This course is designed for anyone who is interested in learning more about modern astronomy. We will help you get up to date on the most recent astronomical discoveries while also providing support at an introductory level for those who have no background in science.
16. Commercial Sector
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From the course by University of Arizona
Astronomy: Exploring Time and Space
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From the lesson
The Solar System
Space probes have visited most planets in the Solar System, and orbiters and rovers are homing in on the habitability of Mars. Space exploration is entering an entrepreneurial phase that might let us venture beyond the Solar System.
Meet the Instructors
Chris ImpeyDistinguished Professor
Astronomy
An exciting development of the last decade is the emergence of private enterprise and
a commercial sector for space travel.
It's still very early days, but we can see the outlines of what might be possible.
As of this day, just seven space tourists have been launched.
They're all extremely wealthy people.
Dennis Tito, for example, paid $35 million for
a space walk, on top of his space flight to the International Space Station.
This is not, obviously, an activity available to the many.
But it's early days.
The genesis of the commercial space activity dates back to the X Prize.
The X Prize was a clever idea designed to spur innovation.
Modeled on the prize that Charles Lindbergh won for
his first flight across the Atlantic.
A private consortium offered $10 million to the first spacecraft or airplane
that could go to a hundred kilometers altitude twice within a one week period.
A hundred kilometers is not technically space, but
at that altitude, the sky would indeed appear dark.
So formal definition of space, and of course,
it's well short of lower orbit, which is several times higher.
Burt Rutan designed SpaceShipOne, and SpaceShipOne won the X Prize,
kicking off a wave of innovation in the design of spacecraft.
The particular goal of this innovation is for reusable spacecraft.
Because part of the large cost of space travel involves the fact that the rocket
equation dictates that 90% of the weight of any spacecraft will be in fuel.
After the success of SpaceShipOne.
Billionaire investor, Richard Branson,
teamed up with Burt Rutan to form Virgin Galactic.
This private space company has the goal of taking tourists to a hundred kilometers
for joy rides in space at a cost of about a quarter of a million a head.
So far, over 700 people have signed up.
The spaceship designed to do this, SpaceShipTwo, had a catastrophic failure,
with the death of one pilot and the severe injury of another, in 2014.
And it's not clear when the first paying flights in SpaceShipTwo will be.
Regardless of the bumps in the road,
and we can remember how many people were killed in the early
days of civil aviation, it seems that the private space activity will continue.
There are 11 private space companies and growing.
Many of them planning low Earth orbit tourism, some of them planning orbital
hotels, and a couple even planing joyrides to the moon, although not lunar landings.
This sector is growing very rapidly, even though revenues have not appeared yet.
As another example of entrepreneurial activity to fuel the space enterprise,
is the Google Lunar XPRIZE.
The search engine giant is offering a price of $30 million to any team,
not government, but funded privately or through a university or
research institute, that can land a rover on the moon, travel between two points,
and send back data or images.
Currently, over 15 teams are still in the running for this prize.
As with the X Prize itself, the Lunar XPRIZE
is small compared to the development and research cost required to win the prize.
This was the case with the original X Prize to Charles Lindbergh.
The innovation is spurred by competition.
The key to these new space enterprises are reusable space vehicles.
Remember that the Apollo spacecraft sitting atop the Saturn V rocket
involved 95% of the mass and fuel.
And these rockets were lost or jettisoned as the object went into its Earth orbit.
The space shuttle was partly reusable, but
also had enormous costs of hundreds of millions of dollars per launch.
SpaceShipTwo and others like it, are planning to be completely reusable,
typically using an air breathing technology to get to very high altitudes
and then a rocket to do the last part of the job,
with both parts returning to earth to be reused.
Spaceport America in New Mexico has grown and
has many tenants hoping to be part of this new space activity.
Another major player in the commercial space sector is SpaceX,
founded by Elon Musk, the billionaire investor, best known for PayPal.
Musk is interested in pushing transport in all areas.
He's also the founder of the Tesla car company.
SpaceX is rethinking the rocket equation and designing its rockets from scratch.
Trying to get more propulsion and re-usability out of a smaller pay load.
SpaceX has already resupplied the space station several times,
given that the space shuttle no longer flies.
And SpaceX has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA to do this.
It's developing the Falcon Heavy lift capability,
which will take shuttles level payloads into Earth orbit.
It's also developing the Grasshopper rocket, which will be fully reusable.
Surveys over the last 30 years show that there's a viable economic model for
space travel based on tourism.
Surveys of the general public show that the likely
revenues from the space tourist activity, of course, depend on the price point.
But annual revenues of $30 or $40 billion are not out of question.
If we make the analogy to entertainment, here is a graph
of a mean cost of movie and a space mission over the last few decades.
