Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / SpaceX Starship as a NASA Space Station - is it possible?

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SpaceX Starship as a NASA Space Station - is it possible? · Elon Musk Podcast

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2:01
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
2:05
I'm feeling a little bit under the weather for the last few
2:07
days, so I'm going to post this really cool podcast I did a
2:13
while ago with my friend Neil Thorne and we discuss the
2:18
Starship as a space station. It's absolutely riveting to
2:24
think about a Starship you can launch to orbit and it's
2:27
immediately a space station. It's a huge, huge rocket.
2:31
So please enjoy this conversation I had with Neil
2:33
Thorne about Spacex's Starship as a space station.
2:39
SpaceX is collaborating with NASA on an integrated low Earth
2:43
orbit architecture to provide a growing portfolio of technology
2:47
with near term Dragon evolution and concurrent Starship
2:51
development. Now this architecture.
2:53
Includes Starship as a transportation and in space low
2:57
Earth orbit destination element supported by super heavy, that's
3:01
the Starship Dragon and Starlink and constituent capabilities
3:06
including crew and cargo transportation, communications
3:11
and operational and ground support.
3:13
So joining me today is Neil Thorne.
3:15
And we're going to be talking about what this means from NASA
3:19
and what SpaceX is capable of and how this is going to change
3:24
space travel and space exploration forever, and how
3:28
this can eventually turn into a thing that SpaceX could use for
3:32
their Mars transportation, be a Starship.
3:35
But before we get into this conversation, let's take a
3:37
moment and listen to a word from our sponsors.
3:39
How you doing today, Neil? I'm doing just great.
3:41
How are you? I am doing fantastic, thank you
3:43
for asking. So the Starship going into low
3:46
Earth orbit and it seems like SpaceX and NASA are working
3:50
together to use this as some sort of transportation hub or
3:54
some sort of space station in the near term.
3:59
And do you think that's what they're looking at here?
4:01
I. Don't know.
4:01
It's a very vague sort of approach that NASA's taking
4:04
there. They're not saying build as a
4:06
space station, they're just saying help us out in low Earth
4:10
orbit. Hard to say exactly what it is
4:13
they're expecting out of this. I haven't thought for ever since
4:17
the Starship became a thing that putting this huge object into
4:23
space. This the Starship.
4:25
Which one Starship has more interior volume than the space
4:28
station does right now. But you link three or four of
4:30
those together and suddenly you've got quite a bit of space
4:33
up there too for activities. Yeah, it'll be an interesting
4:37
next few years for the Starship and for NASA, because eventually
4:42
NASA will be the orbiting the International Space Station.
4:46
What is it, 20-30? I believe 20302032 or something
4:50
somewhere around there? It always seems to be a flexible
4:53
number. Yeah, that's it always seems
4:55
like. I think they wanted to do it in
4:56
2026 at some point. Yeah, and then they.
4:59
I think it's as long as it's useful though.
5:01
They're going to keep it going, but yeah.
5:03
I think so too. I think as long as the taxpayers
5:06
can pay for it and as long as the they're seeing some returns
5:10
from it. It's such an expensive thing to
5:13
run every day to keep six people up there.
5:17
It's just such an expense and everything in there is so
5:22
outdated at this point. The technology is advancing so
5:25
fast here on Earth that even something they've they started
5:29
building 6 years ago that got sent up there two years ago is
5:32
so far beyond the technology right now at it almost becomes
5:37
irrelevant. Yeah, and SpaceX is working
5:39
currently on their Starship program.
5:42
And in the next, hopefully we can see this in the next, as
5:45
Elon said, 6 to 8 weeks, another launch of Starship.
5:49
And when that happens, we'll see if it's actually going to be a
5:52
possibility or feasibility that this will make it to orbit.
5:56
And once it does make it to orbit, these studies that SpaceX
5:59
and NASA will be working together on could become a
6:02
thing. And they have to work together
6:03
to get Spacex's Starship onto the Moon as well for Artemis 3.
