Transcript 0:00 [ on-hold music] Hello, and welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on international affairs by World Politics Review. I am Peter Durrie. 0:16 The first space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was a geopolitical and ideological struggle between superpowers. 0:23 Now five decades in the past, it pushed the limits of technology to the extreme and realized some long-held dreams of humanity, like putting a human on the moon. 0:33 But after the enormous gains of the 1950s and '60s, space exploration became more gradual. 0:39 More countries developed space programs, but between 1961 and 2000, only the Soviet Union, the United States, and China actually put humans into space. 0:50 After the end of the Apollo program, humans never returned to the moon. Ambitious plans to expand human exploration to other planets were shelved. 0:58 And with the end of the space shuttle in 2011, even the US became seemingly so disinterested in the final frontier that it contracted human launches out to Russia. But over the past decade or so, something had changed. 1:10 In 2004, the US Congress required NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration to legalize private space flight, and in 2015, Congress expanded the rights of US persons to explore and ex- exploit space with the SPACE Act. 1:25 During that time, an internet entrepreneur called Elon Musk founded a company called SpaceX with the goal of developing cheaper and more reliable access to space with the ultimate goal o- of building a colony on Mars. 1:37 Today, SpaceX has developed a partially reusable rocket, Falcon 9, and has launched it just shy of 150 times. 1:44 The company's on the cusp of introducing a fully reusable launch system, Starship, with a lift capacity of more than 100 tons to low Earth orbit, and SpaceX and other companies have developed vehicles that can put humans into space as well as mega constellations of satellites that promise to provide high quality and affordable internet access independent of terrestrial infrastructure. 2:07 At the same time, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shattered decades of cooperation between the United States and Russia in space and put even the future of the International Space Station into question. 2:18 China is aggressively pushing its space program, as are India and other nations. 2:23 Arguably, we are already in the age of a new space race, and this time it's multipolar with everyone from superpowers to startups participating. With me today to explore this new space race is Eric Berger. 2:38 He's the author of Liftoff, a book on the rise of SpaceX, as well as senior space editor at Ars Technica. Eric, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Peter. 2:49 Let's say I have a great idea that will help humanity in some way or make me a lot of money, but it requires me to put a satellite into space. 2:59 How exactly would I go about doing that, and how has that process changed between the 1960s, the 1990s, and today in terms of costs and practicality? 3:11 Well, you're in a lot better position now than you were even five or 10 years ago. So back in the 1960s, you were out of luck. It was entirely governments doing this kind of thing. 3:22 Um, and then in the 1990s, you could get into space, but the way it's been described to me is if you had a satellite you wanted to launch, you could go and see Arianespace in, in Europe. 3:35 Um, and you would go have a nice meeting with them, probably a dinner in Paris somewhere, and tell them what you needed, where you wanted to go, and, and how much your satellite, you know, weighed and that sort of thing. 3:45 And then they would put all that information into some kind of a black box and come back with a price two or three weeks later. 3:52 Um, you could also go to Russia and, and try to buy a launch on a Proton, um, from them or a Soyuz. 3:58 But it-- the process was very opaque, and so you would get a price, and it would be probably, you know, $100 or $200 million, and you had to pay that because there really weren't any options. And so, 4:11 you know, what changed is, is the arrival of SpaceX in the early 2000s. They actually put their price right on their website, and that was really sort of this, this revolution in transparency. 4:22 Um, and, and since then we've seen other companies come along. And so that was, that was kind of a big step forward. SpaceX was putting price pressure on, but, but for a long time, up until really about five years ago, 4:35 you know, they hadn't increased the cadence of the Falcon 9 launch. And so you could buy a launch from SpaceX for $62 million, but you might have to wait two or three or four years before it actually got to space. 