SpaceX Launch: Highlights From the Weather-Delayed Mission

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today: For the first time in history, a private company is sending astronauts into space. Science reporter Kenneth Chang on the dawn of a new era in space travel.

It’s Thursday, May 28.

Ken, how many space launches have you covered in your career?

I’ve forgotten. Because I started covering these at the end of the space shuttle era. So it was probably five or six then. And there was a few other scattered ones. And I’ve actually made more trips than that. Because especially with the space shuttle, they would postpone the launch at the last second a gazillion times. So I would just fly in in, fly out, fly in, fly out, and not even see a launch.

But if you had to guess, how many fly-ins and fly-outs have you made to try to watch a space launch?

Oh, I’d say 20.

[LAUGHS] That’s a lot.

Yeah.

And that’s where you are right now, when we say fly in, fly out, you are “in” at the moment.

I am in. I’m actually currently in a Hampton Inn in Titusville, which is 20 minutes from the Kennedy Space Center.

Give me the scene there in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center. I know you’re not there, but you’re soon to be there. What’s it look like right now?

So because of the coronavirus, NASA’s basically limiting the number of people there. The visitor’s center, where the public usually gathers for the launch, is closed. So when I go there, I’ll get to watch it. But I’ll be outside the whole time and with a mask and at least six feet away from everyone else.

So Ken, at this point, it’s about 1:20 p.m. Where are we in the countdown for today’s launch?

So the astronauts have put on their space suits. They’re about ready to get in a car to drive to the launch pad. And this is part of what’s really different about this launch versus what’s happened in past years from the Kennedy Space Center. In the past, it was NASA having the space shuttle and such. This time, it is a private company, one called SpaceX that was founded by Elon Musk, the billionaire who also operates Tesla, which is a company that makes electric cars.

So what’s happening where you are in Florida on Wednesday is that a private company is putting NASA astronauts into space on a privately owned vessel?

Yes. And this has never been done before. If you think, there’s been three countries that have sent people to space: the United States, the former Soviet Union and now Russia, and China. And now you have this small company called SpaceX, which I guess is not so small anymore. But it is now joining these big nations to do something that’s really hard.

Ken, when I think of the space program, I think of it as the pride and joy of the United States. And I think of it first and foremost as a federal government program, NASA. So how did we get to this point where a private company has more or less supplanted NASA in sending astronauts into space?

So of course, at the beginning of the space era, you think of Sputnik.

The Soviets sent a satellite up before the great, mighty United States did.

This spurred, of course, a lot of fear and worry in the United States.

So the United States started a major space program and created NASA to do things that would counter what the Soviet Unions were doing.

And so the first space missions, you just think of —

— you think of Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space.

John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.

And each of these baby steps that led to Apollo.

And of course, Neil Armstrong walking on the surface of the moon.

These were all events tied up in the identity of the United States as a nation.

And so that was the mentality that drove the space program through the ‘60s into the early ‘70s. And then after that, it was a transition to try to figure out what to do. Once we’ve gotten to the moon, how do we get to the next step?

So NASA basically came up with three options to present to President Nixon. You could go for broke, you could start planning to go to Mars. Or you could build a space station and a space shuttle to go to the space station. Or you could just build a space shuttle. And Nixon chose just to build the space shuttle. That was the cheapest that he was willing to invest in. And so because the space shuttle did not have a space station to go to, it had to serve other purposes. One of them was that the military wanted to use it to launch spy satellites. Other people want to use it to run science experiments in orbit. And so this sort of became this pickup truck that was supposed to do all these different chores for different parts of the federal government. It ended up being a technological marvel that was not great at doing any one particular task.

I mean, with the space shuttle, if you think about the launch, if you watch one, it was an amazing sight.

You could hear the rumble as it goes up.

But you could never get over just how bright the light from the engines are. It never does justice to see it on a computer screen or a TV.

But it didn’t capture the imagination of people like going to the moon did for Apollo. Tasks were not the grand dreams that fueled the Space Age.

So what happens to this kind of underwhelming NASA space program that you’re describing?

The space shuttles were actually designed to be run almost like a commercial enterprise. They were reusable. The thought was that they could land and fly very quickly. And that they would fly often enough that the cost of a mission would be fairly cheap as NASA got better and better at running the shuttles. In fact, at various points, there were actually discussions that NASA would outsource the operation of the shuttles to a private company.

Hm.

Those didn’t happen.

Because first, in 1986 —

There was a Challenger accident where the shuttle disintegrated during launch.

And it killed Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who was aboard.

