When I was a kid in the '60s the magazines casually expected humans on Mars around 1986, using mostly Saturn/Apollo hardware as the basis. The movie 2001 was what we in the late 1960s expected space technology would have advanced to by the year 2001. I mean we went to the Moon in 10 years, in 40 years we could do anything. It would be interesting to try and seriously project what we would have today if those things had been accomplished
Now we know what happened. It was that idiot LBJ and his new FDR type social deal that didn't work out. He also screwed up Vietnam. Money spent on the space program is still with us today. Money thrown away on those social programs is gone. The reparations of the 1960s.
@@robertthomas5906 It was partly that. But even if you discount the ascendent leftwing of the time (Greenies and various Racial and Sexual activists) which basically regarded space as a distraction at best, there's the fact that Congress and the White House (but mostly Congress due to their control of the Budgeting Committees)refused to throw political capital into the fray to save the Apollo Applications Programme, or indeed much of anything Space related at the time. A few years later, in the early and mid 70's Congress discovered the Pork possibilities, both for themselves and their native States when they could hold funding hostage to repay their constituents or political benefactors (often large corporations). Since the status quo was so profitable, why change it? Hence why we got 40 years of stagnation when it came to manned flights, let alone things like mining asteroids, space factories, bases on the moon , exploring Mars or any of that. In fact one of the reasons Space X has been so disruptive is its current partial reuse of rockets is still far better than anyone else has (and its currently working on full reuse with its Starship), and has enabled large scale price reductions which is why it currently dominates not only the US launch market but the global one. Reuse isn't as profitable as 'one shot' bespoke space ships, hence why congress had no interest in programs like the Delta Clipper. Of course one could make the argument that the cheaper you make it to get to space the more you can do there and the larger the economics of spaceflight get (which means a bigger pie), but expecting mostly corrupt old lawyers (most of congress) to understand this is a rather hopeless fight, esp as that is not what Boeing pays them for. Anyway, in between corrupt short sighted congresses and Presidents mostly unwilling to spend real political capital to push any large spaceflight (esp manned) projects since Apollo, it's a miracle NASA even got to send those small unmanned probes out to the outer planets.
The closest thing to that I've seen would* be the AppleTV series For All Mankind which depicts what would happen if the Soviets got to the moon first and how the space program is affected by that.
Born in '62 I grew up with this. Now, as an adult, I have a deeper appreciation for the entire Apollo program. What could have been eventually did happen and all of it due to the Apollo program. I'm glad we are going back. This time having learned from our mistakes and our successes.
I was born in '57, and remember and appreciate Apollo as well, and Gemini. I was a bit too young to grasp Mercury but as they were emphasizing the space race in school, I absorbed all I could about the Gemini missions, and the Apollo program.
53 for me. This was all part of the 60s to me - an incredible decade, especially in the UK, where we had the Beatles instead of Vietnam... At the time I loved it - such an exciting time to be alive. But then, as I got older, the realisation set in that I might never see us go back to the moon - very depressing. So the whole Space X thing was wonderful - it looked like I might live to see people back on the moon after all. But climate change has changed all that. I'm still interested, of course, but now I find myself wishing that all this cleverness and money could be spent on saving this planet, rather than flying to another. I can see a moon base being feasible, but we are never going to colonise Mars - apart from the cost and all the technical difficulties, I think we'll find that humans can't survive long-term in low gravity. We have to face up to the reality that there is only one planet suitable for us, and we're currently doing our best to destroy that. I can live with never going back to moon, but I don't want to die knowing that I have bequeathed a dying Earth to my children and grandchildren.
@@charlestaylor253 We are fucked! I heard China is about to laser burn the likeness of Marx on the moon surface along with the stars from their flag. Every time we look at the moon we will have Marx shoved down our throats! Bring back slavery and child labour now or else we will all suffer under the boot of communism! Do your research sheeple!!!!
@@kubajackiewicz2haha, I don't think you understand the genre. Dr. Felton cover obscure historical events and overly flashy media would deminish the quality of his videos. Head over to the 'Dark' channels if you want lots of filters over the video.
Of the three items that competed for money in LBJ’s budget, The Vietnam War, The Great Society, and The Apollo Project: Only the Apollo Project could be considered a success. All three had their detractors, but lessons learned from Apollo led to further space successes, while it seems the lessons from Vietnam have been forgotten, and despite the trillions of dollars spent on poverty, we still create more of it.
The idea of making "equality of outcomes" denies the unequal abilities of people. Pareto's law applied to "wealth distributions". Seems to apply to all sorts of scenarios. LBJ's Great Society was mostly cancelled by Nixon. The Vietnam war was a jobs program and profit bonanza for elites. LBJ himself said, "I'd like to get out of Vietnam but my friends make too much money there". Poor boys were sent to Vietnam, hammered for a year in heavy combat. Thanks to special training nine out of ten would fire at the enemy. Meanwhile the Viets just wanted all foreigners to go home. They were fed up with any sort of colonization. The Apollo failed due to its own success. Once you put someone on the moon and bring them back, then what do you do?
@@jamallabarge2665 I don't think all of the people who were tortured to death after America pulled out were "fed up with any sort of colonization". South Korea wasn't in a hurry to rejoin NK. If America had stayed, a nation that was murdered, would have lived.
@@fiddledotgoth in addition to weight and complexity, using nitrogen and oxygen mixture was more hazardous in its own way. During an earlier ground test, the oxygen pump failed and only pure nitrogen was pumped into the spacecraft. Nitrogen-only as a breathing gas causes suffocation and the ground crew almost did not get the astronaut stand-in out of the spacecraft in time.
@@bobcastro9386 So instead of a backup supply of oxygen (as is provided for every passenger of commercial air flights) they decided to go with pure oxygen...?