4:49 Um, and so it was still pretty clunky process. Fast-forward to today, where, you know, since they've made the Falcon 9 reusable, you can get into space really quickly. 4:59 Um, and it, it's, it's, it's also important, you know, the other big thing that's changed since the 1960s and 1990s is the miniaturization. Everyone has seen this happen with the telephones in their pockets, right? 5:11 These, you know, iPhones and, and Android devices are extremely powerful computers. Well, the same revolution, you know, has happened to satellites. You know, the components are smaller. 5:20 Um, you can get more performance for the same amount of power and in a much smaller size, and so you've seen a diminution in the size of satellites. So that means that satellites cost less to build now, typically. 5:32 You can get more bang for your buck in terms of, of size and, and there are many more ways to get into space, right? You have Rocket Lab with its Electron vehicle. You have Virgin Orbit with Launcher One. 5:45 You have companies in Europe who are trying to do small sat launch. You could go to India and get on their Polar Satellite Vehicle. 5:50 And you-- and now SpaceX, of course, has these transporter missions where for a few thousand dollars per kilogram, you can do a rideshare mission, you know, on a Falcon 9. So it's, it- I- it's really enabled... 6:02 W- we're really at a point now where we're enabling space commerce in a much more user-friendly way than it was even five or 10 years ago. 6:10 And what are some of the things that, that, uh, users of these kind of small sat launch, uh, o- opportunities, what, what are they doing with this kind of stuff? What are some examples? 6:21 The primary example still is earth observation, and that's everything from optical, you know, uh, you know, uh, sort of, you know, standard satellite images, right, of, of the planet to synthetic aperture radar, which basically allows you to quote, see through clouds, um, using your radar images. 6:40 Um, and, and so we're seeing this very powerfully, you know, in the war on Ukraine because 6:47 all of a sudden these remote sense- these commercial ro- remote sensing companies have constellation satellites that are flying over Ukraine, you know, as much or more as the existing kind of government assets, um, the traditional sort of spy and observational satellites you might think about. 7:01 So these commercial companies have actually played a super important role, um, in assessing the buildup of troops along the border of Ukraine and Belarus, uh, and, and Russia prior to the war, and then sort of tracking on a day-by-day basis sort of the movements of, of these militaries in a very powerful way. 7:18 And so that is really the most, um, the most common use of these satellites, but it's, it's obviously we've seen the rise of the mega constellations, so the next big frontier clearly is broadband internet from space, and you've seen that with the Starlink from SpaceX, OneWeb's constellation. 7:36 Um, Amazon has its Project Kuiper coming. Europe, China, you, you know, are both also talking, even Russia's talking about some kind of satellite internet constellation. 7:46 And what is happening at the other end of the spectrum? So you have this small launch capability, uh, that has greatly expanded in, in recent years and has been made accessible to commercial users. 7:56 What is on the, on kind of the larger end of the scale? Is, has there been any technical developments that makes lifting greater loads into orbit, uh, more feasible? Right. 8:07 So the way to think about rockets is there's basically small lift rockets, and so as you talked about, there's been this real flourishing of companies trying to build small rockets to get things into space, relatively low cost. 8:18 And for a long time then the, the area had, had been medium lift rockets. 8:22 And so that's your Atlas V, that's your Falcon 9, that's your Ariane 5, that's your Proton, that's your Soyuz sort of in the, you know, 5 to 20 metric tons to low Earth orbit range. 8:34 Um, the real revolution, another real revolution we've seen over the last 5 to 10 years is the rise of the, the heavy lift and super heavy lift vehicles. So the Falcon Heavy was first. 8:43 You know, that can do up to 60 or 64 metric tons to low Earth orbit if you do fully expendable, meaning you don't try to reuse the side boosters. Um, 8:53 and then NASA is very close to launching its Space Launch System, um, which can do about 90 tons to low Earth orbit. 9:01 And, and SpaceX is working on the super heavy rocket and Starship launch system, which may launch later this year, and that could do theoretically 100 to 150 metric tons to low Earth orbit. 9:11 China is working on a super heavy lift rocket. So, a- and of course Blue Origin has their New Glenn rocket, which is about 50, uh, I think 54 tons or something like that to, to low Earth orbit. 