Innovations in rocketry and propulsion have led to cheaper and
smaller space missions.
So that cost has come down although it's risen recently.
Movies however, have become more and more expensive.
It's now routine to have a movie that costs more than a space mission.
Perhaps the best example is Avatar.
A movie by James Cameron about life on an exomoon, which cost about the same amount,
$400 million, as the Kepler mission, which actually discovered exoplanets.
Perhaps the best analogy to where we sit in the history of space travel is with
the development of the Internet.
Taking the 30,000 foot view, we can see that the early phase of the Internet
involved entrepreneurs and pioneers, visionaries who could imagine the things
that would have been difficult to imagine from everyday life then.
The visionary of the Internet is someone unknown to most people, J.R. Licklider.
Back in the 1960s, he envisaged wireless Internet,
data in the cloud, and essentially the entirety of our digital lives.
Remember, this is when a computer filled the size of a suburban home.
The incubation period for
the Internet occurred in the military industrial complex.
The very first Internet emerged from DARPA,
which was a Defense Agency subcontractor, and most Internet and
email was first done within government agencies and national labs.
The R&D phase of the Internet occurred in government labs and
universities around the country.
The public was dimly aware of the capabilities of the Internet
until the early 1990s.
The floodgates opened in the 1990s,
when the American government deregulated the emergent Internet.
And the big commerce entities like Amazon and Google were first founded.
Flash forward two decades and the entire Internet is dominated by these
Leviathans whose price tag run a hundred billion dollars.
However, it's important to realize that innovation of the Internet still occurs
in government labs and universities around the world, pushing those capabilities.
And that eventually works its way into the commercial sector.
If we hold with this analogy, we can see similarities.
Space travel, or rocketry, also had a visionary phase.
In the early 1920s,
Goddard was the only person in the world experimenting with rockets.
And the first flight of Godard's rocket was as unimpressive as the first flight of
the Wright brothers in an airplane some decades earlier.
But he was sowing the seeds for greater things.
The incubation in the military industrial complex happened after the second war.
NASA brought back German rocket scientists.
In particular, Wernher von Braun, who developed the V-2 rocket,
later staged as of the second world war.
And deployed that same technology in the budding space enterprise in
the United States.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, space travel was the exclusive preserve of governments.
In particular, the United States and Russia.
However, research was going on, and space astronomy and
planetary science prospered due to government funding.
If this analogy holds,
the present day corresponds to the mid 1990s with the Internet.
When Google, Amazon, Facebook, and others were just beginning to emerge as concepts.
We can look at the private space sector now.
At Virgin Galactic, at Elon Musk's Space-X, and
wonder which of these will turn into the Google of space travel in the future.
It's very hard to predict winners and losers, but
it's safe to predict that this activity will grow in the next decade.
Meanwhile, the death of 14 astronauts in two space shuttles and the loss of
other life in this private space industry, reminds us that space is dangerous.
And there have been many hazards along the way.
[LAUGH]
On the Z-1.
Truss.
Little bit more.
Discovery, Houston for EDA.
Wondering if Boomer is more than a few arms' reaches away from Sonny.
[INAUDIBLE] If you want me to go over to [INAUDIBLE] I can do that.
I've got this [INAUDIBLE] all with me.
Sunny, your camera is behind you.
I hope it's tethered because it looks like it's
passing underneath of the The arm and the sector.
It's not.
It came off of the bracket.
The bracket bolts came undone.
Okay, we see that.
[FOREIGN] It was an extraordinary sensation.
I had never felt quite like it before.
I was free above the planet Earth, and
they saw it so it was rotating majestically below
me Perhaps the most notable
way that space travel has permeated the public consciousness was Apollo 13,
one of the most important episodes in the history of space travel.
The ingenuity of the astronauts to nurse their crippled spacecraft back to
Earth and survive what was likely to be a fatal experience, was extraordinary and
inspiring.
Leading of course to a movie and a book.
[MUSIC]
[INAUDIBLE]
[MUSIC]
Fuel pump.
This is it.
A few bumps and we're hauling the mail.
[MUSIC]
We are go for launch.
T-minus 50,- 15, 14,
13, 12, 11, ten,
nine, eight, seven, six.
Ignition sequence start.
Three, two, one.
Ignition.
[MUSIC]
The clock is running!
[MUSIC]
[NOISE] We have liftoff!
[MUSIC]
Houston, we have cleared the tower at 13:13.
Okay guys, we got it.
[MUSIC]
Come on baby.
[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
Altitude is on the line.
Velocity right on the line.
[MUSIC]
Role complete.
We are.
13, stand by for mode one protocol.
[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
Flyer, how are we looking?
Looks good, flyer, right down the middle.
