January 22, 2016 • 43 mins
From Blue Origin to SpaceX, the hottest topic in the private space industry is the reusable rocket. Why is it such a big deal and what does it mean for the future?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says the stars
look very different today. I'm Jonathan Strickland, Laura, and I'm
(00:21):
Joe McCormick Melancholy again. It's a two First. I told
you in the last episode that was a bitter sweet.
That was tribute, right, tribute. Yeah. Actually, now I feel
like I need to like find some good Alan Rickman quotes,
it's been a rough week. Wizards and Goblins. Man, Wizards
and Goblins, got my slitherin sweater here though, So everything's
(00:43):
doing okay. Yeah. So while we are mourning, we're grieving,
we're also celebrating because one, we're celebrating great art that
was left behind as artists themselves have passed away. But
we're also celebrating because we're in an era of amazing
technological and science development and we're witnessing it right now.
(01:06):
Like we are in a time that is phenomenal for
multiple reasons, and just one of those is that recently
we've seen a couple of really cool demonstrations of a
technology that we've been waiting for for a while. Uh,
the idea of reusable rockets, rockets that can launch up,
go into space, returned to Earth and land safely so
that they could be used again after being refurbished. And
(01:30):
this is a big deal and we'll talk about why
in this episode. Yea. So, so the two examples that
we've seen are are Blue Origin, which was the company company. Yeah,
Blue Origins the company, and that was that's backed by
Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Uh, and their rocket New Shepherd,
which was the first one in late I think it
was November, launched up, went to the edge of space.
(01:53):
We'll talk about that in a little bit, and then
returned to Earth and landed safely using thrusters to maneuver
at self and land upright. And then uh, SpaceX would
be the other one, and they launched a Falcon nine
which actually delivered a payload into lower Earth ormit because
SpaceX does that. Yeah. Yeah, it was a payload that
(02:15):
had some satellites in it. So now I should mention
that the Falcon nine, it was the first stage that
returned to The Falcon nine is a two stage rocket.
We'll talk more about that a little bit later too.
But in both cases, this is really impressive display of
technological and engineering expertise. Now, if you're sitting there thinking,
wait a second, what's so great about that? I thought
(02:37):
all the spacecraft we sent to space typically returned. Isn't
that sort of the point? If they if they're especially
for crude space missions, don't they come back? Here you
need to understand the distinction between the spacecraft or the capsule,
for true, and the rocket. That's true. I'm being very
loose with the terminology, but yes, the rocket, the vehicle
(02:57):
that delivers the spacecraft up into space, is what we're
really talking about here. And the situation with rockets today,
I don't know, it seems kind of wasteful. It's like
if you decided, hey, I'm gonna cook dinner, and in
the process of doing so, you destroyed every piece of
equipment in your kitchen that you used to make dinner with,
(03:17):
like the whole kitchen. Basically, like you just at the
end of when by the time it's done, your stove
is gone, your fridges, pots and pans in the trash,
Your you know, knife, you're going in the trash. You're ruined.
The example I gave is imagine that you are going
to go on a family road trip and you buy
a brand new car, and then you go out to
Wally World, and then you just leave the car there
(03:38):
and you uber it back home, and your car you
never get to touch that car again. That car is gone.
So every time you take a road trip you have
to buy a new car. That sounds expensive. You can
get up there. I mean, you know, it depends on
your taste of vehicle. I being a luxurious type. It's
it starts to rack up after eight or nine trips. Sure,
And as you can imagine, launching things into space is
(04:00):
even as cheap as going to Wally World. No, it's
actually a tad more expensive. Uh yeah, So we wanted
to talk today about the concept of reusable rockets. Why
is that a big deal? And to really understand that.
I thought it'd be kind of interesting because that's the
way I think, to have a rundown on the basic
physics of rocketry, so we can understand what is going
(04:21):
on when we're sending a rocket up into space. This
is particularly important because New Shepherd and Falcon nine are
two very different approaches right. One thing you should keep
in mind, of course, is where those two names come from.
New Shepherd named after Alan Shepherd, the first American to
make it into space. Falcon nine named after Star Wars
(04:41):
the Millennium Fall. So, uh, those two are are quite different.
And it's also a really good look into the minds
of Elon Musk and Jeff Basis. Yeah, I would, I
would agree with that, but this this is uh, you know,
we'll talk a little bit about how those two are
very different as we move along. So rockets work because
(05:01):
of fundamental law of our universe actually collection of laws
of our universe that we understand it. Yeah, if they
weren't true, we wouldn't be sending stuff into space, right,
And uh, those laws were first explained in a book
called the Philosophia Naturalists Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton, Sir,
(05:22):
pardon me, sir Isaac Newton. And in that work Newton
framed his observations of physics and frame them in the
form of basic laws of motion. And there are three
basic laws that we have to really look at. And
the first is that objects at rest remain at rest
and objects in motion remain in motion, moving in a
straight line at a steady speed unless acted upon by
(05:45):
an unbalanced force. Meaning an outside force of some sort. Right,
So a ball only stops rolling along the ground because
of friction. It doesn't stop rolling because things naturally slow
down over time, Right, it would just continue for infinity
if in fact that friction wasn't present, or or if
it ran into something else in the change direction, obviously
(06:07):
that would be difference, or maybe went through a gravitational
field that caused some attraction. Yeah, but again, so when
it encounters an unbalanced force, given no unbalanced forces, given
only balanced forces. Yes. Also, we we wanted to note
a thing about the terms rest and motion. Yeah, they're
relative terms, so it all depends upon your point of reference. Right,
(06:29):
So some of it can be a little counterintuitive. If I'm,
for example, sitting on a train and the train is moving,
Am I at rest or my in motion? Well, we
would describe me as being at rest because compared to
my surroundings, I eat the train, the physical train that's
around me, I'm not moving. I'm sitting down, I'm sitting
in a seat. Now, if I were to get up
(06:50):
and walk in that train, then I would be in
motion because according to my surroundings the train I am
moving around compared to that the train itself is in
motion because it's moving relative to the surroundings the countryside
or tunnel or whatever the heck, the train happens to
be going around, so it's all relative. Yeah, so that's
(07:12):
important to remember. Unbalanced force is referencing the sum, total
or net force exerted on an object. So I used
a sandwich on a table because I wrote this note
shortly before lunch and I was dreaming of sandwiches. Hungry
notes are sandwich notes, Yes, So a sandwich on a
table is an example of an object under balanced force
because gravity is pulling down on that sandwich, but the
(07:34):
table is giving equal force upward, keeping the sandwich on
the table. It's not pushing too hard because we're pushing
harder than the sandwich would jump off the table. Right.
This is a really great analygy to be an amazing
table would be an amazing table, but it's not happening.
It's just it's exactly a balanced force. Now, if you
can buy this table from you, this is a metaphorical table,
(07:57):
So the answer is yes, I will sell it. Uh,
But if you were the table, I am interested in
your sandwich table, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
If you were to pick up the sandwich, you would
introduce unbalanced force because you would be actually counteracting gravity. Further,
you would have to use enough force to counteract the
poll of gravity to lift the sandwich higher than its
(08:19):
current height on the table. So what we're really talking
about here is is two different scenarios in which forces
can be balanced. Yes. Yeah, So if an object does
at rest, the forces on it are balanced, and that's
that's without question, right, If an objects at rest, by definition,
the forces are balanced. If an object is moving, then
(08:41):
it could still have balanced forces. If it's moving in
a straight line and it's moving at a constant speed.
If it's speed changes or its direction changes, that's a
change and acceleration that is indicative of an unbalanced force
being applied to this object. So that's covering just the
first law of motion. The other two are pretty easy
(09:02):
to remember. Second law of motion states that force is
equal to mass times acceleration. Keeping mind, acceleration is not
just speed like I said, it's it's a change in
speed or direction because it's a vector quantity. And then
you have the third law, which is for every action
there is an equal and opposite reaction, And that's really
the rocket law right there. Yeah, all three of these
(09:24):
are are applicable. But yeah, but but the rocket would
not go anywhere if it weren't for the fact of
that third. That's the key to the propellant idea of
rocket tree. So when we look at rockets, a rocket
at rest is going to require a certain amount of
unbalanced force for it to lift off of a launchpad.
You know, you've got this big, massive, heavy thing sitting
(09:44):
on a un a really big sandwich. Yeah, an enormous
sandwich sitting on a really big tape. Because the moon
looks very hungry, yes, and shouldn't we treat it once
in a while. So this unbalanced force has to be
greater than the forces pulling it downwards. So it has
to be greater than gravity. And uh so with rockets
(10:07):
we call that unbalanced for something specific, we call it thrust.
So a rocket has to have enough thrust to lift
off of the launch pad. If it doesn't, then it's
not going to go anywhere. Even if you're shooting flames
out the back of this rocket. If it's not enough thrust,
it will just be a flamethrower firing at the launchpad.
And gravity isn't the only thing that's that's in play
(10:27):
here exactly. There are a couple of other things to
keep in mind. So there's a drag, which actually is
you know, sort of air resistance. Really yeah, yeah, because
as we have said many times before, the air around
us is not open and clear. It's soup particle soup. Yeah.
