced 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:22.559 the Delta four rocket and Lockeed produced the Atlas five. 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:25.640 And so you had a duopoly, meaning that there were 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:27.840 only two companies who had to choose from. And by 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:30.800 the way, Boeing and Lockeed work in partnership together in 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:34.480 the United Launch Alliance or u l A. So when 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:37.720 I say duopoly, you know, essentially you're it's it's similar 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:40.079 to a monopoly that you just have these two entities 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:43.360 that can determine exactly how much things cost. And UH 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:47.160 they have all the contracts with lots of big customers 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.160 like the United States military for example, which means that 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:54.079 a lot of their stuff, although you know, certainly worth purchasing, 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:59.680 was very expensive. Yes, so that meant that UH, an 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:04.119 orderization like NASA or smaller companies that had these satellites, 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:08.400 they had a real incentive to look around for an alternative. 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:10.640 The problem was that for the longest time, there was 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.480 no alternative. Right. Meanwhile, the Russian and Ukrainian space programs 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:17.840 offered rockets at a lower cost, which was driving business 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:21.680 out of America, his driving business overseas, and Musk wanted 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:24.800 to reverse that trend by creating a real competitor in 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.160 the United States that could be in the space industry 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.800 and offer competitive prices to bring jobs and money back 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:34.319 into the US. So that really was kind of the 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:37.000 driving force of his sales pitch when he was going 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:41.199 around getting investors early on in SpaceX UM. He also 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:43.520 wanted to do more than just since satellites up. I mean, 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:47.480 that's that's a money maker right there, because people are 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:50.240 going to be producing these for various industries and they 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:52.840 gotta get up there somehow, sure, and cargo as well 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:56.120 for the for the space station. Absolutely, because we have 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:59.480 astronauts aboard the International Space Station and occasionally they need 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:01.520 to either say and stuff back that needs to be 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:05.079 repaired or maintained, or it's the result of whatever experiments 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:07.800 they've been doing, or they of course need more stuff 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:10.280 to come up, you know, supplies, that kind of thing. 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:14.720 So those would both be you know, money making endeavors. 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:16.920 But he also wants to send people up there, which 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.520 is much more complex and expensive venture. Yeah, I mean, 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:24.360 you can design a spacecraft to carry cargo and not 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:28.240 have to worry as much about things like life support 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.839 systems because there's nothing alive necessarily in that cargo. I 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:35.240 mean you might you might have some mice, or there's 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.240 usually some microbes at the very least. Yeah, but I 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:41.280 doubt that. I doubt they're very concerned about it. Yeah, 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:47.520 the microbe you know, the microbe supergroups are really poorly funded. 0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:51.880 But anyway they are, they are in fact microscopic, one 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:56.280 might say. But uh, Musk really wanted to to you know, 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.440 this idea of of sending people not just to the 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:04.120 International Space Station, but further. He had a dream early 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:07.440 early on of this being kind of a stepping stone 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:12.439 toward getting people off Earth and onto other planets or moons, 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.280 and the idea being that, you know, in order to 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:16.600 do that, the first thing you have to do is 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:19.640 solve the transportation problem. And so SpaceX so far has 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:22.840 really focused on the transportation part of it, but they 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:26.560 have not lost sight of this extended goal to get 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:30.079 people onto the surface of Mars, onto the moon, maybe 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:36.160 even have the foundation for further exploration, which is really hard. Yea, 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:39.120 that right there is going to take I mean literally, 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:41.280 it's gonna take a long time, Like it's gonna take 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:43.120 a long time to develop the technology and it's gonna 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.040 take a long time to get there. But yeah, this 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:47.559 is the kind of stuff he says is necessary for 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.719 that to ever be part of our future. So kind 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:52.960 of a kind of an inspiring thing if you're really 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:55.200 into space right now. It was really cool that he 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:57.720 was thinking about that this early in the company. Yeah, 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:01.640 So meanwhile he was saying that, you know, it's necessary 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.960 for this company company to exist because NASA has seen 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:08.880 its budget cut multiple