[INAUDIBLE] s clear 13.
Roger!
EDS to manual!
Inboard.
Get ready for a little jolt fellows.
[SOUND] [SOUND]
[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
[SOUND] That was some little jolt.
[MUSIC]
[SOUND] Tower jet.
[MUSIC]
[SOUND] The public
still has the ability to be inspired by what humans can do in space.
Whether it becomes a routine part of our culture, an activity remains to be seen.
Space is dangerous but the reality of living in space is also mundane.
A lot of the technology involved is used for mundane purposes such as
keeping humans safe, alive, and dealing with their bodily functions.
I'd like to begin tonight with a special Colbert Report shout out.
Hey!
[LAUGH] This one goes out to astronaut and friend of the show, Garrett Reisman.
Who is watching the Report from orbit right now in a desperate attempt to
forget that his space station's only toilet is broken.
[LAUGH] >> Terrible news,
unless you write news headlines for a living.
>> [LAUGH] >> In which case, Houston,
your job is easy.
>> [LAUGH] >> According to NASA,
the astronauts are now using a backup, bag-like collection system.
>> [LAUGH] >> To be clear,
>> This is not a bag.
That's what we'd use here on Earth.
In space,
they use the advanced of technology of a bag like collection system.
Is everyone clear on that?
>> Stephen?
>> Yes?
>> Is it a bag?
Cuz it sounds like these astronauts are pooping in a bag.
>> No!
These men are not pooping in a bag, they are heroes.
They are pooping in a collection system that is bag-like.
>> [LAUGH] >> It's science, it's science,
we're moving on.
>> [LAUGH] >> Anyway,
Garrett, just hold out as long as you can.
>> [LAUGH] >> And, wait a second,
what's my rain stick doing here?
>> [LAUGH] >> Garrett,
the whole nation clenches with you.
>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> Together we are a roaring
waterfall of solidarity, a mighty river of flowing support.
>> [APPLAUSE] [LAUGH] >> Besides,
if things get really desperate,
you can always relieve yourself
in the Hubble space telescope.
[MUSIC]
>> You always got these questions when you go speak to schools.
How do you live in space, how do you sleep?
How do you eat?
And the most popular question of all time, guess what it is?
>> Probably how to go to the bathroom.
>> How do you go to the bathroom in space.
We're gonna find that out today with Scott, who's gonna tell us.
Okay? >> Okay.
>> First, what are we doing?
You want us to explain what it is?
>> Yeah, if you don't mind, go ahead and do the whole thing.
>> Do you want us to explain the practice part of this?
>> Yeah, there's the real >> We have the real toilet, and
then we have the practice toilet.
>> And we have the practice toilet.
>> Scott, were you going to get to that, or what are you gonna do?
>> I would normally skim it during the refresher, but if you want to cover it.
>> Oh, you have to cover it.
>> Just cover it.
Do you want to cover it now, or do you wanna?
>> Now, I'll do it now.
Particularly based on what you just said because that is our functional trainer.
>> That one can be used.
>> This one over here?
>> That's right. That's where we're going to spend most of
our time, because that one can be used.
>> You guys are gonna use that.
>> We could use that.
>> You could use it before.
>> We're not gonna do it today.
>> No no no no.
>> We do it in this one, I'm gonna be upset.
>> No you don't want to do it in that one, because why?
>> This is our positional >> Trainer.
>> So you can see there's a TV monitor here.
>> There's a TV monitor there.
>> There's a camera inside the hole.
>> That's correct.
>> You'll notice the hole here is four inches.
>> The hole is four inches?
>> Whereas a normal toilet seat is more like 12 or 18 inches.
>> What's a normal, you mean like the one you have at your house?
>> That's right.
[MUSIC]
Alignment is important.
>> Right.
>> So the benefit of this is if they're not confident
that they have good alignment they can come turn on the camera.
>> Right. >> Or
they can turn the camera off and find their alignment on the seat.
>> Right.
>> Flip the camera on.
And see if they've- >> And see right here,
you can sit down on that thing and look over here and check your alignment.
Now, wouldn't you say this is like the deepest,
darkest secret about space, right?
People always ask me, well, what about UFOs, and aliens?
We got nothing for them, but they don't know about this,
that we actually have a, what's the official title for it?
>> So much the Hubble guys- >> Positioning trainer.
>> Positioning trainer.
And now you're going to go over the high fidelity training.
>> By and large, especially with more experienced crews,
they've been there done it.
They just want a refresher on how to use the [INAUDIBLE].
>> Here we go, activation.
We're there.
Foot, toes, down and lock.
So [INAUDIBLE].
>> So this is to support your feet while you're sitting on the potty.
Right. >> You have your feet right here.
Support your feet.