I found my love of space through my dad. I think it’s fascinating that many decades later, and the death of my dad…I’m still learning from awesome videos, such as yours. Excellent stuff per usual!
Probably a T-shirt because he'd have to wear a space suit. And therefore, we launch a brand new line of t-shirts. For bonus points. Look up Magellan and take a look at his portrait. This look is what you may incur if you do not check it out :D
The key fact and unthinkable stupidity of the Apollo 1 fire is that they very carefully included design features that mitigated the extra risks of a pure O2 atmosphere but then for the manned ground test _systematically negated all those measures_ to run a test with very close to zero chance of survival. In that gas mix _any_ spark could ignite aluminum like kindling making it very unlikely it could've been run without so much as one static shock ending in tragedy. Simple insanity expressed in the diligent purpose of a group somehow going totally off the rails.
They were acting like cowboys. I doubt any of the Apollo missions would fly today, with NASA's modern safety protocols. Or at least not the early ones. Even the Mercury ones were crazy when you think about how young the rocket technology was. There's an parallel universe where half the astronauts blew up on the launch pad.
@@WaxPaper Idk. A lot of these newer protocols seem like they compensate (psychologically) for all the things they have little to no control over by massively over doing the regimentation on what they can control but no amount of polishing the floor is going to make up for frozen insulation hitting the -Endeavor's- Challenger's wing leading edge, no matter how much they refuse to consider that unconstrained (and _supposedly_ unconstrainable) possibility. They wouldn't even look on orbit. SMH. At least in those earlier cases they generally had a good idea of just how many corners they were cutting and the risks they *knowingly* took. These days they've got a 300 page checklist to make the tacos so they're covered if the meat was bad. Followed the checklist✔️
Remember, these were the 60s when they killed JFK, RFK, LBJ. Grissom’s family has insisted for years the fire was premeditated, and there has been some evidence to support this. He was a troublemaker and had been debriefed into some Cold War espionage matters. For many parties the “accident” was convenient.
Of course they couldn't figure out the precise cause. The only safe way to use a pure Oxygen atmosphere was to keep the partial pressure the same as in our air, by reducing total pressure to about 0.2 bar. The risk of fire is slightly higher still but not by much. *Except* part of the test was a _leak check_ leading them to *pressurize the capsule to 1.25 bar* ... That's right. They made it safe but then made it into an even better lighter just for the _manned_ test they'd be unable to escape what with the above ambient pressure holding the hatch shut. It was a systemic *procedural* failure that would never be duplicated in any realistic flight scenario. Claiming there was any "silver lining" was just PR and the redesign of the environmental system just a guilty conscience making sure they couldn't forget the basic operating limitations and kill someone...again. Blame the pure O2 and all the flammable Velcro but ignore the fact you can burn an I-beam in a pure O2 atmosphere at or above 1 bar which everyone diligently checked off the task list.
My dad was one of the engineers working on the Saturn (and Gemini and Mercury) programs.... as usual, budgets were getting tight and per my dad, the engineers at Rockwell had spec'd a valve that cost about $70 (back then) and the "accountants" insisted they were going to use a valve from another company that cost $30 (literally).... the engineers were very upset but despite their objections they were overruled. The $30 valve failed. Following the accident investigation, anyone who had a title or degree had an idea of how to address an escape system (not unusual) for the crew while on the pad (as far as getting out of the capsule). It was getting frustrating for the NASA crews who were very much participating in this due to mostly complexity of the proposed solutions. Somehow, Alan Shepard got my dad's name, called him direct and they spoke numerous times on this. Dad's ideas supported the other engineers, ultimately the hatch was redesigned where class C explosive bolts were used to attach the hatch to the capsule and in the event of an escape, the crew could literally "blow the hatch" with the push of a single button, get out and slide down a telpher line. Dad was the engineer who designed the explosive bolts.
@@jeffalvich9434 Thanks for sharing, it's an amazing story. Maybe Shepard got ahold of a directory and picked his name out to bypass all the organizational B.S. He was a test pilot used to close contact with his ground crew and the designers so it makes sense he'd want to check the guys doing presentations especially after the pad fire. Virtually all the fatal incidents NASA has had were a result of the organization getting too big to operate the same way as he was going for. Something about the organizational structure at that scale keeps mirroring that old Lee Iacocca quote about logic sometimes being a way to go wrong, with confidence. Just crunching the numbers carrying the one while at the team level inadvertently circumventing or disregarding key measures making prior tradeoffs workable. They could still learn a lot from your dad and Shepard.
@@foreverpinkf.7603 Yeah. It actually makes sense considering it's primary job is keeping air inside while in vacuum. _Unfortunaly_ you can't do a leak test unless the pressure inside is higher than outside. And everyone just kind of set to work putting a live crew in the one condition the environmental system was designed to avoid (er, other than vacuum and high CO2 I guess.) Nobody considered they could just install a check valve and pump in whole air for the leak test. Heck, they could put it in the middle of a window that could fit inside the standard door without replacing anything else for the test but that piece of glass. Nope. Instead they just dialed the pressure way up and made a passable crematorium. I'm sure you've heard references to how stupid groups of people can be but it's usually referring to mobs not high level engineering efforts. It's a major design flaw evident in your Mk1 human being that I just can't get over.
Thanks Paul. Always great. Ah, what could have been, but wasn't. Oh and perhaps you can do one on the Space Transportation System, if which the Space Shuttle was just one of four parts -- and the only one made.
