TechStuff In Spaaace(X) - Part Two

I spilled something bigger, bigger and better. Yes, we can make it bigger, faster, stronger. So two thousand and ten they launched a successful test of a Falcon nine rocket. It's eight better than the Falcon one. You might ask, well, why did they go from one to nine like what happened to Falcons two through eight. Well, the nine doesn't refer to the version, No, it refers to how many engines are in the first stage of the rocket. Yes, it has nine Merlin engines in that first stage. It

is also a two stage rocket. Yes, so like the Falcon one, it's a two stage rocket, but unlike the Falcon one, it had nine engines instead of just one engine. Uh, still was a liquid liquid fuel engine liquid oxygen and kerosene specifically, and used aluminum aluminum lithium alloy tanks. Now, according to SpaceX, the nine engines provide more thrust than five seven forty seven's at full power. Now I should stress that's the current Falcon nine because over the course

of the last few years. Yeah, the Falcon nine has gotten pardon the pun, a bit of a boost over the last Okay, I'm sorry, I regret everything I've said, I know, but but it is, it has improved over the years as they've worked on it. So the the figures we have for the Falcon nine really reflect the most recent version of the rocket, not the original, not

this original one from yes Um. And the reason I has those nine engines in there is to provide redundancy, that way of the that the rocket can continue even if two of its engines shut down entirely during the process. Right. So they've had issues where they I mean they've actually tested it where they would shut down an engine on purpose and then fire it back up to make sure that in fact the rocket would be able to continue and deliver its payload into orbits. So this was definitely

something that was built into the design. Also, what's really kind of cool is that, uh, the the stages stage one and stage two, they are separated by a different method than the way you would find in um in in previous versions of launch vehicles. Now, normally a launch vehicle the two stages would be connected with explosive bolts and you would blow the bolts and then stage one would fall away, in stage two would ignite and continue

to go up into orbit. But since they were hoping to create a rocket system that can be used multiple time, like the whole shebang, not just the shuttle bit, yeah, they decided to go with something else. They went with using air pressure. They essentially had like pneumatic bolts that would blast off with a little little blast of compressed air. So it wasn't explosive in the sense of like an actual explosive device. It would separate more um less violently.

Let's say, yeah, gently is good because this soothing easing blast from high in earth. Yeah. Really, it was mostly to to make sure that things would remain safe for once the falcon would start to carry people, not just not just stuff. Stuff is replaceable. People are not to know. So anyway, the if everything is working properly when the engines a night, Uh, they will burn for three minutes

in that first stage and uh interesting facts. So at sea level, the Falcon engines engines provide and again this is current. Falcon nines provide one point three million pounds of thrust, which is five thousand, eight hundred five kilo newtonts. But rocket thrust increases as altitude increases, so they just get more powerful as they go further up in the air. So once they get to space, the engines are putting out one point five million pounds of thrust or six thousand,

six d seventy two kilo mutants, So that's pretty awesome. Now, earlier rockets were slightly less powerful, but still significantly stronger than the Falcon one, not a big surprise with all the extra engines thrown in there. I'm just waiting for them to have the Falcon eleven so turn it all the way up to eleven um, which would make sense because I'm pretty sure Tesla's vehicles have dials that go all the way up to eleven I think I think

Musk is a fan of spinal test. So uh, Now, as the rockets mass decreases, which you would expect to have happened. It's got fuel, it's burning fuel, so therefore it's going to lose mass in the process of actually

launching into space. The Falcon nine engines gradually get throttled back to compensate so that it keeps acceleration within the right parameters, because obviously, if you have the engines blasting at the same amount of thrust and the mass of the thing it's thrusting up into space is decreasing, then it would accelerate beyond what they had it they need. So interesting that you have to actually think about throttling back the engines as opposed to because you know, getting