9:22 So you've got all of these rockets kind of coming along, um, i- in sort of this new class of launcher and, and we'll have to see sort of the, the effects of that down the road. 9:33 And, and what are some of the projects that would be feasible with this, with, with these heavy or, or super heavy lift capabilities that aren't really on the table today or were, weren't really on the table 10 years ago? 9:46 Yeah, so I think we can set aside NASA's Space Launch System rocket because that's only gonna be used by the government. 9:52 It's only gonna fly probably once a year, and NASA's gonna use it for exploration missions, um, probably initially moon landings and things like that. 9:59 But, you know, looking at it commercially, how does a Starship or how does a New Glenn, um, change the game? 10:06 That's really a great question because we've never seen that kind of commercial lift capability, and so we really don't know, you know, how it's going to be used. 10:18 Um, initially SpaceX is gonna use it to build out its Starlink constellation much more rapidly, but y- you know, one area I think where we could see some movement over the next 10 to 15 years is on the idea of space-based solar power. 10:30 Because once you get, you know, relatively inexpensive heavy lift capability, 10:37 y- you can start to talk more realistically about putting up this, you know, large number of solar arrays in space where you have access to power 100% of the time, 24 hours a day, and then you beam that power back to Earth basically for, 10:50 for always on green energy. Um, so, so, you know, you know, we don't know what's gonna happen with commercial heavy lift, but it's kind of one of these exciting questions to think about over the next 10 to 15 years. Hmm. 11:02 And do you think that these are basically kind of continuation of gradual and incremental changes that we have bas- seen since basically the 1960s or 1950s even, or has there been a new quality in the, in the way we access space o- over the past 10 or 20 years? 11:18 I, I don't, I don't view this as an incremental change. I think what SpaceX has done over the last decade is really revolutionary. 11:24 You know, even in 2015, 2016 when they started to talk about reusing their, their Falcon 9 first stage, you know, you looked at that and you said, "Well, that seems pretty far out. 11:35 Um, it's hard to see them really being able to, to make that work." Um, and, and, you know, you talk to their competitors and they said, "Well, it's not economically viable to do that," right? 11:47 "You use too much propellant trying to bring the rocket back, so you can't lift a heavy payload," that kind of thing. You had very skeptical takes on this. 11:53 And, and so fast-forward now to 2021, and SpaceX is launching rockets 10, 11, 12 times the first stages. 12:02 And, oh, oh, by the way, it really is seen as safe because NASA's like, "Yeah, you can launch humans on the second or third flight of a rocket." 12:10 And the Department of Defense is launching payloads, GPS satellites, these, these enormously valuable satellites on previously flown rockets. So it's a- 12:18 It's really changed the paradigm of how we think about this, and kind of the next evolution in that is toward a fully reusable launch system. 12:27 So right now, when a Falcon 9 rocket launches, the first stage comes back, and people have probably seen it land on land or land at sea, and that's really cool. 12:35 Um, and they've started to recover the payload fairings as well. 12:39 Um, but the second stage, you know, with its Merlin engine, is completely expended, and so you have to build a new one of those every time you launch a rocket. 12:45 Um, and, and so the, the-- where SpaceX wants to go is with a fully reusable launch system, and that's what Starship is. It's the first stage comes back, the second stage comes back, and then you can launch it all again. 12:56 Um, but they're not alone in that, right? You know, Blue Origin is building New Glenn, and initially only the first stage is recoverable. 13:03 But I'm, you know, I'm reliably informed that they're working very hard to eventually make their upper stage sort of reusable as well, in the sense that it would fly back to Earth kind of like Starship. 13:14 And then there's another company, Relativity Space, which is building, uh, this large Terran R rocket. 13:18 Now, it's not as big as a Falcon Heavy or a New Glenn, but it's still a pretty good sized rocket, and they're intending the first and second stages for that to be fully reusable as well. So this is a trend. 13:28 It's a trend toward, you know, much lower cost launch and, and it, it is a radical departure from basically the first 50 or 60 years of spaceflight, where rockets were basically entirely expended after every launch. 