Fun fact: Originally, the Space Shuttle had a two-stage fully-reusable winged flyback design, but that was too expensive to develop on NASA's shoestring budget after Apollo. #FundNASA
@@SaturnCanuck BTW, the first stage was more often called a Lifter or a Booster, as a Launcher is a term used for a full rocket. Too bad nobody wanted to fund the full version - some of the Phase B concepts could do everything the TAOS shuttle could, and be fully reusable.
Thank you Paul for discussing the forgotten"I" Missions of the Apollo Program - the Lunar mapping missions. One time I saw that those missions would carry a module that carried a bank of high-powered cameras similar to the ones used on CIA satellites at the time. This module would have been carried into orbit tucked away in the S-IVB 3rd stage, and extracted similar to the Lunar Module during the coast phase to the Moon. It did not specify if a crew member later in the mission would conduct an EVA to extract the film from the module. Ah, what Apollo could have been. You must forgive us Paul, us Americans tend to be short sighted in our goals.
You are by far the most interesting TH-camr on the planet, also how did I turn on TH-cam and get here within 2 minutes of it uploading, also would love to see more content on British history and technology (like harriers)
The Simpsons episode "And now, for the pride of the US Air Force, the British-made Harrier jump jets!" (Yes, a few inaccuracies, but it's a cartoon...)
@@sunnyjim1355 At the time the plans were made, automated vehicles were extremely limited. Having a crew would allow for adjustment of experiments and instruments in process. That had changed by time the mission was scheduled to occur, but there's no way they could have known that would happen when they planned it. Technology was advancing crazy fast at that time.
Great video! I really appreciate your content, the level of detail you cram into each episode is mind boggling! I really hope you will be doing an episode on the recent US military UAP disclosures, I can imagine it would be fantastic!
Great video Paul. Brings back memories of reading in articles and books during the 60s about further NASA programs with permanent moon stations and trips to Mars, all with improved Apollo type hardware. Well, for the politicians and funders, with Apollo 11 and the raising of the American flag on the moon, the job was done. Now it is up to private entrepreneurs such as Bezos or Musk to continue these ideas. I am glad that there is anyone at all who is tackling these projects and thus humanity is advancing further into space.
These videos are really interesting. I'm a space geek and I still learn so much from them - no sensationalization or whacky presentation, just good interesting facts.
Had thought of a concept for a lunar lander that uses drop tanks attached to the inside of a lunar Landers legs. As the legs are a good solid structure to anchor fuel tanks off of, rather than another structure being used. Then only a single center rocket engine is needed. Reduces weight and complexity. Could go moon direct with a reentry capsule that way. Would be compact, then able to shed weight when the fuel tanks are expended. To distribute weight, they would need to be dropped in two sets. Two to a set. Or four empty fuel tanks each time. Some tanks could be taken off manually while on the moon to further reduce weight and complexity for a mechanism for such an action if needed.
@@sigkil Drop tanks have a potentially serious drawback. As studied in the early 1960's as the "Lunar Crasher", the idea was to have a decent propulsion module that would slow the vertical velocity but not bring it to a complete halt at the surface but jettison first at altitude. That is a make or break maneuver, if one tank doesn't drop at all (or drops later than its matching pair) the sudden change to the center of gravity could flip the vehicle over and be unrecoverable. It was passed over as an 'inelegant design'
The best thing about your videos is the lack of overused classical music drowning out the audio...it's amazing how much easier it is to understand talking without music blaring.
Paul keeps producing top quality videos, both - educational and interesting ! Personally I think he’s one of the most underrated TH-camrs 👍👌P.S. just shirts alone is fascinating enough to earn a subscription. I love that style, color and design, and personally have a few Robert Graham embroidered long sleeves shirts, similar kind.
@@sunnyjim1355 1964 to 2021 is 57 years that's pushing 60 b****I love how people like you get all bent out of shape when you even suggest we didn't land on the Moon. you didn't land on the moon --what do you have in it? nothing. What difference is it in my life or your life if we landed on the moon or not? Nothing.
For someone who is (a) expressing nothing more than their opinion and (b) has a BAD case of internet muscles, you're sure getting worked up over something you claim doesn't matter. Looks like they aren't the one acting like a bitch here.
The proposed Venus fly by was a bold idea and would have clearly pushed the current technology and experience in space to the very limit. Would've been either a bold move or merely reckless. We'll never know.
Automated probes of Venus to increase our knowledge should be done but I can't understand why any nation would want to send crews anywhere near that hell hole.
It would be absurdly cruel to send any crew on a year long interplanetary mission in a craft with so little internal space. For that length of time that's too little space for even one person. Same thing for Orion. Orion might be good as a reentry vehicle but BY ITSELF, it's no good as an interplanetary transfer vehicle. You'd need a transfer HAB, at least an inflated one. A Venus round trip (no landing) would be shorter than a Mars mission, but not ENOUGH shorter. Even the week plus long Apollo missions were pushing it. Inevitable hardships and risks are bad enough without adding torture. Apollo didn't have the exercise facilities of Skylab, ISS, and (for some missions) the Shuttle. Apollo didn't even have a microgravity toilet (though I think Orion has one). The proposed "Apollo Applications" manned Venus flyby would also need a completely different Service Module, The Apollo ones didn't have enough volatiles to provide life support for even one person that long. I like the idea of having a Moon base established before the '80s, however.
FAMK is stupid. Just the premise - there was an such a perception of Soviet space superiority that if they claimed another "first", there is a decent chance the whole space program would've folded. It would be enough if the Soviets landed on the Moon at all - they wouldn't even need to be first to force bigger American commitment to space exploration.
Congratulations Paul on your amazing subscription milestone. Awesome content as always and exciting to wonder what the next video will feature. Maybe a ‘Project AURORA’ video next..? 😏
In hindsight, it seems unlikely that the big post-Apollo program would have been funded in any circumstances, except, maybe, if Soviet cosmonauts landed on the Moon too. Even then I wouldn't give it very good odds.