times over the last couple of decades, 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:12.560 and so they have to do more with less, and 0:14:12.600 --> 0:14:15.120 so it would be good to have the option to 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:18.880 work with a company that could potentially launch things for 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:23.560 much less money than what their competitors could do. Right. Although, 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:25.920 you know, okay, despite these budget cuts, the the U 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:28.400 S shuttle program at NASA was going pretty strong during 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:30.960 this period. There would be a five or six shuttle 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:33.520 launches each year in two thousand and two thousand one, 0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.960 and two thousand two, which ain't too shabby, right, So 0:14:38.000 --> 0:14:40.200 we still at this point had a shuttle program which 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:43.400 was nice. Yes, we will get more into the fate 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:46.480 of that later. Yeah, But over the next few years, 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:50.080 SpaceX started to work on developing that rocket technology. I mean, 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:52.960 it's a brand new company, so they started really hiring 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:56.880 people either straight out of school or people who were 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:02.040 former engineers at at NASA Laboratory Worries, and they first 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.840 started developing a rocket called the Falcon one, which is 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:08.560 a two stage vehicle. H Now, if you ever hear 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:11.200 that the two stage vehicle or three stage whatever, and 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:14.120 you wonder what that means. Those are the rockets that 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:17.760 have segmented parts, right, and your first stage is the 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:19.840 one that's closest to the ground when the rocket is 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:23.320 standing upright. That first stage is designed to launch the 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:26.400 rocket off the launch platform and at a certain altitude, 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:28.840 detached from the rest of the vehicle and fall back 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:31.920 to Earth, which will also trigger stage two, which will 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:35.120 continue firing the rocket further out right and until it 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.520 gets to whatever destination orbit it's supposed to go to. UH. 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:40.760 And then you might have multiple stages depending upon the 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:42.920 design of the rocket, but this particular one was a 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:46.440 two stager UH and it had a Merlin engine for 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:49.040 its first stage, and the second stage had a kestral 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.640 engine designed by a guy named Tom Mueller, and mueller 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:55.960 Head gained Musk's attention because he had he had taken 0:15:56.000 --> 0:15:58.080 on a d I Y project. You know, the kind 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:00.240 of thing like you know when you're in school and 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:02.520 you just you're really interested in something and you just 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.400 want to build a version of it for yourself. Yeah, 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:06.880 you just decided to do it. You just decided to 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:10.960 go out there and build a thirteen thousand pound forest 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.920 liquid fuel rocket in a friend's warehouse. Yeah, that's fifty 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:17.000 eight newtons you know in case. Yeah, I know, some 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:18.880 people like the toy with cars. This guy was just 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:22.360 building a rocket that would have an enormous amount of 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:26.640 force behind it. So today, yeah, he was. He took 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:29.640 d I Y to a level that is beyond my reckoning. 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:33.200 But today Mueller is the vice president of propulsion Development, 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:38.239 Big shock. So they start working on this Falcon one project. 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:42.960 By two thousand three, they would open a testing facility, right, Yeah, 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:45.800 and the small town of McGregor, Texas. And this is 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:48.920 where all of their equipment and vehicle parts are proven 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:51.800 as safe as possible or scrapped and taken back to 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:56.320 the drawing. Right. And then we had another terrible news story. Yeah. 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:59.600 Also in two thousand three over at NASA, disaster befell 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:02.560 the Shuttle program this year. That was when the Columbia 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.159 orbiter would break apart during its re entry and and 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.320 all seven members of its crew would be lost. When 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:10.920 it had launched, pieces of insulating foam had broken off 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:13.679 of the main engines external fuel tank and damaged the 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.640 heat protection tiles on the left wing of the craft. 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:20.160 And y'all, re entry is serious business. An orbiter will 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:23.800 be moving at some seventeen thousand miles per hour, that's 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:28.400 some eight thousand kilometers per hour, and exposed to friction 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:32.280 based heat of approximately three thousand degrees fahrenheit a k 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:38.639 a thousand six d fifty degrees celsius. So it's a 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:41.680 it's a dangerous time, certainly, but um so so not. 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.320 NASA would wind up grounding the Shuttle program while it 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:48.800 investigated this disaster and and started planning safeguards for the future. 