13:42 So how have different governments reacted to these changes over the past 10 or 20 years? 13:47 Um, you had g- the US, China, uh, Russia, kind of the, the big three in, in, in space, uh, but also governments like India have invested a lot in, in, into their space programs. 13:59 Um, and now there's basically a startup coming along and, and upending the economics of, of this business. Um, how have they reacted, reacted to that? 14:10 So I'll start in the United States because that's really where you had the s- the initial commercial spaceflight revolution led by SpaceX, but certainly not exclusively SpaceX. 14:20 You know, NASA and the, the government here was pretty skeptical of SpaceX in the mid-2000s, so from 2002 to 2010 or so. Um, but then the company has started to deliver. 14:34 Um, you know, the biggest example of that is the Commercial Crew Program. 14:38 You know, here we are in the middle of this Ukraine war, and we're not reliant, as in the United States, on Russia to get our astronauts into space, and that's because of SpaceX. 14:47 You know, if you go back to 2014, uh, NASA gave two contracts for commercial crew. They gave it to, to SpaceX, the upstart, and they gave it to Boeing, which is the blue blood established aerospace player. 14:58 And they gave s- they gave Boeing 60% more funding than they gave SpaceX because Boeing asked for it and said they needed it. Um, 15:08 and now here we are in 2022, and SpaceX is about to launch its fourth, or excuse me, its fifth crewed mission for NASA to this International Space Station. 15:17 Boeing is probably at least a year away from putting people on a test flight of its Starliner spacecraft. So SpaceX has delivered for NASA in a big way. 15:26 And so over the last 15 years, you've really seen sort of NASA very much warm to SpaceX and its capabilities. Um, a- and, and they're so it's accepted. And around the world there's been a response, too. 15:39 I would point to China and say they were the first sort of country to really recognize the disruptive potential in commercial space. 15:45 And so about five years ago, you know, they basically said to their private industry, such as it is, "You can start licensing technology from the state space corporation," and then going out and trying to find, you know, venture capital funding or other sources of funding to p- you know, privately 16:03 use that technology to sort of help grow their commercial space industry. 16:08 Now, the commercial space industry in China is not like purely commercial or separate from the government like it is in the United States, just because that's how their authoritarian government operates. 16:17 But, but it is-- They certainly recognize the value of commercial space. India, too, has started to do the same thing with its space organization. 16:26 They have a new space industry that they're trying to nurture and have gotten pretty serious over that about the last 18 to 24 months. 16:33 And Europe, too, is finally starting to recognize, you know, the importance of, of having sort of these dynamic new players in the space industry. 16:41 And so over the last two or three years, they've gotten-- they've warmed much more to the commercial space idea than they had previously. 16:48 Um, so the United States is way ahead, but, um, its competitors are trying to catch up. Oh, and I, I left out Russia. They don't really have a, a commercial space industry. 16:57 Um, and obviously the war in Ukraine is gonna affect, greatly affect their ability to do anything in that regard. 17:03 How do you think, um, will increasingly cheap and reliable access to space, um, change considerations around national security and economic policy for governments like the United States or China, but also for smaller nations who might not be able to sustain, um, kind of their own full-fledged space program? 17:22 It's a great question, and I don't really have a crystal ball, uh, other than to say that it is going to change things dramatically. A-again, we've seen this in Ukraine, right? 17:31 The commercial, um, remote sensing has played a huge role in, in sort of open source intelligence, um, that has backed up the claims that the Biden administration and other people were making about sort of this buildup to the war. 17:45 Um, it's been super important to have this public ground truthing of what's actually happened on planet Earth. Um, and, and I think 17:54 we're just starting to sort of come to grips with the implications of that for future conflict or activities here on Earth. 18:01 Like you cannot lie about what is happening on the planet anymore because it's not just the, the s- you know, the, the security establishment in the United States or, or major countries that know what's going on. 18:13 Like the, the whole world can see it, like through the satellites of Planet and other companies of, of what is actually happening on the ground. That's really powerful. 