6:08
So maybe this could be part of that, because they need to dock
6:10
with the SpaceX Starship in order to get to the Moon.
6:16
So. As you say, everything that they
6:18
need to do to help NASA here, they have to do for the moon as
6:22
well. So it's going to be being built
6:24
in sequence, I think. In parallel I should say.
6:28
Yeah, they're going to be using Super Heavy, which is the
6:30
Starship program, a Dragon and Starlink.
6:34
So the Dragon will more than likely be docking with it.
6:37
And I think the Polaris program will be using a Dragon to dock
6:41
with a Starship. I think what the what's going to
6:44
happen is they're going to send a Starship to orbit.
6:46
They're going to get it up there.
6:48
Then they're going to send the crew of Polaris program in a
6:52
capsule of Dragon capsule on a Falcon Nine and then dock with
6:55
the Starship, kind of mimicking what they're going to be doing
6:57
with the Starship in the Orion capsule.
7:00
And then they're going to, they're going to go inside the
7:04
Starship and do some testing and do some science and some
7:08
experimenting, some engineering and see if it's actually
7:11
feasible to live in one for a little bit and then do some
7:15
more, some more testing inside and maybe outside of the
7:19
Starship. So I think that's what they're
7:23
thinking here. I'm not 100% sure.
7:25
But yeah, it's very vague. It really is very vague this
7:29
whole wording. I think they kept it that way,
7:31
so. I think so.
7:33
So they can't be like Starship is going to replace the
7:35
International Space Station. Exactly.
7:37
And I think that would make a lot of companies very angry.
7:41
The blue origins, the Axiom space, all these people would be
7:45
very upset at that. So I think you keep it vague.
7:49
They're going to help us out. We're going to use their
7:51
capabilities to to further our goals.
7:56
That's it. Yeah.
7:57
And maybe if goal happens to be a new space station, then it
7:59
happens to be a new space station.
8:01
Yeah, maybe eventually they will.
8:02
Maybe eventually they will turn a International Space Station,
8:07
turn it away, get rid of it and then they'll put couple
8:10
starships together, or even 1 Starship is a or there's 1000
8:14
cubic meters estimated in interior volume of a Starship,
8:19
which if built right can hold for Earth to Earth transport 100
8:24
people according to Elon Musk. More than likely for these kind
8:27
of missions it'll be something similar to the International
8:29
Space Station where it's about 6 people.
8:32
Maybe the Starship could hold a little bit more because the
8:35
space station has 915 cubic meters of internal space and
8:41
it's not that much different, it's 85 cubic meters of
8:45
difference. So you could put some more
8:46
supplies in the Starship, but. Yeah, it's not much, though.
8:50
The space in the space station is more compartmentalized, so
8:54
it's more usable space. Yeah, than the Starship, which
8:58
would be a more open plan, but obviously much probably much
9:03
better for people's psyches as well.
9:06
Yeah, I think so. Most of the renderings we've
9:09
seen have has been a tube it through the middle with a ladder
9:13
or some sort of transport in the middle where you can go from
9:16
section to section. But it's pretty wide open
9:18
through the whole Starship. And I think just people spend a
9:22
year plus on the International Space Station and they're
9:25
segmented off doing their experiments, Don't see anybody
9:28
maybe all day, maybe throughout the day they might see one or
9:31
two people, but if they maybe there's 7-8 people in a
9:35
Starship. Maybe you can see all the way
9:37
through the Starship while people are working.
9:39
I think that'll be really neat. I don't know if that's how it's
9:41
going to actually have to. I think it would be a much more
9:44
enjoyable atmosphere too. Even if you're not working with
9:47
somebody that they happen to be across the 9m gap between you
9:51
working on something else and you can see them, I think that
9:54
camaraderie gets built and then again, people can also get on
9:58
your nerves much faster. That's true.