If it were otherwise, we'd be in a vacuum and
that would suck for us. We wouldn't exactly like a hoover.
(10:48):
It would suck for us. I wish you could see
the little laugh that Laura. What was great was Laura
half laughter that almost came out. There was the moment
where where she wasn't sure where I was going, and
then there was the moment where she's like, on, man,
I think I probably make around to you a lot.
(11:09):
It's you're not the only person I inspire that. But
at any rate, so as long as a rocket is
within Earth's atmosphere, it has to deal with the drag, right,
It's gonna deal with this air resistance, which is part
of something that like, when we think of air resistance,
you're probably thinking, well, that's got to be minor compared
to gravity. I'm not saying it's more powerful than gravity,
(11:30):
but it's something that as a rocket scientist you have
to take into account. Otherwise you might not be developing
a rocket engine that provides enough thrust to escape Earth's gravity. Actually,
to escape ears gravity entirely, I mean not just going
into orbit, but to actually leave Earth's gravity, you need
to be going at a speed greater than eleven point
(11:50):
one eight six kilometers per second or six point nine
five miles per second. Wait, that's really fast, super fast
for seventy kilometers per hour or thousand twenty three miles
per hour. I know that's true, but you don't think
about that when you watch a rocket take off because
it just doesn't look like it's going that fact, well,
(12:11):
at the point where it's leaving the ground, it's not
going that fast exactly constantly accelerating. And then, of course,
once you get outside the air atmosphere, you're no longer
dealing with the drag. And also the further out you go,
the less you have to worry about gravity. And the
mass of the rocket itself is changing, right, because you've
got the mass of all the fuel inside the rocket.
(12:33):
As you burn that fuel, that mass starts to decrease,
you need less force to accelerate it, right, because forces
mass times acceleration um. As the mass goes down, it
actually is easier to accelerate, right. And that's why multi
stage rockets are so interesting, because you can jettison part
(12:53):
of the rocket you had used to get up to
where you are at that point of that altitude. Right.
That's what we talked about earlier, like throwing your pots
and pants in the trash as you're done with them, right,
and then the second stage you light up, and the
second stage can then accelerate the smaller mass of the
rocket plus spacecraft, uh, much easier than it would if
(13:14):
the first stage were still attached, because then you would
have more mass to deal with. So that's that's interesting too.
So the way that this thrust is generated is through
propellant through burning fuel. Essentially, you're creating very hot, very
rapidly expanding gas and you're directing it through a nozzle. Yeah,
I mean, one thing we should specifies that it's kind
(13:36):
of different than when we usually think about burning fuel.
We we're thinking about like internal combustion engines or something
like this. A rocket literally works by throwing mass out
the back. Yeah, it's and that mass is in the
form of gas, and you would think, oh, gas doesn't
have a whole lot of mass to it. Well, it's true,
but it's coming out at an incredible rate. Yes, So
(13:59):
remember forces mass times acceleration. If that gas is coming
out at an incredible acceleration, then the fact that it's
small as far as mask goes doesn't matter so much,
right though, I also think the total escaping mass that
comes out the back of a rocket is pretty significant,
even though it's gas over the over the length of
(14:19):
a launch, definitely, But at any given instant, the amount
of gas that's escaping that mass is tiny compared to
the rocket plus spacecraft, right, But the acceleration is so
great that it's enough to counteract gravity. So, in other words,
when you watch a launch and you see that kind
of slow lift off, that's because you've got this huge
(14:41):
mass undergoing a relatively small amount of acceleration compared to
the tiny mass of the gas particles undergoing massive acceleration. Now,
I have another physics question. Has anybody ever done the
math to figure out how much it changes the position
shin of the orbit of the Earth every time you
(15:02):
have a rocket to pitch against the Earth to leave.
Orbit pushes back, Earth pushes back, So you know, you
shove Earth, Earth shoves you. Then it goes to your family.
Another reason to go treat the moon. The moon never
did nothing to anybody, well werewolves, but other than them.
(15:26):
So obviously, when you are making your plans to launch
your rocket, it's not just the mass of the rocket
and spacecraft you have to take into account. You also
have to take into account the mass of the fuel
that you're including, right, So this gets a little more
complicated because then you think, all right, well I need
to add enough fuel to get to this particular altitude,
more fuel to pay for the fuel exactly right. So
(15:48):
then you know, it's interesting, Joe, because before we went
into the studio, in fact, a couple of hours ago,
you had mentioned it's really cool that we live on
Earth because Earth has properties that allow rocketry to even
work here. Yeah, we actually got a really good piece
of listener mail about this one time on Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, the other podcast that I do with
(16:09):
Robert Lamb and Christian Seger, and this listener wrote in
to talk to us about about how we're in a
nice position on Earth that you know, we can build
rockets that can escape Earth's gravity. But if we lived
on a planet that had a more difficult to escape gravity, well,
I mean, what would we do. Yeah, Because if you
can't find fuel that has the energy density that you
(16:30):
need and is able to release that gas at an
acceleration that's going to counteract the effect of gravity on
your mass. In this case of rocket, you're stuck. Yeah,
technological civilization that just can't get off the surface of
the planet, which is entirely possible depending upon the gravity,
right or not just the gravity, but also which elements
(16:52):
are commonly available to turn into fuel, although for ygen
not uncommon. I mean, once you figure out like fusion,
then probably have a pretty good chance. Fusion is great.
Fusion is great. Once you get into space to actually
create lift with thrust, it would be interesting. I'm sure
there's a way to do it. I'm just I guess
(17:13):
you could probably even do it with steam if you
really wanted to, like if you wanted to write a
boiler into space plan Yeah, But fusion I think of
as more of a way of releasing a controlled amount
of energy over a long period of time, as opposed
to that burst that you need in order to escape
the bonds of Earth or whatever hypothetical plant. Yeah, maybe
(17:35):
you could do one of those nuclear explosion reactions you do,
the use nuclear bombs to propel yourself. You just yeah,
it's like I've actually read about this, using like three
or four nuclear explosions to propel an object into space.
I mean, once you're real done with the planet, then
why not. I've been stuck here for thousands of years.
(17:55):
I'm sick of it for them, For them, nuclear real
asian might be a tasty treat. So at any rate,
getting back to some of the other things that affect
rockets taking off, there's also air pressure, so this is
interesting too. You know, you have to counteract air pressure
in order to have gas escape from the rocket in
(18:16):
the first place. Right, If the air pressure were too strong,
it would be like a cork, so no gas would
ever escape your rocket. So your rocket has to produce
more internal pressure than there is air pressure here on Earth.
Not such a big deal, right, If air pressure were
that great where a rocket could not generate enough internal
pressure to escape, we wouldn't be breathing right now. But
(18:39):
it is a factor that you have to take into
account when again you're a rocket scientist, it's not completely
trivial where you can ignore it. Also, rockets have to
obviously be strong enough to contain that internal pressure. If
they didn't, they would not be rockets. They would be
bombs because it would explode. Uh, that would be what
you would call something that is unable to contain the
(19:01):
pressure that generates inside of it. Um And until recently
they were one use affairs. It's kind of like with
your kitchen example, my car example. The idea that you
use this thing one time. Other couple of exceptions that
the one that Lauren will pick up in a second.
But in general, you'd use it to launch something up
into space. It would fall back to Earth, usually in
(19:21):
an ocean. That's what where that's where we wanted to go. Also,
the oceans cover more of the surface of the plant
than than land mask does. And you might go out
and retrieve it, but you probably weren't going to use
it again, which meant that you had to build a
whole new one the next time you wanted to put
something on the space. Yeah, or you would have to
put a whole lot of work into making that thing reusable. Yeah.
(19:44):
For For example, for the Space Shuttle, NASA designed components
that could be retooled and reused the there two solid
rocket boosters were the parts that got the shuttle off
the ground and end up some like twenty eight miles
or KOs And at that point they'd separate and and
those solid rocket boosters would parachute into the Atlantic. The
Navy would go out and pick them up, and then
(20:06):
they could be taken back into the into the lab
and refurbished for future launches. But it was such an
intense process because of the solid part of those solid
rocket boosters that they used solid fuel instead of liquid,
so huge parts of the rockets had to be completely
replaced each time. But I mean that was the whole
idea behind the space shell, right, was that they were
trying to make as much of it reusable as possible.
(20:29):
Like that was the whole concept behind that particular era
of NASA's space exploration was we want, we want, We're
limited the low Earth orbit, but we can keep using
this equipment repeatedly. And it had some stages that couldn't
be reused. Right. The external tank, which was the shuttle's
main fuel tank, would burn up upon re entry after
launching the shuttle the rest of the way into low
(20:50):
Earth orbits. And and that's a good point to make
because there actually if you want to use a reusable
rocket to get you not just to the edge of space,
spit up into orbit around the Earth and then back safely,
there are a couple things you've got to take into consideration.
One of them would be making it so that it
survives re entry into the atmosphere from space. We've got
(21:12):
it up in orbit. Uh, it's got to be able
to get back into our gassy soup I talked so
wonderfully about with that drag. Thing becomes pretty intense without
burning and breaking apart. And then it's also got to
survive contact with the surface of the Earth. And so furthermore,
I mean, I don't know about any of you guys,
but every time I dunk my expensive electronics and an ocean,
(21:33):
they don't work anymore after. So so that's that's another thing,
Like if you have an ocean splashed down, then you're
trying to get this thing ready to fly into space.