stuff into space is hard. We talked about that. It's it's hard to think you would think that it would be full, right, that's not the way it works. It's kind of cool. Uh. Now, the second stage of the rocket has a single Merlin vacuum engine, not a vacuum cleaner engine. It's an engine that works in the vacuum of space. So for being in space. Yes, yeah, you've got this pneumatic stage separation that separates once. Once that happens,

the stage one starts to fall away. Stage two kicks in that one Merlin engine kicks in and provides a hundred eight thousand pounds of force or a hundred one killing Newton's so, you know, relatively modest compared to the actual stage one rocket, which makes sense because that was again nine engines versus one. Uh. And that one burns for three hundred seventy five seconds, which is six minutes fifteen seconds for those who want to break it down

like that. Uh, and then it will get into its orbit, so the second stage engine can actually stop and start multiple times, which allows the Falcon nine to place different payloads into different orbits. You group the payloads together so if you have satellites that need to go into a certain orbit, you can release them and then continue the

spacecraft further out to deliver more payloads and higher orbits. Yeah. Yeah, this this allows you know, everyone involved to save a lot of money because the actual launch is what's expensive. You know. Once once you're up there, it's kind of like, yeah, just just toss everything around wherever it needs to get right, Okay, who's here for lower th orbit? All right out you go. Yeah.

It's one of those things where, uh, it makes it a viable business to work with these other companies we talked about in our first episode where we were talking about how you know, a company might have a satellite that needs to put into orbit, and another company may have a similar satellite that also needs to go in orbit,

it's maybe a slightly different elevation. This would allow SpaceX to have the opportunity to launch both in the same mission and thus you you can serve and you end up making the whole endeavor less expensive for all individual parties. So pretty pretty savvy move on the business side. Uh,

pretty cool stuff. Now beyond all that, also in two, SpaceX would land a contract with a satellite operator called a Ridium for four hundred ninety two million dollars, as was the largest commercial space launch deal ever up to that time. And in the second test of the Falcon nine, SpaceX becomes the first private company to launch of spacecraft into orbit and then recover it after it orbits the Earth. So this is again pretty it's it's a pretty big yeah.

Another step on that on that plan. On the back of all of this this wonder and amazement, Musk would make the only a little bit far reaching claim that he would be sending astronauts into space within three years at only twenty million dollars a piece. Yeah, that's um, that's that's compared to uh previous missions. Sure, and spoiler alert, that did not happen. No, it would take a little longer than three years because we still haven't sent anyone up into space. No humans have gone into space on

a SpaceX vehicle yet. So if you're waiting to hear that magical fairy tale story, we don't have that. If it happened while we were recording, that's different, but as of the recording, it has not yet happened. Now, moving on to two thousand eleven, we have a groundbreaking ceremony for the Vandenburg Air Force Base space launch complex that

SpaceX would use. Uh. Now, at that point, SpaceX was valued at about one point three billion dollars, pretty impressive considering that it only had had started back in two thousand two. Yeah. Yeah, And and this Air Force space that they were celebrating was not for them alone, right, it's a government facility exactly. It's it's essentially they're saying, hey, do you mind if we use your your playground to

launch our our our rockets and air forces. You know, we can work up a deal, and that's exactly we can work that out. Um. Meanwhile, over at NASA, the Shuttle program was officially shut down in eleven after the Atlantis Is final flight, which returned to the Kennedy Space Center on July one. This means, among other things, that the amazing infrastructure that is the Kennedy Space Center and its launch pads would be rendered idle um at a cost of like some a hundred thousand dollars per month

in maintenance. I don't think that's offset by tourists like me going to look around at the Kennedy Space Center. Not quite no, um. So you know, in turn, that means that you can bet NASA was pretty eager to start looking at at ways to recoup that and start renting out those launch pads to private companies. Yes, so that will become more important a little later on. Yes. In two thousand twelve, in May, SpaceX would launch a successful mission to have its Dragon spaceship dock with the