10:00
So obviously when they select an astronaut, they do a lot of
10:04
psychological studies to make sure they're going to live and
10:06
play well with others. So that will have to continue.
10:10
Yeah. And sending 100 people in the
10:12
Starship to any long distances is really difficult to conceive
10:16
of. What are we talking 17/16/17
10:19
people per sort of Starship, if you all, I can't imagine
10:25
traveling a very long distance, stuck in the same room my my
10:28
sort of bedroom if you will, the entire time.
10:31
That would be very difficult because it wouldn't be much room
10:33
for anything else. Yeah, that's true there.
10:35
So there there's been talks of how many people could go on of
10:40
Mars ship to from any anywhere from six people to some people
10:47
were saying 30 people and there were some people that were
10:50
saying up words of 100 people to Mars.
10:53
I don't think it's going to be 100 people.
10:55
I think that's ridiculous. I think that's way too many.
10:58
But I think if you have something like this, where
11:01
SpaceX and NASA are working together, low Earth orbit, they
11:04
can try different configurations for the long term Mars
11:10
transport, because you can have two starships docked together.
11:13
What they're going to be doing with the refuelling of the
11:16
tankers for the Artemis missions, instead of a tanker,
11:19
you have just another Starship where people can float between
11:23
the starships. There's a port and there could
11:25
be a section where it's like a living section where it's just
11:28
you work out, you sleep, there's maybe some entertainment,
11:32
there's big windows. And also there could be a
11:35
variant where it's just cargo, where there's just a like so
11:38
much food and you're going to have to bring a lot of water to
11:41
Mars or even to low Earth orbit. So sure, there's a possibility
11:47
that's what they're going to be working on as well.
11:48
And it's going to take, I wish it were to happen really fast,
11:52
but space transport, space technology, engineering and
11:56
science all take a long time. So what they're building now,
11:59
maybe 50 years from now, we'll see the ultimate gain of we're
12:05
gonna be taking normal trips to Mars.
12:07
There's gonna be just numerous trips per year to get to Mars.
12:12
And I believe the next, the closest that Mars is gonna be to
12:17
Earth is going to be 2024. So maybe if Starship gets to
12:22
orbit this year, and then maybe next year, who knows, maybe
12:27
they're gonna start trying to get to Mars.
12:30
Just shoot a Starship. Yeah, shoot a Starship without
12:33
any intention of landing it. Yeah, and just.
12:36
Try try to get into Mars orbit, or at least use the orbit to
12:40
slow you down so you could land if you wanted to.
12:42
Yep, obviously that's the hardest part about any trip to
12:46
Mars is making sure you hit the right spot so you don't burn up
12:49
in the atmosphere or get slingshotted out into space,
12:52
bounce off the atmosphere. So it's very difficult to do and
12:57
that's where the majority of sort of things being shot at
13:00
Mars veil. So it's they're gonna have to
13:04
practice that for sure. Yeah.
13:06
Right now they're practicing getting the thing to orbit
13:08
around Earth which is comparatively way easier.
13:14
So it's gonna take some time and some yeah, who knows, who knows.
13:19
We'll see what happens with the next Starship launch to see
13:22
whether they actually get to orbit and there's no
13:24
complications and destroy the pad.
13:26
And if that all goes to plan, then yeah, I could potentially
13:31
see them trying to stretch themselves.
13:33
Obviously SpaceX is an iterative design company and they're not
13:37
afraid to say, OK, we did it, let's move on.
13:40
Ship 15 was the first one to land.
13:43
They didn't bother trying to land another one.
13:45
They said, good, let's move on. Yeah, I could see them getting
13:49
to orbit and saying good, let's move on.
13:52
I can see that too. Yeah.
13:55
And saying, OK, we made the orbit, now we need a tanker up
13:57
there. Let's do that.
13:58
OK, now that's done. We don't need to do it 100 times
14:02
before they put people in this Starship.
