Front Burner - The billionaire space race is on

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are promising a new era where anyone will have access to space. But not everyone’s on board. Today, we speak to science writer Shannon Stirone about the promises and perils of the billionaire space race.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Clean release. Ignition. Good rocket motor burn. There's Mach 1 trimming now. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. 30 seconds, Mach 2. Everything's looking really good and stable. To all you kids down there, I was once a child with a dream, looking up to the stars.

Now, I'm an adult in a spaceship. On Sunday morning, Virgin CEO Richard Branson and a crew from his rocket company, Virgin Galactic, blasted off on a brief trip to space. The whole thing was a spectacle before he even lifted off. A spectacle hosted by Stephen Colbert. And I will be using this model to give scientifically accurate play-by-play of today's historic events, as well as doing this. Richard Branson isn't the first billionaire to go to space. That distinction is believed to be held by the software architect Charles Simone back in 2007.

But he did manage to get up there before Amazon's ex-CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos is planning to ride on the first crewed flight by his rocket company, Blue Origin, on July 20th. And Bezos is still trying to outmaneuver Elon Musk and his company, SpaceX, for big NASA contracts. The billionaire space race is very much here. And while some people hope this will open up space travel to way more people, others are worried that it has some big, big downsides. My guest today is science writer Shannon Sterone. She's written about space and sometimes billionaires in space for The Atlantic, The New York Times and other publications. and other publications. Shannon, hi, thank you so much for making the time today.

Hi, thanks for having me. So look, you and I are speaking on Sunday, and we just watched Richard Branson and his crew launch into space via a YouTube live stream. And I really want to talk about this live stream with you in just one moment. But first, Jeff Bezos and his brother are headed to space in nine days, plus the female pilot, Wally Funk, and someone who's paying $28 million at an auction. And can you just explain to me, before we get rolling here, what exactly these flights are and and and how far they're going and how long they're up there for yeah so uh they're they're very different flights actually so the flight that unity 22 um that just took off and is on its way back already for virgin galactic um is technically a rocket plane so they're you, you know, are just flew up to 280,000 feet, and then they'll land back on a runway. Jeff Bezos's flight is different in that it's

actually a rocket, sort of a capsule on a rocket, and they will fly up just 12 miles higher than what Richard Branson did today. They'll sort of go up and just kiss the boundary of the Karman line, which is just where NASA defines the edge of space. And they'll go up for a couple of minutes, be weightless and come right back down. I wonder if you could put that height in perspective for me. So like 280,000 feet, and then I guess 12 miles higher than that. Can you compare that to how high it is when I get on a regular plane? Yeah, so I mean the highest that you're going to fly on any sort of larger commercial airliner is going to be max about 40,000 feet. So it is a significant difference.

I mean they go up high enough where you can see the thin haze of our atmosphere. You can see the curvature of the Earth. You know, it is a fundamental change in perspective. Okay. I know that Branson only recently announced that he was taking this flight, and he, like, insisted that he was not trying to beat Jeff Bezos. Is there a little competition with Bezos? I know nobody will believe me when I say it, but honestly, there isn't.

In fact, he says the world needs both space tourism companies. And so, I don't know, like, do you believe that? No. Of course not. Of course not, because why wouldn't he just, he could do it any old time. I mean, this is not, I mean, I hate to say it, but like all pun intended, this is not rocket science. Like this is ego. He wanted to beat Bezos as he wanted to beat him. What was going through your head as Branson's flight took off this morning? Sort of mixed feelings. I really want them to be safe. You know, I'm nervous watching them because they have had an accident on this plane before where one pilot died, one pilot was injured significantly.

before where one pilot died, one pilot was injured significantly. At 45,000 feet after co-pilot Michael Osbury prematurely unlocked the plane's tails or feathers and they deployed, the space plane actually broke up around the pilots, thrusting them at the speed of sound into an atmosphere with almost no oxygen. You know, so I'm nervous just watching any human take off from Earth in that sense. It's just it's very dangerous. On the other hand, I'm a little bit angry because it's so fluffy. And, you know, watching the live stream is is so it's like propaganda for Virgin Galactic. It's like, you know, one giant, very highly produced commercial. As soon as they do that, it's going to initiate a backflip for Spaceship Unity.