And that's why all all those rockets have that one
sticker that goes from white to black. If it's had
contact with an ocean um in case you didn't notice
it as you were fishing it out of the Pacific
or Atlantic. Yeah, so the reusable rocket idea is very
(21:56):
attractive and that it can lower costs that you can
keep you equipment instead of having to rebuild it every
single time in the case of something like the Falcon nine.
Obviously it only applies to the first stage of the rocket.
The second stage, which would push payloads further into space,
that is not retrievable in that sense. So I think
I've read that typically the first stage is like the
(22:19):
most expensive part of the deal. It's definitely the largest
and has the most fuel on it, so I would
imagine it would have to be the most expensive. Honestly,
one of the hard things to do is to put
a price on a rocket, as it turns out, because
lots of companies work on them. And I'm not going
to say that the government is squirrelly about releasing those
(22:40):
numbers in in specific breakdowns, but they're really hamsterry about it.
Or well, everybody nobody wants to tell you exactly how
much money they actually spent to do something. Well, and
to be again, it's it's complicated because if you look
at we'll talk about the Saturn five rocket in a second.
That was what we used to get the Apollo missions
into days. If you look at the Saturn five rocket,
(23:01):
three different companies worked on the three different stages of that, rightet.
That was a three stage rocket, so you had your
initial stage that would get to launch, and then two
more stages to actually push the Apollo spacecraft out to
where it was supposed to go. And a different company
designed each of those stages. When you talk about that,
and then you look at it and and ask somebody
(23:23):
how much does the Saturn five rocket costs? It's understandable
that the answer is that it's complicated, right, It's not
just like you don't you go out to the lot
and say, hey, how much for the Saturn five? Doesn't
work that way. But at any rate, um it is
still pretty cool that we've seen a couple of demos
of this reusable rocket approach. They they actually retain enough
(23:46):
fuel so that they can use thrusters on the return
to have a light, relatively light touchdown on a on
a on a pad landing pad and on a launchpad.
So both the Falcon nine and UH New Shepherd have
demonstrated this ability, although they've done it in very different ways.
It's almost like orders of magnitude difference in a way.
(24:08):
But they neither of them were using a parachute, right.
They were actually using thrusters to counteract gravity's pull and
slow down the descent so that they can have a
smooth touchdown, just just so we can make it feel
a little cooler. Can we call them retro rockets? Sure,
they fired the retro rockets, firing retro rockets and slowed
(24:29):
the descent so that they could land. Now, one other
thing I want to point out before I get into
the differences between all this is also that at the
time we're recording this, which is on January fourteenth, two
thousand and sixteen, very soon we're gonna have another demonstration
of SpaceX trying to land one of these rockets on
(24:49):
one of the barges that are floating out in the ocean.
Like y, I think it's I think it's the seventeenth.
So by the time this episode goes live, it we
will know whether or not it worked. But but we
don't now. Yeah, we don't know now because we can't see.
So you guys have one up on us. But it
hasn't worked yet for for the ocean landing. It has
(25:10):
worked for a landing pad that was on the ground.
The fingers crossed. Yeah, and okay, so just in case
you guys are thinking, like, man, this doesn't sound that hard,
let me lay out another few reasons that I don't
think that we've covered on why this is really difficult
to do this whole reasonable rocket thing. Okay, first off,
and you know, not to bring the party down too much,
(25:31):
but you know, like it needs to be brought up.
The failure of the original version of the Space Shuttle
solid rocket boosters was what caused the destruction of the
Challenger back and okay that the problems with that original
design have been really well documented. Concerns about them were
raised with the NASSA during development, So of course that
tragedy is taken into consideration by today's engineers when they're
building reasonable rockets. Just you know, I'm just trying to
(25:54):
say that whenever you're trying to save a piece of
equipment for future use, you've got to be so careful
that you're not doing so by potentially endangering the crew
and the passengers. Um, it's it's a it's a really
huge thing to think about. Also, from an engineering perspective,
when you reuse a rocket, you're basically stopping development of
(26:15):
that rocket, so you're looking at getting stuck with a
potentially imperfect model. And this was pointed out by a
representative of the French Space Agency c n e S
by the name of Christoph Banal, and he sat back
in I just thought it was such a pithy little quote.
If you reuse, you stopped producing, depending on the level
of reusability, so you end up with a permanent prototype. Um,
(26:38):
so that's something to think about. And then he he
also pointed out that the equipment and fuel that you
need to add to a rocket to get it to
land safely is a non trivial weight and size issue.
He estimated that you'd be needing to use at least
like more fuel at launch than you would with non
reasonable rockets. So in other words, you'd have to make
sure that however much more fuel you need doesn't completely
(27:02):
over than than rebuilding a rocket from scratch. I would argue,
I see totally where he's coming from, and I agree
that those concerns are warranted. But if you're talking about
trying to get to an era where the space industry
makes financial sense. Clearly, at some point we have to
(27:22):
look at the ability of using reusable rockets, because otherwise
it's just gonna be this ridiculously expensive proposition that never
goes beyond a very very narrow use case. It seems
like common sense that the reasonable would be the eventual
way to go. Right. But but yeah, so let's look
at the two different ways that these two companies are
(27:43):
trying to get past these problems. Right So, Blue Origin, uh,
with the New Shepherd rocket it's it's approach was arguably
not even arguably it was simpler than the Falcon nine
approach or less ambitious. If you're Ellen, Muski might mention
something along those lines. Uh must actually tweeted about SATs. Yeah,
(28:06):
I don't even know if I spat might be a
little too friendly, Yeah, that would I think ribbing is
is a good way of putting it. But uh So,
the test vehicle of New Shepherd it was had a
target altitude of three hundred seven thousand feet, which is
about ninety three point six kilometers. Now, the goal for
commercial flights, which is the whole concept behind Blue Origin,
(28:29):
is uh an altitude that would be just over one kilometers.
And the reason for that is that internationally, we define
the boundary of space at one kilometers. When I say we,
I mean pretty much everyone besides the United States now
on a scale of one to ten. How arbitrary is that?
Like a fourteen? Yeah, I mean it's uh, there's a
(28:49):
specific term for it. But at any rate, the international
community says one kilometers. United States will say that anyone
who has flown at an altitude higher than eighty kilometers
as an astronaut, but does not actually have a specific
definition for what the edge of space is. So, uh,
there's this twenty kilometer gap between what the international community
(29:10):
agrees as an astronaut and what the United States does.
And uh so what's twenty kilometers between friends? Right? But
at any rate, Um, that one hundred kilometers, while impressive,
is not the same as delivering something to low Earth orbit.
Low Earth orbit begins at about a hundred sixty kilometers.
So this vehicle goes just beyond half the distance it
(29:31):
would need to get to a little bit more than
half the distance it would need to get to low
Earth orbit. Um, it's actually meant to be kind of
a passenger vehicle. Like, if you have a decent amount
of cash to burn, you could get a seat aboard
a space capsule on top of one of these rockets.
(29:51):
Do you do you get a discount if you're a
member of Amazon Prime. That's an excellent question. I've been.
I've been Amazon Prime members since they first launched it,
so just week so I think I think I should
get This should include free space travel, or at least
at least a significant discount space travel. They'll just be
like we just dropped the shipping fee Black Friday special.
(30:11):
So the way it works is that you know, you
would get aboard this capsule. H. The rocket would launch. Um,
there would be a separation phase. What I'm sorry, still
my space travel never arrived? Can you send me another one? Uh?
So it would launch, the space capsule would separate from
the rocket at the proper altitude. Space capsule would continue
(30:33):
to go up a little bit just from momentum from inertia. Uh,
the rocket would start to descend and would it's almost
like it's going straight up and straight down there. It's
not quite like that there is an arc to it,
Like it's almost like a really narrow parabola that you
would see but the rockets orientation pretty much remains vertical
(30:54):
with respect to the ground, so it doesn't tilt. Meanwhile,
you aboard the capsule would be able to experience free fall,
which would feel like weightlessness for several minutes, and then
you would get a little alerting buzz that says, hey,
you need to put on your seatbelt now and experience
around five g s of accelerative forces as you descend
(31:14):
towards the Earth and land safely through a combination of
thrusters and parachutes. The New Shepherd rocket uses just those
retro rockets for landing and it doesn't use a parachute.
So that's Blue Origins New Shepherd, which I don't want
to downplay. It is a very impressive achievement. They demonstrated
it before SpaceX was able to have a successful landing
(31:37):
of their Falcon nine. And if in fact they want
to create a vacation experience where people with the right
amount of money you can actually go up into space,
this is a really cool way of doing it. But
if you were elon Musk, what might you tweet at that?