And this was a huge setback. And NASA had to go back and fix the design. And then they became very careful to make sure that it was safe enough for the astronauts. And of course, once you’re very careful about safety, you’re safer. But that means that everything costs more, everything is slower. And this piece of the space shuttle program continued. Then in 2003, there was another accident.

Columbia, it was actually on a mission conducting some science experiments. And —

— as it reentered the atmosphere for landing —

— the structure of the shuttle disintegrated and the seven astronauts aboard died. And this was a turning point, for NASA and the country to decide going to space is dangerous. We are risking our astronauts’ lives to do something in space. What should we be asking them to risk their lives for?

Mhm.

And this soul-searching led to the decision that the shuttles were now too old, too complex, too dangerous to continue operating.

So that there would be a few more flights, and then it will be retired.

So after all these years of neglecting the space shuttles and running into safety problems, the decision is not to invest more in them, but essentially, to kind of walk away from the program?

That’s essentially what happened. But still, NASA needed a way to get its astronauts to and from the space station.

So when the Obama administration came in, they took a look at what NASA was doing and decided that was an opportunity to get more commercial companies into this business of sending people to space.

And what is NASA thinking at this moment, as it starts to contemplate farming out travel to the space station?

So the thinking of the NASA officials were, we really want to go back to the moon. We really want to go to Mars. We want to go send astronauts off on new places where they can go look at things that we have never seen before. And because too much of the budget was tied up with the space shuttle, they wanted to find some way to spend less money on what they thought was routine missions, so that they could do something that was more exciting and could better justify what they were created to do.

Got it. So the thinking is: let a private company do the kind of grunt work of space travel. And that would free the federal government, NASA, up to do the grand explorations.

That was exactly the reason. And NASA chose two of them that they liked and decided to fund them. One was Boeing and one was SpaceX. And of course, NASA wanted both of these to be operational as soon as possible. It became a sort of friendly competition. Both companies actually ended up three years behind schedule.

[LAUGHS]

And at this final time, SpaceX is going to be first. And Boeing is still, perhaps, a year behind.

So SpaceX wins the competition.

Yes.

There actually is a flag on the space station. So on the very last space shuttle mission, the astronauts left a flag there. And whoever was going to be on the first vehicle to get to the space station would capture the flag.

And so that will be SpaceX.

Yes.

OK. So Ken, I know you need to go actually watch this rocket launch. So we will let you go —

Yes.

— and talk to you once the launch is done and you are off deadline.

If I miss the launch, my editor is going to kill me. This was actually a conversation I had with my editor. [LAUGHS]

We’ll be right back.

So Ken, it’s nearly 7 p.m. And things did not quite go as planned. What actually just happened down there in Florida?

So through the whole day, the weather looked really icky. It was raining. It was cloudy. And then, about an hour before liftoff time, the rain sort of cleared up. The clouds start thinning out. And it looked like, for a while, that they were going to actually be able to get the rocket off the launch pad. But then, at the very end, about 15 minutes before the liftoff time, the weather officer said we’re still red for launch. They called off the launch. And they’re going to try again on Saturday.

So no launch on Wednesday, but perhaps a launch over the weekend?

Yes.

So I want to talk about, Ken, this private company that, I guess, almost just put American astronauts into space — SpaceX. I mean, what was it about this company that attracted NASA to it and allowed it to get this coveted contract?

So SpaceX was this upstart small company. It was very ambitious. And they found ways to do rockets and such that was less expensive and faster than many of the bigger companies in the past. And I always described them for the longest time as the Southwest of the rocket business, Southwest Airlines.

[LAUGHTER]

They found efficiencies that other companies did not that has allowed them to find new markets and find ways to do things that weren’t a business model before, because it was too expensive and too slow in the past.

What are some examples, Ken, of ways that they inexpensively innovated and seemed to save a lot of money on this kind of a launch?

So in the very beginning, their engineering decisions were often driven by how things could be done efficiently. And this could have been as simple as recycling parts of their rockets. So if you’ve ever watched a rocket launch, the bottom part of the rocket, which is the first stage or booster stage, is the part that lifts up the rocket through the thick bottom part of the atmosphere. And it usually just drops away when it’s done after a few minutes.

Right.

And for the longest time, this piece would just fall back into the ocean and be lost.

Right. And that sounds like a pretty expensive thing to just toss off into the ocean.

It’s a very expensive thing. Just each engine would be several million dollars.

Wow.