This is normal. We want those windows pointed down towards the Earth to maximize that incredible view. So in that sense, it just feels like there's this disconnect between, you know, what the public, what they want the public to see this as and how I, you know, personally feel. Right, right. And just for people who might have not been able to turn into the live stream, there was like Stephen Colbert was hosting.

Entrepreneur, philanthropist, iconoclast, activist, adventurer, billionaire, goatee host organism. And Khalid performed this new special song. Canadian Chris Hadfield was a commentator. And the beauty of what Sir Richard and his crew are doing now is that they've had the mothership Eve to carry them gently up. So, yeah, they're much more comfortable than I was at this stage.

You know, they announced at one point this partnership with Land Rover. They designed some bespoke vehicle to, like, drive them to the launch. And then after they kind of reached their destination, they sort of talked about... Remember the day, remember where you are, and remember who you shared this with. And remember the name Virgin Galactic, because today space is virgin territory. Yeah, it definitely did feel like one long commercial for Virgin Galactic. But more broadly, though, what have you been thinking as you've been watching both Bezos and Branson prepare for these space trips, particularly the timing of these trips? Yeah, I mean, I guess first, objectively, I can say that it's a cool thing.

It's cool that they have developed these rockets and these spacecraft or these airplanes that can take civilians up to this sort of boundary and safely return them back to Earth. Objectively, that's extremely cool. However, I do find that there is sort of a poorly timed method right now between the pandemic. You know, a lot of the world is still waiting, desperately hoping to get vaccinated um you know we're in the thick of a fire season sort of i mean climate change is an ongoing crisis that's not going to stop unfortunately but to to have this sort of fluffy um boisterous ego contest in the middle of this global crisis just feels like the most tone deaf thing you could do. What about the argument that, you know, maybe these guys will sort of push the technology

further and that that technology might help with climate change? Yeah, I, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing that they're doing with these spacecraft in particular that will help climate change. We already know what can help the climate crisis, what can mitigate the effects of the climate crisis. And, you know, they're not participating in those solutions. You know, Jeff Bezos did donate $10 billion. We're sort of yet to see where that money is going to be funneled. dollars we're sort of yet to see where that money is going to be funneled but the these companies are designed for us you know specifically diversion is more

so than Blue Origin even is a for-profit business it's space tourism they want people to be able to pay to buy seats you know the going rate for a flight on Virgin is a quarter of a million dollars. So, you know, that does not help the climate crisis. That helps Richard Branson get richer. You know, this is something, I guess I'll bring in another billionaire here. Elon Musk has also talked about, and he's also planning to go to space soon, and he's talked about SpaceX as his company's plans for space. Tourism is, quote, an important milestone towards enabling access to space for everyone. The very first flights would be fairly expensive,

but the architecture allows for a cost per ticket of less than $200,000, maybe as little as $100,000. Do you think it's possible that there's a point where more people could afford to go to space, where it wouldn't cost a quarter of a million dollars? Absolutely. I mean, the first thing I would say is it's important, I think, to recognize the very thin veil of, because they're all saying the same story, is we want to give everyone access

to space like it's an inclusive thing. I mean, I think that, first of all, there's no way that we can believe them when they say that, when they don't practice inclusivity and making things accessible to people on Earth. Why would they suddenly do it at the Kármán line or on Mars? Second of all, I mean, there is, of course, a chance down the line where, you know, they develop more of these rockets and they have more flights. And it sort of balloons out into the way commercial aircraft did, where initially only wealthy people could take cross-Atlantic flights or get on an airplane at all. And eventually, you know, you get more companies, the prices go down, and now we can all get on a Southwest flight for 100 bucks and go wherever. So there is, of course, that chance. The difference, though, is that this is

so much more dangerous. It's so much more technologically challenging. So I think just like commercial airliners, there will be deaths. Someone's going to go up and someone's going to die, and then everything will come to a halt because suddenly no one's going to want to pay a quarter of a million dollars to die. So I have a big problem with that narrative of we want to give everyone access to space. Like, I don't really think that's true. I think you just, it's cool to have this company and it's cool to say that. But there's all evidence to the contrary. Okay. And just picking up on that affordability issue for a second. So Musk company has a lot