Would it be something like congratulations? But people need to
understand the difference between space and orbit. That's pretty much
(31:59):
why he said. Right, So the Falcon nine, unlike New Shepherd,
can deliver payloads into lower th orbit. It is a
two stage rockets, so the first stage gets them, the
second stage and the the whatever the payload is up
to the right altitude for separation, and then the second
stage takes it from there. But the first stage already
goes significantly higher, like into the lower th orbit range
(32:24):
than the New Shepherd rocket can. And this is way
harder to do, right. This is not just like you
shouldn't have this attitude that well, once you're in space,
you're in space, right, It's not like that at all.
Earth's gravity is still a major factor to contend with,
and you have to have a much higher velocity to escape, right,
And you also have to your the orientation of your
(32:45):
rocket changes because you're you're actually trying to when you're
going into orbit, you're essentially constantly in free fall around
the Earth. Right, You're traveling forward at a speed that
is great enough so that as you fall towards the Earth,
the Earth curves away at a similar rates, so you're
never going to actually hit the ground, at least assuming
you don't slow down enough. So that your orbit deteriorates
(33:06):
and you fall. Also, if you're if you're SpaceX, then
you're probably trying to do stuff while you're up there. Yeah,
you're probably actually delivering payloads like like, and those are
two space barges, sandwiches on the Moon to probably not
the Moon, probably stuff aboard the International Space Station, as
well as satellites. You're delivering all that shrimp cocktail they
(33:28):
love so much. Yes, yes, we've talked about the shrimp
cocktail at length in previous Forward Thinking episodes. Uh So,
when that first stage separates from the second stage and
whatever the payload is UM, it then starts to descend.
They use the thrusters so that they can orient the
rocket properly so it's not just twirling and falling, you know,
willy nilly as it descends into the Earth's atmosphere. And
(33:52):
then they have to make sure that they use the
right amount of force so that it can actually land
safely on a landing pad. So it is already more
difficult than the Blue origin approach, which was already really
hard to do UM. And then add to that the
fact that they want to do this regularly using autonomous barges.
(34:15):
Floating on the ocean, which obviously that's gonna be a
moving platform. That makes it even harder. Drone boat sounds cooler.
That's not a rowboat. That's something totally different. Okay, Well,
I have a question about this whole enterprise. Yeah, so
the question is exactly how much money would a reusable
(34:36):
rocket save in the long run. Now, I know Elon
Musk himself has given a prediction, though you know, we
might want to take it with a grain of salt
because he himself has a stake in that somewhat yet. Yeah,
but his prediction, he's he's famously said that rockets that
are as reusable as modern airplanes will reduce the cost
of access to space by a factor of about a
(34:58):
hundred time. Yeah. Do you think that number is close
to right if it were as reusable as an airplane? Probably,
But that's if you take into consideration the fact that
airplanes can be serviced and ready to go back up
in the air within within half an hour. I don't
think we're ever going to get to a point where
rockets are going to be that reusable. Of course, that
(35:20):
may not have been what he was trying to get across.
He might have just been saying like, well that he's
used that comparison several times. I think is is saying like,
you know, look at what airplanes can do. Uh, you know,
imagine if you throw your airplane in the garbage every
time it landed right, And it's an interesting comparison. Again,
I think with any rocket launch, you're going to have
(35:42):
a significant just for the sake of safety. You obviously
have to have a significant amount of time to test
and refurbish and everything to make sure that the rocket
is ready to go for another another launch, which adds
to the cost. Right, It's not just the amount of
fuel you have to dump into the thing, it's the
amount of work you have to do to make sure
that is going to be safe and not danger to
(36:02):
the payload or to anyone else in the launch area.
So you're saying, you think all this, all this testing
is very important. We're not just like glad awesome, we're
addicted to testing. I would say that in the case
of rocket science, testing is of some importance. And so
whether or not that testing would be enough to reduce
(36:23):
this one hundred times cheaper prediction to you know, fifty times,
I don't know, But still fifty times would be significant.
I mean, even if this is a ridiculously high estimate,
like I would take thirty times, y'all, I would take
fifteen times, it would be Any improvement would be really impressive,
especially a magnitude of more than like two. So, but
(36:46):
trying to actually answer your question of how much money,
how much physical dollars it would save, as we said before,
it's really hard to put a price in rocket. Why
do they have to be physical dollars? Oh, I don't know.
Talking about space exploration is going to be some kind
of cat show only enterprise and we can change. Bitcoin
(37:08):
is the new thing, guys. This is how you use
up your old pennies, Joe. So, you know, trying to
answer the question like how much money would be saved,
it's super tricky because obviously, unless you have the actual
price tag of a rocket and you can see how
much it costs from building it from scratch all the
way to the point of launching it, and then compare
(37:28):
that to a refurbished rocket that has already been fired
once and is now going to go again, you can't
easily answer that question obviously. But if we want to
look historically and again, this is kind of comparing apples
to oranges. We can look at the center in five rocket,
like I mentioned before, that's what NASA used to get
the Apollo missions up into space, and those costs at
(37:49):
the time around four million dollars per launch. That's in
the late sixties, early seventies. If you adjust for inflation,
that's more than three billion dollars per launch. Now that's
not just for the cost of the rocket and the fuel,
that's all the costs associated with launching. But still three
billion dollars. So I thought, well, let me check and
(38:10):
see what SpaceX how much that would cost? Uh? And
I looked on SpaceX's website, which actually has the amount
of money it costs to launch a Falcon nine rocket
according to two thousand sixteen numbers, and according to that
it's sixty one point two million dollars. So three billion
(38:30):
to sixty one point two million. Already we've seen a
dramatic drop in the in the in the cost. Right,
That's that's pretty good. That's not bad. Now. Arguably, we
could also add the fact that we've got decades of
research and development between the sixties and today. We have
things like computers. Yes, we're not using slide rules to
make the calculations. So yeah, just the decreasing cost of
(38:52):
computing power is gonna be a huge part of enormous stuff.
Oh and I love the fact that that SpaceX calls
it their standard payment plan for the sixty million dollars
per launch. So if they're able to actually make a reliable,
reusable rocket, that cost the sixty one point two million
might actually go down significantly, at which point you might
(39:13):
have other companies that would be interested in launching scientific
research equipment or commercial equipment out into space. It might
fall within the realm of possibility now, because for some
companies they might say, well, we have this great idea,
but there's no no point in even developing it because
we have no way of actually executing this. But this
could open a lot of doors as well as usher
(39:35):
in a new era of space exploration, manned missions or
peopled missions. I guess I should say, I mean, you know,
we we we like it when people are able to
do science. Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty psyched about it.
It's also nice to see something that could reverse the
trend of space missions getting so expensive that governments are
(39:59):
loath to fund them, right especially if there's not some
other outside force that is acting upon our interests. For example,
I say that because the Space Race was largely funded
because it was part of the Cold War between the
United States and the then Soviet Union. Arm wrestling, military
(40:22):
related kind of kind of thing, and we benefited from
all of that scientific exploration and discovery, But ultimately what
was funding it was something akin to fear and aggression,
which I would rather we not have to have. But
but sometimes when you're talking to the person who signs
(40:42):
the checks, you've got to have that other really compelling reason.
But are you saying now that the the analogy to
the Cold War could be like billionaire ego feuds could
be that, or it could also just be it also
could just be that, well, now the price has fallen
to a point where it's easier for the people who
fund things to see that there could be a return
(41:03):
on that investment. You know. The thing that we talked
about and forward thinking all the time is that pure
research is of value all by itself because you never
know what else you're going to learn or or benefit
from down the line as a part of that pure research.
But that's a hard sell for the people who actually
signed the checks, if they're not a scientist, if they
(41:24):
don't have that appreciation. Uh. And by lowering the cost,
it may make it easier to convince the powers that
be to actually fund the various missions that could lead
to phenomenal discoveries down the road, things that we can't
even anticipate right now. Um. So I'm excited by this era.
I really hope that it continues to develop over time.
(41:48):
I really hope that the SpaceX demonstration was successful, which
we will know by the time this episode goes live.
And uh, I hope that we see even more competition
in the space because that drives innovation. If you can't
get competition through you know, various nations warring with one another,
companies trying to one up each other, I'll take that, sure.
(42:08):
And I guess that kind of comes akin to your
billionaires all getting into a fight with one another and
just through space exploration. All right, that's fine. I don't
mind if we benefit from it, sure better than I
bought a bigger boat. I don't think that's nearly as
beneficial to humanity. So just wait till we introduce James
Cameron into this feud. Yeah, well, I mean, we'll have
(42:29):
to get them out of the ocean first, right. Once
we get them out of the ocean, then maybe we
can point them towards space. But at any rate, this
was fun to talk about. We're so excited to be back.
And guys, if you have any suggestions for future topics
for forward thinking, or you got any comments or questions,
you should send those into us our email addresses FW
thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can
(42:50):
drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus.
Twitter and Google Plus we are FW thinking. You can
search FW thinking on Facebook. We'll pop right up. You
can leave us a message there. Thank you guys so
much for your support. Thank you for all the questions
about Hey, when are you guys coming back, because it
means a lot to us. We're so pleased that we
could be back now and strap in because it's gonna
(43:11):
be a crazy year. I have a feeling. I mean,
there's some weird stuff coming down the pipe as far
as science and technology goes, and we're gonna try and
cover all of that. That's my it's my ambition. So
we'll see, all right, and until then, we'll talk to
you again really soon for more on this topic. In
(43:33):
the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought
to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says the stars
look very different today. I'm Jonathan Strickland, Laura, and I'm
(00:21):
Joe McCormick Melancholy again. It's a two First. I told
you in the last episode that was a bitter sweet.