@@SteveGrason59 Yeah, I've heard that. After a lifetime of fending off why-don't-we-spend-the-money-on-Earth, and seeing the same line in things written in the 60's, it's still implausible, but that could be my bias.
@@SteveGrason59 FAMK is stupid. Just the premise - there was an such a perception of Soviet space superiority that if they claimed another "first", there is a decent chance the whole space program would've folded. It would be enough if the Soviets landed on the Moon at all - they wouldn't even need to be first to force bigger American commitment to space exploration.
@@HalNordmann Calm down Hal 😂, it’s just a fictional show with an interesting premise whether realistic or not. I enjoyed watching the two seasons.The show sort of delivered what I thought would happen as a kid who grow up in the sixties ie we would go to moon ,establish moon bases and then head onto Mars. As a 9 year old boy who watched the moon landing live I was always disappointed that the Apollo program didn’t progress. I never liked the space shuttle program.
@@SteveGrason59 Fun fact: Originally, the Space Shuttle had a two-stage fully-reusable winged flyback design, but that was too expensive to develop on NASA's shoestring budget after Apollo. #FundNASA
The problem was 100% O2 at 1 full atmospheric pressure. As designed in space, 1/5 atmospheric pressure in the capsule results in very close to the same "partial pressure" of O2 in air at sea level, which is 21%. What matters is not so much the actual % of O2, but the combined aspect of the % in the gas medium, AND the pressure of that gas medium. The capsule, at sea level pressure inside, with plain air that is 21% O2, would have had the same "partial pressure" as pure 100% O2 in space at 1/5 normal atmospheric pressure. At sea level the pure O2 in the capsule has 5 times the oxidative effect as air, resulting in extreme combustion once a source of ignition is triggered. Note also that in higher pressure O2, spontaneous combustion of oils and some plastics will happen, without the need of a triggering event.
As far as I am aware there is no problem with 100% oxygen at 0.2 bar as would be the case in space. The problem was that the O2 pressure for the ground test was raised to 1.2 bar to simulate the correct differential pressure on the capsule. What could possibly go wrong? Edit: sorry - this has been mentioned already :-/
Indeed. O2 at 1 atmosphere with all the rework in the CM electrical wiring. What could possibly... Still, the atmosphere in the CM was ultimately vented to 0.2 bar and nitrogen ultimately purged. Not entirely sure what was done during reentry. N2 introduced to increase the CM internal pressure?
@@fiddledotgoth Well, hindsight = 20/20; one bar pure oxygen is bad news. And yes, there was a reason. Nitrogen has mass. Support hardware complexity - more mass/weight. Apollo was fighting for every ounce (no grams at that time). The test was a launch simulation where "Test as you fly, fly as you test". Pesky earth atmosphere pressure got in the way along with whole bunch of rework of harnesses which ultimately - most probably - resulted in short and fire. Remember the news vividly... Apollo 13 is another good example of "should have, would have, could have". And (way too) many more... Space is hard.
I just noted how well cut is the fabric of your shirt, that the pattern continues perfectly in the middle. A lot of thinking and expertise, like in the apolos;)
If Starship will fly. There is a pretty good possibility it will blow up on pad, or they will need to close their unauthorized testing site. Starship isn't good for anything, really. It is too heavy to go beyond LEO, and for LEO trucking a winged vehicle would be better. A winged flyback/aluminium construction Heavy-lift Vehicle from NASA's SPS study has similar payload to Starship, yet only 4000t mass when full (less than simply the mass of fuel for Starship)! And that is even with some mass reserve!
@@ShadetreeArmorer For one, Starship has terrible dry mass. Steel may be cheap, but it is simply too heavy. And in spaceflight, mass is everything, every gram counts. Remember the orange tank on the Shuttle? It used to be painted white, but they later left it orange, just to save those few kilos. The weight limits on rockets are far more strict than the ones on airplanes - and you don't see any airplanes made of steel, do you?
Please @@HalNordmann I have SpaceX on the phone right now, what is your phone number so I can conference you in. You simply must relay all this earth-shattering information to them ASAP.
@@ShadetreeArmorer I suppose you think that is funny. But really. Even a lot of experts say there is a ton of problems with Starship, mass being one of them. Besides - either you want fast reusability, or cheap construction. You don't need both at once, and if you try that, you risk your system will be neither.
What a fantastic photo of the three..🌹 Wow.., first human to walk in space.. to be outside our atmosphere and spacecraft….. to have seen in it in it all
You mean SLS (the rocket), not Artemis (the program). And it depends on how you want to define things. Starship is unquestionably more powerful in terms of thrust - but SLS can deliver a larger payload in a single launch (indeed, Starship cannot deliver *any* payload direct to lunar orbit). That's not a failing of Starship of course... it just reflects that it's designed with orbital refuelling in mind, and is therefore optimised for that use case.
@@thex9165 even expendable starship still has very high dry mass, and with 380s Isp, it may still loose at some distances with EUS with like 460s Isp and lightweight AlLi tanks
@@_mikolaj_ Fun fact: A winged flyback/aluminium construction Heavy-lift Vehicle from NASA's SPS study has similar payload to Starship, yet only 4000t mass when full (less than simply the mass of fuel for Starship)! And that is even with some mass reserve!
Maybe slightly off topic for the video, but related. If anyone hasn't seen it, try and see "The Right Stuff" film, or at least read it. Gives some great background the start of the space programme
So they effectively ended the Apollo program by saving $328 million a year. Now over 50 years later there is talk of doing the things they were planning to do in the 1970s.