14:04
They'll have to do it 100 times. But if they're just doing tests,
14:07
they're going to be happy with what they got and move on to the
14:09
next challenge. Yeah.
14:11
And even between the first launch and this next launch
14:15
that's coming up, they switched. I think it, I think Elon said
14:19
hundreds of things, maybe 1000 things, something like that
14:23
between The Last Starship and a Super Heavy and the next one
14:26
that's going up. One of the most important things
14:29
is that you're going to be doing hot staging between the booster
14:33
and the ship, which is. I'm not sold on that just yet,
14:37
but we'll see how it goes. Yeah, that seems like an
14:40
incredible feat. I don't see the the a lot of
14:43
Russian spacecraft have done that in the past, and it seems
14:45
to be pretty pretty well documented.
14:47
But I think SpaceX could pull it off.
14:50
I don't know if it's gonna work this time.
14:51
It's the first trial and error. Exactly right.
14:53
This is all trial. This is all to be done, to be
14:56
determined. They'll have to.
14:58
They'll figure it out. It's not impossible to do, just
15:00
a matter of figuring out how to make their.
15:04
Current. Build sustain that sort of blast
15:09
as as they separate, Yeah, obviously they don't need some
15:13
way to exhaust the flame as it comes out but also the top, the
15:17
Dome of the the booster is going to have to withstand the all
15:21
those engine lighting as well. Yeah, I don't understand how
15:25
they're going to do it. I don't really understand that
15:26
technology that much. But it seems like they have to
15:29
reinforce like it's a stainless steel Dome on this thing.
15:34
So they have to reinforce something.
15:36
Yes, it's not a. Thing Stainless steel either.
15:39
Plus they want to reuse these 100 times.
15:42
Yeah, so there really can't be any damage from the separation.
15:46
For this to be successful, it can't be any damage.
15:48
It has to be 100% perfect. If it starts to wear away from
15:53
the heat or there's any damage whatsoever, then it's
15:56
unsuccessful. It's not going to be a long term
15:58
solution to fix it. So do you think this could be
16:01
something like a, for lack of a better term, a puck that they
16:04
put on top of the booster and they could replace it if needed?
16:07
So it's not going to be, it might not be 100% reusable right
16:11
away, but they could just use it just for that one time and then
16:16
the next booster is going to have a different puck on it and.
16:20
They could do something like the heat tiles that they've got on
16:22
the outside of the ship. They could plaster those over
16:25
the top of the booster and use those as an abrading,
16:30
replaceable part. Yeah, that.
16:32
But it would take some time to inspect those every time that it
16:36
lands. Yeah, that's true.
16:37
It's similar to the space shuttle.
16:39
So yeah, I think the I think we're going to see some wild
16:43
stuff in this next lodge. But yeah, the NASA and SpaceX
16:48
collaboration here with this space station is going to be a
16:51
huge thing. And The funny thing is NASA is a
16:54
government agency and for forever they've been using
16:58
taxpayers money to do things like this, experiments like
17:01
this. And Phil McAllister, the
17:04
Director of Commercial Space Flight at NASA said it is great
17:07
to see companies invest their own capital toward innovative
17:10
commercial space capabilities. We've seen how these types of
17:14
partnerships benefit both the private sector and NASA.
17:17
So basically they're saying, hey, all of you companies out
17:21
here, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Space, SpaceX,
17:25
Special Aerospace Services, Think Orbital and Fast Space.
17:29
You spend your money, you figure this out and then we're going to
17:32
partner with you to use your technology in the future and
17:35
we're going to pay for it. But you have to figure it out
17:37
like you're going to have to have a minimum viable product,
17:39
the MVP, so we can use it for our own services for the future,
17:44
whether that's a space station with SpaceX or if they're going
17:48
to be using it, of course for HLS and further missions.
17:52
But it's different than what it used to be for the longest time.