International Space Station. So the Dragon spaceship is like a capsule. If you look at it, it kind of is reminiscent of something like one of the Apollo capsules. It looks kind of in that same sort of general shape. Um, and it's not carrying any cargo on this first test. Uh. And there it doesn't have any people aborted on the first test, but it was successful in docking with the I s sh yeah. Yeah, and the astronauts who are already up there could open the docked capsule and go

right on inside, which is any brave. Yeah, I mean you said there thinking. I mean, I'm sure they had all the instrumentation to prove that in fact, it was perfectly safe. But just think of this, This unmanned capsule docks with the space station and it's you know, docks to an airlock, and I can't imagine the amount of tension I would feel opening the airlock for the first time and not knowing for sure that everything on the

other side was still okay. I'm sure that they were like tethered in, and I'm sure there are many safety precautions taken. It's just interesting to be like, as are a world apart from me. I'm too nervous to be able to do. Yeah, I get anxious, like going to the grocery store. So let's talk about this Dragon spacecraft. It's pretty cool. So it's designed to deliver people and cargo to space, although again no people so far have

gone anywhere. Specifically, is designed to go to orbiting destinations like the I S S or satellites, as opposed to some longer mission to say the Moon or Mars. It's not meant for that. About how much stuff can it hold? It can hold eighty three cube feet of cargo, which is twenty five cube meters on at least on the way up. And it has a mass of six thousand kilograms,

which means it weighs thirteen thousand, two hundred twenty eight pounds. Now, the return payload when it comes back to Earth is three thousand krams or six thousand, six d fourteen pounds, and the return payload volume for the Dragon spacecraft is three eight cube feet or eleven cube meters. And you might say, well, why why is the difference? Where where's the difference with the volume when it goes up versus

the volume when it comes down. And so part of the capsule when it's going up is a connector that connects the capsule to the launch vehicle right and in that in that area you have an unpressurized chamber, and inside the unpressurized chamber. You can have certain types of cargo stuff that does not need to be protected in that way. So let's say that you have some extra satellites that you can just you know, throw in the back. It's in the back of your truck. Essentially you go

up into space. Well, when you get up into space, the capsule, when it's going into re entry, will disconnect from that connector that originally had it next to the launch vehicle, and so the capsule itself will come down, which means that you can't carry as much back down

as you could carry back up. Now, why would you want to carry stuff down in the first place, But, like we mentioned in the first episode, occasionally stuff aboard the I s S needs to be repaired or maintained, and they can't necessarily do all of that on the station itself. Or maybe they want to send little bits of scientific experiments back down to Earth, right, and in that case you would need to have exactly so that's

what that would be used for. So the pressure I section, which would be the one that would carry humans if we ever sent any up in a Dragon Space capsule UH, can also carry cargo and it has something called draco thrusters. So these are these are thrusters. They're meant to provide uh, propulsion and some maneuverability in space, developed by SpaceX. So since it's the Dragon Capsule, of course it's the Draco thrusters.

There are eighteen of them spread across four pods, So two of the pods have four thrusters, two of the pods have five thrusters. Now, the thrusters provide all this maneuverability whenever they're needing to to dock with the I S S or whenever they're they're trying to reposition themselves for re entry um and each individual thruster is capable of creating nine pounds of thrust. Now, the Dragon also

has this unpressurized trunk that was talking about. That's the part where it'll disconnect just as you start to go into re entry. And uh that's also why you're able to carry more stuff up than down. As I said before, on May thirty one, the Dragon Capsule returned to Earth safely, completing that first test mission of the capsule. And it's the first private spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station.