50 years ago the only nations interested in space were the usa and the soviet union. that has now changed, and now technology has advanced so much that a lot of the things that they wanted to do in the 70's that would have been extremely expensive are actually almost affordable now. who knows, if they discover a big deposit of lithium or gold on the moon that could really change things up dramatically. keep in mind nobody has ever taken a soil sample more than a meter or so deep on the moon.. there could be more there.
Fun fact: Originally, the Space Shuttle had a two-stage fully-reusable winged flyback design, but that was too expensive to develop on NASA's shoestring budget after Apollo. #FundNASA
I knew the North American Aviation technician that installed the pyrotechnic batteries in the Apollo 1 command module. He told me the cables were routed too close to metal parts on the seat and were a likely cause of the fire. Pyrotechnic batteries were there to blow the explosive bolts for capsule separation, and have plenty of energy to start a fire. And during a static test, the astronauts are a source of compression and vibration, right on top of the seats. So if this fire didn't start on the pad, it's likely one would start at ignition or liftoff.
Wait I thought an O+N mixed air system was already planned for real missions when Apollo 1 happened? Or did they originally plan to implement it much later?
What about the whole NERVA program? I thought this was supposed to be the much more efficient nuclear thermal 3rd stage to the Saturn V that was never built. Do the Moon bases incorporate this to get extra performance for more payload or was this for something else like going to Mars?
They actually did build a prototype and test fired it. You can find the video on youtube. th-cam.com/video/eDNX65d-FBY/w-d-xo.html The idea was it would be the engine used for Mars missions but maybe also carry larger payloads to the Moon.
@@steverogers8163 I meant it was never built into a working rocket stage to fly. It was just a prototype engine on a test stand. Prototypes are built all the time and then discarded without ever becoming the full end product. At some point the line needs to be drawn between developing something and saying you are ready to go with the completed product. I tend to draw that line when someone claims they are ready for the intended use, not just when some tests were done on a test stand with a prototype. Getting too far into prototypes, one could say go on about how Blue Origin has the BE-4 rocket engine and say a ULA could promise to fly rockets that use the BE-4 engine. Then various customers, say the US military could book up launches with said rocket. Obviously with only prototype BE-4 engines so far and this remains the case years after Blue Origin promised they would be done prototyping and testing the BE-4 engine, the real BE-4 engine does not exist. On the other hand Elon Musk can claim that he has Raptor engines with this criteria because he has flown and landed rockets using these engines and at least the last time he flew a rocket with them, they all worked great and got the job at hand done. At this with all of that instrumentation for the version 1 series, it is still kind of a prototype and the version 2 has a lot less crap hanging off of it, so it is probably getting closer to what the eventual mass production units will look like.
The issue for Apollo 1 during the plugs out test was, because the test was conducted at sea level, the cabin was pressurized to approximately 16.7 psi, not 5 psi used during actual missions. This made the internal environment much more combustible.
Another issue NIxon started the war on drugs and created the DEA which ended up being a two trillion dollar failure. The irony is they could have afforded to keep to Apollo applications program and spent more on the shuttle's development. At they very least they should have kept the Saturn IB in production eventually replacing the CSM with a lifting craft.
The War on Drugs was a jobs program for rural America. Lots of people out this way work in "corrections". Once people in rural areas get used to such things you need a crowbar to get them away from it. Nixon was a boozer. Drank a lot. To him Hippies were moral degenerates. Sending the DEA after them seemed to make sense. I still remember the Paraquat program. The US would spray "marijuana" fields with the the gunk. Smokers got dosed with it. Joe Biden, of all people, helped create "Civil Forfeiture" . Any money or property, including cars and land, were to be taken if it were ALLEGED to be "drug related". I put alleged in capital letters. When Police take this stuff, you have to go to court to prove that it was not drug related. In 2014 police took more private property than burglars. Outside of the places where weed is legal, people continue to use it. They use lots of it.
Fun fact: Originally, the Space Shuttle had a two-stage fully-reusable winged flyback design, but that was too expensive to develop on NASA's shoestring budget after Apollo. #FundNASA
@@HalNordmann The SRBs were a budgetary shortcut as they felt they would be cheaper to develop but proved to be problematic on a vehicle of that configuration.
@@Patchuchan They were indeed a budgetary shortcut. There were plans to replace them with liquid fuel boosters, but those were also too expensive to develop.
That handshake (actually plural) in the space station really says a lot. Perhaps the Cold War was a bit too much of a distraction but if one looks back at history with a longer view, Russians and most of the previous Soviet nations have been friends and allies with Western Europeans (apart from one or two awkward exceptions), North Americans and us Anglo Antipodeans, much more than we've ever been enemies. As usual, an excellent production.
@@Niaaal I won't argue that they sacrificed, both the troops and the citizens. And there was valor to spare as well. But the fact is, a very large percentage of Soviet loses, military and civilian, were the direct result of Stalin being batshit crazy. They lost millions killed or captured for the sole reason that Stalin wouldn't allow troops to fall back to keep from being encircled. Much the same with civilians. Stalin should have had them moved out of the cities, but he didn't give a damn about them. The VAST majority of the weapons/equipment the Soviets manufactured, they did so using American steel, aluminum, copper, etc. When America joined the war, the outcome was decided. The Soviets fighting saved millions of lives of the other allies. But the Soviets weren't mandatory to win at all. America alone out-manufactured all the Axis nations, and in fact, even with a late start to the war, America produced ~49% of everything war related made by All countries involved in the war.
NASA's internal review found the cabin to be lined with a total of 34 square feet (3.2m2) of velcro, which is flammable in a 100% oxygen enviroment. Once that fire is started any plastics would catch fire very fast.
