ColdFusion - The Story of SpaceX | ColdFusion

Starting point is 00:00:13 Welcome to the first Cold Fusion video of 2016. Let's start the year with a bang, in the form of a rocket blast. Throughout the ages, human civilizations have always looked up at the stars and wondered, what's out there? Over the centuries, we've learned a great deal about space, but have had very little advancement in the ways of exploring it. As time progressed, the power and capabilities of technology increased, but space travel was largely left behind.

Starting point is 00:00:42 By the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century, space travel was still complicated, expensive and worst of all, run totally by government. There's just too much red tape waiting to snag the fresh ideas of scientists and physicists, leading to a pretty stale industry. Until now that is. One man who chooses to dream big has started to change all of this. That one man is Elon Musk and his big dream is Space X. In this video, we'll learn all about SpaceX how and why it started its achievements and future plans.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Let's get straight into it. So first up, why and how did it get started? SpaceX or Space Exploration Technology Cooperation was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and the co-founder of PayPal. SpaceX's main goal is to create technologies to reduce space transportation costs and enable the colonization of Mars. Why space, why do you think it's important for us to be... Sure.

Starting point is 00:01:49 ...have quick access to lower Corvette. With SpaceX, it's trying to help solve the kind of space-bearing problem. I mean, I think that a future where we're a space-faring civilization and a multi-planet species is very exciting, inspiring, awesome future. and in order for that to happen, we've got to dramatically improve the cost of spaceflight. If we can keep improving the cost of spaceflight, then eventually that trend is in the right direction. It could be leading to a city on Mars,

Starting point is 00:02:26 and certainly along the way a lot of activity in low with orbit and the moon and lots of other exciting things. Elon's initial vision was to create relatively inexpensive reusable rockets that could have travel characteristics similar to current commercial airlines. That is, you could send a ship out to space with cargo, passengers or any payload, re-enter and land back on Earth and be ready for the next flight within hours. In the early 2000s, Elon approached members of Russia's space program three times to gain access to a refurb Russian rocket in order to start his practical space dream. Unfortunately for Elon, the deal ended up falling through. But after this, he realized

Starting point is 00:03:10 something. He didn't need the Russians or anyone else because rocket technology had more or less stayed the same since the 1960s. So for any real progress to be made, there needed to be a whole new way of doing things, a better way. Not many people believed in private space travel, so Elon was going to have to do most of this by himself and all from his pocket. So I had to come up with low-cost ways to produce engines, the primary structure of the electronics to launch operation, as well as run the company with very little overhead. In the end, he managed to reduce the cost of building a rocket greatly by streamlining the process into an economically viable territory.

Starting point is 00:03:50 Think of it much like how Henry Ford made the automobile cheap to manufacture. About 80% of all parts from any SpaceX rocket are made in-house by SpaceX themselves. Okay, so that's all nice, but really what's the big deal? Well firstly, Elon's methods are drastically cheaper. Let me explain. Traditionally, for NASA to launch anything into space just once can cost anywhere from $100 to $260 million. For the Space X program, a Falcon 9 rocket would cost about $57 million to make, but it

Starting point is 00:04:25 is reusable and burns about $200,000 worth of fuel per launch. And pretty much, after paying for the rocket, which is half the price of just a regular launch anyway, you would be spending a few hundred thousand instead of about 200 million per launch. This is a quantum leap in cost savings. This is one of the reasons why there's so much excitement around SpaceX. Alright, so it's cheaper, but what else has SpaceX done? What other breakthroughs are there? Well, let's take a look.