That was tribute, right, tribute. Yeah. Actually, now I feel
like I need to like find some good Alan Rickman quotes,
it's been a rough week. Wizards and Goblins. Man, Wizards
and Goblins, got my slitherin sweater here though, So everything's
(00:43):
doing okay. Yeah. So while we are mourning, we're grieving,
we're also celebrating because one, we're celebrating great art that
was left behind as artists themselves have passed away. But
we're also celebrating because we're in an era of amazing
technological and science development and we're witnessing it right now.
(01:06):
Like we are in a time that is phenomenal for
multiple reasons, and just one of those is that recently
we've seen a couple of really cool demonstrations of a
technology that we've been waiting for for a while. Uh,
the idea of reusable rockets, rockets that can launch up,
go into space, returned to Earth and land safely so
that they could be used again after being refurbished. And
(01:30):
this is a big deal and we'll talk about why
in this episode. Yea. So, so the two examples that
we've seen are are Blue Origin, which was the company company. Yeah,
Blue Origins the company, and that was that's backed by
Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Uh, and their rocket New Shepherd,
which was the first one in late I think it
was November, launched up, went to the edge of space.
(01:53):
We'll talk about that in a little bit, and then
returned to Earth and landed safely using thrusters to maneuver
at self and land upright. And then uh, SpaceX would
be the other one, and they launched a Falcon nine
which actually delivered a payload into lower Earth ormit because
SpaceX does that. Yeah. Yeah, it was a payload that
(02:15):
had some satellites in it. So now I should mention
that the Falcon nine, it was the first stage that
returned to The Falcon nine is a two stage rocket.
We'll talk more about that a little bit later too.
But in both cases, this is really impressive display of
technological and engineering expertise. Now, if you're sitting there thinking,
wait a second, what's so great about that? I thought
(02:37):
all the spacecraft we sent to space typically returned. Isn't
that sort of the point? If they if they're especially
for crude space missions, don't they come back? Here you
need to understand the distinction between the spacecraft or the capsule,
for true, and the rocket. That's true. I'm being very
loose with the terminology, but yes, the rocket, the vehicle
(02:57):
that delivers the spacecraft up into space, is what we're
really talking about here. And the situation with rockets today,
I don't know, it seems kind of wasteful. It's like
if you decided, hey, I'm gonna cook dinner, and in
the process of doing so, you destroyed every piece of
equipment in your kitchen that you used to make dinner with,
(03:17):
like the whole kitchen. Basically, like you just at the
end of when by the time it's done, your stove
is gone, your fridges, pots and pans in the trash,
Your you know, knife, you're going in the trash. You're ruined.
The example I gave is imagine that you are going
to go on a family road trip and you buy
a brand new car, and then you go out to
Wally World, and then you just leave the car there
(03:38):
and you uber it back home, and your car you
never get to touch that car again. That car is gone.
So every time you take a road trip you have
to buy a new car. That sounds expensive. You can
get up there. I mean, you know, it depends on
your taste of vehicle. I being a luxurious type. It's
it starts to rack up after eight or nine trips. Sure,
And as you can imagine, launching things into space is
(04:00):
even as cheap as going to Wally World. No, it's
actually a tad more expensive. Uh yeah, So we wanted
to talk today about the concept of reusable rockets. Why
is that a big deal? And to really understand that.
I thought it'd be kind of interesting because that's the
way I think, to have a rundown on the basic
physics of rocketry, so we can understand what is going
(04:21):
on when we're sending a rocket up into space. This
is particularly important because New Shepherd and Falcon nine are
two very different approaches right. One thing you should keep
in mind, of course, is where those two names come from.
New Shepherd named after Alan Shepherd, the first American to
make it into space. Falcon nine named after Star Wars
(04:41):
the Millennium Fall. So, uh, those two are are quite different.
And it's also a really good look into the minds
of Elon Musk and Jeff Basis. Yeah, I would, I
would agree with that, but this this is uh, you know,
we'll talk a little bit about how those two are
very different as we move along. So rockets work because
(05:01):
of fundamental law of our universe actually collection of laws
of our universe that we understand it. Yeah, if they
weren't true, we wouldn't be sending stuff into space, right,
And uh, those laws were first explained in a book
called the Philosophia Naturalists Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton, Sir,
(05:22):
pardon me, sir Isaac Newton. And in that work Newton
framed his observations of physics and frame them in the
form of basic laws of motion. And there are three
basic laws that we have to really look at. And
the first is that objects at rest remain at rest
and objects in motion remain in motion, moving in a
straight line at a steady speed unless acted upon by
(05:45):
an unbalanced force. Meaning an outside force of some sort. Right,
So a ball only stops rolling along the ground because
of friction. It doesn't stop rolling because things naturally slow
down over time, Right, it would just continue for infinity
if in fact that friction wasn't present, or or if
it ran into something else in the change direction, obviously
(06:07):
that would be difference, or maybe went through a gravitational
field that caused some attraction. Yeah, but again, so when
it encounters an unbalanced force, given no unbalanced forces, given
only balanced forces. Yes. Also, we we wanted to note
a thing about the terms rest and motion. Yeah, they're
relative terms, so it all depends upon your point of reference. Right,
(06:29):
So some of it can be a little counterintuitive. If I'm,
for example, sitting on a train and the train is moving,
Am I at rest or my in motion? Well, we
would describe me as being at rest because compared to
my surroundings, I eat the train, the physical train that's
around me, I'm not moving. I'm sitting down, I'm sitting
in a seat. Now, if I were to get up
(06:50):
and walk in that train, then I would be in
motion because according to my surroundings the train I am
moving around compared to that the train itself is in
motion because it's moving relative to the surroundings the countryside
or tunnel or whatever the heck, the train happens to
be going around, so it's all relative. Yeah, so that's
(07:12):
important to remember. Unbalanced force is referencing the sum, total
or net force exerted on an object. So I used
a sandwich on a table because I wrote this note
shortly before lunch and I was dreaming of sandwiches. Hungry
notes are sandwich notes, Yes, So a sandwich on a
table is an example of an object under balanced force
because gravity is pulling down on that sandwich, but the
(07:34):
table is giving equal force upward, keeping the sandwich on
the table. It's not pushing too hard because we're pushing
harder than the sandwich would jump off the table. Right.
This is a really great analygy to be an amazing
table would be an amazing table, but it's not happening.
It's just it's exactly a balanced force. Now, if you
can buy this table from you, this is a metaphorical table,
(07:57):
So the answer is yes, I will sell it. Uh,
But if you were the table, I am interested in
your sandwich table, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
If you were to pick up the sandwich, you would
introduce unbalanced force because you would be actually counteracting gravity. Further,
you would have to use enough force to counteract the
poll of gravity to lift the sandwich higher than its
(08:19):
current height on the table. So what we're really talking
about here is is two different scenarios in which forces
can be balanced. Yes. Yeah, So if an object does
at rest, the forces on it are balanced, and that's
that's without question, right, If an objects at rest, by definition,
the forces are balanced. If an object is moving, then
(08:41):
it could still have balanced forces. If it's moving in
a straight line and it's moving at a constant speed.
If it's speed changes or its direction changes, that's a
change and acceleration that is indicative of an unbalanced force
being applied to this object. So that's covering just the
first law of motion. The other two are pretty easy
(09:02):
to remember. Second law of motion states that force is
equal to mass times acceleration. Keeping mind, acceleration is not
just speed like I said, it's it's a change in
speed or direction because it's a vector quantity. And then
you have the third law, which is for every action
there is an equal and opposite reaction, And that's really
the rocket law right there. Yeah, all three of these
(09:24):
are are applicable. But yeah, but but the rocket would
not go anywhere if it weren't for the fact of
that third. That's the key to the propellant idea of
rocket tree. So when we look at rockets, a rocket
at rest is going to require a certain amount of
unbalanced force for it to lift off of a launchpad.
You know, you've got this big, massive, heavy thing sitting
(09:44):
on a un a really big sandwich. Yeah, an enormous
sandwich sitting on a really big tape. Because the moon
looks very hungry, yes, and shouldn't we treat it once
in a while. So this unbalanced force has to be
greater than the forces pulling it downwards. So it has
to be greater than gravity. And uh so with rockets
(10:07):
we call that unbalanced for something specific, we call it thrust.
So a rocket has to have enough thrust to lift
off of the launch pad. If it doesn't, then it's
not going to go anywhere. Even if you're shooting flames
out the back of this rocket. If it's not enough thrust,
it will just be a flamethrower firing at the launchpad.
And gravity isn't the only thing that's that's in play
(10:27):
here exactly. There are a couple of other things to
keep in mind. So there's a drag, which actually is
you know, sort of air resistance. Really yeah, yeah, because
as we have said many times before, the air around
us is not open and clear. It's soup particle soup. Yeah.
If it were otherwise, we'd be in a vacuum and
that would suck for us. We wouldn't exactly like a hoover.
