Today, Explained - One giant leap for SpaceX

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

For the first time in almost a decade, an American rocket is launching people into space. The Verge’s Loren Grush explains why the launch could fundamentally alter the future of spaceflight. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the International Space Station. As of right now, we are go for launch. Today, the head of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, spoke from the Kennedy Space Center. This is a unique moment where all of America can take a moment and look at our country do something stunning again, and that is launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil. Even the president will be there. I hope you're all going to join me. I'd like to put you on the rocket and get rid of you for a while.

Okay, thank you very much. President Trump is planning to go because this launch is a pretty big deal. I mean, I would say it's the biggest space news of the last decade. Lauren Grush, senior science reporter, The Verge. It's important for two reasons. One, this is the first time that we, as the United States, have launched people to orbit from American soil since the end of the space shuttle program. The last space shuttle flight took place in 2011, and since then, we have not had a way to put our own astronauts

into orbit. And the second reason is the ride that they're flying on. This is not a NASA vehicle, it's a SpaceX vehicle, It's a SpaceX vehicle. It's a private vehicle. And so this will mark the first time that humans have launched to orbit on a private vehicle and not a government-made vehicle. Why is NASA even working with a private company like SpaceX to begin with?

Yeah, so for most of spaceflight history, the government has been in charge of creating the vehicles that take humans to orbit. When Bush canceled the space shuttle, the idea was to go back to the moon. They wanted to free up money so that they could do these bigger, bolder things in space. And so that spurred the Constellation program. We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon, and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own.

When the Obama administration came in, they decided to cancel the Constellation program, citing it was too expensive. So they decided to amplify this new model for doing business, where NASA would become a customer instead of the one building the rockets in the first place. NASA decided, okay, we're going to partially invest in these vehicles, but these companies are going to be in charge of the design and building it and of the operation. We will also accelerate the pace of innovations as companies, from young startups

to established leaders, compete to design and build and launch new means of carrying people and materials out of our atmosphere. NASA also wanted to help the commercial companies and say, okay, once you're done, you can take these vehicles and you can actually use them to turn a profit. So potentially, once this is over, SpaceX can sell tickets to private citizens and take tourists to orbit if they wanted to. So NASA gets a chance to see if this whole working with private companies thing can really work. What's on the line for SpaceX? Well, this is a huge deal for SpaceX because the reason that SpaceX was created was to put people on Mars.

So launching humans has been part of their goal this entire time. But it's definitely been a long road to get here. I mean, they had quite a few explosions when they were trying to launch rockets. But eventually, they got their technology to work. They had NASA invest in them. And then they were able to send cargo to the International Space Station through NASA. And so now they've taken their cargo vehicle called the Dragon and have upgraded it into what is known as the Crew Dragon. And they've had to do a ton of testing for this program

in order to convince NASA that it's time to put astronauts on these vehicles. And then they've also had their fair share of hiccups too. Last year, a test version of the Crew Dragon exploded during a ground test. Oh, no, fuck, no, fuck. And that, you know, really sent shockwaves through both the space community and NASA. But they were able to overcome those and now they're on the cusp of actually putting humans on these vehicles.

I hate to ask, but if a bad outcome does happen here, what kind of setback is that going to mean for NASA, for SpaceX? It's going to be a very tragic day, for sure. And it's something I don't really want to think about. And it's going to create a lot of questions of whether or not this way of doing business was right or successful. I don't know if that means that NASA will stop pursuing these kinds of programs, but it certainly will be an existential question for a lot of people if that were to happen, and it will be a really bad day. Assuming this is successful, though, I mean, I remember when the former chief scientist of NASA, Ellen Stofan, came on our show maybe about a year ago, you know, she was talking about how NASA can only really go as far as public funding can take it. NASA is actually about 0.4% of the U.S. federal budget. So I do hear people