17:56
It's very different, absolutely. And it's really is a great
17:59
solution. NASA puts so much money and
18:03
effort into developing things like the SLS and everything that
18:07
came before it, space shuttle and whatnot.
18:11
To have commercial companies do all that research, development
18:15
and testing, and then to just pay them a bunch of money at the
18:19
end or during it as a sort of seed money, it's just so much
18:23
easier for everybody as far as the government is concerned and
18:28
a lot less risk as well. Yeah.
18:31
And then you hand off that risk to private companies,
18:35
Absolutely. It leaves so much more, so much
18:38
more room for NASA to play around with different ideas,
18:40
too. They don't have to stick with
18:42
one thing like the SLS. They're stuck with the SLS.
18:45
They can't really diverge from that and say we're going to stop
18:49
doing that because Starship works now they have a contract.
18:52
They're going to be building these SLS rockets for the
18:55
foreseeable future. And what Starship surpasses the
18:59
SLS and technology and weight to orbit ratio?
19:04
Weight ratio to orbit, but they don't care because they have
19:07
these contracts in place with Boeing and other companies,
19:10
Northrop, Brahman, etcetera, to build these SLS rockets and they
19:14
can't change it. You know what I really like
19:17
about the Qantas commercial partnerships is that some
19:21
someone who likes SpaceX is going to pay for their materials
19:26
what they should be paying as opposed to what NASA pays for
19:28
materials. A screw, NASA's paying for a
19:31
screw might cost them $100 a screw because the companies that
19:35
are selling them that screw know that they can get away with it,
19:38
whereas SpaceX is saying we're not paying, that we'll build a
19:41
machine and make these for a dime a piece, if that's what
19:45
you're going to bother charging us.
19:46
It's a much more efficient from an economic standpoint to have
19:51
the commercial partners take care of all the stuff because
19:54
they're not going to get overcharged the way NASA has
19:57
traditionally been overcharged. Yeah, I think that's an
20:00
important step forward for NASA and a important step forward for
20:03
these companies because not only do they get money for these
20:07
initial projects, but they can add things on to it eventually.
20:10
So SpaceX could say, OK, we have the Starship, we have a crew
20:14
Starship, but we can also make a space station Starship.
20:18
Would you be interested in the space station?
20:21
NASA could be like, yeah, we like that idea.
20:23
That's a great idea. We're going to give you the
20:25
money for it, even if it's just a concept right now.
20:29
But since SpaceX brought it to them in a capability in like in
20:33
the capacity of a like a commercial project, then they're
20:38
going to pay like SpaceX is going to pay for it and the NASA
20:40
will pay them whatever SpaceX wants to charge them.
20:45
So for sure, I think it's going to be a huge boost to the low
20:49
Earth orbit economy, but also the economy of deep space
20:53
exploration as well. Yeah.
20:55
And keep in mind as well that SpaceX has never had any
20:59
interest in space stations with orbit beyond Starling.
21:03
So this that would be a change of tune and it would have to
21:06
come with a obviously a big check behind it for them to do
21:09
something like that. Or they see some benefit in
21:12
having a station in orbit and they're willing to work with
21:14
NASA to get one. Does.
21:16
Is it a good starting off point for a mission to Mars or
21:20
something like that, to have all the tankers take all their fuel
21:23
there and then you dock a ship there and launch it from there?
21:26
They'd have to determine whether that makes sense or not.
21:31
Yeah, I guess the tankers in space will eventually assemble
21:35
or serve the same purpose as that space station, right?
21:38
Just having a ship in space that's gets refueled to refuel
21:43
another space ship, that's a space station right there.
21:47
Yeah, very basic one. Yeah, minus the people.
