Name: NASA and Space Startups Are Learning to Coexist
Uploaded: 2016-07-28
Duration: 5 min 10 s
Description: NASA’s Philip McAlister explains how the disruptors fit in.

[ SOUND ] Why now? What is it about this moment that there's so much activity, commercial space. Yes, that's a great question. A lot of people have been trying to do things in space for decades now. And what has usually happened is they kinda flame out in the start up phase when they're trying to get early financing. Space companies, you can't really start that with two people in your garage. You need a large, well educated workforce. You need large facilities, probably have to have access to a wind tunnel and launch pads and test stands. That's very expensive, and A lot of the startups would basically just hit a wall when it came to the financing phase. So we didn't get a lot of space startups over the years, some made it but not a lot. What changed about ten or twelve years ago is we got an influx of self- financed individuals, very wealthy individuals that wanted to do something in space. Elon Musk, perfect example. Jeff Bezos. Richard Branson. Richard Branson, he uses a lot of other people's money. [ LAUGH ] But he has leveraged it. Yes. Very well. Robert Bigelow, those people got through the early financing phase cuz they were mostly self- funded. And since they were successful entrepreneurs They brought a laserlike focus on costs and efficiencies that we didn't necessarily had in the aerospace program. Or the aerospace industry prior to that. I would say we got fairly conventional because there weren't startups coming up and disrupting our industry. We got to favor conventional technology that worked. If it was expensive we just kinda got use to that. And so with these entrepreneurs came in, really disrupted our industry, the aerospace industry. And had a focus on cost so then, the cost of space transportation has gone down. And suddenly This is plans that didn't close before, can close today and I think that's part of the reason why you're seeing so much activity in commercial space today. Another factor, and I'm not going to take credit for this being from NASA, NASA has helped to some extent. Right, so talk about where NASA's role is in all of this, and how frankly the Americans should think about the fact that it is now a private government sponsor. Cooperation as opposed to the United states of America gonna put a man on the moon, we all know John F Kennedy said that, and then we did it by the end of the decade and that's what we still think about as Americans as one of our greatest accomplishments as a nation, but this is again a private industry. [ CROSSTALK ] Yeah that's a great point, I would say in the early space age It was very much just like you describe. NASA was in charge, we were the customer with the capital C and we use private industry to basically develop hardware to our specifications based on our decisions and it was government owned hardware. So that was the relationship that NASA had with the private sector for probably 30 years, the first 30, 40 years of our existence, and what we're seeing today is more willingness for NASA to partner with private industry, for them to do things and own the intellectual property, own the hardware, and use that hardware for other customers beyond just NASA. And when they do that, costs come down even further. And it amortizes their business base, over a larger business base, their overheard costs over a larger business base. Our costs go down. New markets come to life. And the industry does better. So it's very much like my kids say, more better. More better. [ LAUGH ] We got more people doing more things in space. It's not just one way. They're not displacing NASA necessarily, because there's always the next horizon for NASA to go to, where there's not necessarily a profit margin, where there's not necessarily other customers. I can't see many other customers for a Mars capability today, maybe in the future But today pretty much that's gonna be NASA's thing. So what is the next frontier that you're most excited about right now? You know that's a great question, I get that question all the time. I bet you do, I can imagine. [ LAUGH ] You know what's next. I got it right after we announced the last thing which was commercial To crew we had NASA said about five years ago now we are almost through with the developement as you probably know we will try the space shuttle in 2011. That was a bitter sweet moment for a lot of us in NASA but it was time for that to be retired. Since that time the only way we can get NASA to open down the international space station is on a Russian [ UNKNOWN ] vehicle And we pay over 80 million dollars per seat on the. Per seat. That is per seat yeah that is a lot of money. You thought a first class airline seat was expensive. Right. That is a lot of money. That's a lot of money, so I'm in charge at NASA headquarters of the program that's developing US capability to get humans back into space for the United States we are partnering with two companies SpaceX and Boeing two very different firms but. They're competing, both doing great. And we hope to have launches to the International Space Station in 2017 or 2018. So certainly by next year you'll probably see some test flights, and we're really excited about it. [ SOUND ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

NASA’s Philip McAlister explains how the disruptors fit in.