SpaceX: Revolutionizing the Space Industry
[Music] It's common to hear that space is the final frontier, to go where no man has gone before. But in actuality, it's the beginning of the future. The knowledge we gained about the universe increases day by day, but our means of accessing it is a slow and sometimes even painful journey. Since the 1970s, the American spaceflight industry has been moving in the wrong direction. From being able to send humans to the Moon atop a Saturn V rocket, to then only being able to send astronauts to the ISS aboard the Space Shuttle - now having nothing at all.
Space has been a place only explored by the biggest governments on the planet, but now the tides are shifting. If the most powerful countries on Earth aren't willing to put effort, do others have to step up? The engineering feats from the 20th century had put us in a position to accomplish all of our goals, but yet the entire reason we began has been forgotten. The reasons these rockets were built, the places we've went, the things we've achieved, it's all just been swept under the rug until now.
The private spaceflight industry is growing at an unprecedented rate. The biggest problems with space travel are being tackled by some of the smartest and richest people on this planet. And it's not a coincidence. Space travel is one of, if not the, most important issues today. It's not a cultural issue; it's not a political issue; it's a matter of evolution. We've always been explorers, moving from sea to land to moving across entire continents, traversing oceans, covering every single inch of our planet, and now it's time to go even further.
[Music] As of 2019, only four entities have put a space capsule in orbit and successfully returned it back to Earth: the United States, Russia, China, and SpaceX. That's it! Elon Musk took a sum of 100 million dollars and in 2002, Space Exploration Technologies, or better known as SpaceX, was born. They're in a league of their own, launching some of the most powerful spacecraft since the Apollo era. SpaceX is competing with some of the most powerful forces in the entire world. Their goal is simple: to enable humans to live on other planets, and as of right now, the destination is looking like Mars.
SpaceX has revolutionized the commercial spaceflight industry and are the ones reigniting the public's interest in space travel. But the company hasn't always had the reputation it does now. The Falcon 1 rocket was SpaceX's first and almost last venture in commercial spaceflight, but it's perhaps the most important one of them all. From 2006 to 2009, Falcon 1 attempted five flights, but it wasn't off to the best start.
[Music] "When you had that third failure in a row, did you think, 'I need to pack this?'" "Why not? I don't ever give up. I mean, I'd have to be dead or incapacitated." But on September 28th, 2008, things went a little differently. Falcon 1 carried a 165 kilograms simulated payload into orbit successfully for the first time. A privately built liquid fuel booster reached orbit. The Falcon 1 rocket is the first in the family of Falcon rockets developed solely by SpaceX. It stands 21 metres high and was capable of carrying over 500 kilograms of payload to low Earth orbit. For its time, this was the most important event in spaceflight history. 500 kilograms isn't much, but this was the start of everything. It created the roadmap necessary towards a future of cheaper and more reliable space travel.
That day, that first successful flight was what single-handedly saved SpaceX from extinction. After the first three failed attempts, SpaceX was on life support. The 100 million dollars that was put into SpaceX was all gone. If this fourth flight hadn't succeeded, SpaceX most likely would have gone under, and all the things you're seeing them do today would have never happened. "I messed up the first three launches, first three launches failed. Unfortunately, the fourth launch, which was the last money that we had, we thought if the fourth launch worked, or it would have been it for SpaceX."
Simply putting something in orbit is one of the hardest tasks there is, and all these failures show how challenging the process really is. They had done it, and it saved everything. On December 23rd, 2008, NASA awarded commercial contracts out to private spaceflight companies. 19 of which went to a company called Orbital Sciences, while 12 went to SpaceX. The contract was valued at over 1.6 billion dollars. From this, SpaceX was saved, and they boomed in a good way this time.
In 2010, SpaceX developed Dragon, and yet again made the world's first commercially built spacecraft to be launched and recovered successfully from orbit. The Dragon spacecraft is the future of manned space travel. It can deliver not only cargo, but is also capable of carrying up to seven passengers to Earth orbit and even beyond. Also in 2010, a new addition to the Falcon family would be introduced. The Falcon 9 was made with reusability in mind. It's a two-stage rocket with nine Merlin engines that's over three times the size of the Falcon 1.