21:49
Yeah. But yeah, I also think that if
21:53
SpaceX does make some sort of space station out of the
21:56
Starship, they can charge rent to NASA and that could be
21:59
recurring income for SpaceX. If they can see the ROI on a
22:03
Starship that's in orbit and they can make X amount of
22:06
dollars per year from it to continue development of better
22:10
starships, Mars starships, ground systems, infrastructure,
22:15
whatever. If it's going to pay for part of
22:17
the development of these new systems or even Starlink, then
22:21
that might be something that you would be interested in.
22:23
Because it seems. I wouldn't say free money
22:26
because they still have to have people manning the systems and
22:29
fixing up the ships and stuff as time goes by.
22:31
But once the once the ships are decommissioned they could in
22:37
theory outfit the ships with. I don't know like I wouldn't, I
22:43
don't want to say plug and play, but it could be a very
22:45
compartmentalized systems that they could take out of 1
22:48
Starship and put into a newer Starship.
22:51
And it could be really easy to transfer those things because
22:54
the docking mechanisms for the HLS Starship, it's pretty big if
22:59
you think of not the docking the the elevator systems it's pretty
23:03
big. So maybe that could be as part
23:05
of the docking system. It could be big enough that they
23:07
could transfer A people and B supplies from 1 Starship to
23:11
another. So decommission one, take it
23:14
back down to earth, refurb it, do whatever you got to do, and
23:18
then upgrade your Starship to a new one.
23:20
And it seems like you could have a.
23:22
You could have a space station forever in that case.
23:24
For sure. The beauty of Starship has, from
23:27
day one, has been its cost effectiveness.
23:30
It's extremely, relatively, extremely cheap to make and to.
23:36
They could put up another one on a moment's notice at some point,
23:39
right? To replace a part that of a ship
23:42
that is malfunctioning can bring it back down.
23:44
What not as you say before, there's a lot of others
23:47
companies that are involved in this partnership with NASA.
23:50
So it's SpaceX is just one part of that.
23:53
There's all kinds of ship of companies that would be doing
23:55
similar things with them and for them.
23:57
Yeah, Blue Origin, the project the Blue Origin is going to be
24:00
used for with this NASA collaboration is integrated
24:03
commercial space transportation capability that ensures safe,
24:06
affordable and high frequency US access to orbit for crew and
24:09
other missions. That just does that mean that
24:12
they're going to be using a rocket to get to lower
24:15
thoroughbred the commercial space?
24:17
Transportation. It sounds like it.
24:20
Or at least one of the taxis. Yeah, sure.
24:23
And nothing. It really says nothing else.
24:25
It says other missions, whatever that means, but it doesn't
24:29
really give them anything else. There's no other hard or piece
24:32
of this future NASA. The space that they get out of
24:36
this, you're ferrying people back and forth.
24:41
Yeah, Sierra Spaces looks similarly too.
24:44
Development Sierra gets the in space superstructure as well.
24:48
They're actually primed for that next generation space station,
24:53
so they'll get the space transportation in space
24:56
infrastructure and tailored space facilities to provide a
25:00
human presence in orbit. They are really the space
25:04
station, provided that they can meet all of their deadlines and
25:07
whatnot. To be honest, at that point
25:09
SpaceX seems like they're in the wings in case Sierra can't
25:13
provide what they need. And they could work together.
25:15
This is is collaborative efforts with NASA so.
25:17
Anyway, everything that goes up into space needs to work with
25:20
together. Yeah, universal locks and
25:23
universal lists and universal that.
25:25
You can't have anything that is proprietary when you're when you
25:27
talk about NASA and space, it's all got to work together.
25:30
Yeah, so one that's very interesting is vast, and this is
25:34
some cool wording. Collaborating with NASA on
25:37
technologies and operations required for its microgravity
25:40
and artificial gravity stations. Includes the Haven One, which
25:44
will provide a microgravity environment for career research
25:47
and in space manufacturing, the first crude mission called Vast
25:50
One to the platform development activities for larger space
25:53
station modules will also take place out of the Space Act
25:55
agreement. So, artificial gravity stations.
25:59
Pretty sci-fi if you ask me. That's very sci-fi.