of contracts with NASA and they have made NASA be able to do a lot of things more cheaply. The Holy Grail is really a fully reusable orbital system. This building houses and processes Falcon 9s that have landed at our landing pads or have been landed on the drone ships and have come into port. So isn't that a good thing for actual scientific exploration, you think? Yeah, I mean, what SpaceX has done with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy is remarkable. I mean, the fact that this technology this technology has, we've been dreaming of it for decades and science fiction and physicists have proposed, you know, if we really

want to have a sustainable presence in space, we need to be able to reuse our rocket stages. Otherwise we're just wasting all this invention and this money. So the fact that SpaceX has made that become reality is fantastic and it has brought the cost down but there's no um there's no actual mission for SpaceX that is we want to advance science we want to advance space exploration it's I want to send people to Mars you know I want to be able to do these things there's no science involved That's definitely not Musk's MO. I know that there are people who, on the flip side of that, argue that SpaceX is also creating problems for scientific exploration because of all these satellites that they're putting in the air. And can you tell me about that? Yes. Starlink is ruining the night sky. If not, I would say

they have already ruined it. He has an FCC license to launch 12,000 satellites into the region sort of between where the International Space Station orbits and slightly lower. It's already reduced Hubble's visibility by, I think it was 5%. So many astronomers who go and use telescopes for looking, you know, for far out objects have Starlink trails destroying their images. So it's not only that, but the light pollution from the satellites are affecting animal migration. Certain places, even in Canada, actually this summer, I saw a report where along the horizon line, there's going to be certain parts in Canada where people are going to see more Starlink satellites than stars. So when you look out and you see bright lights, those will not be stars. Wow.

Although I suppose the flip side to that is that the attempt here is to try and get internet or affordable internet to like areas that don't have access to the internet right now. Is there like a better way to do that, you think? Yeah, I mean, my argument is that if he really wanted long-term infrastructure for providing internet to people, he would do that by laying cables and building physical infrastructure in these places, which he definitely has the money to do.

But it's not as cool as, you know, the commercials of putting up a rocket and having to be used from Earth and then watching the little train of satellites go out. It's not as cool. So they have other options, they're choosing not to take them. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here.

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Okay, now I want to talk to you about Mars. So Elon Musk has talked about SpaceX's ambitions for Mars, as you mentioned, among them building a human settlement there. And he said he's confident that a million people could live on Mars by 2050. And what do you think of this plan? That's never going to happen. How come? It's never going to happen. Mars is beautiful and desolate, and it looks a lot like places on Earth. However, Mars is a deadly, deadly toxic planet. It is, you know, the temperatures. Mars dips down to temperatures well below zero,

you know, many tens of degrees below zero at night. Temperatures dropping as low as negative 225 degrees Fahrenheit. Even for Canadians, it's like it will kill you in a matter of seconds. There's toxic radiation, not only from the sun, but from galactic cosmic rays. The soil is toxic. It's full of perchlorates, which are, you know, it's not Matt Damon. You can't grow potatoes in it because the potatoes would have poisoned him and killed him. They grew even better than I expected. I now have 400 healthy potato plants. I dug them up, being careful to leave their plants alive. The smaller ones I'll

reseed. The larger ones are my food supply. The only viable way to have anyone not, I mean, live, I think is a generous word, survive on Mars would be to live underground. It is not in any way, shape or form a viable place to live or even to survive, I would say. So his, it is a, I would say confidently that he believes in that story, but it is a lie. It is simply not true. I'm really glad that you brought up Matt Damon because like embarrassingly, that really, that really was my point of point of reference. You know, I know you parse through a lot of this in this very funny article called Mars is a Hellhole that you wrote earlier this year for The Atlantic. And also in that article, I remember you made this comparison between Musk and the astronomer Carl Sagan, who used to host the show Cosmos, people might remember. might remember. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky. And how they related to the idea

of space very differently. And I think you've kind of touched on some of it, but I wonder if you could tell me how you see them as different. Yeah, that's a great question. So that article was sort of sparked by Elon Musk filming this podcast where he sort of started to poke fun at Sagan's pale blue dot poem, where Sagan says, you know, there's no other place for us like this is our home. In our obscurity, in all this vastness there is no hint