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.120 And certainly the folks over at SpaceX we're taking very 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:55.320 careful note obviously. Yeah. I mean, if their plan was 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:59.280 to eventually put people up into space, and I don't 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:01.920 mean for this to be a spoiler for part two. 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:04.520 But that's something that SpaceX has yet to do. They 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:07.879 haven't they haven't launched demanded mission yet. But if they 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:10.680 do wish to do this, they have to obviously take 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:14.240 these things into account and and you know, personal safety 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:17.879 has got to be paramount and there in their estimation 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:21.080 when they're building these things. Keeping in mind that. The 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:23.639 interesting thing about astronauts is they talk about, Hey, you 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:25.920 need to ask us what if the risk is worth it? 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:28.879 Because many of us are ready to sign up. As 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:31.960 soon as something is shown to be uh, to be 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:36.040 working in working condition, I'll sign up. And I'm thinking, wow, 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.040 you are a different kind of person than I am. Uh. 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:44.520 It's it's inspiring, but not me um so. So, in 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:49.000 two thousand four, facing further budget cuts and continued fallout 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:52.879 from this Columbia disaster, then President George W. Bush announced 0:18:52.960 --> 0:18:56.960 the NASA Shuttle programs eventual retirement. It was set out 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:01.080 a few years from from this announcement, right, I don't 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.359 think it was specified quite yet. We'll get there. Yeah. 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:05.240 It was one of those things that made a lot 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.320 of people very sad, because, of course, space exploration is 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:12.040 one of those things that is often very inspiring, particularly 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:17.720 to young people who see this this uh incredible endeavor 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:21.080 to learn what we do not yet know, and it's 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.359 it's got adventure wrapped up in it. I mean, you 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:25.880 can't deny it. Oh yeah, yeah, well you know, But 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.920 NASA shuttle program would regain its feet the next year, 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.040 in two thousand five, they would send a single shuttle 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:36.359 up for the first time since Columbia's loss. And and 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:39.879 over the next six years, the Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:44.760 shuttles would become active again, largely collaborating with the European 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.640 Space Agency on projects to build, maintain, and also crew 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:52.119 the International Space Station. And you know, I wanted to 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:54.000 talk about all of this NASA stuff because even though 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:57.800 it's not directly at this point related to SpaceX, you know, 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:01.440 public American opinion about space exploration is so tied to 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:04.800 what's going on with NASA UM and and also you 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:06.359 know they do vi all of their stuff from the 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:09.760 commercial space industry, so it's very much a part of 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:13.320 of what's going through SpaceX's mind right now. Absolutely. I mean, 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:17.639 this this is such a huge interconnected web, right You've 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:20.439 got this thing where it's not just it's not just 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.679 the scientific endeavor, the loss of that that you have 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:26.000 to take into account. I mean, that is already an 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:29.200 enormous thing, but on top of it, it's business. Right. 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:33.080 If NASA ends up scrapping this whole program and there's 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:36.439 no replacement, there's nothing that takes the Space Shuttle's place 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.160 in that time, and there are fewer contracts out there 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.439 for a company like SpaceX, right, or for Lockheed or 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:45.439 for Boeing. I mean, you've got this enormous industry that 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.760 relies upon this demand, and if the demand goes away, 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.639 then that's a problem. Meanwhile, that also meant that NASA 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:55.040 had to outsource a lot of work to Russia. Whenever 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:58.080 Russia was sending up capsules to the International Space Station, 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:01.160 they had to rely upon that. And again it it 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.119 illustrated that there needed to be some sort of new 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:07.920 entity to allow UH the United States to be able 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:11.800 to operate independently of other nations. This is also the 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.920 time two thousand five, That's also the time when SpaceX 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:17.879 would buy a stake in a company called Surrey Satellite 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.600 Technology Limited to the company that builds small satellites. So 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:25.080 now they've got a stake in a company that actually 0:21:25.440 --> 0:21:28.360 is trying to send stuff up into space. Moving on 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:32.119 to two thousand six. On March two thousand six, my 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:36.240 wife had a birthday. But more importantly, in the context 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:39.600 of this particular episode, SpaceX had a test launch of 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:42.959 the Falcon one launch vehicle also known as a rocket, 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:45.280 but launch vehicles what they call it in the biz. 0:21:46.200 --> 0:21:49.199