littleflute
commented
4 years ago 00:12 So what I'm going to talk about here is, this is a power station. 00:16 So if you've ever wondered 00:17 what a couple of million horsepower looked like, 00:20 that's pretty much what it looks like. 00:22 And for me, it's always been about the rocket. 00:24 In fact so much so that when I was growing up, 00:26 the school called in my parents to have a bit of a discussion, 00:31 because they believed that my aspirations 00:34 were unrealistic for what I wanted to do. 00:37 (Laughter) 00:38 And they suggested that I take up a job at the local aluminium smelter, 00:42 because I was very good with my hands. 00:44 But for me, aluminium, or as you Canadians say, "aluminum," 00:48 was not part of my plan at all. 00:50 So I started building rockets when I was at school. 00:53 They got bigger and bigger. 00:54 I actually hold an unofficial land speed record 00:56 for a rocket bike and roller blades 00:59 while wearing a rocket pack. 01:00 (Laughter) 01:02 But as the rockets got larger and larger, 01:04 and more and more complex, 01:05 I started to be able to think I could do something with this. 01:08 Now today we hear about very large rockets 01:11 taking humans to, or aspiring to take humans to, 01:15 the Moon, and Mars and beyond. 01:17 And that's really important, 01:18 but there's a revolution going on in the space industry, 01:21 and it's not a revolution of the big, 01:23 it's a revolution of the small. 01:25 So here we have an average-to-large-sized spacecraft in 1990. 01:30 We can tell it's 1990 because of the powder blue smocks 01:32 for all the trained in the clean rooms in 1990. 01:35 But that was your average-to-large-sized spacecraft in 1990. 01:38 Here's a spacecraft that's going to launch this year. 01:41 This particular spacecraft has four high-resolution cameras, 01:44 a whole lot of senors, a CoMP communication system. 01:47 We're going to launch thousands of these into the solar system 01:50 to look for extraterrestrial life. 01:52 Quite different. 01:54 You see that Moore's law really applied itself to spacecraft. 01:57 However, the rockets that we've been building 01:59 have been designed for carrying these very large, 02:02 school-bus-sized spacecraft to orbit. 02:05 But this kind of launch vehicle here is not very practical 02:08 for launching something that will fit on the tip of my finger. 02:12 And to give you a sense of scale here, 02:14 this rocket is so large that I inserted a picture of myself 02:17 in my underpants, in complete confidence, 02:19 knowing that you will not be able to find me. 02:21 That's how big this rocket actually is. 02:23 (Laughter) 02:25 Moving on. 02:27 (Laughter) 02:29 So this is our rocket -- it's called the Electron. 02:31 It's a small launch vehicle 02:33 for lifting these small payloads into orbit. 02:36 And the key here is not the size of the rocket -- 02:39 the key here is frequency. 02:40 If you actually wanted to democratize space 02:43 and enable access to space, 02:44 launch frequency is the absolute most important thing 02:47 out of all of this. 02:48 Now in order to really democratize space, there's three things you have to do. 02:53 And each one of these three things has kind of the equivalent amount of work. 02:57 So the first is, obviously, you have to build a rocket. 03:00 The second is regulatory, and the third is infrastructure. 03:05 So let's talk a little bit about infrastructure. 03:07 So this is our launch site -- 03:09 it's obviously not Cape Canaveral, 03:11 but it's a little launch site -- 03:12 in fact, it's the only private orbiter launch site 03:15 in the entire world, down in New Zealand. 03:17 And you may think that's a bit of an odd place 03:19 to build a rocket company and a launch site. 03:21 But the thing is that every time you launch a rocket, 03:24 you have to close down around about 2,000 kilometers of airspace, 03:27 2,000 kilometers of marine and shipping space, 03:30 and ironically, it's one of the things in America 03:32 that doesn't scale very well, 03:34 because every time you close down all that airspace, 03:36 you disrupt all these travelers trying to get to their destination. 03:40 The airlines really hate rocket companies, 03:42 because it costs them around $70,000 a minute, and so on. 03:46 So what you really need, 03:47 if you want to truly have rapid access to space, 03:50 is a reliable and frequent access to space, 03:53 is you need, basically, a small island nation 03:55 in the middle of nowhere, with no neighbors and no air traffic. 