So in August of two thousand eleven, SpaceX would send a Dragon spacecraft up again to pick up return earned cargo to bring back to Earth, and Elon must champion the mission as a demonstration of America being able to deliver cargo and to take cargo from the I S S for the first time since the space Shuttle program was shuttered. Now keep in mind that particular capsule had not actually carried anything up to the station, It just

brought stuff back down. But in October the Dragon capsule would be the first private spacecraft to complete a resupply mission to the I S S. So by the end of two thousand eleven, it had done it all. They had done a successful test stalking, they had returned cargo safely to Earth, and they brought stuff up supplies back up to the I S S in order to support all of this. Meanwhile, that McGregor, Texas testing facility that I mentioned in the first episode was running at eighteen

hours a day, six days a week. Wow, And you know I have actually heard I didn't include this in the notes, but recently we're recording this in in August of two thousand fourteen, and very recently there have been

some news reports of former employees who are laid off. Uh. This happened very recently at SpaceX, who have also laid allegations that they were not allowed to take breaks that they would have legally been um allowed to do, uh, and that they were not being paid sufficiently for overtime. So whether or not any of that is true, I don't know, but that that that is an ongoing thing.

But when you hear something like this about these facilities running these crazy amount of hours per day, oh yeah, especially when I think McGregor only employs some two fifty people today. I'm not sure what the employment rate was back then, although I think that that's the that's just about the working team that they that they hire out. So SpaceX, Yeah, exactly, space X as a as a

full company as like three thousand employees. So it's you know, it's one of those things that that's an ongoing situation. So we don't have a lot to report about that particular issue. But you can imagine that there are people who are working really, really hard and I hope it turns out that they're being compensation. Okay, But also in two thousand twelve, SpaceX would test something else called the grasshopper.

This is a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. Yeah, so it's a rocket that can take off and land vertically. So here's the reason why they want to test this other thing while the Falcon nine is working. It's really kind of testing a proof of concept that they could build a rocket that they could launch up into wherever, and then when it starts coming back down, they could maneuver it so it could land safely upright exactly the

way it had taken off. It's got landing you know, it's it's got struts essentially that act like landing gear. And the reason you would want that is if you sent any one to someplace like Mars, it would allow them to, you know, come back would be nice. We've talked about a lot about Mars, both on this show and on Our Sisters show Forward Thinking, and some plans don't involve the return ticket. I I prefer the plans

that involved the return ticket. Everyone collective sanity. Yeah, you know, even people who think it's exciting to go to Mars, even if there's no way back. I'm not sure that you're going to feel the same way. It's a five years on Mars or ten years or forty years or forty minutes. Who knows. I mean, it might be like, wow, I really underestimated how boring it is up here and how deadly. So yeah, this would be a way of creating a vehicle that could potentially visit a distant surface

and then take off again from it. Um. Now, this particular one is too, is just designed to be a test, but it would hopefully be built into the Stage one Falcon nine rockets, which would also make them reusable, uh in the sense of being able to actually land them so that you could recover them, and the actual reprocessing phase would be much shorter than if it were you know, if you had to go out into the ocean and

retrieve it from you know, crashing in there. So now we move up to two thousand thirteen, SpaceX announced a plan to launch a satellite into geo stationary orbit, which

is different from low Earth orbit. Geo stationary orbit is one in which an orbiting body holds the same position in the sky relative to an observer on the ground, which means that if you're standing on the ground for a week, I mean, you know, I guess you're having people bring you snacks, but and look up the the satellite would be there the entire time and maintain its relative position to you that whole time. Uh. And in order to do that, you have to actually put that

out a little further than your low Earth orbit. Also, I should all clarify that geostationary orbits are a subset of geosynchronous orbits. A geosynchronous orbit is one in which an orbiting body will return to a given position along its path after a given amount of time. So you might say that you have a satellite that has kind of a figure eight type orbit over the southeastern United States, and then every three days the satellite is over the

same point of reference along that pathway. That's a that one is a geosynchronous orbit. Geostationary is very specific and that it maintains that's that particular location. So we would have like a geostationary satellite directly above Atlanta, that would be an example. Um. But yeah, in order to get it out there, you gotta get it pretty far out into the orbit. It's it's your your your local ones

are much closer in uh. Yeah, lower orbit satellites might be some one thousand, two hundred miles that's one thousand nine kilometers out from Earth's surface. Uh, GEO stationary satellites are something like twenty two thousand miles or thirty five thousand kilometers out. And just for perspective, because I don't know about you guys, but but those ranges of numbers, my brain starts to go, I don't have no idea what that means. I can't compare that to things that