18:20 And we've seen it, too, with the Starlink communication satellites, right? 18:24 Like thousands of their dishes are now in Ukraine, and like it's, it is both being used presently for internet access and communication, and if Russia were to make a big attempt to try to shut down- 18:36 Ukraine telecommunications. Starlink would be an absolutely vital link for, for that country to the internet. So this is commercial space making a huge difference and, and, you know, 18:47 what that means for the future in terms of low-cost launch and more access to space, it's going to get kind of messy and muddy. 18:54 Um, and, and it's, it's, it's, it's, it's going to be interesting because never before have we been in a situation where so much private capital and energy has been flowing into this area and, and that naturally is gonna come into conflict with what, what government wants to do. 19:09 Speaking about what government wants to do, one of the things governments like to do is, is kind of con- keep tabs on or control or regulate, um, the actions of private companies and actors. 19:20 Uh, so what are the regulatory challenges, uh, that come along with this, uh, with this new commercial activity in space? 19:29 So by far the biggest regulation challenge over the next decade is going to be getting a solid handle on making sure we don't muck up low Earth orbit, right? A- and there's all sorts of problems. 19:41 Like this is not a new problem. You know, the, these upper stages from s- from rockets that, that got spent and then left in low Earth orbit have been there for decades. 19:50 Um, but it, it's really, you know, we're really putting a fine focus on it now with, with Starlink and with OneWeb because you're starting to see hundreds and then thousands of new satellites. 20:00 You know, if SpaceX, SpaceX is successful over the next year or two, it will be a point where they are operating two-thirds of all satellites in low Earth orbit, um, which is kind of crazy to think about, but, but that's where we'll be and, and I'm sure they'll get there. 20:15 Um, a- and so it really creates a problem for tracking all of these new satellites, all of the existing debris, and making sure there aren't, you know, collisions. 20:25 And then you add on top of that a layer of anti-satellite tests, which we saw Russia do just, you know, late last year, creating, you know, hundreds of new pieces of debris to try and track. 20:36 And, you know, there's been movements of the International Space Station to avoid this debris. 20:41 Um, and, and we have got to get a handle on making sure that companies that launch these satellites into space, and, and it's not SpaceX, there's lots of other companies coming along with similar ideas. 20:53 There's a company in Texas called AST SpaceMobile which is building these huge satellites, um, it wants to put in low Earth orbit. 21:00 And, and it's just, we have got to make sure that we're regulating these, this, the launch of these satellites and ensuring they have the ability to avoid collisions, be trackable by, you know, authorities here on Earth, and then have a plan to be rapidly de-orbital, meaning bring them back to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere if there's some kind of issue. 21:24 So w- we're not there, right? It, right now if you want to launch into space, you have to get permission from the FCC because they regulate the, the, the spectrum, and you have to, uh... 21:37 So if you want to sell like satellite services in the United States, you have to get approved to launch by the FCC. Uh, the bottom line is that, you know, you've got the FCC having a hand in this. 21:48 You've got NOAA with the Department of Commerce. You've got NASA. You've got DoD. And, and we've got to come up with a much better system of tracking 21:59 all of this activity, regulating it both from a launch standpoint and then what's in, in space a- and just, and then we've got to take that from a domestic level and integrate with China and Russia a- and all our European partners and everyone else who's launching into space. 22:14 It's this huge challenge, and we, we really don't have a good handle on it domestically or internationally, and if we don't, it's gonna be potentially catastrophic for sort of the environment in low Earth orbit. 22:28 And you already mentioned a couple of times Russia's invasion of, of Ukraine and the kind of dis- disruptive effects it had on a, on a few different things. 22:38 My understanding is that Russia and the US were actually cooperating quite closely in space, uh, up until a couple of months ago basically. 