Erik Nordeus - The Engineer

Henry Ford always said there are no big problems; there are just a lot of little problems. “Ford was just the kinda guy that when something was in the way, he just found a way around it,” Elon said. To solve the problem of why it was so expensive to launch rockets, SpaceX had to break it down into smaller questions.

The first question the SpaceX team had to answer was whether they should build a capsule on the top of a rocket or a new Space Shuttle. Arguing the Space Shuttle should have retired ten years earlier than it did, they came to the conclusion a capsule was the best alternative. 53The idea behind the Space Shuttle might have been sound, but in reality it had several drawbacks. “The Shuttle is just an incredible complex and dangerous machine,” Elon said. 365

The Space Shuttle didn’t have an escape module that could save the crew if something went wrong after the launch. As Titanic would never sink, the engineers who constructed the Space Shuttle decided it didn’t need an escape module because it would never fail. 350“It [the Space Shuttle] really is not a good design,” Elon said. “It is something where if anything goes wrong, the crew dies. And that is no good. We were much better off with the Apollo approach [a capsule] where if something went wrong with the booster, you had an escape module.” 365The idea behind an escape module is similar to an ejection seat in a military aircraft. If something happens after the launch, the escape module will make it possible for the astronauts to fly away from the rest of the rocket. It will probably save the crew.

An often-used argument in favor of the Space Shuttle was that it could land wherever you wanted it to land as long as the runway was long enough. The other alternative, a capsule, will just fall into the ocean and then the navy has to search for it with aircraft carriers. But it’s a misconception. A capsule returning from space with a parachute can steer on the way down since the capsule itself has similar properties as a wing. Years before GPS became available, latter capsules from the Apollo program could land within a circle with a radius of 1 mile [2 km]. When you land a capsule, the only factor you can’t control is the wind. To correct for the wind, it’s possible to add a different type of parachute or a propeller. Now you can land with a capsule on the painted numbers on a runway in a similar way as when a skydiver can land with a high accuracy. 350

SpaceX’s long-term goal is to land on other planets, such as Mars, thus there’s no point with the Space Shuttle’s wings since there are no runways on Mars. “In space, wings are dumb. You don’t make an aircraft looking like a boat,” Elon said. 350Despite having wings, the Space Shuttle couldn’t really fly. It could only fall with style. When it returned from space, it glided towards the runway without any engines, so it had only one chance to land.

Yet another drawback with the Space Shuttle is that it was designed to be reusable, but in reality, it wasn’t. After each launch, the external tank broke up before impact in the sea and was never recovered. The reusable parts were so difficult to reuse that the cost of the Space Shuttle was four times more compared with an expendable rocket with equivalent payload capability. 305

The second question the team had to answer was whether they should rebuild an existing rocket or design a new rocket from a clean sheet. What if SpaceX could rebuild the old Saturn V rocket that launched the craft used when we landed on the Moon. Elon argued the Saturn V was a great rocket and its design was much better compared with the Space Shuttle. 350“The holy grail of SpaceX would be to build the Saturn VI,” Elon said. 365

Finding old Saturn V blueprints wasn’t an issue. A rumor circulated that the blueprints for the Saturn V rocket were lost, or rather destroyed by the US government so they wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. But the rumor proved to be false. The blueprints for the Saturn V rocket exists and are stored at the Marshall Space Flight Center and at the Federal Archives. Rocketdyne, the manufacturer of the large F-1 and smaller J-2 engines used in the Saturn V, have also saved their blueprints. 279

The problem with rebuilding the Saturn V rocket is that it was designed in the 1960s. It’s impossible to reproduce the rocket because the parts are not manufactured anymore. To rebuild the Saturn V, it has to be redesigned with modern parts, and in the end it’s easier to design a completely new rocket. 279And that’s what the engineers at SpaceX set out to do.

The rockets designed by SpaceX had to be cheap. We want to explore and expand beyond Earth and have a Mars base if we can afford it. Launching a rocket is easy compared with how to do it cheaply. You can compare SpaceX with Henry Ford who didn’t invent the car – he just made it available to the public by designing the cheap and reliable T-Ford.

A rocket with a capsule can be more expensive than a Space Shuttle. After the Space Shuttle accident in 2003, when Columbia disintegrated during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, the US government ordered the development of the Ares I rocket. “As is not unusual with large government programs, the schedule slipped and costs ballooned by tens of billions,” Elon said. President Barack Obama canceled the new rocket because it didn’t make sense anymore. To finish the rocket, the program would have needed another $50 billion and the cost per flight would have been $1.5 billion. The cost per flight with the Space Shuttle was $1 billion. This is despite the fact that Ares I could carry only four astronauts and the Space Shuttle could carry at least seven. 277

To come up with the answer why rockets were expensive, Elon used his engineering skills. “I tend to approach things from a physics framework,” Elon said. “And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. So I said, OK, let’s look at the first principles. What is a rocket made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, plus some titanium, copper, and carbon fiber. And then I asked, what is the value of those materials on the commodity market? It turned out that the materials cost of a rocket was around two percent of the typical price – which is a crazy ratio for a large mechanical product.” 305In comparison, the price of the material in a car in relationship to the price of the car itself is about 25 percent. Neither rocket fuel was the reason to why rockets were expensive. The cost of the fuel and oxygen used in a modern rocket is about 0.3 percent of the price.

If neither material nor rocket fuel could be blamed as the reason to why rockets were so expensive, what was the real reason? When SpaceX was founded, Boeing or Lockheed manufactured most rockets. Their rockets were far from cheap simply because they never needed to cut the costs. The rockets were partly funded by the US government, and if the rockets became more expensive than what the contract with NASA said, they received more money. Rockets that are more expensive were actually something good. “If you were sitting at an executive meeting at Boeing and Lockheed and you came up with some brilliant idea to reduce the cost of Atlas or Delta, you’d be fired,” Elon said. “Because you’ve got to go report to your shareholders why you made less money. So their incentive is to maximize the cost of a vehicle, right up to the threshold of cancellation.” 288

On the other hand, Skunk Works, a division of Lockheed and famous for aircraft like F-117 Nighthawk and SR-71 Blackbird, gave back money to the government. They gave it back either because they had brought in a project under budget or because they saw that what they worked with was just not going to work. 407

SpaceX’s plan was now complete. They would design a rocket with a capsule on the top. To lower the price per launch, all parts of the rocket had to be reusable within a matter of hours – not months as with the Space Shuttle. SpaceX needed to avoid the mentality of other companies that design expensive rockets just to make more money from the government. “Our first order of business is to defeat the incumbent, old school rocket companies,” Elon said. “Lockheed. Boeing. Russia. China. If this is a chess game, they don’t have much of a chance.” 50