Space.
Up until now, only governmental
agencies like NASA have been able to send
people into space, but not anymore.
No sir.
We are going to space.
Now, before you say anything, yes,
I am wearing a Poe Dameron suit, but
we are talking about space.
Space startups to be more exact.
Companies like Virgin Galactic and
SpaceX are trying to send people into
space and things into space affordably.
Actually, Virgin Orbit has invited
me to their facilities, so let's go.
We're going to Los Angeles.
I'm here at the Virgin Orbit plant and
this is the cafeteria.
You can see people eating and I obviously
want to show you everything else, but it's
going on over there and it's top secret.
But hey, there's the CEO.
So my friend Mingxi here,
is a Materials Engineers.
- Materials engineer basically means
I deal with anything having to do with
whatever anything is made out, but
I focus especially on metals.
- So what's make your rockets different
from like SpaceX's rocket.
- Couple things, so first of all, our
rocket is much smaller than SpaceX's for
example.
We're launching from a Boeing 747 airplane
so basically, it's gonna fly up into the air
basically how we would normally fly a plane,
and then we're gonna drop a rocket from
the wing, and
then the engines are gonna fire, and
then we're gonna go in the orbit.
This actually means we have more
flexibility launching from anywhere
we want in the world.
So we can literally pickup a payload
from anywhere say, if we had a Canadian
customer, from middle of Canada.
And then straight from there,
fly to where we need to launch
from instead of currently most launch
vehicles are limited to just Florida.
- Is launching from midair different
from launching from the ground in terms
of weather and stuff like that?
- In a way, yes.
We do get better conditions in that we do
have better control in where we can take
it so we're not limited to,
we have to stay in one place and
we have to deal with the weather there.
We can kind of choose where to go there.
- Have you ever been on the plane?
- I have not, but we are sitting on
the seats from the plane,
that's basically the same thing.
- We're basically on a plane.
- Gonna launch a rocket, BRB.
Thanks Mingxi.
- Yeah good to see you again.
- See you in space.
- See you there.
- (Laugh) - Okay.
Okay, now I'm going to go see some people to
talk about how this space start up
thing actually works.
But not this guy.
He doesn't know much.
So I am here in the middle of
the Virgin Orbit plant with
Will the VP of Special Projects.
- Hi everyone.
- So I wanted to ask why are startups
now trying to get into space.
- Well, I think space has always been
fascinating to people for
lots of different reasons.
Whether it's just personal significance,
or scientific, or social, or military, or
whatever else.
The thing that's changing
now is it's becoming a lot cheaper.
- How is it cheaper?
So what got cheaper?
- Well, technology got cheaper.
So as everything gets smaller,
as everything gets faster
as everything gets lighter weight.
Those kind of innovations, a lot of which
were born in the space industry and
then sort of got perfected in other
industries, are starting
to flow back into the commercial space.
- So what kind of companies
would wanna partake?
- It's lots of different companies.
So if I look just at our customer
manifests here at Virgin Orbit,
first of all NASA's a customer of ours.
They're a really important
customer of ours.
But we've got lots of other different
types of customers as well.
One of the ones we're most excited about
is privately funded company called OneWeb,
and they're going to be launching
hundreds of satellites that they'll use to
provide high bandwidth, low latency
broadband internet connectivity
all over the surface of the earth.
- How affordable is Virgin Orbit?
- So let's say right now you've got
a satellite and you've got a briefcase
full of cash out in the trunk of your car.
- Yeah. - First of all,
let's talk about that.
That's pretty exciting.
But also, if you were to go to another
rocket company right now and wanna fly,
you're gonna have to wait a couple years.
And you're going to have to fork
over $50 plus million.
What we're trying to do is get that down
from 50-ish to 12-ish and to make from you
have to wait for several years, three or
four years, down to you have to wait for
a couple months before you
can get your satellite into orbit.
- So you've worked with
Virgin Galactic as well?
- Yeah. So, space tourism is
something that everyone wants to do.
So, I heard on the news,
like Katy Perry and
Justin Bieber bought tickets?
How is that feasible?
How can you bring people to space in like
a big, bus tour kind of way?
- It's going to space,
but only just barely.
We're going to get you to the official
border of space and a little further
than that So you get the full experience,
you earn your astronaut wings.
You're official, a legitimate astronaut.
But by keeping the distance we're
travelling a little bit lower
it lowers our costs.
And then also it means that from a medical
perspective, just about everyone is
healthy enough to fly on that vehicle.
When can we expect it?
- It's pretty soon now so you've gotten
the chance to see some of the hard work
here in the Virgin Orbit facility.
As you can tell we're
getting pretty close.
We've built several full rockets worth of
material.
We've been testing them for
a long time out in the desert.
We've been firing our rocket engines at
a very long duration at full thrust so
our hope is we'll be flying our
first satellites all the way
into orbit in the first half of next year.
- Wow. - And our sister company
Virgin Galactic similar kind of thing.
We've got a lot more testing to do before
we're comfortable putting passengers in
the back of it, but we're getting there.
- Are people who go to space with
Virgin Galactic considered astronauts?
- Yeah, absolutely.
So here in the United States anyone
who exceeds and
altitude of 50 miles above mean sea level
you're considered an astronaut.
-Can I get a free ticket?
- Yeah, we can talk.
We need to do some kind of a media junket.
You gotta be able to go up and
write the good reviews, right?
- All right Will,
nice to talk to you.
- Thanks for coming to visit us.
- Guys, look at how cool this is.
Bye guys.
All right, I just got back and
it's super cool.
Who would have thought
that space could be a startup idea?
Just a couple years ago, even the thought
of sending things into space seemed like
a billion, multi trillion dollar idea.
And now, they're
trying to send people into space for
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That's so cool!
And he did say he's going to launch
that satellite rocket next year.
So, it seems like
big things are happening.
And, Will did promise me that
Virgin Galactic ticket,
so I'm going to hold him to that.
You're going to see me become
an astronaut, just you wait.
All right, guys, I'm out.
I'll see you later, bye.
I'm gonna go build a rocket now, bye.