22:46 Um, Russia and, uh, United States and, uh, are, are both partners in the International Space Station. Just a couple of days ago, a US astronaut came back, um, on a Russian spacecraft from the ISS. 23:00 Uh, Russian cosmonauts are training I, I think at the moment in the US, um, to go to the ISS. And now it seems like basically except for work on the ISS, Russia's space program is, is 23:13 under a near complete boycott of Western governments and companies. How will that affect cooperation in space going forward, and how will it affect the International Space Station? 23:26 So the way to think about this is, you know, when the Soviet Union collapsed, um, uh, you know, a f- a few decades ago, uh, government funding for the Russian space program really went down. 23:41 And now Western governments, in United States particularly but also Europe and elsewhere, did not want to see the, the brilliant Russian rocket scientists who could build ICBMs and, and other, you know, nuclear, issues of nuclear concern go to other actors, go to other countries and, and take their talents and, and put them to potentially nefarious uses. 24:02 Um, so we really wanted to keep their space industry engaged primarily on civil space activities, and that was one of the real drivers of creating the International Space Station. Um, and over the last 20 or 30 years, 24:17 Europe and the United States has bought a lot of Russian launches. Um, Europe buys a lot of Soyuz launches and then launches them from its spaceport in French Guiana. 24:26 American companies have bought a lot of Russian rocket engines because they're good and at relatively low cost, and it was, you know, it sort of kept, kept those industries going. Um, since the invasion of Ukraine- 24:41 All of that has stopped except for the partnership in the International Space Station. 24:46 So Russia is not selling engines to the United States anymore, US companies anymore, and US companies probably wouldn't want to buy them anyway. Um, Europe has stopped buying Soyuz launches. 24:56 They've shut off work on a lander, a Martian lander called ExoMars. And so basically all of the cooperation that existed before has stopped except for the International Space Station. 25:05 That's kind of been this line that no one has w- been willing to cross. As you said, you know, Mark Vande Hei, a NASA astronaut, just came back on a Soyuz spacecraft this week, and, you know, he, you know, 25:19 i- it, it's-- astronauts are still training in Star City in Russia for future missions to the International Space Station. There are Russian astronauts here. Um, and so we'll see. I, I, you know, I think absent 25:32 more provocational or sort of worse atrocities in Ukraine, this partnership probably continues. 25:39 But I, I will tell you this, you know, it, the International Space Station is essentially an international treaty among the United States, um, Europe, uh, Japan, Canada, and Russia. 25:50 And so the United States is not gonna essentially break an international treaty and pull out of that partnership. If anyone did, it probably would be the Russians. 25:57 And we don't really know what their motivations are, but the fact of the matter is if they were to pull out of the International Space Station, they would have no civil space program whatsoever because they have nowhere else to go in low Earth orbit, and there are no new Russian space stations on the horizon. 26:14 Looking forward a bit, so SpaceX founder Elon Musk famously founded the company to make, um, humanity a two-planetary species colonizing Mars. 26:26 Um, the US government is talking about a permanent presence on the moon or in, in moon orbit. Uh, China is working on a space station. 26:35 There are startups that, that say they want to mine asteroids or, or make space tourism more or less routine. Among all of that, what are, what is vaporware 26:46 w- and what will actually happen or will likely happen within the next two decades of, of all these kind of different plans and more that are floating out there? 26:57 And how will it actually reflect down on our lives here on Earth? So, uh, this is the m- this is-- I say this is the most exciting time in space ever. 27:10 Um, it's, it's, I think it's far more dynamic and interesting than the Apollo moon landings, as awesome as those were in the 1960s. 27:17 And it is simply because there is the potential for all of, a lot of very interesting things to happen. Um, and so let me start with China. 27:27 I think their approach is similar to the Apollo program that NASA took in the 1960s, and they're sort of on this steady pace. 27:36 So as long as the Chinese government sort of remains in power as it is, I think they're gonna make a steady progression. They'll do moon landings sometime in the early or mid-2030s. 27:46 Um, and they're very interested, too, in sort of looking at the water ice resources at the South Pole. 27:53 Um, and so they are on a trajectory to, to put humans on the moon probably in 10 to 15 years, and, and I feel pretty confident that that will continue as long as the Chinese government remains stable. 