26:03
That's your rotating stations for sure.
26:05
Yeah, and that'll take. That would be pretty cool.
26:08
Yeah, it'll be cool. They're gonna have to.
26:10
I think what they'll do is they'll set up a smaller version
26:14
of we're going to have to incrementally set up smaller,
26:18
medium, large, etcetera, anti gravity.
26:21
Artificial, not anti, but artificial gravity stations.
26:24
Anti gravity would be wild, but artificial gravity.
26:28
Stations proof of concept is was one of the first things right.
26:30
You got to get up there and prove that it's going to work
26:32
and it's going to be able to be stable and and what do people,
26:36
how do people react in that situation?
26:38
We don't actually know why. We can guess based on experience
26:41
that we've done on Earth about spinning people around in a
26:44
circle, but how long term effects of somebody being spun
26:49
and just observing around them, right?
26:52
This part of the station is spinning slower than that part
26:54
of the station and it's all curved.
26:56
And how does that affect somebody?
26:58
Be curious to see. Yeah.
27:00
And they're gonna be, oh, go ahead.
27:02
Go, no, go please. Oh, I believe they're gonna be
27:04
using Starship as a transportation system for the
27:07
Vast One as well, or the Haven one, so.
27:10
To get it up there. Yeah.
27:12
Nice. They're gonna be using, I
27:14
believe, this Falcon Nine. Yeah.
27:16
So they're gonna be doing the Haven One on the Falcon Nine,
27:19
and then they're gonna be using the Starship eventually, too.
27:22
So that's pretty cool. They're all gonna be
27:25
collaborating with each other and also NASA.
27:27
So it's gonna be it's gonna. That's gonna happen in 2025 S
27:32
Yeah, August 2025. Apparently that's going to be
27:36
pretty soon. Yeah, couple years from now.
27:40
Yeah. And the other ones we haven't
27:42
talked about are the ones that kind of interest me quite a bit.
27:45
Northrop Grumman and Space, Aerospace Services, special
27:48
aerospace aerospace services and think Orbital are all on the
27:52
robotic side of things. That's getting things up there
27:55
to build stations and to manufacture things and not put
28:00
people in danger of getting lost in space or being subject to
28:04
being out in space with the radiation what not.
28:06
So it's I'd like that side of it as well.
28:09
Curious to see how that helps. So the the north of Grumman, the
28:14
persistent platform to provide autonomous and robotic
28:17
capabilities for commercial science research and
28:20
manufacturing capabilities in lower orbit.
28:23
The manufacturing capabilities part of that is pretty cool.
28:26
I'm interested to see what they do if they're going to 3D print
28:30
things, or if they're going to be doing just take parts from
28:33
Earth, like just say beams and trusses and pieces and then put
28:38
them together robotically. I don't know what the actual
28:41
mission is, they don't have any more information about it, but
28:43
it seems like that would be something that they could do up
28:46
there, as many manufacture parts of a station or parts of
28:50
something with robots. That's the dream we always see,
28:53
right? We always see in the future of
28:54
the sci-fi, things are being built right in space.
28:57
You've got your sort of space dock where the ship is being
28:59
built in place up in space around in Earth's orbit, and
29:03
that would be cool to see something.
29:05
I was when I was a kid, I was really fascinated by space
29:07
welding, where you put two pieces of steel together that
29:11
are perfectly flat and as soon as they go together, there's
29:15
nothing stopping them from joining.
29:18
So it's a Weld that just happens because they're the molecules
29:21
just pass from one piece of metal to the other.
29:23
Oh wow, there's nothing stopping them.
29:25
There's no, there's no oxygen. There's nothing in the way these
29:29
molecules just passing from one piece of the next and the joins.
29:32
Pretty cool. I might have that wrong.
29:34
It's been a long time since I looked into that, but that was
29:37
one thing when I was a kid. It was really cool.