means stuff to me. A thousand, two hundred miles is something like driving from New York City to Miami. Great road trip, Uh, it can be, it can pleasant through certain parts shirt um and uh, two thousand miles, by contrast, is like eighty percent of the circumference of the entire planet. So a longer road trip is what you're saying, A very much longer road trip than trip. Yes, you would have to have a submarine or jet skis. Well, I'll

hold off on planning that trip. But yeah, So that that same year, SpaceX would put in a bid to lease one of the Katy Space Center's launch pads, right, you were talking about this earlier. Yeah, they the Kennedy Space Center finally opened up one of their launch pads thirty nine A to be specific, which is like the historic Apollo Mission launch pad out to a private company, and SpaceX put in one of the bids. The other bidder was Blue Origin, which is Amazon founder. Jeff Bezos

is space Company. In this corner, we have Elon Musk and in this corna Jeff Bezos. I love the thought. I mean, we've done episodes on both of these people, right, We've done We've done a Bezos episode, We've done a Musk episode, and they're both these very dynamic, wonderful personalities that have these big dreams and all of this stuff. So you know, will come out the winner either way. But as it turns out, the story ends ends up with with a single entity winning that bid, right. Well,

that was actually part of the bidding war here. Well, it wasn't really a bidding war as much as it was just a general political and legal kerfuffle because Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos were really aiming for this pad being opened up to multi company use. They wanted, you know, many people to be able to come in and use this thing, and you know, under the argument that leasing to a single company would put that company in basically

monopoly territory as far as space launches go. On the other hand, SpaceX was really the only company that was prepared to actually use a launch site like that. Even Bloor Origin had never had a successful test at that point, so SpaceX might be saying like, well, that's all well and good, but we're the ones doing stuff and if it just lays dormant that it's not doing anyone any good anyway. Yeah, and they would eventually win that bid

in December. Sadly, it was not the way I had proposed when we were talking about this before the episode, where I said all all all disagreements among entrepreneurs should be settled in the thunder Dome, as as our ancestors would have had it. Yes. Yes, in fact, you know, you bust a deal and you face the wheel, and that's no way. That's a different part of the movie anyway. Two two thousand fourteen, So we're up to this year,

at least the year were recording this. For those of you in the future who are listening to us, I hope you found it quaint. But in May of two thousand and fourteen, SpaceX would unveil the design for the Dragon version to spacecraft, and we all thought it looked gorgeous because it is. It also has the crew capacity for seven crew members. Yeah, it looks it looks like

Apple designed the interior of this thing. Right, if you ever look at the controls, all right, if you get a chance, go on Google image search and look at what the Apollo spacecraft control panel looked like. It looks kind of like the Millennium Falcon. It's all these little switches and buttons and things like nothing. Nothing looks like it would control a spacecraft in the sense of, you know, being able to manually take control of this thing. The

the one that was unveiled. The concepts at least for the Dragon version two console look like it was designed by Apple. You have these enormous flat panel displays, this very elegant looking control scheme set up. It looks the way you would think a science fiction spacecraft control would look. It's pretty pretty beautiful. Now, again, these are concepts, so

we wait to looks. But anyway, it will according to SpaceX, and it will be able to and propulsively almost anywhere on Earth, so you don't have to worry about a window opening up for you to be able to land at a specific location. Yeah, that was one of those big limiting factors for the Shuttle program, right, like if you missed that window, you had to wait until you came back around around so um, which is important because it's meant to be reusable. Yes, uh, you know, after

being processed and refueled, it can go right back into service. Yeah, which is kind of crazy. And it will have eight Super Draco engines built into the sidewalls. I just talked over the fact that they're they're building these right into the side walls of the spacecraft. Absolutely. Yeah. The idea being that if there's a problem during launch, the Super Draco thrusters can actually allow the capsule to detach from the launch vehicle and potentially save the lives of the

