Star Wars: The Battle to Build the Next Shuttle

the first time we were racing into space it was about national pride the eagle has wings this time it's about money the international space station is a near zero-gravity laboratory dedicated to scientific research the end of NASA's shuttle program left the world with only one way to get there Russia we're proposed to pay over seventy million dollars per seat to the Russians just to go to the space station it's just kind of embarrassing that the United States has to thumb rides from the Russians there is a better way a new shuttle will soon take flight but NASA won't be making it private companies will and liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket and dragon we're building this in anticipation of a market emerging NASA is hosting a competition for private enterprise to build a spacecraft to shuttle humans back and forth to low-earth orbit and that contract will be worth billions I think commercial space today is much like commercial aviation was back in the late 20s and 30s it's being enabled by the government but eventually it's going to take off there's competition and competition is good contenders in this heated race Boeing SpaceX and Sierra Nevada and the stakes are high all multibillion-dollar aerospace companies each determined to win the NASA contract in order to become the leader in the emerging space industry SpaceX is the youngest contender born in 2002 from PayPal billionaire Elon Musk his company set out with a lofty mission to colonize Mars do you ever question if you're crazy yes I think it's important to question your sanity because at the point which you stopped questioning your sanity you're probably insane SpaceX's dragon is a capsule design meant to hold both crew and cargo and can stay in orbit for up to two years how much cheaper is it going to be to send an astronaut to the International Space Station using dragon dragon can take up to seven people and if nASA uses the full complement of crew and orders for per year we can do it for twenty million dollars per person it's a lot cheaper than the 72 million dollars person yeah the SpaceX Dragon capsule is launched into space by the company's own rocket called Falcon 9 dragon is the first commercial spacecraft in history to deliver cargo to the International Space Station and safely return to Earth a mission previously achieved by only three nations this is the first Dragon spacecraft you can see the the heat shield and the scorch marks this came in like a flaming meteor how did it feel and when that came back in one piece hey right it's like wow I can't believe it work we're kind of like a Silicon Valley technology company that's doing space what qualifies you to put human beings in outer space every launch of the Falcon 9 rocket which is the rocket that would carry astronauts has succeeded so it's got a hundred percent success rate which is I mean the best success rate of any rocket ever boeing is known for airplanes but they actually have a long history in space since nasa's beginning boeing has been a contractor on every manned space program including building the parts for the international space station boeing has been in human space flight from day one and so it's just part of our core we see this as just the next huge opportunity for Boeing and for NASA how big do you expect the market to be the development price itself is such a huge barrier just a very different business model than Boeing's used to our huge development programs are typically centered around commercial airplanes a military aircraft where there is a lot of orders and right now the foundation of the business is two flights a year Boeing's cst-100 is also a capsule they're weld list design makes their craft stronger and lighter than traditional models how many astronauts will fly in this capsule right now we've configured it to fly up to five but the cst-100 is designed for up to seven we have a significant experience obviously in capsules from mercury and Gemini Apollo the capsule was was an easy decision what about comfort this isn't exactly the most comfortable position I've ever been in no absolutely but you could have a very rough landing we needed to make sure that this design would would satisfy even the roughest potential landing and then there's aerospace insiders Sierra Nevada you've probably never heard of that despite the fact that they launched something into orbit about every two to three weeks Sierra Nevada has been around for over 50 years one of the things people see when they come here it's wonderful technology they see a spaceship that's already flying in a short period of time you guys are up against Boeing and SpaceX what makes you think that you can take them on how many people knew Google before they started we think dreamchaser is the best transportation system for what we do in space it's almost like we're building the iPad and other people are building the apps in the future from that iPad Sierra Nevadas Dream Chaser design is the only one in the competition that is not a capsule it's a lifting body one model is the only one that actually looks like the shuttle what's interesting about this is actually the volume inside is as much usable volume as the Space Shuttle had we could put seven people it would be a comfortable fit and they could stay in space for several days if they need to with enough supplies really like a space SUV yes so far there hasn't been a capsule that's taken humans that's gone up to space so one might have to build 20 or 30 or 40 capsules to do the same thing that we can do with one space vehicle when you look at the economics of that that's a really important thing all right let's jump in this simulator okay look at the fast I see the runway right there yeah doesn't fly like an airplane but it lands like an airplane the fact that the Dream Chaser requires a landing strip that sets it apart from the competition for us we can land pretty much on any runway 8,000 feet or longer in the world because we don't enter like a capsule we pull a lot less G's on entry we come in at a very low one and a half GS so you can come in land on a runway with a sensitive payload the scientists can get to that payload within 30 minutes because it's right there on the runway every spacecraft ever flown by NASA has been built by a commercial company and increasingly the government has transferred the financial and physical risk of the business to private enterprise is there something at risk with these big businesses entering into the space industry the organization NASA that had done this for many many years is not doing it so we are sort of sticking our necks out a little bit we're taking a group of people corporations that really hadn't been at the development level and we're sort of thrust in there and saying you go produce make a safe system for me and come back and let me know when you're done but the benefit is that we get back and forth much simpler conquering a new frontier requires having a destination for NASA that place is the International Space Station it's the most expensive single object ever created projected to cost the u.s. eight billion dollars in the end ISS costs 60 billion and that's not including operating costs or the initial cost of the shuttle program all in the price tag is an estimated 150 billion dollars ISS infrastructure is expected to last until 2028 before requiring costly maintenance the government funding has only been committed until 2024 if a manned commercial space shuttle won't launch before 2017 commercial companies will be left with little time to make a profit to justify the cost these private companies are betting that there is business beyond ISS there is a potential for a huge business opportunity there is going to be an incredibly robust and interesting capability to get not just American astronauts back and forth to low-earth orbit but perhaps paying commercial customers someday to a destination it certainly doesn't exist today fast forward 10 years I wish I could look in my crystal ball and say that this is going to take off and in a matter of 15 or 20 years we're going to have a couple space stations orbiting the Earth perhaps a hotel back and forth to which we take you know wealthy but paying passengers nonetheless it's about when you build it will they come the original space race was driven by nationalism the new space race driven by the bottom line of private enterprise in my case I have an ideological Drive the thing that really matters is to establish a base on on Mars might be worse to become a multi-planet species establishing an insurance policy full for life itself Elon Musk has sunk 100 million dollars of his own fortune into SpaceX you see then the Commercial Crew program as a step in that direction is that why this is important to SpaceX it's gonna be helpful towards creating a base on Mars for Boeing SpaceX or Sierra Nevada winning this contract would secure their company's survival whoever wins this contest they set to be the next major player in space exploration yeah I really think so this is the time well this design die if Boeing does not win the NASA contract we'd have to go back and see whether you could close the business case by moving forward without the help from NASA on the development what will it mean for Sierra Nevada if you lose this race if you don't win the contract by time this decision is gets made we would have had a lot of maturity on the vehicle so there is a strong likelihood that we will be able to take what we've learned and move it to other markets it would slow us down because we would have less money to spend in that direction but we continue launching satellites as well as launching cargo to the space station and bringing cargo back from the space station every spacecraft we've ever flown has been built by a commercial company this is just another way of procuring that spacecraft I'm convinced that we will have a reliable safe spacecraft when the time comes to assign that country the more we test ourselves and the more we push exploration those smarter and the better we benefits in our DNA to explore that's what draws us to space we need to continue to go beyond what we currently know you