(10:48):
It would suck for us. I wish you could see
the little laugh that Laura. What was great was Laura
half laughter that almost came out. There was the moment
where where she wasn't sure where I was going, and
then there was the moment where she's like, on, man,
I think I probably make around to you a lot.
(11:09):
It's you're not the only person I inspire that. But
at any rate, so as long as a rocket is
within Earth's atmosphere, it has to deal with the drag, right,
It's gonna deal with this air resistance, which is part
of something that like, when we think of air resistance,
you're probably thinking, well, that's got to be minor compared
to gravity. I'm not saying it's more powerful than gravity,
(11:30):
but it's something that as a rocket scientist you have
to take into account. Otherwise you might not be developing
a rocket engine that provides enough thrust to escape Earth's gravity. Actually,
to escape ears gravity entirely, I mean not just going
into orbit, but to actually leave Earth's gravity, you need
to be going at a speed greater than eleven point
(11:50):
one eight six kilometers per second or six point nine
five miles per second. Wait, that's really fast, super fast
for seventy kilometers per hour or thousand twenty three miles
per hour. I know that's true, but you don't think
about that when you watch a rocket take off because
it just doesn't look like it's going that fact, well,
(12:11):
at the point where it's leaving the ground, it's not
going that fast exactly constantly accelerating. And then, of course,
once you get outside the air atmosphere, you're no longer
dealing with the drag. And also the further out you go,
the less you have to worry about gravity. And the
mass of the rocket itself is changing, right, because you've
got the mass of all the fuel inside the rocket.
(12:33):
As you burn that fuel, that mass starts to decrease,
you need less force to accelerate it, right, because forces
mass times acceleration um. As the mass goes down, it
actually is easier to accelerate, right. And that's why multi
stage rockets are so interesting, because you can jettison part
(12:53):
of the rocket you had used to get up to
where you are at that point of that altitude. Right.
That's what we talked about earlier, like throwing your pots
and pants in the trash as you're done with them, right,
and then the second stage you light up, and the
second stage can then accelerate the smaller mass of the
rocket plus spacecraft, uh, much easier than it would if
(13:14):
the first stage were still attached, because then you would
have more mass to deal with. So that's that's interesting too.
So the way that this thrust is generated is through
propellant through burning fuel. Essentially, you're creating very hot, very
rapidly expanding gas and you're directing it through a nozzle. Yeah,
I mean, one thing we should specifies that it's kind
(13:36):
of different than when we usually think about burning fuel.
We we're thinking about like internal combustion engines or something
like this. A rocket literally works by throwing mass out
the back. Yeah, it's and that mass is in the
form of gas, and you would think, oh, gas doesn't
have a whole lot of mass to it. Well, it's true,
but it's coming out at an incredible rate. Yes, So
(13:59):
remember forces mass times acceleration. If that gas is coming
out at an incredible acceleration, then the fact that it's
small as far as mask goes doesn't matter so much,
right though, I also think the total escaping mass that
comes out the back of a rocket is pretty significant,
even though it's gas over the over the length of
(14:19):
a launch, definitely, But at any given instant, the amount
of gas that's escaping that mass is tiny compared to
the rocket plus spacecraft, right, But the acceleration is so
great that it's enough to counteract gravity. So, in other words,
when you watch a launch and you see that kind
of slow lift off, that's because you've got this huge
(14:41):
mass undergoing a relatively small amount of acceleration compared to
the tiny mass of the gas particles undergoing massive acceleration. Now,
I have another physics question. Has anybody ever done the
math to figure out how much it changes the position
shin of the orbit of the Earth every time you
(15:02):
have a rocket to pitch against the Earth to leave.
Orbit pushes back, Earth pushes back, So you know, you
shove Earth, Earth shoves you. Then it goes to your family.
Another reason to go treat the moon. The moon never
did nothing to anybody, well werewolves, but other than them.
(15:26):
So obviously, when you are making your plans to launch
your rocket, it's not just the mass of the rocket
and spacecraft you have to take into account. You also
have to take into account the mass of the fuel
that you're including, right, So this gets a little more
complicated because then you think, all right, well I need
to add enough fuel to get to this particular altitude,
more fuel to pay for the fuel exactly right. So
(15:48):
then you know, it's interesting, Joe, because before we went
into the studio, in fact, a couple of hours ago,
you had mentioned it's really cool that we live on
Earth because Earth has properties that allow rocketry to even
work here. Yeah, we actually got a really good piece
of listener mail about this one time on Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, the other podcast that I do with
(16:09):
Robert Lamb and Christian Seger, and this listener wrote in
to talk to us about about how we're in a
nice position on Earth that you know, we can build
rockets that can escape Earth's gravity. But if we lived
on a planet that had a more difficult to escape gravity, well,
I mean, what would we do. Yeah, Because if you
can't find fuel that has the energy density that you
(16:30):
need and is able to release that gas at an
acceleration that's going to counteract the effect of gravity on
your mass. In this case of rocket, you're stuck. Yeah,
technological civilization that just can't get off the surface of
the planet, which is entirely possible depending upon the gravity,
right or not just the gravity, but also which elements
(16:52):
are commonly available to turn into fuel, although for ygen
not uncommon. I mean, once you figure out like fusion,
then probably have a pretty good chance. Fusion is great.
Fusion is great. Once you get into space to actually
create lift with thrust, it would be interesting. I'm sure
there's a way to do it. I'm just I guess
(17:13):
you could probably even do it with steam if you
really wanted to, like if you wanted to write a
boiler into space plan Yeah, But fusion I think of
as more of a way of releasing a controlled amount
of energy over a long period of time, as opposed
to that burst that you need in order to escape
the bonds of Earth or whatever hypothetical plant. Yeah, maybe
(17:35):
you could do one of those nuclear explosion reactions you do,
the use nuclear bombs to propel yourself. You just yeah,
it's like I've actually read about this, using like three
or four nuclear explosions to propel an object into space.
I mean, once you're real done with the planet, then
why not. I've been stuck here for thousands of years.
(17:55):
I'm sick of it for them, For them, nuclear real
asian might be a tasty treat. So at any rate,
getting back to some of the other things that affect
rockets taking off, there's also air pressure, so this is
interesting too. You know, you have to counteract air pressure
in order to have gas escape from the rocket in
(18:16):
the first place. Right, If the air pressure were too strong,
it would be like a cork, so no gas would
ever escape your rocket. So your rocket has to produce
more internal pressure than there is air pressure here on Earth.
Not such a big deal, right, If air pressure were
that great where a rocket could not generate enough internal
pressure to escape, we wouldn't be breathing right now. But
(18:39):
it is a factor that you have to take into
account when again you're a rocket scientist, it's not completely
trivial where you can ignore it. Also, rockets have to
obviously be strong enough to contain that internal pressure. If
they didn't, they would not be rockets. They would be
bombs because it would explode. Uh, that would be what
you would call something that is unable to contain the
(19:01):
pressure that generates inside of it. Um And until recently
they were one use affairs. It's kind of like with
your kitchen example, my car example. The idea that you
use this thing one time. Other couple of exceptions that
the one that Lauren will pick up in a second.
But in general, you'd use it to launch something up
into space. It would fall back to Earth, usually in
(19:21):
an ocean. That's what where that's where we wanted to go. Also,
the oceans cover more of the surface of the plant
than than land mask does. And you might go out
and retrieve it, but you probably weren't going to use
it again, which meant that you had to build a
whole new one the next time you wanted to put
something on the space. Yeah, or you would have to
put a whole lot of work into making that thing reusable. Yeah.
(19:44):
For For example, for the Space Shuttle, NASA designed components
that could be retooled and reused the there two solid
rocket boosters were the parts that got the shuttle off
the ground and end up some like twenty eight miles
or KOs And at that point they'd separate and and
those solid rocket boosters would parachute into the Atlantic. The
Navy would go out and pick them up, and then
(20:06):
they could be taken back into the into the lab
and refurbished for future launches. But it was such an
intense process because of the solid part of those solid
rocket boosters that they used solid fuel instead of liquid,
so huge parts of the rockets had to be completely
replaced each time. But I mean that was the whole
idea behind the space shell, right, was that they were
trying to make as much of it reusable as possible.
(20:29):
Like that was the whole concept behind that particular era
of NASA's space exploration was we want, we want, We're
limited the low Earth orbit, but we can keep using
this equipment repeatedly. And it had some stages that couldn't
be reused. Right. The external tank, which was the shuttle's
main fuel tank, would burn up upon re entry after
launching the shuttle the rest of the way into low
(20:50):
Earth orbits. And and that's a good point to make
because there actually if you want to use a reusable
rocket to get you not just to the edge of space,
spit up into orbit around the Earth and then back safely,
there are a couple things you've got to take into consideration.
One of them would be making it so that it
survives re entry into the atmosphere from space. We've got
(21:12):
it up in orbit. Uh, it's got to be able
to get back into our gassy soup I talked so
wonderfully about with that drag. Thing becomes pretty intense without
burning and breaking apart. And then it's also got to
survive contact with the surface of the Earth. And so furthermore,
I mean, I don't know about any of you guys,
but every time I dunk my expensive electronics and an ocean,
(21:33):
they don't work anymore after. So so that's that's another thing,
Like if you have an ocean splashed down, then you're
trying to get this thing ready to fly into space.