sometimes saying, oh, I don't know if we can make it to Mars in 15 or 20 years. You're like, we could go in five if we really tried, you know, and spent the money. So if this is successful, could it mean that we might actually get to that original mission of SpaceX where they're sending people to Mars or private citizens on a really expensive ticket to space? I mean, I think this is obviously the crucial first step for that to happen. Whether or not you and I are going to be able

to afford tickets to space, you know, that's still an open question right now. It's still tens of millions of dollars to ride on one of these vehicles. So sure, SpaceX has been able to bring the cost down, but has it been able to bring the cost down in a way that makes it more accessible and is able to sustain a burgeoning market of space tourism? That's something that we're going to find out in the years ahead. And can SpaceX survive long enough to get to that point where they can start regularly sending people to space?

I think they're going to keep going no matter what. But let's remember that the reason that SpaceX was founded was to put people on Mars. That is what Elon Musk has been, you know, saying from day one. And I don't think a lot of people realize that SpaceX hasn't launched anybody yet. I think a lot of people underestimate just what it takes to send a human and not a robot into space. We have a lot of needs that need to be met.

We need life support systems. We need, you know, food to eat. We need a place to go to the bathroom. You know, there are a lot of things that need to be engineered to keep us alive in space because we are just not meant to be there. So I think once SpaceX finally has the experience

of what it takes to keep people alive in space, that is going to be super valuable experience for them and inform the rest of their vehicle designs moving forward. It's taken years for SpaceX to get to this point, on the verge of sending their first crewed rocket to space. But they've gotten really good at a different type of launch, and it's starting to clutter up the sky. I'm Noam Hassenfeld, filling in for Sean Ramos-Varum. This is Today Explained.

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ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. Some months ago, I was talking to an astronomer, Cliff Johnson, who was telling me about this kind of extraordinary and concerning thing he saw through the telescope he was running observations on. I was remotely observing from Chicago. But the telescope was in Chile. With my colleague, Clara. They were looking at the Magellanic clouds.

These are two very dim dwarf galaxies. And suddenly, you know, in the webcam, you start seeing these kind of streaks, like these little objects start, you know, slowly making their way across the frame. It's like something out of, like these little objects start, you know, slowly making their way across the frame. It's like something out of like a UFO movie, and he had never seen anything like it before. And they just kept coming. Kind of like imagining looking at like the Pac-Man dots,

just kind of flying together in a line across the view. One after another, after after another after another. And eventually he determined there were 19 of these dots that were crossing over the telescope's view. For the entire time we were taking this single exposure, they were crossing the screen. These objects are so bright that they create these white streaks through the image

where it's overexposed. And it's essentially like imagining nails on a chalkboard, basically just having these laser streaks go right across and zap your data, literally. And then Cliff's colleague went to Twitter and posted the picture of what they were seeing and just wrote, I'm in shock. Brian Resnick, senior science reporter at Vox. What are these dots? What are they?

They're satellites. And are these government satellites? Who's behind them? No, they're from SpaceX. They're called Starlink satellites. They're little satellites. They're small. And they orbit the Earth at a relatively low altitude compared to other satellites. And they're meant to eventually one day beam down internet access to remote areas of the planet. Is that the only way some places can get internet access? Like, are there a lot of places that can't get online without satellites? Well, there is a really large need to expand internet access to rural places.

Even in the United States, rural broadband access is a huge issue. A really crucial point of inequity is that there are a lot of places that big cable companies, they just don't build out the infrastructure for good internet in rural places. And this is a problem that the government has tried to address. A lot of people are concerned about because if you're cut off from the internet, you're cut off from the economy. That's just not just the United States, around the world too. There's a lot of places that are just cut off from internet. How do we weigh this good of bringing internet to more remote places against these concerns

from astronomers? So astronomers get the value of connectivity, but they're really afraid that like a not enough thought has been put into protecting their view of the sky. SpaceX has the clearance to launch 12,000 of these satellites. And SpaceX wants to send even more, potentially tens of thousands. And they're not the only company that is seeking to send up these small satellites in low Earth orbit. Perhaps not very long from now, the number of visible satellites in the sky might outnumber the number of stars. The astronomers see this as like the tip of the

iceberg. What exists right now is not going to destroy astronomy. They're worried about this regulationless future where anyone can send up any type of bright object into space and really face no consequences for that. And they don't have to think about, A, the research impact that these objects are having, and B, also, what does it mean that we might be, like, permanently changing

our view into the cosmos? So let's talk about the cost here. Is it just an aesthetic one that we are sort of going to be looking up at a sky that is a bit brighter and a bit fuller than we're used to, or is there something worse there? And I don't want to say that a sky full of lights is fine, but what's the worst scenario here?