Both of these, the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon capsule, were launched together for the first time in December 2010. A year and a half later, they were sending Dragon to the International Space Station, becoming yet again the first private spacecraft to dock at the ISS. Since then, they've been doing routine resupply missions to the ISS funded by NASA. So far, they've done over 18 resupply missions with only one failure, and they have no plans of stopping.
With all the success of the Dragon spacecraft, let's not forget about the Falcon 9 itself. After years of work, in 2014, the first test flight of the Falcon 9 reusable took place. The rocket is the same as any other Falcon 9, but now the rocket was capable of lifting off of the ground, launching into the sky over 250 metres, and after hovering, turned back to the launch pad in one piece. After more testing, they decided to try and test these for real, but just like the Falcon 1, it didn't get that great of a start.
[Music] But you can only mess something up so many times before it starts to go your way. Five, four, three, two. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] For the first time, we had reusable rockets, and space flight was changed forever. SpaceX, on a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, had successfully launched 11 satellites into orbit around the Earth and returned the first stage back to launch pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Just four months later, in April 2016, they made history yet again. Falcon 9 launched Dragon on a cargo resupply mission to the ISS for NASA, and for the first time, landed the first stage of the Falcon 9 back on Earth on a drone ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX has proved that they could not only land a rocket back on land, but also with extreme precision on a barge in the middle of the ocean that's less than a hundred square kilometres in size. These launches are quite literally changing the world each and every time. But let's get bigger. The Falcon Heavy is an engineering masterpiece. Tens of thousands of hours of work, years of innovation, all with one goal in mind: carrying humans into space, returning them to the Moon, and even beyond.
The liftoff thrust of the Falcon Heavy is the same as 18 Boeing 747 aircrafts going at full power all at once. To even try and compare the two is embarrassing. The first stage of the rocket is composed of three different Falcon 9 cores with a total of 27 Merlin engines all firing simultaneously. It's essentially like you're launching three different rockets at once and making sure that they all work together. Shortly after liftoff, the center core slows down to conserve fuel while the two side cores use almost all their fuel, saving only a portion of it.
Once the fuel is exhausted about halfway through the flight, the side boosters separate and return back to the launch pad for a simultaneous landing. As for the center core, it's used to push the payload into orbit. It will be going too fast to return back to Cape Canaveral, so once it's completed its mission, it will return to Earth, but not on land; it will land on a barge approximately 1,300 kilometers off the coast of Florida. One rocket, one launch, three different landings. The space shuttle that NASA used from 1972 to 2011 cost approximately sixty thousand dollars for each kilogram of material to be sent into orbit. The Falcon Heavy can do the same thing but for just 1,300. Nothing else even comes close, actually.
With the ability to lift over 64,000 kilograms, a mass greater than a 737 jet with passengers, luggage, crew, and fuel, the Falcon Heavy can lift over double what the next closest competitor can do at a third of the cost. If there's any rocket that's currently being manufactured in the modern age that can escape it while sending humans into deep space, it's the Falcon Heavy. It's the most powerful rocket in the world currently in use, and the fact that you can save and reuse over half of it makes it the most efficient rocket ever made.
Reusable rockets are a necessity. Why? In order to live on other planets, the only way that will be feasible for the masses is to reduce the cost of spaceflight drastically. Right now, the Falcon Heavy costs about 90 million dollars per launch. If we can engineer these rockets to have a lifespan of a hundred launches, then we're looking at under a million dollars per launch. Compare this to the Saturn V in 1969, which in today's money cost a few billion dollars per launch, and you'll start to see the power of reusability. Just the first stage of the rocket accounts for over 75 percent of the total cost.
