The ENTIRE History of SpaceX in 9 Minutes — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00What if I told you a guy once tried to
2. 0:02buy a rocket from Russia, got laughed
3. 0:04at, and then decided, "Fine, I'll just
4. 0:06build my own." And that this somehow
5. 0:08worked. Welcome to the story of SpaceX,
6. 0:11the company that turned rocket science
7. 0:13into a flex. It's the early 2000s. Elon
8. 0:16Musk has just made a fortune from
9. 0:18PayPal. Most people would buy a yacht,
10. 0:20or an island, or at least a nice watch.
11. 0:23Elon looked at his bank account and
12. 0:25thought, "What if I made humanity
13. 0:27multi-planetary?" Normal stuff. His idea
14. 0:30was called Mars Oasis.
15. 0:32He'd send a small greenhouse to Mars and
16. 0:34grow plants there. Mostly to get people
17. 0:36hyped about space again. So, he flew to
18. 0:39Russia to buy old intercontinental
19. 0:40ballistic missiles to launch it. Here's
20. 0:43the problem. The Russians looked at this
21. 0:44tech guy in a suit, wanted millions for
22. 0:47each rocket, and basically treated him
23. 0:49like a tourist. On the flight home, Elon
24. 0:51opened his laptop, made a spreadsheet,
25. 0:54and realized something wild. The raw
26. 0:56materials for a rocket cost only a tiny
27. 0:58fraction of what rockets were being sold
28. 1:00for. So, the problem wasn't physics, it
29. 1:03was price. In 2002, he founded Space
30. 1:06Exploration Technologies, aka SpaceX, in
31. 1:09a warehouse in El Segundo, California.
32. 1:11He put in around $100 million of his own
33. 1:14money and hired some of the best
34. 1:16engineers he could find, including Tom
35. 1:18Mueller, a propulsion genius who'd built
36. 1:20rocket engines in his garage. Yes, his
37. 1:23garage. The goal, build cheap, reusable
38. 1:26rockets. Why reusable? Think about it.
39. 1:30Every other rocket in history was
40. 1:31basically a one-time use item. Imagine
41. 1:33flying a Boeing 747 across the Atlantic
42. 1:36and then throwing the plane into the
43. 1:38ocean. That's how space travel worked.
44. 1:40Wild, right? First product, Falcon 1, a
45. 1:43small rocket named after the Millennium
46. 1:45Falcon from Star Wars. Nerd points,
47. 1:47infinite. Launch time came in 2006 from
48. 1:50a tiny island in the Pacific called
49. 1:52Kwajalein. And the rocket caught fire
50. 1:55and crashed about 25 seconds after lift
51. 1:58off. A corroded nut was the cause.
52. 2:00Millions of dollars undone by a nut.
53. 2:03Attempt two, 2007. The rocket flew
54. 2:06higher, but things went wobbly and it
55. 2:08failed again. Attempt three, 2008. It
56. 2:12launched and the first stage bumped into
57. 2:14the second stage after separation.
58. 2:16Failure number three. By now, SpaceX was
59. 2:19almost out of money. Elon's other
60. 2:21company, Tesla, was also bleeding cash.
61. 2:24He was down to his last shot,
62. 2:25financially and emotionally. Imagine
63. 2:28your two businesses both about to die at
64. 2:29the same time. Rough week at the office.
65. 2:32Everyone figured it was over. The
66. 2:34headlines were basically rich guy loses
67. 2:36money on rocket hobby. September 28th,
68. 2:392008. Falcon 1 fourth launch. Last
69. 2:42chance. And it worked. It reached orbit.
70. 2:45SpaceX became the first privately funded
71. 2:47company to put a liquid fuel rocket into
72. 2:50orbit. Elon later said that if that
73. 2:52fourth launch had failed, the company
74. 2:54would have been done. And just like
75. 2:56that, the underdogs were in the game.
76. 2:58Then came the plot twist. Just a few
77. 3:00months later, in December 2008, NASA
78. 3:03gave SpaceX a contract worth 1.6 billion
79. 3:06dollars to deliver cargo to the
80. 3:08International Space Station. Why would
81. 3:11NASA bet on a company that had literally
82. 3:13just barely survived? Because the space
83. 3:15shuttle was being retired and NASA
84. 3:17needed someone cheaper. SpaceX was
85. 3:20hungry and honestly kind of the only
86. 3:22option that wasn't ridiculously
87. 3:24expensive. That contract saved the
88. 3:26company. Seriously. No NASA deal, no
89. 3:30SpaceX as we know it. Now the team built
90. 3:32something bigger, the Falcon 9, with
91. 3:35nine engines on the first stage and a
92. 3:37spacecraft called Dragon, designed to
93. 3:39carry cargo and eventually people. In
94. 3:432010, Dragon became the first commercial
95. 3:45spacecraft to orbit Earth and return
96. 3:48safely. In 2012, it docked with the ISS.
97. 3:51A private company parking at the space
98. 3:53station. Like pulling into a drive-thru,
99. 3:56except the drive-thru is 400 km above
100. 3:58Earth. But here's where it gets truly
101. 4:00unhinged. Elon said, "What if the rocket
102. 4:04just landed itself upright like in an
103. 4:07old sci-fi movie?" And the industry
104. 4:09basically said, "Bro, that's
105. 4:11impossible." So SpaceX tried and failed,
106. 4:14then tried again and failed again.