And that's why all all those rockets have that one
sticker that goes from white to black. If it's had
contact with an ocean um in case you didn't notice
it as you were fishing it out of the Pacific
or Atlantic. Yeah, so the reusable rocket idea is very
(21:56):
attractive and that it can lower costs that you can
keep you equipment instead of having to rebuild it every
single time in the case of something like the Falcon nine.
Obviously it only applies to the first stage of the rocket.
The second stage, which would push payloads further into space,
that is not retrievable in that sense. So I think
I've read that typically the first stage is like the
(22:19):
most expensive part of the deal. It's definitely the largest
and has the most fuel on it, so I would
imagine it would have to be the most expensive. Honestly,
one of the hard things to do is to put
a price on a rocket, as it turns out, because
lots of companies work on them. And I'm not going
to say that the government is squirrelly about releasing those
(22:40):
numbers in in specific breakdowns, but they're really hamsterry about it.
Or well, everybody nobody wants to tell you exactly how
much money they actually spent to do something. Well, and
to be again, it's it's complicated because if you look
at we'll talk about the Saturn five rocket in a second.
That was what we used to get the Apollo missions
into days. If you look at the Saturn five rocket,
(23:01):
three different companies worked on the three different stages of that, rightet.
That was a three stage rocket, so you had your
initial stage that would get to launch, and then two
more stages to actually push the Apollo spacecraft out to
where it was supposed to go. And a different company
designed each of those stages. When you talk about that,
and then you look at it and and ask somebody
(23:23):
how much does the Saturn five rocket costs? It's understandable
that the answer is that it's complicated, right, It's not
just like you don't you go out to the lot
and say, hey, how much for the Saturn five? Doesn't
work that way. But at any rate, um it is
still pretty cool that we've seen a couple of demos
of this reusable rocket approach. They they actually retain enough
(23:46):
fuel so that they can use thrusters on the return
to have a light, relatively light touchdown on a on
a on a pad landing pad and on a launchpad.
So both the Falcon nine and UH New Shepherd have
demonstrated this ability, although they've done it in very different ways.
It's almost like orders of magnitude difference in a way.
(24:08):
But they neither of them were using a parachute, right.
They were actually using thrusters to counteract gravity's pull and
slow down the descent so that they can have a
smooth touchdown, just just so we can make it feel
a little cooler. Can we call them retro rockets? Sure,
they fired the retro rockets, firing retro rockets and slowed
(24:29):
the descent so that they could land. Now, one other
thing I want to point out before I get into
the differences between all this is also that at the
time we're recording this, which is on January fourteenth, two
thousand and sixteen, very soon we're gonna have another demonstration
of SpaceX trying to land one of these rockets on
(24:49):
one of the barges that are floating out in the ocean.
Like y, I think it's I think it's the seventeenth.
So by the time this episode goes live, it we
will know whether or not it worked. But but we
don't now. Yeah, we don't know now because we can't see.
So you guys have one up on us. But it
hasn't worked yet for for the ocean landing. It has
(25:10):
worked for a landing pad that was on the ground.
The fingers crossed. Yeah, and okay, so just in case
you guys are thinking, like, man, this doesn't sound that hard,
let me lay out another few reasons that I don't
think that we've covered on why this is really difficult
to do this whole reasonable rocket thing. Okay, first off,
and you know, not to bring the party down too much,
(25:31):
but you know, like it needs to be brought up.
The failure of the original version of the Space Shuttle
solid rocket boosters was what caused the destruction of the
Challenger back and okay that the problems with that original
design have been really well documented. Concerns about them were
raised with the NASSA during development, So of course that
tragedy is taken into consideration by today's engineers when they're
building reasonable rockets. Just you know, I'm just trying to
(25:54):
say that whenever you're trying to save a piece of
equipment for future use, you've got to be so careful
that you're not doing so by potentially endangering the crew
and the passengers. Um, it's it's a it's a really
huge thing to think about. Also, from an engineering perspective,
when you reuse a rocket, you're basically stopping development of
(26:15):
that rocket, so you're looking at getting stuck with a
potentially imperfect model. And this was pointed out by a
representative of the French Space Agency c n e S
by the name of Christoph Banal, and he sat back
in I just thought it was such a pithy little quote.
If you reuse, you stopped producing, depending on the level
of reusability, so you end up with a permanent prototype. Um,
(26:38):
so that's something to think about. And then he he
also pointed out that the equipment and fuel that you
need to add to a rocket to get it to
land safely is a non trivial weight and size issue.
He estimated that you'd be needing to use at least
like more fuel at launch than you would with non
reasonable rockets. So in other words, you'd have to make
sure that however much more fuel you need doesn't completely
(27:02):
over than than rebuilding a rocket from scratch. I would argue,
I see totally where he's coming from, and I agree
that those concerns are warranted. But if you're talking about
trying to get to an era where the space industry
makes financial sense. Clearly, at some point we have to
(27:22):
look at the ability of using reusable rockets, because otherwise
it's just gonna be this ridiculously expensive proposition that never
goes beyond a very very narrow use case. It seems
like common sense that the reasonable would be the eventual
way to go. Right. But but yeah, so let's look
at the two different ways that these two companies are
(27:43):
trying to get past these problems. Right So, Blue Origin, uh,
with the New Shepherd rocket it's it's approach was arguably
not even arguably it was simpler than the Falcon nine
approach or less ambitious. If you're Ellen, Muski might mention
something along those lines. Uh must actually tweeted about SATs. Yeah,
(28:06):
I don't even know if I spat might be a
little too friendly, Yeah, that would I think ribbing is
is a good way of putting it. But uh So,
the test vehicle of New Shepherd it was had a
target altitude of three hundred seven thousand feet, which is
about ninety three point six kilometers. Now, the goal for
commercial flights, which is the whole concept behind Blue Origin,
(28:29):
is uh an altitude that would be just over one kilometers.
And the reason for that is that internationally, we define
the boundary of space at one kilometers. When I say we,
I mean pretty much everyone besides the United States now
on a scale of one to ten. How arbitrary is that?
Like a fourteen? Yeah, I mean it's uh, there's a
(28:49):
specific term for it. But at any rate, the international
community says one kilometers. United States will say that anyone
who has flown at an altitude higher than eighty kilometers
as an astronaut, but does not actually have a specific
definition for what the edge of space is. So, uh,
there's this twenty kilometer gap between what the international community
(29:10):
agrees as an astronaut and what the United States does.
And uh so what's twenty kilometers between friends? Right? But
at any rate, Um, that one hundred kilometers, while impressive,
is not the same as delivering something to low Earth orbit.
Low Earth orbit begins at about a hundred sixty kilometers.
So this vehicle goes just beyond half the distance it
(29:31):
would need to get to a little bit more than
half the distance it would need to get to low
Earth orbit. Um, it's actually meant to be kind of
a passenger vehicle. Like, if you have a decent amount
of cash to burn, you could get a seat aboard
a space capsule on top of one of these rockets.
(29:51):
Do you do you get a discount if you're a
member of Amazon Prime. That's an excellent question. I've been.
I've been Amazon Prime members since they first launched it,
so just week so I think I think I should
get This should include free space travel, or at least
at least a significant discount space travel. They'll just be
like we just dropped the shipping fee Black Friday special.
(30:11):
So the way it works is that you know, you
would get aboard this capsule. H. The rocket would launch. Um,
there would be a separation phase. What I'm sorry, still
my space travel never arrived? Can you send me another one? Uh?
So it would launch, the space capsule would separate from
the rocket at the proper altitude. Space capsule would continue
(30:33):
to go up a little bit just from momentum from inertia. Uh,
the rocket would start to descend and would it's almost
like it's going straight up and straight down there. It's
not quite like that there is an arc to it,
Like it's almost like a really narrow parabola that you
would see but the rockets orientation pretty much remains vertical
(30:54):
with respect to the ground, so it doesn't tilt. Meanwhile,
you aboard the capsule would be able to experience free fall,
which would feel like weightlessness for several minutes, and then
you would get a little alerting buzz that says, hey,
you need to put on your seatbelt now and experience
around five g s of accelerative forces as you descend
(31:14):
towards the Earth and land safely through a combination of
thrusters and parachutes. The New Shepherd rocket uses just those
retro rockets for landing and it doesn't use a parachute.
So that's Blue Origins New Shepherd, which I don't want
to downplay. It is a very impressive achievement. They demonstrated
it before SpaceX was able to have a successful landing
(31:37):
of their Falcon nine. And if in fact they want
to create a vacation experience where people with the right
amount of money you can actually go up into space,
this is a really cool way of doing it. But
if you were elon Musk, what might you tweet at that?
Would it be something like congratulations? But people need to
understand the difference between space and orbit. That's pretty much
(31:59):
why he said. Right, So the Falcon nine, unlike New Shepherd,
can deliver payloads into lower th orbit. It is a
two stage rockets, so the first stage gets them, the
second stage and the the whatever the payload is up
to the right altitude for separation, and then the second
stage takes it from there. But the first stage already
goes significantly higher, like into the lower th orbit range
(32:24):
than the New Shepherd rocket can. And this is way
harder to do, right. This is not just like you
shouldn't have this attitude that well, once you're in space,
you're in space, right, It's not like that at all.
