Hi everyone, and welcome back to Geek Time. 欢迎回来【极客时间】. Hi, Brad.

Hi, Lulu.

So in today's Geek Time, I thought we continue to talk about Elon Musk.

All right.

Because he's done a lot of really outstanding things. I mean really out-there things, right? You know, people, even if you’re not into science technology, you've heard of things like SpaceX, Starlink, 什么星链呐SpaceX,还有像各种各样的这种rockets, I thought we can start with SpaceX, what does it actually do? And why is it so impressive?

Well. A SpaceX was a company, it was started in 2002. The whole reason was there was a competition, and that competition was to design a rocket that could be sent into space and then reused within 2 weeks. And SpaceX was able to win that competition, but that the whole idea is to reduce cost for putting things into space. They are often referred to as a payload, but just something like people or in a satellite or parts for the space station, and do it in a cost effective way.

对, 那个叫载荷吧, 就是那个 payloads. So this was started by what, the US government, you said this competition?

I don't remember if the government started, but like the government wanted this, because NASA, NASA could do a lot, but they had to have other people looking at us. NASA is kind of limited as to what it can and can't do.

And so they wanted more of like the private sector to go out and start doing some of this stuff as well. And so this whole competition was created as a way to get that going.

So basically, private companies like SpaceX they were competing in trying to make fully reusable rockets? You said reusable within 2 weeks.

Right.

What about the cost? Do they also reduce cost?

That's the whole point. It's like if you can reuse the rocket, then you can reduce the cost by a lot. SpaceX has been able to get their rocket launches down to about or 67 million per launch, which is 10 times cheaper than what NASA has been able to do this far.

Wow, 10 times, mainly because the rockets are reusable or immediately reusable. I see. I see.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now let's move on to some of the specific products, shall we say or plans? I've heard of things like “猎鹰”“龙飞船”, like Falcon, Dragon spacecraft and the starship星舰. Let's walk through some of these plans or products, so that our audience can get a basic understanding of what SpaceX is doing or has been doing.

Yeah, so like they have the Falcon rocket, the Falcon rocket really has two stages. It has the main stage which starts the initial rocket launch. And that stage once it disconnects, it actually lands back down. It's kind of like autonomous. And so once it launches and disconnects, it will go back down to the platform and it will use its own thrusters to land on the platform.

Oh, I see.

The other stage will come down on its own, but it doesn't have landing, so it will land usually in the water. So oftentimes the launches are not over land but over water.

Emm. Both of these stages you're talking about this rocket, it is a rocket that can carry payload.

Right. So those two stages get the payload out into space.

Emm.

Now that makes it really good, because oftentimes that the rocket will land in the water, it will either sink in the water and create garbage or it will be destroyed by the impact, whereas this stage lands by itself. If it doesn't quite land perfectly, then it just goes into the water and they can get it right back, because it's right there.

I see. So this like a Mobile-C platform for it.

Mhm. It's basically just like a boat that's in the water that's autonomously controlled or controlled by someone at the center.

Emm. I'm just a bit curious. All of these are going to be out for commercial use in the future? So like if I had like a gazillion, then I could literally just customize a rocket from them or just get them to build me a rocket?

Yeah, I don't know if they'll actually be selling the rockets to people. But if you had something you wanted to put in space, you could contract SpaceX to use their rocket to send your satellite or your payload off into space.

I see. So you're basically renting the rockets as like some sort of courier service to send your payload into orbit.

Mhm. Which is what the NASA has been doing as a recent to get satellites out because they're not using their own rockets at the moment. They might have actually gone back to that. But there was like a point when they weren't using any rockets, they were actually maybe renting rockets from Russia or something like that and sending their payloads that way.

But what if I had gazillion and then I would like to travel in space?

Well, you could do that. There's a few different ways. Aside from the rocket they have the spacecraft now.

Dragon spacecraft.

Yeah. SpaceX has the Dragon spacecraft which can either do cargo or crew, they have a few different configurations.

Their current configuration can carry up to seven passengers into orbit. So if you could go with a group of people up there. And this is very interesting because if you look at the competition, Jeff Bezos, the owner of... the leader of Amazon, he's been sending people into space, but he's only going to what's the first... the first milestone that officially space, which is about it's 100 kilometers up into the atmosphere or just outside of the atmosphere.

But that's not going to get you very far. You're just going to come back down to earth right away, whereas the Dragon spacecraft could be sent out to like the ISS which is over 400 kilometers away from the earth's surface.

ISS is the international space station, 国际空间站, did you say 408 kilometers away?

Yeah. By 408.

I see, so it's much further than what Bezos was able to do. I was just wondering the Dragon spacecraft you said can carry up to seven passengers.

So technically I don't know if he's already doing this, but technically he can just rent it out like some sort of for people who want to have a trip in the space as long as they could afford it.

Right. Mhm.

Now if you are going to go off into space and you are going to do that, you would have to have permission from like the government to go off into space. And so like with Bezos, he is often doing things like this where he has to get permission to do a launch and to send something into space. But, yeah, if you're gonna do it, as long as you have permission, then it's perfectly fine.

Ok. So that's Dragon spacecraft “龙飞船” which can carry up to seven passengers into orbit. But what if more people want to go? There's like a starship, right? 星舰, we hear this a lot.

Now, Musk has been talking about going to Mars. You know. He really wants to populate Mars.

To colonize Mars.

And so. Yeah. To colonize Mars. But he's creating what's called the starship rocket or the starship, and the starship is they've launched the first one, it was launched last year, but they're hoping that they can get this one down to about $10 million per launch, which is much cheaper than even the current launch.

Okay.

But they're thinking it'd probably be a little bit more expensive for larger carrying capacities. But they think their starship should be able to carry up to 100 people to Mars.

Emm. But so far, he hasn't really successfully launched it yet, right?

Well. They've launched a smaller version. They're launching the prototypes. They haven’t... It's not quite like their spaceship, their Dragon spacecraft, but it's still in the testing phases, but it has launched, they have launched one. And so it's not that far into the future that we should be able to do this.

Wow.

The only issue with something like that is they'll probably have to send several rockets into space in advance for other materials. And then once they put several payloads into space, then they'll probably attach them to the starship and then you then go to Mars.

I See. Wow.

Elon Musk always strikes me as the type of person that is really coming from the future.

Yeah, he is a crazy person and sometimes like people... the stories I hear about him are very intense. He works 20 hours days. And when people don't wanna put in all that overtime, he thinks that they're weak people, and, but like he's just like a monster. He is…

A working machine.

Some things I don't agree with, but you have to give them props for some of the things he does.

Yeah. Exactly.

So that ends today's episode of just a little bit of intro to SpaceX. Next episode, I think we can focus on Starlink maybe?

Yeah. Mhm.

Okay. And if you have anything that you wanna say on this topic, leave us a comment in the comment section or request any episode that you would want us to talk about in this segment. Thank you, Brad, for coming to the show.

No problem. See you next time, Lulu.

We'll see you next time.

Bye everyone.

Bye.