28:04 Like, there could be some kind of uprising, and that would throw things off. But, 28:08 um, I think the biggest question for the United States is whether or not SpaceX's Starship program really works because they are pushing a number-- Like, th-th-they're, th- like, start with the Raptor 2 engines they're using. 28:23 Like, they are pushing the margins on those engines really hard to try to get the most amount of performance out of a relatively small engine. 28:32 And, and that's because they need to fit a bunch of them, you know, under, you know, to, to launch the Super Heavy rocket. 28:38 And then the flight profile of Starship coming back in, you know, where it comes in and does this belly flop maneuver, and it has to bleed off all this energy from orbital flight. 28:45 You know, again, that is really at the bleeding edge of what is possible. Um, and so it's, it's, it's-- they've done some cool things, but there's lots of engineering work ahead of them. There's major challenges. So 28:59 if Starship ultimately is successful, [clears throat] and by successful I mean they can launch it and land it and fly it again, 29:06 then that really does fundamentally change how we start to explore the solar system because it becomes a function of not what can we afford to do in space, but what do we actually want to do in space because Starship has this huge lift capability, it could be relatively low cost, and you could put humans on it. 29:25 Uh, that is a absolutely revolutionary vehicle, and it does open up the possibility of having a really big, robust colony or settlement on the moon and potentially even sending humans to Mars. 29:37 I think if, if SpaceX does send humans to Mars, it could happen within the next 15 years. Almost certainly the first missions would be a partnership with NASA. 29:46 You would send NASA astronauts, um, uh, to do exploration, then, then sort of SpaceX's goals for settlement of Mars probably would follow on after that. 29:54 But it really starts with the question of is Starship successful or not? If it is, it changes in a big way. If Starship ultimately is not successful, 30:03 then I think NASA falls back on the Space Launch System, which is kind of this, you know, it's, it's a huge, capable rocket, but it's enormously ex- enormously expensive. 30:12 You know, it, it was recently found that launching s- um, SLS and the Orion spacecraft per mission was $4.1 billion, and you can only do it once a year. That's really not that much of an exploration program. 30:25 And so, uh, uh, for the really revolutionary changes, you need Starship to be successful. You'd like to see New Glenn fully reusable and, and sort of this continued revolution in launch. And 30:38 w- that is, uh, that, that is really exciting and, and quite inspiring. Um, but will we notice anything, um, here down on Earth if, if all of this happens? 30:50 Well, I mean, I think one thing you're gonna notice is that you'll be able to get internet from anywhere on the planet at any time at pretty high speed, and I think that's gonna be pretty revolutionary over the next five to 10 years. 31:03 That will enable, you know, all sorts of, of things, I think from truly autonomous vehicles to, um, to who knows what. And, and we're just gonna have a really 31:16 good, uh, understanding of what's happening on our planet with kind of this ubiquitous satellite coverage. Um, and then hopefully, you know, what this means down the road is that Earth, 31:27 you know, can be used f- for the Garden of Eden that it is, right? I mean, if we could move 31:34 some of our heavy industry off-planet, if we could get a lot of these rare earth metals from asteroids instead of strip mining Earth, if we could get our power from space rather than burning coal on planet Earth, 31:46 you know, we could be-- environmentally do great things for our planet. Um, but again, you know, uh, the potential is there. Whether we realize that over the next 10 or 15 years or 20 years, I don't know. 31:59 Thank you for joining me today, Eric. It's been my pleasure. And thank you, dear listener. If you found this conversation interesting, you would probably enjoy more of Trendlines. 32:08 You can subscribe in any podcast app of your choice, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and you can of course listen to old episodes and find our show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com/podcast. 32:20 My guest today was Eric Berger of Ars Technica. My name is Peter Durrie, and I am the producer and editor of Trendlines, and we are published by World Politics Review. 32:29 Have a great week, and until next time on Trendlines. [outro music]