that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves the earth is the only world known so far to harbor life and musk you know channeling calls again there is nowhere else at least in the near future to which our species could migrate this is not true this is false mars but the thing is with with elon and i think it's it not i think it is incredibly similar to what we saw today with virgin galactic what we're going to see on the 20th with jeff bezos is that there is a profound difference between for-profit billionaires who have for-profit companies and space exploration with the purpose of discovery and science. Going to space to try to understand, are we alone in the universe? Or let's go to Mars and look like what the Mars 2020 rover is doing right now, which is let's look beneath

the soil and see, was life ever here? Is life currently here? Are we alone? Or let's go to the icy moons and see, you know, try to understand how did the solar system form? How did Earth become the way it is? Those are so different than look at me launch on my plane. I'm going to go up and beat Jeff Bezos to space, or I want to put 100 million people on Mars because I need you to believe that I'm capable of putting 100 million people on Mars, because how cool would it be if I could do that? What Richard Branson did this morning was absolutely super cool, but it's for a business. He wants to sell tickets to rich people who can go have those cool experiences. I kind of wonder though, is what they're doing so different from what the U S and the Soviet union were doing in like the sixties and the seventies,

like didn't NASA get to where it's gotten because of a bunch of guys trying to like one up each other by landing on the moon? Yeah. I mean, and I think, I think it's a really important thing to talk about is that is that the roots of NASA, like you mentioned, began with the Cold War. And, you know, we went to the moon a few times. And in 1972, we're like, okay, we're done now we did that. And NASA transitioned into our, you know, beloved science space program. So I do think that there is a difference, though, because while everything unfortunately seems to begin as an ego race, there is, of course, a chance that these men and these companies can, you know, change their MO and go, you know what? companies can, you know, change their MO and go, you know what, I really, I want to be able to launch these rockets and put a bunch of science payloads on the scientists, give me all of your wish lists of what you want to go to suborbital flight. I mean, Jeff Bezos has enough money,

he could launch so many spacecraft into deep space, to the different different planets and moons, he could do that to his heart's content, he's got so much money. But he doesn't do that. I think that's the proof is in the pudding is that this is not a new thing. When these guys are building out their companies, they're doing so already in an environment where NASA has existed for 50 years. So they have grown up in a world where they've watched Voyager go to the outer solar system, where they've watched Galileo go to Jupiter, they know full well what they're capable of doing, I'd love to get your take on this. Also related to your earlier point about these billionaires flying to space while things are literally on fire down here on Earth. You know, a lot of people are wondering whether NASA should be doing this right now in a time

when we've got a climate crisis and so many other issues to fix on Earth. Like, does it still make sense to pump so much money and scientific brainpower into space exploration at all? Is this still worth doing? I love that question. That is such an important question. I think absolutely space exploration, true space exploration is one of the most unifying and connecting and powerful things that humans can do. I think that space exploration, putting what very tiny, the amount of money that NASA gets every year to do anything in space is so paltry, it's upsetting. So it's like, it doesn't even cost you a cup of coffee or cost us a cup of coffee every year. It's like a couple of pennies that we each contribute to making NASA exist.

Having those missions, sending humans to the International Space Station, going to the planets, going to the icy moons, asking these questions helps us understand our place on Earth. It helps us understand why we're here, how we got here, how we're connected to each other. And it helps us become better stewards of the planet because if we understand why our climate operates the way that it does, or if we can monitor it from space to see it changing over time, those are all things that help us live better. They help us survive. It is profoundly important. And I think the minute we stop truly exploring space, we stop being really human. Okay. Shannon, thank you so much for this. This conversation was a lot of fun, but I also learned a ton. So thank you. Very appreciative. Thank you for having me.

All right, so before we go today, after returning to Earth on Sunday, Branson called the whole experience magical. At a press conference, he said, quote, I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth because I feel I'm still in space. Jeff Bezos also posted a congratulatory note for Branson on Instagram saying, quote, can't wait to join the club. Also go Italy. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to Front Burner and we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.