How SpaceX was $200,000 from bankruptcy

this video was brought to you by slightly a web platform that designs your presentations for you just add the content and let artificial intelligence do the rest get one free month by signing up at sleeping calm /youtube it began as a dream to take mice and plans to Mars and ended up as the first private company to carry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station and along the way it survived many crashes and an almost inevitable financial extinction we are talking of course about space X and today we are gonna dive deep into its history filled with crazy anecdotes and valuable lessons to see where the company aims to be soon so let's get started with SpaceX in this episode of company forensics [Music] the beginnings you and your buddies are flying to Moscow to buy a refurbished intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM hold on did you know buying used ICBMs was a thing anyway you have one goal to buy a used ICBM and get closer to your purpose of sending mice and plants to Mars but the sellers look at you think you're a rookie and spit on you literally well that's what happened to Ilyn musk in 2001 but he wasn't done one year later he returned with more talent and most importantly more cash a lot more cash this time the sellers didn't spit on him and instead drank vodka to begin negotiations and the musk was serious about negotiations he wanted not one ICBM but three his offer however came up short so again they mocked him pissed off musk stormed out of the building and went straight back to the airport on the flight he returned to his team and came up with an idea guys I think we can build the rocket ourselves back then musk wasn't really known for these weird pickup trucks and the Tony Stark vibe instead he was a young calm millionaire having made a fortune by selling companies like paper the fortune that he made was now a stepping stone for his obsession space with millions in his bank account he could finally pursue his dreams in a way pretty much only he could for example he crashed Mars society dinners and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the organization in these dinners which are pretty much a who's who of rich people obsessed with space he told everybody about his idea to create a Mars greenhouse or maybe even sending mice to Mars and then bring them back with offspring included these were crazy thoughts but there was one idea that stood out he wanted space travel to be cheap SpaceX is born with his goals clear musk founded space explorations technologies SpaceX for short in El Segundo California in 2002 here's a quirky fact for you SpaceX's location was so massive musk could drive straight up to his desk in his silver McLaren that's the millionaire's life but he also constructed the place for complete integration he and the engineering department worked side to side with the construction department must even unloaded cargo himself so he could learn all the details of what people were doing musk had also concluded that SpaceX could build 85% or more of a rocket in-house which would help them free themselves from having to deal with vendors with their higher costs and longer production times during these first stages some people called musk a lunatic while others stepped into the fend him but it's understandable why people would doubt him when he announced the first rocket the Falcon won a tribute to the Millennium Falcon he announced it would carry a 1,400 pound load for seven million dollars when the competition was pricing this at around 30 million dollars the first launch would be in November 2003 just 15 months after founding the company he even hinted of a trip to Mars by the end of the decade ambitious to say the least musk however had a dependable team around him to back up his stock he hired young talented individuals with similar determination such as Tom Miller and aerospace engineer who became one of the founding employees at SpaceX he led the development of the Merlin engine which is used in the Falcon rockets and this team was relentless one story goes that SpaceX needed a turbo pump a company like Boeing would take five years and a hundred million dollars to produce said pump but musk and Miller managed to get a supplier to build one in 13 months for 1 million dollars SpaceX also wanted to shake the industry altogether according to experts at Anderson in 2004 musk protests that a contract NASA gave to a defunct company called Kistler aerospace as no other company had the chance to participate the government sided with SpaceX further opening the doors for private space transport but the promise 2003 launch had bumpy roads the engine design was taking longer than expected with rising costs and musk had consumed himself in yet another massive project called Tesla he Manafort of that he was investing millions into space X and also invested seventy million dollars into Tesla after which he ended up a CEO so now he had two companies with visionary ideas but a thirst for funding musk had repeatedly stated that both projects almost collapsed on themselves SpaceX didn't make the original 2003 deadline but this didn't deter musk he sent the entire team to an island in the Pacific which was previously used for missile testing to prepare for the launch but each time they tried to send Falcon one to space new technical issues came up so it was back to the drawing board it wasn't until March 24th 2006 that conditions seemed adequate for the first Falcon test flight and so Falcon one flew to the heavens things were going great until 33 seconds after liftoff when the engine failed and the Rockets tumbled to the ground crashing into a fireball but musk was determined to have another launch in six months even if the rest of the crew felt it would be too soon keep in mind spacex needed to get going as fast as possible so he had a team working on getting falcon one up and running again then he assigned another team to work on Falcon 9 a possible replacement for the aging space shuttle program and meanwhile he was bidding to become a supplier for NASA flights all of this without one successful launch it's important to highlight that by then SpaceX received seed money coming from commercial orbital transportation services that's Cotts from NASA the funding was initially 278 million dollars eventually he would reach almost 400 million dollars but it wasn't for Falcon instead its objective was to help in the development of the Falcon 9 project and the Dragon capsule Falcon 1 was having a tough time getting off the ground the second and third launches failed and all the while musk kept injecting funds both into Tesla and SpaceX the need for money Falcon 1 eventually did fly but it wasn't easy by the fourth and first successful launch SpaceX had almost no money and hurried so much the first stage components still needed improvement and disintegrated upon reentry by the time Falcon 1 made it successful made in flight SpaceX needed a lot of money and so did Tesla sources say Tesla was burning around 4 million dollars per month and musk has said in retrospect that he almost came down to choosing one of the two either Tesla or SpaceX to save the successful Falcon one launch did put SpaceX on the