Alternate perspective: Perhaps the amazing thing is that there was an Apollo 12, and that the plug wasn’t pulled completely after the main objective had been accomplished with 11. In each of those missions, 12-17, the USA risked killing yet another crew. So the safe option would have been to simply have stopped after success had been achieved. And we all know how close we came to losing Lovell-Swigert-Haise. So NASA rolled the dice and won. Continuing beyond 11 is what amazes me. Something to consider for everyone lamenting that we didn’t continue beyond 17.
It almost was. Most Americans couldn't grasp the concepts of extended moon missions and actually thought the only reason for going to the moon was to "beat the Russians." There are times I wish the Soviet Union had beaten us to the moon like in "For All Mankind"
It's kind of amazing what some of this equipment is capable of looking like a box with 2 hangers and aluminum foil taped on it. Edit: Also, great video as always Paul!
As always a banging video Paul 👏 along with your usual snappy threads (though it does look slightly like an illustration for how the coronavirus multiples&spreads 😉) Just kidding mate - I’m just jealous 😉 😛 👍 Warmest wishes from South Wales 🏴- Jonathan 😊 👍
In the movie Apollo 13 Tom Hanks's character was asked by a reporter why should we go back to the moon since we already have been there. He replied "imagine if Columbus discovered the new world but nobody ever went back." Well the truth is we never did go back!!!
Pity they waited until the docking to shake hands. If they had done it on the ground and cooperated a bit, it might have been a better solution. Waring politicians are the scourge of the world
I disagree that the fire ended the plans for the followup programs. What willed it was that congress didn't have the backbone to fund it when they could spend that money instead on things that would help them get reelected.
2:02 yeah.... no starship is more powerful than sls. even more powerful than the previous reckord holder, the n1 and starship will very likely fly before sls anyways
SLS is already fully stacked at Cape, and could fly anytime if they wanted to. And BTW, the BN4/SN20 test isn't planned to reach full orbit, assuming it doesn't blow up on pad.
@@HalNordmann that is correct. but the first starship will still fly first most likely. it will definetly be able to launch, even if it doesn't have permission. so by the time artemis 1 launches, the sls won't be the most powerful rocket this could all turn out to be wrong and starship needs to take more time, but that is very unlikely. i'd say it is about as unlikely as elon musk and jeff who playing monopoly together n low earth orbit
@@HalNordmann kinda ture. the first starship launch to space won't be orbital, but it is still the stronger rocket, even tho it is flying a suborbital trajectory
Another great topic and video! Minor nit though at 7:55, the original Apollo design used a high-pressure (16PSI) pure-oxygen atmosphere. That was subsequently changed to a low-pressure still-pure-oxygen system.
It’s a shame nothing came of the Apollo applications. Instead we got stuck in low earth orbit with the space shuttle and blow untold trillions of dollars on useless wars in the Middle East. At age 52, Space X is the last hope I have to witness space travel in my life time.
@@tomw0815 sure right now. Give it a few years and like anything the price will come down. 15 years ago I remember seeing a flat-panel plasma TV at Costco for $10,000. Better and bigger TV today is $500.
I believe this overlooks the fact that Congress cut funding because the Apollo mission's prerogative goal was met: to assure the American public and as of yet decided nations that in the race to develop militaristically advantageous space technology the USA wasn't just playing catch-up or merely on par with Soviet Space Technology, but better, and more capable. Lyndon B. Johnson didn't think the "War on poverty" would eliminate racial injustice. *Funding and support for the Apollo program primarily came from the Military Industrial Complex, as they were the only ones negotiating for the proceeding funding of up to 1 in every 22.6 dollars of tax spent, or capable of convincing congress.*
I used to dream of going into space. I even thought I would love to live up there. I'm old enough to know better now though. My dream has evolved to living on EARTH as if I were living in SPACE. The problems are the same: clean water, grow food, place to live, a LIFE worth living for. I want to build my own "Earthship" like they're doing in Arizona. Sustainable living will be the wave of the future, and the path to long term living in space. That's a dream that EVERYONE can join in!
Thanks for sharing and open talking, I was curious :-) why there were no new videos. I'm glad everything went well. And you also advertise to be tested.
I was in my teens in the U.K. when Apollo 11 landed. It was amazingly exciting - still have copies of all the newspapers announcing the landing today. By Apollo 17 everyone was getting bored with it and at the time it felt like that was why it was cancelled. Space exploration has to keep reinventing itself and chasing new goals or the same could happen again.
That boredom is how I felt watching the space shuttle and hearing that the millionth mars rover landed. I kept thinking, "Enough of the rovers, hurry up and send people". I want to see bold adventures, going to low-earth orbit is not adventurous. Space is incredibly vast, let's keep pushing.
God: so why didn’t you continue out and explore the rest of the universe? Humans: we decided to stay home and fight each other. God: but why? Humans: you mostly.
And with the reusable Starship & Superheavy it's going to be much more practical to move large payloads to orbit, the moon, and Mars, as well as the fact that it has the equivalent living area of the ISS in each Crew/Lunar Starship, hopefully it's make serious space exploration, construction, and colonization much more practical. It's also deffinitly good that SpaceX has a rather fearless testing methodology that isn't worried if it brakes a dozen Starship prototypes if it makes the next dozen even better and more reliable (before they get tested to the limit too), and the fact that they intend to mass produce Starships instead of making far more expensive one-offs will probably let them scale up way past what anyone else has even come close to achieving, Falcon 9 is already demonstrating a lot of the benefits of all this even with an expendable upper stage
When I was a kid in the '60s the magazines casually expected humans on Mars around 1986, using mostly Saturn/Apollo hardware as the basis. The movie 2001 was what we in the late 1960s expected space technology would have advanced to by the year 2001. I mean we went to the Moon in 10 years, in 40 years we could do anything. It would be interesting to try and seriously project what we would have today if those things had been accomplished
Now we know what happened. It was that idiot LBJ and his new FDR type social deal that didn't work out. He also screwed up Vietnam. Money spent on the space program is still with us today. Money thrown away on those social programs is gone. The reparations of the 1960s.