>> When you use the commode, you can put your feet in the toe restraints down at
the bottom, if you're just floating there in zero.
>> Right. >> Right.
Vacuum valve open, here we go.
All right.
Ready?
>> Sounds good.
>> Unstow urinal hose from velcro strap, install hose in cradle.
Okay, so so far we've talked about your positioning aid, that was for number two.
When you go number one you have that hose there.
>> Yeah, but you also have this tow strap there.
>> The tow strap, that's to hold you while you're using,
while you're going number one into the hose.
>> Solid waste and liquid waste go two different places.
>> Check cradles is auto.
Check mode is auto.
Check motor is on.
>> Then step select switch to one.
>> Okay. [INAUDIBLE] switch to one.
There it goes.
[INAUDIBLE] [NOISE] It's good.
It's working.
It's sucking.
>> Good. >> Okay.
Check them UCS on my.
[INAUDIBLE]
>> On that
>> Here, and
then we put a little baggy in there, right?
Trash bag.
>> All right.
>> This little bag, the air can suck to the bottom.
So whatever you throw in here sort of gets sucked down to the bottom of the bag.
Yeah. >> [INAUDIBLE]
>> And we put that bag in,
that's where your toilet paper is gonna go.
>> Toilet paper, hand wipes.
Paper trash.
>> You don't put any paper in the bowl.
Only solid waste in the bowl, and all your paper and hand wipe stuff goes in there.
>> And then when you're done, you tie that up, throw it away, and put a new one in.
>> Need a bag?
>> Steve already pointed it out.
You guys are flying all male funnels.
>> Yes, cuz they're all guys.
>> But for the sake of observation here, male funnels don't have any venting.
Steve already mentioned the whole unit works on air.
Female crew members have three choices for
their anatomy based funnel choices and they're all vented.
The difference is for
women we want their anatomy against the funnel, but we still need the air flow.
For men we do not want them docking to the funnel.
To that end also, if you're urinating and the funnel's filling with water you want
to slow down because we don't want to flood the fan separator.
Did you guys use the fire restrains at all or just wedge yourself in here?
>> I stick my hand on the roof.
>> All right.
These are fire restraints.
>> They were helpful for getting in and out actually.
>> Those handles?
>> Just those handles.
>> You really didn't use them?
>> No. >> No, just use the roof.
I think I've used the stretch.
>> I sit where I'm comfortable.
>> Right. >> I scooch.
>> Yep. >> Yeah, that's right.
>> You know what I think of?
I think of Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, riding a chopper.
>> [LAUGH] >> I thought I was riding a chopper, and
that's the right position for me.
>> You would have made a marvelous >> I would have, but it's too late now.
[CROSSTALK] >> And that's the benefit here.
>> [INAUDIBLE] opportunity and it didn't turn out marvelous.
And now it's too late.
>> That's the benefit of the mirror, is if you don't,
if you can't tell that something is attached, you can look in the mirror.
>> If this breaks, volume G, where your spare odor and bacteria filter are,
you know, it gets underneath your aft lockers.
So you have to remove lockers to get to these things.
>> All right.
>> You fly, adult diapers, those are standard compliment.
Technically, they're for women but
since you don't have any on your flight, feel free to use them if you have to.
This is an Apollo fecal bag and you have a finger cup for wiping.
It is an adhesive attachment.
>> I think I'm gonna have to get some of the DC vac in that thing
I could make that work for them.
>> Okay, any questions?
You guys have done this before so.
Simple reminders.
Keep it clean, alignment's your friend.
Solid waste in the commode, urine goes down the tube, nothing else.
If you want to come over here, the reminders are on the wall.
We do leave this in a configuration, especially once you're in quarantine, so
all you have to do is come over and turn on the fan set.
Which you would do, because you're following the procedures.
>> Correct. >> There is a chance for
it to be out of config.
This is a very popular room with tours, so what I usually start the class with is,
that door has a deadbolt.
It has a cypher lock, it has a sign that says training in progress,
and they ignore it every time.
So if you're going to come in here, even if you're just doing a sim next store, and
you run in here to use this toilet, use the dead-bolt.
Or you're gonna have somebody's home video with you in it.
Like this.
[MUSIC]
>> The commercial or private space industry is just emerging,
no one is making any money yet.
Well we can see the parallel between the development of the internet, whether it
was a visionary phase, incubation by the military industrial complex, where most of
the activity occurs in government labs or universities or research institutes.
And eventually, propagation into the private sector.
If the Internet is the model,
then eventually the private sector dwarfs the government sector that spawned it.
And that's a healthy situation.
However, it's worth noting that both in the Internet and
in space travel, the government still has the ability to fund experiments and
novel innovations that might not be fundable for commercial reasons.
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