astronauts inside. That would be, you know, amazing, would be a really important development in this kind of spacecraft. They can produce one twenty thou pounds of axial thrust uh and m. Also, the Super Draco have engine chambers that were created in a three D printer. It's the first time that an actual working part of a space engine has been built by a three D printer, not a not a prototype. That'sn't then that's normal, right, that's that's part of the course. No, but the actual bits that

are going into this space. Yeah, it's kind of interesting and amazing and one of those. And again it really brings home the fact that three D printing is playing a very large role in in multiple industries. So it's I was really blown away by that when I heard that, I thought, surely they mean that they just printed the prototype and tested it. No, these are the actual chambers themselves.

In July two thousand fourteen, SpaceX received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration with the f a A to build a launch facility in Texas, which would be the first purely commercial launch site. This is different from relying on that Air Force facility the or leasing the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center, and they're hoping to support twelve launches per year. It's a pretty impressive site, all

you know. It's not huge. It's just seventy acres. It's in a town called Boca Chica Beach, which is about twenty miles outside of the larger town slash area of Brownsville in Texas, near the Mexican border. The US Census has identified this area as being the poorest in the entire country. Six percent of its residents live below the

poverty line. Um, the spaceport is going to be an eighty five million dollar project, or is projected to be so right now, which is gonna be bolstered by fifteen point three million dollars in funds from to Texas organizations, one being the Texas Enterprise Fund, which makes perfect sense, and the second being the Spaceport Trust Fund, which apparently exists.

So that's the thing, um and uh and yeah, local government is pretty excited about the some three hundred jobs at the construction is likely to create in the area, and the hundred fifty or so staff members that it's likely to hire once it's complete. Also all the tourism and stuff like that that it's going to bring hopefully, and then you also have to have the businesses just

to support the existence of this thing. Sure, sure, yeah, you're gonna have to build a lot more Starbucks or whatever it is, which is that's great news for this town. So yeah, yeah, but the potential for some some real rejuvenation of that town's economy is pretty exciting. Uh. And of course Texas and Elon Musk have a standing, if slightly to multious relationship. You know, in addition to housing

that that testing facility. Texas was also one of the first states to have Tesla charging stations um, although as if this recording, it can't actually sell Tesla vehicles in the state due to car sales laws that preserve dealerships being the sole distributors of consumer vehicles. You can't have a company sell directly to its customers. Um. And for more on that, you can check out our two part

or the Tesla Tale, which published in March. And rumor has it that Stay Governor Rick Perry is really trying to change this whole thing because it would be pretty good for the economy of the state, many people argue, but yeah, the laws have not budged quite yet. And also Texas is on that shortlist of states that may

eventually house Tesla's giga factory battery plant. Yeah, the one that would be making the Just like Musk wants the space industry to be something that the United States can really focus in on internally, same thing for producing the batteries that would go into electric vehicles and improving the batteries and improving the working conditions around all of that. Yeah, yeah, so important stuff. Yeah. The only confusing thing about this spaceport.

For me is that the announcement about it really only came a couple of months after SpaceX signed that lease for that Kennedy Space Center a launch pad, but that was for a lot, like, you know, six months or something twenty years. Who alright, so they're gonna have their own space and they're leasing the other like dormant space. Maybe they are like kind of edge and everybody else out. I don't know. I'm yeah, I'm not sure what's going

on there. I mean, you know, it's sub lease of Yeah, yeah, I'm figuring that maybe they're going to try to use their own launchpad for for commercial purposes, for helping other companies get into space using that infrastructure and maybe preserve the Kennedy area for their own stuff or maybe for their NASA related trips or something like that. Yeah, that's

a possibility. Well, and and maybe it'll be one of those things where certain types of launch vehicles will be able to use their one facility and others might need a larger one. For example that you know, there's we'll talk about the Falcon Heavy at the end of this episode, and that one makes the Falcon nine look like a junior just as the Falcon nine dwarf, the Falcon one, the Falcon Heavy dwarfs, the Falcon nine right makes it look like a paper airplane. Yeah, I mean, you gotta

