It’s Wednesday, October 11th 2017.
In a few hours, SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) will attempt to launch EchoStar 105/SES-11 communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. This will be the second SpaceX launch in three days if it is successful, the first coming this past Monday, October 9th with the Iridium-3 launch – an importance step if SpaceX hopes to achieve the launch cadence they claim is possible. It will be the 15th launch of 2017 for SpaceX, making them the leading launch provider of 2017 over any other company or country. If they launch and subsequently land the first stage rocket, it will be the 18th landing of a SpaceX first stage booster. The EchoStar 105/SES-11 launch will also be the third time SpaceX will launch a “Flight Proven” first stage booster for a commercial customer. The previous launch coming in June and the first for SES-10 in April 2017.
This is awesome.
It is engaging and exciting and I cannot wait to see what happens next. Every time SpaceX lands it is just as awesome and awe inspiring as it was the last time. It’s almost becoming mundane and boring for some. You can actually see that in the news coverage of the landings. An article in The Verge today is titled Watch SpaceX launch and land its third used Falcon 9 this afternoon. As if it is a given now that they will just stick this landing like the seventeen before. Seventeen. Rockets. LANDED. I mean that is crazy. It’s even more crazy that this is just becoming the M.O. of this private rocket company funded from selling PayPal. This company is 15 years old. I was 14 when Elon Musk founded this company. He was 31 – barely two years older than I am now. In those 15 years they have turned launching into space on it’s head. This giant, slogging bureaucracy formally the purview of only national governments and pseudo-private corporations running on massive subsidies from national governments (not to say they don’t get any of that themselves) is now being outdone by an upstart from South Africa who everyone always claimed was ridiculous. For SpaceX, for Tesla, for SolarCity (Now also, Tesla). The Hyperloop, the Boring Company. He is truly pushing the limit of what is possible in this world. I know I’m verging on super fanboy-dom right now, but how can you not be? If you want to be excited about the future, this is exciting.
It’s pushing the envelope in so many ways. Thanks to SpaceX, China has a private firm starting up dedicated to producing it’s own reusable launch system for space. Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin is getting into the game. Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, Virgin Galactic. Australia announced at this years IAC that they will be joining the space faring nations of the world. NASA is working on the Space Launch System (SLS) which will be the largest rocket produced since the Saturn V, the granddaddy of all big freaking rockets that America built 50 years ago! 50 years! We can’t even build them anymore. When the program was ended, the government destroyed the machinery to build them. If that is not some backwards looking BS I don’t know what is. But now we’re coming back with the SLS. Even United Launch Alliance (ULA) is waking up, claiming their own reusable space flight vehicles.
And Mars. This year at the IAC, Elon Musk claimed the first launch of cargo to the Red Planet would take place as early as 2022 with humans following in 2024. Who knows if that’s when it will happen. But at this point, if you’ve followed along during SpaceX’s adventure it’s not a matter of if, but when. Humanity could have a presence on the Red Planet before I am 40.
And this is only one company he is involved in. Tesla is gearing up for the release of the Model 3 of which there are 400,000 pre-orders. Almost half a million people put down at least $1,000 for an electric car from a company who to date has delivered 100,000 cars. The Tesla Model S and X have been the penultimate electric vehicles ever built. Audi purchased both a Model S and a Model X in order to benchmark or attempt to reverse engineer it to bring a vehicle to the market to compete against Tesla. Even Ford purchased a Model X on it’s release. A twitter comment from Musk led to Mercedes committing
The Gigafactory 1 in Nevada – a plant to provide the batteries that Tesla will need to provide the car manufacturing it expects it will reach. Currently, if Tesla was to reach it’s production goals today, they would use the entire world’s production capacity for Lithium-Ion batteries. The plant was already producing batteries as of June 2017 with completion of the building expected in 2020. In additional, Tesla is planning a Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, New York to provide the solar panels following their acquisition of SolarCity this year. Tesla is working on a 100 MW battery system for Australia to help them deal with their frequent blackouts. They were one of the first companies into Puerto Rico helping bring power back online by providing panels and battery packs and will be meeting with the Governor of the island to help rebuild the power grid.
The Hyperloop effort is bringing together colleges from around the world to work on pilot systems for a truly futuristic way to travel around the world. Pods in tubes at near vacuum that travel at an average speed of 760 miles per hour. Thing about that. That is insane.
The Boring Company is a pilot system to build new transport ways underground and recently won approval to dig a two-mile test tunnel near the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California to prove that it can work.
I feel like Americans don’t look forward to the future anymore – there is this fear of progress almost. I want to be excited for the future. Not anxious, not dread filled. I don’t want to worry that my generation will the first generation worse off than our parents. I don’t want to worry that on average, my generation makes 20% less in real dollars than my parents. That we have a president who seems hell bent on rolling back protections for the environment, and workers, and immigrants, and healthcare. I want to be excited. I have a right to be excited.
America needs Elon Musk. He might be eccentric, he may over promise. His companies may burn out employees – but they are pushing the limit. That has to be respected. It should be respected. His vision is pushing the limits of what is possible more so than the new iPhone X, or the next Xbox, or a new touchscreen tablet. This is exciting, big stuff that harkens back to an American that I never got to experience. The America that looks to the future with hope and excitement. Not dread or fear. The America of my parents childhood. The world that people dreamed about.
I can’t wait for what’s next.
A Real Perspective 