2012: SpaceX: Elon Musk's race to space

60 minutes rewind in the history of spaceflight only four entities have launched a space capsule into orbit and successfully brought it back to the earth the United States Russia China and Elon Musk mr. musk is a wealthy internet entrepreneur who has vowed to revolutionize space exploration by bringing down the astronomical costs and that can't happen fast enough for NASA which retired the shuttle last summer and now has to pay its old rival Russia to fly American astronauts into space musk is one of the contenders vying for a NASA contract to build America's next man's spacecraft a contest he believes he has the right stuff to win when the final shuttle mission ended last July for the first time in three decades the United States had no way to launch astronauts into space it was the end of one era and the beginning of another instead of NASA designing the next manned spacecraft the White House decided that private industry should design build and fly it opening space to commercial development one of the companies vying for that contract is SpaceX Elon Musk is the founder and CEO it's what we are experiencing at this moment in time the turning point in man's reach for space going from governments to private companies like yours I think we're at the dawn of a new era and and it's I think it's gonna be very exciting what we're hoping to do with SpaceX is to push the envelope and provide a reason for people to be excited and aspire to be human musk is 40 years old a naturalized American citizen and reportedly worth nearly two billion dollars he isn't your typical corporate CEO as a teenager he wrote computer games in his native South Africa or immigrating to the US and to Silicon Valley where he was one of the most successful Internet entrepreneurs the co-founder of PayPal ladies and gentlemen mr. Elon Musk despite a chorus of skeptics musk built a car company called Tesla that turns out 5000 high-end all-electric cars a year another musk company sells solar power systems but his lifelong passion is space and when eBay bought PayPal in 2002 musk started looking for ways to launch his new fortune into orbit I went to Russia to look at buying a refurbished ICBM which is a very trippy experience it was very bizarre and when I tell people that I feel like what musk made three trips to Russia trying to buy an intercontinental ballistic missile called the knepper his plan was bizarre put a greenhouse on the rocket landed on Mars and bean packed the pictures don't get people really excited and that would recharge human space exploration you know that was my original idea you just wanted to get people interested in space I guess yeah capture the imagination yes though it does that it turns out the Knepper was so expensive his idea never flew so musk decided that the only way to get an affordable rocket was to build it himself and he started SpaceX other words me coming into the rocket business not knowing anything about rockets not having ever built anything I mean I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor why even begin when something is important enough you do it even though flowers are not in your favor how much of your personal fortune have you poured into this 100 million dollars a hundred million dollars into something that you did not believe would work at the beginning yes must truly believes that low cost space exploration is essential to the survival of mankind I think it's important that humanity become a multi-planet species I think most people would agree that a future where we're a spacefaring civilization is inspiring and exciting compared with one where we are forever confined to earth until some eventual extinction event that that's really why I started SpaceX SpaceX is housed in a sprawling factory near Los Angeles where fuselages for Boeing 747s used to be built from its beginning ten years ago its goal has been revolutionary change in rocket and spacecraft manufacturing now tell me what's that big piece right up there that's the second stage of a falcon 9 rocket instead of multiple companies building parts all across the country SpaceX builds most of its rockets and spacecraft in house based on Musk's belief that it's more efficient and lowers costs 1,400 engineers and skilled technicians work here building engines rockets space capsules creating mostly from scratch the thousands of components that are the guts of a rocket so what that means is raw metal comes in and then we build the engines the airframe the electronics and we integrate all of that together and that's all done more or less under one roof metal comes in one end of this factory yeah spaceships come out the other yes final assembly takes place at the Cape Canaveral launch pad if the margins there and we don't then have margin to the fourth power that's fine musk has college degrees in business and physics but SpaceX is his first venture in aerospace he bills himself as chief designer and chief technology officer how did you get the expertise to be the chief technology officer of a rocket ship company well I do have a physics background that's helpful as the foundation and then I read a lot of books and talk to a lot of a lot of smart people you're self-taught yeah well it's self-taught yes meaning I didn't I don't have an aerospace degree so how did you go about acquiring the knowledge well I like said I read a lot of books talked to a lot of people and have a great team his team is a mixture there are newcomers mostly 30-something engineers some of them straight out of college and then there are the skilled technicians and aerospace veterans former NASA astronaut Garrett Riesman spent three months aboard the space station and flew on one of the final shuttle missions he was brought in to help oversee the company's manned space work you know I'm curious you have so much background in engineering you could have easily gotten a job at Boeing or at Lockheed but you came here if you had a chance to go back in time and work with Howard Hughes when he was creating TWA if he had a chance to be