107. 4:17They tried landing on a floating
108. 4:19platform in the ocean, a drone ship
109. 4:21named, of course I still love you, a
110. 4:23reference to a sci-fi novel. And the
111. 4:25rockets kept blowing up on it over and
112. 4:28over. The internet loved the footage.
113. 4:30They even made blooper reels. Rapid
114. 4:33unscheduled disassembly, that's the
115. 4:35official term for it exploded.
116. 4:38Then, December 21, 2015,
117. 4:40Falcon 9 launched, delivered its
118. 4:42payload, and the first stage came back
119. 4:44down, slowed itself, and landed on a
120. 4:46concrete pad in Florida standing,
121. 4:49perfectly upright. People in the control
122. 4:51room lost their minds. Grown engineers
123. 4:54were screaming and hugging. This was
124. 4:56history.
125. 4:57An orbital rocket booster had landed
126. 4:59itself.
127. 5:00If you're enjoying this story, hit
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129. 5:04the next company breakdown.
130. 5:06In 2017, SpaceX flew a rocket booster
131. 5:09for the second time, then third, then
132. 5:12fourth, then way more. Today, some
133. 5:15boosters have flown more than 20 times.
134. 5:17And remember our airplane example?
135. 5:19Suddenly, space travel is more like
136. 5:21airlines. Costs dropped massively.
137. 5:24What used to cost hundreds of millions
138. 5:26per launch dropped to tens of millions.
139. 5:28And competitors like Boeing and
140. 5:30Lockheed's joint venture ULA started
141. 5:32sweating. Then, in 2018, SpaceX launched
142. 5:36Falcon Heavy, the most powerful
143. 5:38operational rocket at the time. And what
144. 5:41did Elon decide to put on top as a test
145. 5:43payload? His personal Tesla Roadster
146. 5:45with a mannequin in a space suit named
147. 5:47Starman in the driver's seat playing
148. 5:49David Bowie with don't panic written on
149. 5:52the dashboard. A car in space.
150. 5:56Right now, as we speak, a cherry red
151. 5:59Tesla is floating around the solar
152. 6:00system. Peak billionaire energy and
153. 6:02honestly iconic. May 30th, 2020 SpaceX
154. 6:07launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and
155. 6:10Doug Hurley to the ISS. The first time a
156. 6:12private company carried humans into
157. 6:14orbit. It was also the first crewed
158. 6:17launch from US soil since the shuttle
159. 6:19retired in 2011. America had been paying
160. 6:22Russia to fly its astronauts for almost
161. 6:24a decade. Remember where this story
162. 6:26started? Russia laughing at Elon? Yeah,
163. 6:29full circle. Meanwhile, SpaceX had
164. 6:32another side quest, Starlink. A giant
165. 6:35network of satellites beaming internet
166. 6:37to basically anywhere on Earth. Remote
167. 6:39villages, ships, planes, war zones, you
168. 6:42name it. Thousands of satellites now
169. 6:44orbit the planet and Starlink became a
170. 6:46massive money maker funding the bigger
171. 6:49dream. Plot twist. The company that
172. 6:51sells rockets also sells your future
173. 6:53Wi-Fi. And now, the big one, Starship.
174. 6:57The tallest, most powerful rocket ever
175. 6:59built. Fully reusable. Designed to carry
176. 7:02100 people to Mars someday. Yes, Mars.
177. 7:05The original dream still alive. The
178. 7:08testing approach? Build, launch,
179. 7:10explode, learn, repeat. Early prototypes
180. 7:13crashed in spectacular fireballs and
181. 7:15people online watched like it was a
182. 7:17sports league. But each failure taught
183. 7:20the engineers something and the later
184. 7:21flights got way further. SpaceX even
185. 7:24pulled off catching a giant booster with
186. 7:26mechanical chopstick arms on the launch
187. 7:28tower.
188. 7:29Yes, a skyscraper sized rocket caught by
189. 7:32chopsticks. Reality is stranger than
190. 7:34fiction. So, how did they pull it off? A
191. 7:37few reasons. First, they built almost
192. 7:40everything in-house instead of buying
193. 7:41from 100 suppliers, which kept costs
194. 7:44low. Second, they weren't afraid to
195. 7:46fail. Traditional space companies
196. 7:48treated every failure like a national
197. 7:50tragedy. SpaceX treated it like
198. 7:52homework. Third, reusability. Never
199. 7:55forget that. The whole business model.
200. 7:58Now, it's not all sunshine. Critics
201. 8:00point out the heavy reliance on
202. 8:01government contracts, concerns about
203. 8:03satellite clutter in orbit, and the fact
204. 8:05that so much power sits with one
205. 8:07billionaire who's, let's say, not
206. 8:09exactly low-key online. But even critics
207. 8:12admit SpaceX changed the industry. So,
208. 8:14let's recap. A guy gets rejected in
209. 8:16Russia, builds a rocket company with his
210. 8:19own money, fails three times, almost
211. 8:21goes bankrupt, wins on the fourth try,
212. 8:24gets rescued by NASA, lands rockets,
213. 8:27launches a car into space, carries
214. 8:29astronauts, builds a global internet
215. 8:31network, and now aims at Mars. Not bad
216. 8:34for someone who got laughed at over a
217. 8:35missile deal. Next time you look up at
218. 8:37the night sky and see a little line of
219. 8:39lights moving across it, that might be
220. 8:41Starlink. And somewhere, a booster is
221. 8:43coming back to land on its own.
222. 8:45All right, which company should we break
223. 8:47down next? Drop it in the comments. See
224. 8:50you in the next one.