Starting point is 00:04:57 In 2008, SpaceX became the first privately funded liquid propelled rocket to reach orbit. In 2010, they were the first privately funded company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft. 2012, the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station. 2013, SpaceX delivered a satellite marking the company's first delivery beyond Earth orbit. SpaceX has flown six missions to the International Space Station. And finally, on December 21st, 2015, SpaceX successfully returned to the Earth orbit. successfully returned a first stage booster back to the ground, the very first such accomplishment by an orbit-capable rocket. The main purpose of this mission was to put 11

Starting point is 00:05:42 satellites in orbit for SpaceX's customer, Orbcom. The completion of this mission marks the first major advancement in space technology in over 30 years, a true milestone event proving the endless possibilities of entrepreneurship. This achievement wasn't without failure though. The previous launch attempt failed due to a faulty steel strut. But with all of that being said, I think the biggest deal and the most amazing thing about Space X is actually how Elon Musk approached the challenges that came his way. When Elon started Space X, he came from a software engineering and business role in PayPal, an obviously vastly different world to rocket science. How is he ever going to learn about rocket

Starting point is 00:07:05 science to build a company based around it? The answer? Read books and learn rocket science. According to Elon Musk's biography, that's exactly what he did. Here's a quote. Musk felt comfortable standing up for his positions and directing teams of coders at PayPal, but at SpaceX, he had to pick things up on the job. Musk initially relied on textbooks to form the bulk of his rocketry knowledge. But as SpaceX hired one brilliant person after another, Musk realized that he could tap into their stores of knowledge. He would trap an engineer in the SpaceX factory and set to work grilling them about a type of valve or specialized material. One SpaceX engineer, Kevin Brogan, states, I thought at first that he was challenging me to

Starting point is 00:07:49 see if I knew my stuff. Then I realized he was trying to learn things. He would quiz you until he had learned 90% of what you know." End quote. Okay, so we're almost at the end of the video. But before we finish, what are Elon's goals here? Musk wants to reduce the cost of space payloads by a factor of 10 to about $1,000 per kilogram or less.

Starting point is 00:08:13 In June of 2015, SpaceX asked the federal government to begin testing for a project that aims to build a constellation of 4,000 satellites capable of beaming the internet down to the entire globe, including remote regions which currently do not have internet access. Elon Musk's long-term vision for the company is to develop technology and resources suitable for the human colonization of Mars. He hopes to send humans to Mars by 2030 and he has expressed interest in living there someday. So far, this seems like the stuff of science fiction, but how close are we actually to getting people in space? Well, it actually might be pretty soon.

Starting point is 00:08:51 SpaceX has used its dragon spacecraft to make uncrewed cargo runs to the International Space Station, and this has proved its basic vessel's spaceworthiness. The company is scheduled to begin manned runs to the International Space Station in 2017. So there you have it. That's the story of SpaceX and what they're up to now. It's incredible that one man and his idea could cut into and disrupt possibly the hardest industry on this planet. Just as a final thought, I want to leave you with this.

Starting point is 00:09:23 Here's a quote from Jim Cantrell, who was part of the founding team at SpaceX with Elon Musk. Quote, so I am going to suggest that Elon is not successful because his vision is a grand, Because he is extraordinarily smart, not because he works incredibly hard. All of those things are true, but the one major important distinction that sets him apart is his inability to consider failure. It is simply not in his thought process. It doesn't matter if he's going up against the banking system with PayPal or going up against the entire aerospace industry with SpaceX or going up against the US auto industry with Tesla. He cannot imagine not succeeding. And this is a very critical trait that ultimately leads him to success.

Starting point is 00:10:07 What separated us, I believe, was his lack of being able to conceive failure. I know this because this is how he parted ways at SpaceX. We got to the point where I could not see SpaceX succeeding and walked away, but he stayed with the project and succeeded. I have 25 years of building space hardware, and he had none at the time, so much for experience. End quote. So that's just something to think about.

Starting point is 00:10:32 Okay, on that note, that's the end of this video. I'd like to know your thoughts on SpaceX and what they're doing at the moment. If you're new here, feel free to subscribe. If you want to watch more cool stuff, hang around for the next 10 seconds and follow the prompts on your screen. Anyway, this has been Degogo and you're watching Cold Fusion. Thanks for watching and I'll catch you again soon for the next video. Cheers guys.

ColdFusion - The Story of SpaceX | ColdFusion

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