@@robertthomas5906 It was partly that. But even if you discount the ascendent leftwing of the time (Greenies and various Racial and Sexual activists) which basically regarded space as a distraction at best, there's the fact that Congress and the White House (but mostly Congress due to their control of the Budgeting Committees)refused to throw political capital into the fray to save the Apollo Applications Programme, or indeed much of anything Space related at the time. A few years later, in the early and mid 70's Congress discovered the Pork possibilities, both for themselves and their native States when they could hold funding hostage to repay their constituents or political benefactors (often large corporations). Since the status quo was so profitable, why change it? Hence why we got 40 years of stagnation when it came to manned flights, let alone things like mining asteroids, space factories, bases on the moon , exploring Mars or any of that. In fact one of the reasons Space X has been so disruptive is its current partial reuse of rockets is still far better than anyone else has (and its currently working on full reuse with its Starship), and has enabled large scale price reductions which is why it currently dominates not only the US launch market but the global one. Reuse isn't as profitable as 'one shot' bespoke space ships, hence why congress had no interest in programs like the Delta Clipper. Of course one could make the argument that the cheaper you make it to get to space the more you can do there and the larger the economics of spaceflight get (which means a bigger pie), but expecting mostly corrupt old lawyers (most of congress) to understand this is a rather hopeless fight, esp as that is not what Boeing pays them for. Anyway, in between corrupt short sighted congresses and Presidents mostly unwilling to spend real political capital to push any large spaceflight (esp manned) projects since Apollo, it's a miracle NASA even got to send those small unmanned probes out to the outer planets.
The closest thing to that I've seen would* be the AppleTV series For All Mankind which depicts what would happen if the Soviets got to the moon first and how the space program is affected by that.
Or maybe its because all that money had been wasted on faked missions...
@@Jogeta5 ^This
Born in '62 I grew up with this. Now, as an adult, I have a deeper appreciation for the entire Apollo program. What could have been eventually did happen and all of it due to the Apollo program. I'm glad we are going back. This time having learned from our mistakes and our successes.
I was also born in 1962 👍 I heard the moon landing on the radio, as we only got a TV in 1970. Still very captivating, though. BR, Per (Denmark)
I was born in '57, and remember and appreciate Apollo as well, and Gemini. I was a bit too young to grasp Mercury but as they were emphasizing the space race in school, I absorbed all I could about the Gemini missions, and the Apollo program.
53 for me. This was all part of the 60s to me - an incredible decade, especially in the UK, where we had the Beatles instead of Vietnam... At the time I loved it - such an exciting time to be alive. But then, as I got older, the realisation set in that I might never see us go back to the moon - very depressing. So the whole Space X thing was wonderful - it looked like I might live to see people back on the moon after all.
But climate change has changed all that. I'm still interested, of course, but now I find myself wishing that all this cleverness and money could be spent on saving this planet, rather than flying to another. I can see a moon base being feasible, but we are never going to colonise Mars - apart from the cost and all the technical difficulties, I think we'll find that humans can't survive long-term in low gravity. We have to face up to the reality that there is only one planet suitable for us, and we're currently doing our best to destroy that. I can live with never going back to moon, but I don't want to die knowing that I have bequeathed a dying Earth to my children and grandchildren.
I was born in '69, and not only are we NEVER going back, we're headed toward Authoritarian Marxist tyranny...😞💀
@@charlestaylor253 We are fucked! I heard China is about to laser burn the likeness of Marx on the moon surface along with the stars from their flag. Every time we look at the moon we will have Marx shoved down our throats! Bring back slavery and child labour now or else we will all suffer under the boot of communism! Do your research sheeple!!!!
You are just a natural at hosting. Such a great delivery, explanation and tone every time.
Paul and Mark Felton are in a league of their own when it comes to the mini-documentary format on YoutTube.
EXCEPT, MARK FELTON RELIES ENTIRELY ON FACTS !
Ah yes, Mark felton, let me narrate a Wikipedia article while unrelated stock footage plays
@@kubajackiewicz2 that’s simply not true.
@@kubajackiewicz2 DOCTOR Felton doesn’t do such things
@@kubajackiewicz2haha, I don't think you understand the genre. Dr. Felton cover obscure historical events and overly flashy media would deminish the quality of his videos. Head over to the 'Dark' channels if you want lots of filters over the video.
Of the three items that competed for money in LBJ’s budget, The Vietnam War, The Great Society, and The Apollo Project: Only the Apollo Project could be considered a success. All three had their detractors, but lessons learned from Apollo led to further space successes, while it seems the lessons from Vietnam have been forgotten, and despite the trillions of dollars spent on poverty, we still create more of it.
Except for the well documented fact that all government projects go over budget, so blaming reduction in the budget appears very difficult to sustain.
The idea of making "equality of outcomes" denies the unequal abilities of people. Pareto's law applied to "wealth distributions". Seems to apply to all sorts of scenarios. LBJ's Great Society was mostly cancelled by Nixon.
The Vietnam war was a jobs program and profit bonanza for elites. LBJ himself said, "I'd like to get out of Vietnam but my friends make too much money there". Poor boys were sent to Vietnam, hammered for a year in heavy combat. Thanks to special training nine out of ten would fire at the enemy. Meanwhile the Viets just wanted all foreigners to go home. They were fed up with any sort of colonization.