03:58 And that just happened to be New Zealand. 04:00 (Laughter) 04:02 So, that's kind of the infrastructure bit. 04:05 Now the next bit of that is regulatory. 04:07 So, believe it or not, 04:09 New Zealand is not known for its space prowess, 04:11 or at least it wasn't. 04:13 And you can't just rock on up to a country 04:16 with what is essentially considered an ICBM, 04:20 because unfortunately, if you can put a satellite into orbit, 04:22 you can use that rocket for doing significantly nasty things. 04:26 So quickly, you run afoul of a whole lot of rules and regulations, 04:29 and international treaties 04:31 of the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and whatnot. 04:35 So it becomes quite complex. 04:37 So in order for us to launch down in New Zealand, 04:39 we had to get the United States government and the New Zealand government 04:43 to agree to sign a bilateral treaty. 04:45 And then once that bilateral treaty was signed 04:47 to safeguard the technology, 04:49 the New Zealand government had a whole lot of obligations. 04:52 And they had to create a lot of rules and regulations. 04:54 In fact, they had to pass laws through a select committee 04:57 and through Parliament, ultimately, and to complete laws. 05:00 Once you have laws, you need somebody who administers them. 05:03 So they had to create a space agency. 05:04 And once they did, the Aussies felt left out, 05:07 so they had to create a space agency. 05:09 And on and on it goes. 05:10 So you see, there's a massive portion of this, in fact, 05:13 two thirds of it, that does not even involve the rocket. 05:16 (Laughter) 05:18 Now, let's talk about the rocket. 05:19 You know, what I didn't say 05:23 is that we're actually licensed to launch every 72 hours for the next 30 years. 05:27 So we have more launch availability as a private company 05:30 than America does as an entire country. 05:33 And if you've got a launch every 72 hours, 05:35 then that means you have to build a rocket every 72 hours. 05:38 And unfortunately, there's no such thing as just a one-stop rocket shop. 05:41 You can't go and buy bits to build a rocket. 05:44 Every rocket is absolutely bespoke, 05:46 every component is absolutely bespoke. 05:49 And you're in a constant battle with physics every day. 05:51 Every single day, I wake up and I battle physics. 05:54 And I'll give you an example of this. 05:56 So on the side of our rocket, there's a silver stripe. 05:59 The reason is because there's avionic components behind there. 06:03 We needed to lower the emissivity of the skin 06:05 so we didn't cook the components from the sunlight. 06:08 So we paint a silver stripe. 06:09 Unfortunately, as you're sailing through the Earth's atmosphere, 06:12 you generate a lot of static electricity. 06:14 And if you don't have conductive paint, 06:16 you'll basically send lightning bolts down to the Earth. 06:19 So even the silver paint has to be triboelectrificated 06:22 and certified and applied and everything, 06:25 and the stickers, they're a whole nother story. 06:27 But even the simplest thing is always, always a real struggle. 06:33 Now, to the heart of any launch vehicle is the engine. 06:36 This is our Rutherford rocket engine. 06:38 And usually, you measure rocket engines 06:41 in terms of time to manufacture, in terms of sort of months 06:44 or even sometimes years, on really big engines. 06:48 But if you're launching every 72 hours -- 06:49 there's 10 engines per rocket -- 06:51 then you need to produce an engine very quickly. 06:54 We needed to come up with a whole new process 06:56 and a whole new cycle for the rocket engine. 06:58 We came up with a new cycle called the electric turbo pump, 07:02 but we also managed to be able to 3D-print these rocket engines. 07:05 So each one of these engines is 3D-printed out of Inconel superalloy, 07:09 and right now, we can print round about one engine every 24 hours. 07:14 Now, the electric turbo pump cycle 07:16 is a totally different way to pump propellant 07:19 into the rocket engine. 07:20 So we carry about one megawatt where the battery is on board. 07:24 And we have little electric turbo pumps, about the size of a Coke can, 07:27 not much bigger than a Coke can. 07:29 They spin at 42,000 RPM, 07:31 and each one of those Coke-can-sized turbo pumps 07:33 produces about the same amount of horsepower 07:35 as your average family car, 07:37 and we have 20 of them on the rocket. 07:39 So you can see even the simplest thing, like pumping propellants, 07:42 always pretty much drives you insane. 