there at that when it was the dawn of a brand-new era wouldn't you want to do that I mean that's that's why I'm here and that's why most of the engineers we met are here building spaceships is the chance of a lifetime if you reach the point of having a successful manned flight what will you have proven we're not doing it to prove anything you know we know it can be done we're just trying to do it a little bit differently a little bit faster and to push the push defense a little bit farther out and then we can all go I mean I want to go into space I assume most people here do as well how many want a ride to what four years after starting SpaceX rolled out its first rocket an unmanned booster called the Falcon one Falcon has cleared the tower but the first three test flights failed to reach orbit we are hearing from the launch control sensor that has been an anomaly on the vehicle when you had that third failure in a row did you think I need to pack this in Devin why not I don't ever give up I mean I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated it turned out that the third failure was caused by a two-second glitch in the timing eight weeks later must bet the company on another flight this time around everything worked perfect if that poor Florence hadn't work that would have been it we would have not had the resources to the amount of v you couldn't have gone out at that point yes death would have been I think inevitable because we did not have the resources to do not to Perth launch this is a tricky business trucking yeah yeah I wish it wasn't so hard the story will continue after this in 2010 SpaceX tested a larger more powerful 9 engine rocket called the Falcon 9 and an unmanned cargo capsule known as dragon it was the first privately developed rocket designed to carry cargo and eventually astronauts to the space station and back ignition confirmed 3.2 km/s in its first test flight the Dragon capsule performed flawlessly orbiting the Earth twice before splashdown in the Pacific the first time a private company had launched and recovered its own spacecraft and this is a historic spacecraft yes yeah we came across the Dragon capsule while musk was showing us around you know what I noticed about your cargo ship is that it has windows yeah absolutely the windows are there in case there's an asteroid on board who wants to look out but people don't put windows in cargo ship that's right exactly so what that tells me is that this was never intended to be only a cargo so I know the Dragon was always designed to carry asteroids musk says a manned version of the Dragon capsule will be safer than the space shuttle and a lot cheaper engineers are already designing escape rockets life-support equipment and computer guidance systems they were studying seating for seven when we were there do you believe that your rocket will be the next American rocket to take an astronaut into space I think that's the most likely outcome yes that sort of confidence has not exactly endeared him to the space establishment or to his competitors there are people who've been in the rocketry business for decades yeah who say about you that you don't know what you don't know well I suppose that's true of anyone how can anyone know what they don't know critics say you can't do this your answer to them is we've done it he's done it in partnership with NASA which has given SpaceX technical advice and a contract worth up to 1.6 billion dollars mostly for 12 cargo flights to the space station but SpaceX is lack of experience bothers some NASA legends like Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan they've testified to Congress that the Obama administration's drive to commercialize space could compromise safety and eventually cost the taxpayers now it's a time to overrule this administration's pledge to mediocrity you know there are American heroes who don't like this idea the alarm strong gene cernan have both testified against commercial spaceflight in the way that you're developing it and I wonder what you think of that I was very sad to see that because those guys are yeah you know but those guys are heroes of mine so it's really tough you know I wish they would come and visit and and see the hardware that we're doing here and I think that would change their mind they inspired you to do this didn't they yes and to see them casting stones in your direction difficult did you expect them to cheer you on so they hoping they would what are you trying to prove to them what I'm trying to do is to make a significant difference in in spaceflight and and and help make spaceflight accessible to to almost anyone and I would go for as much support in that direction as we as we can receive President Obama made his support clear when he visited SpaceX's launch site just before Falcon 9's first test flight as this animation shows Elon Musk's next flight will be far more ambitious carrying cargo all the way to the space station it was scheduled to fly in February but it's taken longer than expected to perfect the flight software the flight will be a complicated rendezvous with a space station that is moving 17,000 miles an hour 240 miles above the earth okay so it looks like our burn performance is nominal in the SpaceX mission control flight simulations are continuing and if all goes well SpaceX will begin routine Space Station cargo deliveries later this year but the big prize is winning the NASA contract to build America's next manned spacecraft and Elon Musk is facing stiff competition I'm probably not the guy that most people would bet on it wins it's it's like a little kid fighting a bunch of sumo wrestlers usually the sumo wrestlers win we're a little scrappy company every now and again those Grand Prix company wins and III think this will be one of those times

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 1,316,880

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, paypal, electric car, rockets, billionaire, spacex, elon musk, america, spacecraft

Id: 23GzpbNUyI4

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 09 2018