These 2 American astronauts
spent more than 2 months in space.
Ignition, lift off!
Their launch was the first manned launch
from the US in ten years.
The Falcon 9 Crew Dragon! Go NASA!
Go NASA? Wait. Why NASA?
NASA hasn’t sent anyone into space for years.
This rocket was launched by Elon Musk.
Musk had not only done something
that it was previously thought that only the
governments or super powers could do.
He had done things that they thought they couldn't do.
That no one could do.
Robert Zubrin, author of The Case for Space,
points out that private companies now do what
NASA couldn’t even imagine doing:
send people into space affordably.
This is the potential of a free enterprise.
[music]
Apollo 11 this is Houston
50 years ago, NASA did send astronauts to the moon.
We set sail on this new sea,
because there is new knowledge to be gained
It makes me wonder,
why did the moon landing succeed?
Apollo was purpose-driven.
We wanted to astonish the world
what free people could do.
But after that success,
NASA became a typical government agency:
Overbudget, behind schedule.
When you don't have a truly commanding purpose,
the purpose of the program becomes
to supply money to various suppliers.
Like Lockheed Martin,
where Zubrin worked,
and where he discovered a way for this rocket
to carry twice as much weight.
It doubled the payload capability for 10% extra cost.
They said to us,
"Look, if the Air Force wants us to
improve the Titan, they'll pay us to do it.”
Why would a private contractor not innovate?
Because
The incentive structure is all messed up
NASA pays contractor’s development costs
and then adds 10% percent profit
The more projects cost,
the bigger the contractor’s profit.
You have good people engaged in cost maximization
because you just gave them an incentive to do that.
We have not been good at maintaining schedule,
and we have not been good a maintaining costs.
And they aren’t good at innovating.
Governments never are.
Only recently did the Pentagon
stop using these floppy disks.
Astronauts would bring their laptops with them in space
because the shuttle computers were obsolete.
When they saw that the astronauts
were bringing their own computers,
why didn't they upgrade?
Because they had an entire philosophy
that various components had to be space rated.
And the process of space rating something
was very bureaucratic and costly.
Costly was okay at with NASA
as long as spaceships were assembled
in many congressmen’s districts.
In some ways, NASA is a very large job program.
Aerospace lawyer James Dunstan
By spreading its centers across the country,
NASA can get more support
from more different congressmen.
The current request calls for more than 21 billion
We’ll welcome you back to Texas
to spends lots of money any time.
But now, private competition
has lowered the cost of getting to space
[Rocket sound]
Eleven years ago,
an Obama committee concluded
building a rocket as powerful as this
Would take 12 years and cost $36 billion.
Musk did it in six years for less than $1 billion.
Because it was his money he was spending.
[Rocket sound]
One Musk innovation was reusable rocket boosters.
For years, NASA dropped theirs into the ocean.
Why would they throw it away?
Because that's the way it's always been done.
But Musk thought:
If you had to get a new plane
every time you flew somewhere,
very few people could afford to fly.
So he found a way to have them land safely
so they can be used again.
[cheering]
Landing legs have deployed
Zubrin suggested that to his bosses 20 years ago.
And the Falcons have landed
I went to the Vice President and I pitched it to him.
And he said yeah it’s really cute idea Bob,
but if we sell one of these were out of business.
They wanted to keep the cost of space launch high.
But now that there’s a list of competitors,
launch prices are crashing.
Now there’s the competition
Bezos has blue origin
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic
Boeing, SpaceX
Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin
[Music]
There's also Chinese SpaceX wannabes.
But Musk is testing still newer ideas.
By the time the Chinese copy him
and have something as good as what he has now,
he'll have something better.
Like Starship, his bigger spacecraft.
Taller than the statue of liberty
It’s meant to take people to Mars and back
With a system like Starship,
you could travel on Earth,
from anywhere to anywhere in less than an hour
flying through space
because there's no friction in space.
What might be next?
You just don't know.
Benjamin Franklin was once asked
after he did one of his electricity demonstrations.
“This is fascinating Dr. Franklin,
but what possible use could this electricity ever have?"
[click]
And he answered, "Of what use is a baby?"
[Baby sound]
All our most wonderful inventions started as babies.
Government didn’t know what to do with a Model T,
the early computer,
the Wright Brothers’ plane
It took competing entrepreneurs, pursuing profit,
to turn them into the great things we have now.
Let's celebrate the entrepreneurs
who break government’s old rules
and to take us new places.
Reigniting the dream of space
[Rocket launch]
[Music]
[Swoosh]
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