The fuel used on a Falcon 9 launch is cheap when compared to the price tag of the rocket, coming in at only around 250 thousand dollars per launch, or about 0.3 percent of the total cost. A Boeing 737 costs around a hundred million dollars on average, compared to the Falcon Heavy at around 90 million. It's essentially the same. Now imagine that every time we take a flight around the world on one of these planes, we destroyed it afterwards. Imagine that every time we drove to work or school, we had to destroy the car. But yet, when it comes to space flight, rockets tend to fly once and only once, despite the rocket itself being the majority of the cost.
This doesn't make much sense. Looking back on history, reusability is the common denominator when it comes to widespread access to anything. If cars couldn't be refilled and taken on multiple trips, who would own them? If airplanes were all simply one-way flights and couldn't be reused, no one would be flying. Imagine having a rocket with humans that could be launched, sent to orbit, returned to the surface, refueled, and then launched again multiple times in the same day. This is the key to affordable space travel. All we have to do is perfect it.
Once perfected, an even bigger rocket in development by SpaceX will revolutionize the way we travel. The BFR, or big Falcon rocket, will be over 118 meters high. It's over two and a half times as strong as the Falcon Heavy. It's a spacecraft with seven engines on top of a booster named Super Heavy with 31 more Raptor engines. It's capable of carrying over a hundred thousand kilograms of material not only into low Earth orbit but to Mars as well. If a base is set up on Mars, it could refuel and then go even further than that.
But the BFR comes Starship. It's just the top part of the BFR. Instead of putting payloads in orbit or sending us on deep-space missions, it can also be used for travel on Earth. Starship is a system that will bring some of the shortest travel times humanly possible. You will be able to reach anywhere on Earth in under one hour. Imagine the commercial uses for this. You could work anywhere in the world and have a commute shorter than you would today. You could order a package and have it sent to you from across the world in hours. Visiting friends and family would be easy, and the term long-distance starts to lose its meaning.
The designs of the BFR changed year after year. When working on revolutionary ideas, chances are you're not going to get it right on the first try. Historically, SpaceX is the biggest example of that. But when you realize that the Starship itself is more powerful than the Falcon Heavy, the investments in rocket technology will start to become apparent. With space flight, reusability is the only way we can ever even think about leaving Earth and venturing anywhere else. Without it, costs will remain too high and the dreams of going anywhere else but here will remain just that: a dream.
SpaceX are the ones leading the charge, the ones who are tackling the problems that nobody else will. While governments across the world push their space agencies to the sides, private companies will rise up. These are the ones who are building the future of our species. These are the ones who are reigniting the interests of space travel in everyone's minds, and these are the ones who will fill in the gaps and go even further beyond what anyone else in the world is doing.
If you're uncertain about the future of SpaceX, I think we should just look back at Elon’s previous ventures. SpaceX's missions and their reusable rockets will impact space travel the way PayPal affected monetary transactions, the way Tesla impacted electric vehicles, and the way Neuralink will impact our biology. Fifteen years ago, everyone was skeptical about space flight, like being able to even launch a rocket, but they did. People were skeptical they'd ever be able to land a rocket, but yet they did. Even recently, people doubted that the Falcon Heavy would work. But of course, it did. Ten years ago, they had just gotten their first rocket into orbit. Fast forward to today, and they're making their mission statement a reality.
So looking at the plans of SpaceX, there's a good chance that you're looking directly into the future as well. In 2015, SpaceX for the first time landed the first stage of the Falcon 9 back on launch pad 40. But directly adjacent to that is launch pad 39A. It's also owned by SpaceX, except the story behind it gives me faith. On my birthday, July 20th, in 1969, men first stepped foot onto the moon and changed the world for our species forever. Just four days earlier, at 9:32 a.m., they loaded aboard a Saturn V rocket and launched into space. They had left Earth on a mission that no one else had ever done before them.
But once the smoke and dust from the launch pad had settled, their launch pad 39A, the same launch pad that SpaceX is using today to launch the biggest and most powerful rockets ever made. The mystery of human existence lies not just in staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
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