you gotta do this. You have to keep on making larger and larger vehicles so that we can finally get to start destroyer. I mean, we've all seen where this leads. Is that the reason scientifically. One of the other things that is kind of interesting about this and and this

is one of those things. I just came across this while I was doing some research on SpaceX, and this may or may not indicate anything in the in the future, but we've also talked about the hyper loop, uh, this concept of this enclosed train system that would be able to move it really super fast speeds. Apparently SpaceX is now the company that owns hyperloop dot Com. At least from what I was able to find. It used to

belong to someone else. That ownership has apparently transferred to space X. I have not completely fact checked this, so this could be wrong. But if that is possible, can you just imagine that the commute to go to work at your space factory is on the hyper loop and you live in some other town in Texas and you just in like fifteen minutes there would be pretty incredible.

I wonder, I wonder if company employees, if you know, they actually could buy Tesla vehicles in the state of Texas, Uh, if they would get like an employee discount on it. It's funny because this description just makes us us think that this, this very tiny town, this this town that's been struggling with poverty, could transform into like a super future tech place in a span of like a decade or so, like the the center of the new space Age.

That's pretty crazy. Well, meanwhile, to to kind of conclude this conversation, there's some other things we have to talk about. One of those is that SpaceX has run into some political opposition, and there are a lot of different ways of looking at this. But some politicians are claiming that the company should be accountable to taxpayers, which is a little odd because it's a private company. It's not it's

a contractor, it's not a government organization. And some folks like fill the bad astronomer plate, have hypothesized that the politicians are actually trying to protect interests in their home states because the states involved happened to be the same states that have large manufacturing facilities owned and operated by

companies like Lockheed and Boeing. So when the representatives of those states happen to be the ones who are raising objections, it does raise questions about, Okay, well, where are your objections coming from. Is it from just an honest place of concern or are you trying to protect a large company that falls in your constituency. Yeah, so tough questions.

On top of that, the company SpaceX has actually sued the US government specifically over military contracts between the US Air Force and United Launch Alliance, that being the organization I guess that both Boeing and Lockheed belonged to in order to preserve their own best commercial interests for space technologies exactly, And so SpaceX as that those contracts were

awarded unfairly in the bidding process, was non competitive. In other words, that the Air Force went ahead and stuck with its longtime partner, United Launch Alliance rather than going to the lowest bidder. Now, if those suspicions are true, that would imply that the politicians are playing favorites and potentially that the Air Force would be wasting money on another company with the expensive contracts that they could they could be they could be doing the same thing for

less money. And since that money ultimately comes from the United States taxpayer, this is this should be a big deal to citizens. And it's even more complicated than that though, right because Russia and and the Russian technology companies come back into it. That's right, because ULA ends up getting some components from Russia, UH specifically from a company that is largely owned by the Russian government. And as we have relations between the United States and Russia become more

common implicated. The situation in the Ukraine obviously is an example of that. Then you also have these these complications that arise their their concerns about UH security, their concerns about fairness. It's it's all wrapped up into this big political mess. Right. So again, another argument SpaceX makes is, if you go with us, it's all in the United States, you don't have to worry about funding a government that you may have disagreements with, unless you're disagreeing with yourself,

in which case we really can't help you. Um, But at any rate, it's messy, is what we're getting down to. And then on the government side of the issue, right, because it's certainly not one sided. Yeah, I mean you have to look at all sides of the I always try to look at all the sides of any given issue and not just try to jump onto one or

the other. So on the government side of things, you have to understand, first of all, the politicians are citing that there are anomalies and SpaceX tests and launches so far, which may or may not hold merit. It all really depends upon your point of view, because space launches are

potentially really hazardous, so you don't want anomalies obviously. You want it to be as predictable and rough replicatable as possible, so that way replicable, but you want to make sure for that for the safety of the astronauts, right and the cargo, I mean everything, oh, Sharon, and just the money that you've poured into it, exactly. So uh. On the other hand, you know, space launches are also really complicated, and even companies that have been in the industry for decades,