map when it came to investors after all it was the first private liquid fuel rockets to enter orbit but it was 2008 and the recession hit hard both companies were depleting their funds and it came to the wire as musk had just a couple of hundred thousand dollars to spare it came down to the wire SpaceX caught a big breather when they landed a new contract with NASA to provide a launch platform for space cargo for a healthy 1.6 billion dollars as for Tesla musk managed to gain a new round of funding with 40 million dollars when December 23rd 2008 just days before bankruptcy that's a Christmas gift now all he had to do was make his Rockets work which is easy right as for Falcon one it had its second and final successful launch in July 2009 now SpaceX focused its attention on the newer and larger Falcon 9 the first noticeable trait it had not one but nine Merlin engines but this was a much more ambitious program Falcon 9 would be able to carry the most cargo of any spacecraft and it didn't end there along with Falcon 9 and SpaceX worked on the Dragon capsule to carry cargo into the International Space Station if they accomplished this they would achieve yet another first in the industry at least it seemed like the lessons learned from Falcon 1 we're of great health 11 months after the final Falcon 1 flight in June 2010 Falcon 9 successfully launched and placed a mock-up of the Dragon capsule in orbit then in December of that year it launched a second time with an operational Dragon capsule not perfect though as on both occasions the boosters disintegrated in reentry but the company kept going by 2012 its Dragon capsule docked with the ISS making it the first commercial spacecraft to do so SpaceX now meant business before the launch of the Dragon capsule its valuation was at around 2.4 billion dollars after the success that valuation jumped to almost 5 billion dollars then they landed at contracts to be part of the Commercial Crew program with NASA and develop a crew capsule for the next generation of us human capabilities you see after the shuttle program was cancelled NASA relied on the Russian space program to ferry astronauts the International Space Station at the sum of 80 million dollars per astronaut not a bad deal for Russia but NASA desperately needed another option and SpaceX now became a commercially viable space transportation company by the end of 2012 it had 40 launches in its 10-year history the Falcon 9 has launched 89 times with a 98% success rate one of the highest in the world SpaceX was so big that even another giant Google ended up investing in it as part of a funding round with fidelity totaling 1 billion dollars in exchange for 8.3 percent of the company this was a valuation of 12 billion the biggest internet company joining a space transport company sounds like space domination to me breaking the norm SpaceX has always aimed to be the cheapest company in space transport it can manage this through strategies like reusing components mainly the Boosters check out the grasshopper tests they're cool also manufacturing most components in-house allowed SpaceX more control over costs further lowering them but the strive for reusability comes at a cost a mental one that is max Vosges of a former employee at SpaceX recalls that this obsession drove engineers insane and that we could have had Falcon one in orbit two years earlier than we did if Ellen had just given up on first stage reusability but then check out what he says Ellen he forces them to do what's hard and I admire that about him well it did work eventually SpaceX managed to land the Falcon 9 first stage component which is big news because it can drive the price further down but let's go back a bit why is NASA so expensive Musk's view on it is exciting and harsh he believes that contracting system guarantees manufacturers some profit even if they exceed the advertised price shareholders want to make money and a cheaper option for NASA means less income for them so Boeing and Lockheed maximize costs on the verge of cancellation of course Boeing and Lockheed have rejected his comments but he is somehow right the ula estimated a cost of 400 million dollars launched and the European Aryan program costs 137 million SpaceX on the other hand has offered launches ranging from fifty to sixty million dollars now what does this all mean SpaceX forced the entire industry to rethink itself ula aims to redo its business model the European Space Agency filed for more subsidies and now looks to lower costs meanwhile countries like China are rushing to create their cheap yet efficient rockets and unlike the past SpaceX has proven it's worth as of late in the first quarter of 2020 alone the company launched as much cargo as China Russia and their European efforts combined but of course it doesn't stop here SpaceX continued with the development of the Falcon Heavy a bigger version capable of more cargo the Starling satellite system a network of 12,000 satellites to provide Internet all over the world and the starship a reusable space shuttle which would lower the cost to about 2 million per launch and yes the starship engine did blow up but this is a new SpaceX in fact due to recent success musk has accelerated starships development it seems the moon is closer than we thought the now and the future our attention shifts towards the now just days ago when two austra knots in really cool suits took to space in the crew dragon reusable spacecraft the crew version of the original dragon vehicle Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken took off on May 30th amidst these weird times the entire world watched as dragon blasted to space giving us hope for a better tomorrow even if some used it as a political opportunity those who became part of the first ever commercial space flight to place a crew in orbit successfully add another notch to the list but you can tell this is only the beginning musk has been clear from the start he wants to reach Mars now SpaceX proves that it's possible they are the Wright brothers of commercial space travel but other companies are catching up with the likes of Jeff Bezos from Amazon with the Blue Horizon project so we are witnessing the second space race and it's a private one there's even talk of the first tourist flight involving a Japanese millionaire and of course musk said yes SpaceX has failed in the past it probably will continue to make mistakes but one can only ask where will they go next we don't know hope you enjoyed that episode my space geek comes out when I watch anything that's related to SpaceX so I hope you enjoyed that as well hit that red subscribe button if you want to stay tuned for more company failure and success stories [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Slidebean

Views: 98,862

Keywords: How SpaceX was $200000 from bankruptcy, spacex, spacex launch, spacex landing, falcon 9 launch, falcon 9, spacex history, elon musk, elon musk spacex, nasa spacex launch, nasa spacex, falcon 9 landing, rocket launch, spacex starlink, slidebean ceo, caya slidebean, company forensics, Space Station, crew dragon, dragon spacex, nasa astronaut, tesla, spacex story, spacex fails, nasa spacex landing

Id: uHQX3MpAgfQ

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020