Page 29 - bon-dia-aruba-20200525

A29
science Monday 25 May 2020
First commercial space taxi a pit stop on Musk's Mars quest

By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Sci- were essentially garden
ence Writer shears, she "cut the thing,
It all started with the dream we launched the next day
of growing a rose on Mars. and it worked," Reisman
That vision, Elon Musk's vi- says.
sion, morphed into a shake- Musk is SpaceX's public
up of the old space indus- and unconventional face
try, and a fleet of new pri- -- smoking marijuana on a
vate rockets. Now, those popular podcast, feuding
rockets will launch NASA with local officials about
astronauts from Florida to opening his Tesla plant dur-
the International Space ing the pandemic, nam-
Station -- the first time a for- ing his newborn child "X
profit company will carry Æ A-12." But insiders say
astronauts into the cosmos. aerospace industry vet-
It's a milestone in the effort eran Gwynne Shotwell, the
to commercialize space. president and chief oper-
But for Musk's company, ating officer, is also key to
SpaceX, it's also the latest the company's success.q
milestone in a wild ride that
began with epic failures
and the threat of bankrupt-
cy. In this Thursday, May 29, 2014 file photo, Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, walks down the steps
If the company's eccentric during the introduction of the SpaceX Dragon V2 spaceship at the headquarters in Hawthorne,
founder and CEO has his Calif. Associated Press.
way, this is just the begin-
ning: He's planning to build recalls Hubbard. professor of public policy at the space station in 12 dif-
a city on the red planet, "His real focus was hav- Syracuse University. ferent flights, he says. At a
and live there. ing life on Mars," says Hub- When Columbia disinte- little more than $50 million
"What I really want to bard, a Stanford University grated, NASA had to con- a ride, it's much cheaper
achieve here is to make professor who now chairs template a post-space than what NASA has paid
Mars seem possible, make SpaceX's crew safety advi- shuttle world. That's where Russia for flights to the sta-
it seem as though it's some- sory panel. private companies came tion.
thing that we can do in our The big problem, Hubbard in, Lambright says. Starting from scratch has
lifetimes and that you can told him, was building a After Columbia, the agen- given SpaceX an advan-
go," Musk told a cheering rocket affordable enough cy focused on returning as- tage over older firms and
congress of space profes- to go to Mars. Less than a tronauts to the moon, but NASA that are stuck using
sionals in Mexico in 2016. year later Space Explora- still had to get cargo and legacy technology and in-
Musk "is a revolutionary tion Technologies, called astronauts to the space frastructure, O'Keefe says.
change" in the space SpaceX, was born. station, says Sean O'Keefe, And SpaceX tries to build
world, says Harvard Univer- Everyone at SpaceX, from who was NASA's adminis- everything itself, giving the
sity astrophysicist Jonathan senior vice presidents to trator at the time. A 2005 firm more control, Reisman
McDowell, whose Jona- the barista who offers its pilot project helped private says. The company saves
than's Space Report has in-house cappuccinos and companies develop ships money by reusing rockets,
tracked launches and fail- FroYo, "will tell you they are to bring cargo to the sta- and it has customers aside
ures for decades. working to make humans tion. from NASA.
Ex-astronaut and former multi-planetary," says for- SpaceX got some of that The California company
Commercial Spaceflight mer SpaceX Director of initial funding. The com- now has 6,000 employees.
Federation chief Michael Space Operations Garrett pany's first three launches Its workers are young, highly
Lopez-Alegria says, "I think Reisman, an ex-astronaut failed. The company could caffeinated and put in 60-
history will look back at him now at the University of have just as easily failed to 90-hour weeks, Hubbard
like a da Vinci figure." Southern California. too, but NASA stuck by and Reisman say. They also
Musk has become best Musk founded the com- SpaceX and it started to embrace risk more than
known for Tesla, his auda- pany just before NASA pay off, Lambright says. their NASA counterparts.
cious effort to build an ramped up the notion of "You can't explain SpaceX Decisions that can take a
electric vehicle company. commercial space. without really understand- year at NASA can be made
But SpaceX predates it. Traditionally, private firms ing how NASA really kind in one or two meetings at
At 30, Musk was already built things or provided of nurtured it in the early SpaceX, says Reisman, who
wildly rich from selling his services for NASA, which days," Lambright says. "In still advises the firm.
internet financial company remained the boss and a way, SpaceX is kind of a In 2010, a Falcon 9 rocket
PayPal and its predeces- owned the equipment. The child of NASA." on the launch pad had a
sor Zip2. He arranged a idea of bigger roles for pri- Since 2010, NASA has spent cracked nozzle extension
series of lunches in Silicon vate companies has been $6 billion to help private on an engine. Normally
Valley in 2001 with G. Scott around for more than 50 companies get people into that would mean rolling the
Hubbard, who had been years, but the market and orbit, with SpaceX and Boe- rocket off the pad and a fix
NASA's Mars czar and was technology weren't yet ing the biggest recipients, that would delay launch
then running the agency's right. says Phil McAlister, NASA's more than a month.
Ames Research Center. NASA's two deadly space commercial spaceflight di- But with NASA's permission,
Musk wanted to somehow shuttle accidents -- Chal- rector. SpaceX engineer Florence
grow a rose on the red lenger in 1986 and Colum- NASA plans to spend an- Li was hoisted into the rock-
planet, show it to the world bia in 2003 -- were pivotal, other $2.5 billion to pur- et nozzle with a crane and
and inspire school children, says W. Henry Lambright, a chase 48 astronaut seats to harness. Then, using what