way longer than SpaceX can have anomalies. Yeah. Yeah, So the question is are the anomalies that are the quote unquote anomalies that are in these SpaceX launches, do they fall inside that same sort of set of parameters as what you would find in any other business exactly. So I don't have the answers to those questions. I don't know really, Like this is not so simple as to say SpaceX is right and the government is wrong, or

the governments and space X is wrong. It's there are a lot of factors you have to take into consideration, and frankly, I don't have all the information, so I can't really come down on it. I hope that SpaceX is able to to be really in the mix for these competitive projects because I would love to see that. I think competition is always a good thing. Oh of course, yeah, no, And and I think that the thing is that nobody

has that information right at this very moment. This is all very much ongoing and uh and but but hopefully it'll come to a resolution for the best of all of us soon absolutely so, speaking of the future, since we're talking about soon, this is soon and not so soon. But next year two thousand fifteen, SpaceX plans to do a test launch of a super powerful rocket. This is

the Falcon Heavy that we talked about earlier. This would be the launch vehicle that would allow us to to actually go to places like the moon or march with people with people exactly now this one. You know, the first stage of the Falcon nine was a rocket that

had nine engines. The first stage of the Falcon Heavy is made up of three Falcon nine engine corps for a grand total of twenty seven Merlin engines, ye creating nearly four million pounds of thrust seventeen thousand kilo news and capable of launching a payload that would weigh fifty three metric tons into orbit. The second stage of the

Falcon Heavy launch vehicle same as the Falcon nine. So once you get up there, Yeah, if you ever look at pictures of what this is going to look like, it looks like a it looks essentially like a Falcon nine rocket with two other Falcon nine stage ones strapped to the bottom of it. And so it's really fat on the bottom and skinny on the top because you've got a regular Falcon nine stage two and the payload

at the top of it. Pretty amazing if they are able to actually make this work, and it sounds like a feat of engineering that I am so far out of the comprehension of I would I would love to see the first launch of this, right, I would love to be present for the test launch of the Falcon Heavy. I am sure it's going to be an awesome site,

and I mean that in the classic sense. Yeah. Uh. Now, there's some rumors that have been around pretty much since SpaceX started that the company will go public, but as of this recording that has not yet happened. That doesn't stop the rumors from going around. I mean they've been, They've really picked up since two thousand thirteen. Musk says that he has no near term plans to go public, and likely he would wait until SpaceX is Mars Colonial

Transporter is in service. That would mean the actual vehicle that would be capable of taking people to Mars, whether or not it would actually be people would probably be

you know, unmanned missions at first. But I can see where I mean, you know, Musk is such a such a personal driver of all of his businesses, and so I can absolutely see where he would want to retain that kind of control everything that they're and not have to answer to a board, to a board that does not necessarily have him is the head of it, because he is on the board of directors, right now as is the president and CEO. Uh, she is also on

the board. But yeah, when you have stakeholders, when you have we have uh, you know, stockholders, I should say, then you've got to answer to a lot more people, And often you may if you're in an industry that requires as much risk as the space industry, you may have stakeholders who say, I'm not really I think can we make money some other way? I can see you getting pressured pretty easily into, you know, not doing these

crazy things like retiring the Falcon after one successful mission. Yes, exactly. So it is interesting. We'll have to keep an eye on it and see if, in fact, SpaceX ever does go public and become a publicly traded company. But um, it's it's been a fascinating journey just to learn more about this company and what what goes into it and

uh and what their plans are. And I have to tell you, before I started researching US, I was a skeptical is probably not strong enough a word for it, but very doubtful that we'd be ever able to get anyone to Mars by twenty by the mid twenty twenties. Even now, I'm I'm skeptical, but I'm more willing to believe it based upon the incredible accomplishments this company has done so far, and it seems like they're gearing up for something pretty big. Yeah, yeah, that's I mean. I

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