The problem is that observatories, they're just like giant cameras. So they're opening up their apertures, they're collecting light, and they're making images. So if you have these bright things, that ruins the image. It literally looks like someone took chalk or an eraser and erased part of the image. Every little bit you erase in an astronomy image is an enormity. And increasingly, so much of astronomy now is about taking this big picture and looking for little tiny things that are changing.

So they're not looking at one star, they're looking at all of them or as much as they can at one time. And in these very wide view astronomical images, if you have satellites everywhere, well, that ruins the image. The fear is like, this is just the beginning. So the fear is not Elon Musk versus astronomy. The fear is like, this will continue unregulated and there are no protections for the night sky. Beyond the clutter, beyond harming, say, astronomical images, are there other problems that come from having more and more satellites in the sky? You know, there have already been some examples of things that have been sent up that have been intentionally bright.

There is this group some years ago that sent up a satellite called the Humanity Star. New Zealand's first satellite in space is a huge disco ball. But the glittering satellite put into orbit by Rocket Lab is not an invitation to party, more a prompt to think a little deeper about the role of humans on planet Earth. And astronomers were not happy about it. Calling the satellite an act of environmental vandalism and a New Zealand light pollution project. Astronomers were like, wow, if you can send something up that's intentionally bright into

space, like what else could happen? And like there's no international ban on space advertising. So you can imagine a scenario where some company sends up satellites into space and has them spell out a favorite brand of cola or something horrible. Could you imagine going to Utah, going to one of the darkest places in the world? You go out there, you do your trip,

you start stargazing, and then you see overhead flash by like, buy Coca-Cola. There's nothing internationally, at least, to stop that from happening. Plus, there's this whole other problem of space debris, where if we just keep launching more and more things into space, we have this potential to create space junk where satellites can go offline, they can break, they can just float before they de-orbit and crash back into our atmosphere. And they can potentially create problems when they bump into other things. So, I mean, it seems like a pretty serious issue, both from a research perspective, from an aesthetic perspective, from a safety perspective in space.

I mean, what are astronomers or other stakeholders doing about it? You know, we're at the part of the movie where the scientists are like, this is a problem and we should be thinking about it. And they're really just asking for international communities, for companies like SpaceX, to think a little bit harder. To their credit, SpaceX is working with the astronomy community. They're working with specific observatories. They're trying some experimental coatings on their satellites to darken them.

But at the same time, they keep sending up more and more of these satellites that are unaltered. And they're going to keep doing it. So that's a part of the problem, too. Scientists are like, hey, can we just slow down, like, figure this out before it's too late? look up and there's, you know, islands the size of Texas of plastic floating around everywhere. And there were people decades ago saying, don't dump plastic in the ocean. And only now are people taking it really, really seriously. And I wonder if what you're talking about, this tip of the iceberg is sort of demonstrating that space, or at least the space close to Earth, is maybe less infinite than we think.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely finite. There's only so much space around the Earth, and our eyes are really sensitive, and so are these observatories. They can see the faintest light from light years and light years away. Like, light that predates all of human civilization for sure and predates a lot of life on planet Earth, that light that traveled here from the deepest reaches of the cosmos to be blocked by some little plaything that some humans built, it seems so deeply tragic to erase this light that has come to us over millions of years,

over tens of thousands of years, over billions of years, however long that light traveled to reach our telescopes. And to just, like, erase it? It just seems wrong. Thank you.