Earth's gravity is still a major factor to contend with,
and you have to have a much higher velocity to escape, right,
And you also have to your the orientation of your
(32:45):
rocket changes because you're you're actually trying to when you're
going into orbit, you're essentially constantly in free fall around
the Earth. Right, You're traveling forward at a speed that
is great enough so that as you fall towards the Earth,
the Earth curves away at a similar rates, so you're
never going to actually hit the ground, at least assuming
you don't slow down enough. So that your orbit deteriorates
(33:06):
and you fall. Also, if you're if you're SpaceX, then
you're probably trying to do stuff while you're up there. Yeah,
you're probably actually delivering payloads like like, and those are
two space barges, sandwiches on the Moon to probably not
the Moon, probably stuff aboard the International Space Station, as
well as satellites. You're delivering all that shrimp cocktail they
(33:28):
love so much. Yes, yes, we've talked about the shrimp
cocktail at length in previous Forward Thinking episodes. Uh So,
when that first stage separates from the second stage and
whatever the payload is UM, it then starts to descend.
They use the thrusters so that they can orient the
rocket properly so it's not just twirling and falling, you know,
willy nilly as it descends into the Earth's atmosphere. And
(33:52):
then they have to make sure that they use the
right amount of force so that it can actually land
safely on a landing pad. So it is already more
difficult than the Blue origin approach, which was already really
hard to do UM. And then add to that the
fact that they want to do this regularly using autonomous barges.
(34:15):
Floating on the ocean, which obviously that's gonna be a
moving platform. That makes it even harder. Drone boat sounds cooler.
That's not a rowboat. That's something totally different. Okay, Well,
I have a question about this whole enterprise. Yeah, so
the question is exactly how much money would a reusable
(34:36):
rocket save in the long run. Now, I know Elon
Musk himself has given a prediction, though you know, we
might want to take it with a grain of salt
because he himself has a stake in that somewhat yet. Yeah,
but his prediction, he's he's famously said that rockets that
are as reusable as modern airplanes will reduce the cost
of access to space by a factor of about a
(34:58):
hundred time. Yeah. Do you think that number is close
to right if it were as reusable as an airplane? Probably,
But that's if you take into consideration the fact that
airplanes can be serviced and ready to go back up
in the air within within half an hour. I don't
think we're ever going to get to a point where
rockets are going to be that reusable. Of course, that
(35:20):
may not have been what he was trying to get across.
He might have just been saying like, well that he's
used that comparison several times. I think is is saying like,
you know, look at what airplanes can do. Uh, you know,
imagine if you throw your airplane in the garbage every
time it landed right, And it's an interesting comparison. Again,
I think with any rocket launch, you're going to have
(35:42):
a significant just for the sake of safety. You obviously
have to have a significant amount of time to test
and refurbish and everything to make sure that the rocket
is ready to go for another another launch, which adds
to the cost. Right, It's not just the amount of
fuel you have to dump into the thing, it's the
amount of work you have to do to make sure
that is going to be safe and not danger to
(36:02):
the payload or to anyone else in the launch area.
So you're saying, you think all this, all this testing
is very important. We're not just like glad awesome, we're
addicted to testing. I would say that in the case
of rocket science, testing is of some importance. And so
whether or not that testing would be enough to reduce
(36:23):
this one hundred times cheaper prediction to you know, fifty times,
I don't know, But still fifty times would be significant.
I mean, even if this is a ridiculously high estimate,
like I would take thirty times, y'all, I would take
fifteen times, it would be Any improvement would be really impressive,
especially a magnitude of more than like two. So, but
(36:46):
trying to actually answer your question of how much money,
how much physical dollars it would save, as we said before,
it's really hard to put a price in rocket. Why
do they have to be physical dollars? Oh, I don't know.
Talking about space exploration is going to be some kind
of cat show only enterprise and we can change. Bitcoin
(37:08):
is the new thing, guys. This is how you use
up your old pennies, Joe. So, you know, trying to
answer the question like how much money would be saved,
it's super tricky because obviously, unless you have the actual
price tag of a rocket and you can see how
much it costs from building it from scratch all the
way to the point of launching it, and then compare
(37:28):
that to a refurbished rocket that has already been fired
once and is now going to go again, you can't
easily answer that question obviously. But if we want to
look historically and again, this is kind of comparing apples
to oranges. We can look at the center in five rocket,
like I mentioned before, that's what NASA used to get
the Apollo missions up into space, and those costs at
(37:49):
the time around four million dollars per launch. That's in
the late sixties, early seventies. If you adjust for inflation,
that's more than three billion dollars per launch. Now that's
not just for the cost of the rocket and the fuel,
that's all the costs associated with launching. But still three
billion dollars. So I thought, well, let me check and
(38:10):
see what SpaceX how much that would cost? Uh? And
I looked on SpaceX's website, which actually has the amount
of money it costs to launch a Falcon nine rocket
according to two thousand sixteen numbers, and according to that
it's sixty one point two million dollars. So three billion
(38:30):
to sixty one point two million. Already we've seen a
dramatic drop in the in the in the cost. Right,
That's that's pretty good. That's not bad. Now. Arguably, we
could also add the fact that we've got decades of
research and development between the sixties and today. We have
things like computers. Yes, we're not using slide rules to
make the calculations. So yeah, just the decreasing cost of
(38:52):
computing power is gonna be a huge part of enormous stuff.
Oh and I love the fact that that SpaceX calls
it their standard payment plan for the sixty million dollars
per launch. So if they're able to actually make a reliable,
reusable rocket, that cost the sixty one point two million
might actually go down significantly, at which point you might
(39:13):
have other companies that would be interested in launching scientific
research equipment or commercial equipment out into space. It might
fall within the realm of possibility now, because for some
companies they might say, well, we have this great idea,
but there's no no point in even developing it because
we have no way of actually executing this. But this
could open a lot of doors as well as usher
(39:35):
in a new era of space exploration, manned missions or
peopled missions. I guess I should say, I mean, you know,
we we we like it when people are able to
do science. Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty psyched about it.
It's also nice to see something that could reverse the
trend of space missions getting so expensive that governments are
(39:59):
loath to fund them, right especially if there's not some
other outside force that is acting upon our interests. For example,
I say that because the Space Race was largely funded
because it was part of the Cold War between the
United States and the then Soviet Union. Arm wrestling, military
(40:22):
related kind of kind of thing, and we benefited from
all of that scientific exploration and discovery, But ultimately what
was funding it was something akin to fear and aggression,
which I would rather we not have to have. But
but sometimes when you're talking to the person who signs
(40:42):
the checks, you've got to have that other really compelling reason.
But are you saying now that the the analogy to
the Cold War could be like billionaire ego feuds could
be that, or it could also just be it also
could just be that, well, now the price has fallen
to a point where it's easier for the people who
fund things to see that there could be a return
(41:03):
on that investment. You know. The thing that we talked
about and forward thinking all the time is that pure
research is of value all by itself because you never
know what else you're going to learn or or benefit
from down the line as a part of that pure research.
But that's a hard sell for the people who actually
signed the checks, if they're not a scientist, if they
(41:24):
don't have that appreciation. Uh. And by lowering the cost,
it may make it easier to convince the powers that
be to actually fund the various missions that could lead
to phenomenal discoveries down the road, things that we can't
even anticipate right now. Um. So I'm excited by this era.
I really hope that it continues to develop over time.
(41:48):
I really hope that the SpaceX demonstration was successful, which
we will know by the time this episode goes live.
And uh, I hope that we see even more competition
in the space because that drives innovation. If you can't
get competition through you know, various nations warring with one another,
companies trying to one up each other, I'll take that, sure.
(42:08):
And I guess that kind of comes akin to your
billionaires all getting into a fight with one another and
just through space exploration. All right, that's fine. I don't
mind if we benefit from it, sure better than I
bought a bigger boat. I don't think that's nearly as
beneficial to humanity. So just wait till we introduce James
Cameron into this feud. Yeah, well, I mean, we'll have
(42:29):
to get them out of the ocean first, right. Once
we get them out of the ocean, then maybe we
can point them towards space. But at any rate, this
was fun to talk about. We're so excited to be back.
And guys, if you have any suggestions for future topics
for forward thinking, or you got any comments or questions,
you should send those into us our email addresses FW
thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can
(42:50):
drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter or Google Plus.
Twitter and Google Plus we are FW thinking. You can
search FW thinking on Facebook. We'll pop right up. You
can leave us a message there. Thank you guys so
much for your support. Thank you for all the questions
about Hey, when are you guys coming back, because it
means a lot to us. We're so pleased that we
could be back now and strap in because it's gonna
(43:11):
be a crazy year. I have a feeling. I mean,
there's some weird stuff coming down the pipe as far
as science and technology goes, and we're gonna try and
cover all of that. That's my it's my ambition. So
we'll see, all right, and until then, we'll talk to
you again really soon for more on this topic. In
(43:33):
the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought
to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
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