Bill Nye: So SpaceX is a response to the history
of space exploration.
This is my point of view.
So one of the magical things about NASA, the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
here in the U.S., is the administration has
stayed about the same for, 1958, what is that,
56 years.
The reason is Congress had either the ignorance
or the genius to put a dozen NASA centers
in 13 different places around the US.
And when you try to close a NASA center in
Congress, people come unglued.
You can't close a NASA center.
This is how people got to the moon.
When John Kennedy was shot, which was an awful
thing, any idea to cancel the moon program
was squashed.
As soon as Kennedy was shot we couldn't not,
not go as the expression goes.
So humans went to the moon, the space program
existed, changed the world in a great way,
however, it made things expensive.
When you build rocket engines in Alabama and
you get the fuel from Utah and you test them
in Mississippi and you then send them to Florida
and control all that from Texas, with some
drop testing done in Cleveland and all sorts
of material science research done in California,
some flight tests done in the desert in Arizona,
when you do all that you just add cost.
When you go to SpaceX, the material, the stainless
steel and the aluminum come off the train
cars.
It goes through the factory like this.
We make our tanks.
We make our space frame or airframe.
We make our rocket engine bells.
We hook up all our plumbing.
It goes back this way.
We do the wiring and it goes back on the train
car and goes to either Vandenberg Air Force
Base or Cape Canaveral because it's all made
in one place.
But the way NASA was established in 1958,
it's not set up that way and that was good
and bad.
So it is to be hoped that SpaceX, Sierra Nevada
Space, Blue Origins, that these companies
will emerge and lower the cost, especially
of taking stuff to low earth orbit.
Keep in mind everybody, for all the free market
libertarian let's go laissez-faire people,
SpaceX has taken at least half a billion dollars,
$500 million from NASA because NASA wants
to develop this capability.
When you buy an Atlas V rocket or a Delta
IV rocket those are commercially made gizmos,
and so is going to be the Falcon and Falcon
Heavy.
These are commercial rockets and NASA has
gone to great lengths to develop that business.
It's all good.
It's all good.
I would go to space like that.
I applied to be an astronaut four times.
I would love to get a view of the earth from
space.
And right now the price is $200,000, it starts
to come down into the 10th of that I could
imagine doing it.
If you've never jumped out of a plane with
a parachute, that is cool.
I don't do it full-time but I get it.
It's exciting and you do see the world in
a new way and you're in the air.
Everybody's dream is to be able to fly.
You're flying for a few moments.
I get it.
I can see how people get hooked on that.
And I think space exploration would be the
same deal.