29:39
That would be wild. That would open up so many, so
29:42
many doors to stations and architecture and space.
29:47
And that's cool. That's really cool and
29:49
everything. I didn't even know about that
29:50
space welding. I'll have to look into that.
29:52
That's cool. I can.
29:53
Look it up again too. I could be totally wrong being
29:56
completely ridiculed, but that's OK.
29:58
Leave it, leave it in the comments, people.
30:04
Yeah, I think we've touched on everything here.
30:05
Is there any, are there any other companies you'd like to
30:08
talk about? I know we talked about Sierra
30:10
Space, but you didn't get to talk about special aerospace
30:13
services much. But they all do the same kind of
30:15
thing. Special Aerospace Services is is
30:18
looking at autonomous maneuvering units, astronaut
30:20
assistance units, So it's all servicing the station outside
30:25
helping astronauts as well as perhaps doing autonomous work as
30:29
well to keep things running, keep IT service.
30:32
If somebody drops a hammer, if this thing can go and get it
30:34
rather than astronaut having to risk something or it being one
30:38
more piece of space junk, maybe they're out there collecting
30:41
that stuff as well. That would be really cool to
30:43
see. That would be yeah.
30:45
And then think orbital, similar to just another piece of a space
30:49
station, but they do the orbital platforms and research
30:53
manufacturing astronaut missions, that sort of thing.
30:56
So it's building stuff in space, building more things on there.
31:00
So there's the the autonomous builders, if you will.
31:04
This. Is really cool to see, and it'll
31:06
be interesting to see how these all work together as well.
31:09
Can they? Can Blue Origin and SpaceX sit
31:11
down in the same room and figure out the best way to move
31:14
humanity forward? Wouldn't that be nice?
31:17
That would be really cool, I think.
31:19
All of these companies working together, building platforms and
31:21
building stations and sending things, they're going to be
31:25
working together and buying trips to space from different
31:29
companies, Blue Origin or through SpaceX or through Sierra
31:33
Space. If they need to send something
31:35
up there, they're going to be working together to send part of
31:38
their send part of their space station or part of part of their
31:43
platforms up there. So it'll be an interesting time
31:47
for all of these companies to work together and also to work
31:50
with NASA. And they're going to be using
31:52
NASA's technology. They're going to be using NASA's
31:55
capabilities to innovate in space.
31:58
And all of the stuff that NASA has learned throughout their
32:02
time with the International Space Station and through their
32:04
time with the Apollo programs and the Space shuttle, all of
32:07
that, all of these companies can use that to better their
32:11
platforms too. So it's going to be really cool.
32:14
Very exciting, yeah. I hope that's the next 20 or 30
32:16
years are going to be very interesting space field and
32:19
hopefully humanity's still around to take advantage of it.
32:22
Yeah, I think we will be. I think there's we're not going
32:25
to stop. I think this is going to be a
32:27
really cool, interesting time. This is the stuff that I dreamed
32:29
of when I was a kid like like this.
32:32
It's finally coming true that we're going to, people are going
32:34
to start building their own space stations.
32:37
Like companies are going to start building their own private
32:39
space stations. Who knows?
32:41
Eventually we'll be to the point where there's going to be a
32:44
private mission to another star system like Prometheus or
32:48
something like that. Show the movie Prometheus.
32:50
Except maybe they won't be bringing DNA down to Earth and
32:54
dumping it into a river be a little bit different.
32:57
But it's going to, it's going to be wild in the next 20-30 years.
33:01
What happens up there? Because not only is it SpaceX,
33:04
it's all these other companies that want to make money and they
33:06
get, they make billions of dollars per year from NASA and
33:09
also from each other. So it's going to be cool.
33:12
Can't wait to see it happen. Yeah, same here.
33:14
Thanks, Neil. Thank you very much for having
33:16
me on here, Will. Yeah, of course.
33:18
Anytime. Hey, thank you so much for
33:20
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