07:45 This is Electron, it works. 07:47 (Laughter) 07:49 (Applause) 07:55 Not only does it work once, it seems to work quite frequently, 07:58 which is handy when you've got a lot of customers to put on orbit. 08:01 So far, we've put 25 satellites in orbit. 08:03 And the really cool thing 08:04 is we're able to do it very, very accurately. 08:07 In fact, we insert the satellites to within an accuracy of 1.4 kilometers. 08:11 And I guess if you're riding in a cab, 08:13 1.4 kilometers is not very accurate. 08:15 But in, kind of, space terms, 08:17 that equates to around about 180 milliseconds. 08:20 We travel 1.4 kilometers in about 180 milliseconds. 08:23 So, it's actually quite hard to do. 08:25 (Laughter) 08:27 Now, what I want to talk about here is space junk. 08:29 We've talked a lot during this talk about, you know, 08:34 how we want to launch really frequently, every 72 hours, 08:37 and all the rest of it. 08:38 However, I don't want to go down in history 08:40 as the guy that put the most amount of space junk in orbit. 08:43 This is kind of the industry's dirty little secret here, 08:47 what most people don't realize is that the majority of space junk by mass 08:50 is not actually satellites, it's dead rockets. 08:54 Because as you ascend to orbit, 08:55 you have to shed bits of the rocket to get there, 08:58 with the battle of physics. 08:59 So I'm going to give a little Orbital Mechanics 101 here, 09:02 and talk about how we go to orbit, 09:03 and how we do it really, really differently from everybody else. 09:07 So the second stage cruises along 09:09 and then we separate off a thing at the top called the kick stage, 09:12 but we leave the second stage in this highly elliptical orbit. 09:15 And at the perigee of the orbit, or the lowest point, 09:17 it dips into the Earth's atmosphere and basically burns back up. 09:21 So now we're left with this little kick stage, 09:23 that white thing on the corner of the screen. 09:25 It's got its own propulsion system, 09:27 and we use it to raise and trim the orbit 09:30 and then deploy the spacecraft. 09:31 And then because it's got its own engine, we put it into a retro orbit, 09:35 put it back into a highly elliptical orbit, 09:37 reenter it into the atmosphere and burn it back up, 09:39 and leave absolutely nothing behind. 09:42 Now everybody else in the industry is just downright filthy, 09:45 they just leave their crap everywhere out there. 09:47 (Laughter) 09:48 (Applause) 09:52 So I want to tell you a little bit of a story, 09:54 and this is going to date me, 09:56 but I went to a school at the very bottom of the South Island in New Zealand, 10:00 tiny little school, 10:01 and we had a computer not dissimilar to this one. 10:04 And attached to that computer was a little black box called a modem, 10:07 and every Friday, the class would gather around the computer 10:10 and we would send an email to another school in America 10:13 that was lucky enough to have the same kind of setup, 10:16 and we would receive an email back. 10:18 And we thought that was just incredible, absolutely incredible. 10:21 Now I often wonder 10:23 what would happen if I traveled back in time 10:25 and I sat down with myself 10:26 and I explained all of the things that were going to occur 10:29 because of that little black box connected to the computer. 10:32 You would largely think that it would be complete fantasy. 10:35 But the reality is that is where we are right now with space. 10:38 We're right on the verge of democratizing space, 10:41 and we have essentially sent our first email to space. 10:44 Now I'll give you some examples. 10:46 So last year, we flew a small satellite 10:48 for a bunch of high school students who had built it. 10:51 And the high school students were studying the atmosphere of Venus. 10:54 Those are high school students launching their own satellite. 10:57 Another great example, 10:58 there's a number of really big programs right now 11:02 to place large constellations, of small satellites in orbit 11:05 to deliver internet to every square millimeter on the planet. 11:08 And for pretty much everybody in this room, 11:10 that's just handy, 11:11 because we can stream Netflix anywhere we want. 11:14 But if you think about the developing countries of the world, 11:17 you've just disseminated the entire knowledge of the world 11:20 to every single person in the world. 11:22 And that's going to have a pretty major effect. 11:25 Thanks very much. 11:26 (Applause)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhnBn_c9f8Q