So one of the things that, from the very beginning, Elon wanted to do was, we should try to use them again. And for a while, when they were trying to land these boosters, they would just crash and abort. And there was these fantastic explosions as the thing almost landed. And then, finally, they succeeded. They actually managed to land this booster back on the ground at Cape Canaveral. And then now, they do this almost routinely. For every SpaceX launch, you watch it go up, you see the booster drop off. And about 10 minutes after launch, you see it land vertically, almost like those rockets in those 1950s science fiction movies.

Wow.

It’s amazing.

This is where SpaceX went from being the Southwest Airlines to a true innovator in this field.

So Ken, how much, in the end, does it feel like SpaceX has saved in terms of cost from what NASA might have paid to put someone into space a decade ago?

So the clearest comparison that we have is that before SpaceX came along, NASA had a plan to develop its own rocket and capsule for taking astronauts to the space station. And when that program was canceled, the estimated cost to do this would have been at least $20 billion dollars.

Wow.

Now SpaceX has a contract with NASA basically to provide the exact same service, so that all the development costs, plus providing some of the actual launches, for $2.6 billion.

Wow. So a fraction of that $20 billion dollars?

Yes.

Saving that much money would seem like a tremendous boon for NASA, for the federal government, for the American taxpayer. Does anyone at NASA worry that something fundamental is lost when a private company — that is ultimately a business that’s interested in making profit — is running a launch like this?

I think they’re most excited about what the rocket does as opposed to who builds it and who operates it.

Hm.

I always remember the Saturn V rocket from the Apollo missions in the ‘60s, the most impressive thing that’s flown to date. However, it wasn’t because it was so big. It’s because it went to the moon. That’s why we remember it. It doesn’t necessarily matter whose rocket goes to the space station or ultimately takes people to the moon and beyond. It’s that these systems, if they work well, they enable NASA and other agencies to go explore the solar system in new ways that we weren’t able to do before.

Ken, is this ultimately a positive development that you’re describing here, the privatization of space exploration? Which, I guess, at first blush, seems like something people might be worried about. Is it turning out that this is a very natural evolution of a process that began with the government creating a market, taking these serious risks and opening up to a more efficient private company, and that that’s a pretty good progression?

So if we go back in history, think of an example where this has happened before. And that is the airplane.

So in the very earliest days, there was various people building different types of an airplane. But there’s no real business for doing it. It is when the government decides to start sending air mail that it created a business where people could start airlines to carry the mail. And that’s led to this wonderful air travel system that we have in the United States and around the world today.

So if we follow that logic, eventually private space travel could be a vast network that many companies enter and perhaps many civilians use, just like civilian aircraft?

So once it’s no longer just NASA astronauts going to space, there’s all sorts of new possibilities that open up. So if you have a commercial space station that has nothing to do with NASA that could be filled with millionaire space tourists to spend a couple of weeks in space. It could also be a pharmaceutical company that wants to try out new drugs that can only be made in zero gravity. So once there is a market of going to space that doesn’t involve the government, then everyone else can start thinking of how can I get up there, too? How can I make money up there?

So when SpaceX does pull off this launch, maybe it’s in a couple of days, you’re saying it’s not really just putting two astronauts into space on a private aircraft. It’s truly launching a new era in the space program. And it’s, I guess, the private era of space travel.

Yes. And it’s coming sooner than you realize. There’s a company out there doing it right now called Axiom Space. They have a contract with SpaceX. They have an agreement with NASA to use part of the space station for these tourists. And this could be launching as soon as the second half of next year.

Hm.

So Ken, everything that you’re describing is very exciting. But it occurs to me that it’s also somewhat conditional. I mean, what happens if, now that it’s delayed on Saturday, on Sunday, whenever this launch occurs, what happens if it fails? What happens if it goes badly? Is everything you’re describing then in doubt?

It’s certainly pushed into the future and delayed. Is it such a setback that everyone says this was a bad idea, we give up, we need to go back to the way things were? I don’t think so. Space is still a very hard business, no matter whether it’s SpaceX or NASA or someone else running these programs. There is a risk to whoever is riding on top of that rocket every time it launches. Everyone who’s down there watching is nervous. They always go, I hope this is not a bad day. Because they realize it could be a bad day. And I don’t think that one bad day means we never go back to space.

Well, Ken, good luck. I hope that you do get a launch in the next few days. And we’ll check in with you after that.

Great. Thank you very much.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Wednesday, just four months after the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the U.S., the American death toll reached 100,000, according to The Times, more than any other nation in the world. The virus has now claimed more American lives than the U.S. wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Most statisticians say that the actual death toll is probably much higher, given how few Americans have ever been tested.

So far, the virus has infected more than 1.7 million Americans.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.