Channel: Bloomberg

Views: 1,588,785

Rating: 4.7601814 out of 5

Keywords: Bloomberg, Star Wars (Film Series), SpaceX (Business Operation), elon musk, nasa, Space Exploration (Organization Sector)

Id: W0i1pdHJmzM

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Sun May 04 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/JauXin]

Here's the previous SpaceX post and other subreddits.

[u/dcm628]

Did anyone else think the SNC guy was a complete buffoon?

His comparison to Google was ambitious but understandable.

His analogy to building the Ipad while others build the apps in the future made no sense at all. It was gibberish.

Then his comments at 6:13 about capsules are wrong and/or misleading. His first line " So far there hasn't been a capsule that's taken humans that's been up to space" is false, but could have been edited out of context. Even so, if I interpret him as saying specifically his competition for CCtCap doesn't have a capsule that has taken humans to space it has nothing to do with his next point. "So one might have build 20 or 30, 40 capsules to do the same thing we can do with one space vehicle." He is making a case for a reusable vehicle, not his design vs a capsule design. He falsely assumed that just because nobody has flown a reusable capsule before that nobody will ever fly one. This had to be shot before Dragon V2 and it's propulsive landing capability/reuse was announced, but he still made a false assumption about his competitor and presented a poorly constructed argument.

Edit: It seems I was mistakenly giving him the benefit of the doubt. From reading the other thread I can see that it was known back then that both CST-100 and Dragon V2 will be reusable vehicles. Does that guy even work there?

[u/Aperture_Lab]

While this isn't exactly new, I hadn't seen it before, and it does show some nice shots inside Hawthorne, some interview questions with Elon, and similar shots and questions at Boeing and SNC.

[u/Malky_10]

DON'T. READ. YOUTUBE. COMMENTS.

I don't know why I always do it...