The Apollo failed due to its own success. Once you put someone on the moon and bring them back, then what do you do?
@@jamallabarge2665 I don't think all of the people who were tortured to death after America pulled out were "fed up with any sort of colonization". South Korea wasn't in a hurry to rejoin NK. If America had stayed, a nation that was murdered, would have lived.
@@jamallabarge2665 stay on the moon and then head to Mars.
trying to solve poverty under capitalism is like trying to light wood on fire underwater
Really liking these recent subjects, Paul. Fascinating stuff. Keep it up!
that comma you used, frightens me.
Still wondering why the command module had pure oxygen for a test launch...
@@fiddledotgoth in addition to weight and complexity, using nitrogen and oxygen mixture was more hazardous in its own way. During an earlier ground test, the oxygen pump failed and only pure nitrogen was pumped into the spacecraft. Nitrogen-only as a breathing gas causes suffocation and the ground crew almost did not get the astronaut stand-in out of the spacecraft in time.
@@bobcastro9386 So instead of a backup supply of oxygen (as is provided for every passenger of commercial air flights) they decided to go with pure oxygen...?
@@fiddledotgoth Amy got you covered: th-cam.com/video/FvA7N_j_8os/w-d-xo.html
More extremely interesting stuff that passed me by, as a kid in the 60's
U should check out 'The Vintage Space' channel as well. That girl is a big fan of the early space missions
@@oxcart4172 By "That girl" I assume you mean Amy Shira Teitel - and yes, she's awesome.
@@ross-carlson I did mean Amy! I'm terrible with names!
Amy's channel is awesome. She has a half hour drill down on the planned Apollo mission to Venus for example.
Were you asleep?
Fantastic as always. Glad to see the wardrobe magic has returned.
not exagerating, i really like your vids, enjoying the content and naration. Just wanted to give a friendly tap! Thank you sir.
The algorithm favors your worthy content.
Yet another informative, well presented and researched video.
Was there a video after the 2 minute plus Magellan commercial?
@@Wok-y-Taco The two minute commercial you can fast forward you mean. Yes there was.
I found my love of space through my dad. I think it’s fascinating that many decades later, and the death of my dad…I’m still learning from awesome videos, such as yours. Excellent stuff per usual!
i want to know what shirt Paul would wear if he actually got a ride to space
@Noel Coward You must be lots of fun at parties.
Probably a T-shirt because he'd have to wear a space suit. And therefore, we launch a brand new line of t-shirts. For bonus points. Look up Magellan and take a look at his portrait. This look is what you may incur if you do not check it out :D
@@MrSatyre1 It's a parody account.
I want to know what he's smoking, must be some really good gear.
A paisley shirt ofc
The key fact and unthinkable stupidity of the Apollo 1 fire is that they very carefully included design features that mitigated the extra risks of a pure O2 atmosphere but then for the manned ground test _systematically negated all those measures_ to run a test with very close to zero chance of survival.
In that gas mix _any_ spark could ignite aluminum like kindling making it very unlikely it could've been run without so much as one static shock ending in tragedy. Simple insanity expressed in the diligent purpose of a group somehow going totally off the rails.
“Go” fever, bruv.
They were acting like cowboys. I doubt any of the Apollo missions would fly today, with NASA's modern safety protocols. Or at least not the early ones. Even the Mercury ones were crazy when you think about how young the rocket technology was. There's an parallel universe where half the astronauts blew up on the launch pad.
@@WaxPaper Idk. A lot of these newer protocols seem like they compensate (psychologically) for all the things they have little to no control over by massively over doing the regimentation on what they can control but no amount of polishing the floor is going to make up for frozen insulation hitting the -Endeavor's- Challenger's wing leading edge, no matter how much they refuse to consider that unconstrained (and _supposedly_ unconstrainable) possibility. They wouldn't even look on orbit. SMH. At least in those earlier cases they generally had a good idea of just how many corners they were cutting and the risks they *knowingly* took. These days they've got a 300 page checklist to make the tacos so they're covered if the meat was bad. Followed the checklist✔️
Remember, these were the 60s when they killed JFK, RFK, LBJ. Grissom’s family has insisted for years the fire was premeditated, and there has been some evidence to support this. He was a troublemaker and had been debriefed into some Cold War espionage matters. For many parties the “accident” was convenient.
@@johnassal5838 _Endeavor?_ Don’t you mean _Columbia?_
Of course they couldn't figure out the precise cause. The only safe way to use a pure Oxygen atmosphere was to keep the partial pressure the same as in our air, by reducing total pressure to about 0.2 bar. The risk of fire is slightly higher still but not by much.
*Except* part of the test was a _leak check_ leading them to *pressurize the capsule to 1.25 bar* ... That's right. They made it safe but then made it into an even better lighter just for the _manned_ test they'd be unable to escape what with the above ambient pressure holding the hatch shut.
It was a systemic *procedural* failure that would never be duplicated in any realistic flight scenario. Claiming there was any "silver lining" was just PR and the redesign of the environmental system just a guilty conscience making sure they couldn't forget the basic operating limitations and kill someone...again.
Blame the pure O2 and all the flammable Velcro but ignore the fact you can burn an I-beam in a pure O2 atmosphere at or above 1 bar which everyone diligently checked off the task list.
My dad was one of the engineers working on the Saturn (and Gemini and Mercury) programs.... as usual, budgets were getting tight and per my dad, the engineers at Rockwell had spec'd a valve that cost about $70 (back then) and the "accountants" insisted they were going to use a valve from another company that cost $30 (literally).... the engineers were very upset but despite their objections they were overruled. The $30 valve failed. Following the accident investigation, anyone who had a title or degree had an idea of how to address an escape system (not unusual) for the crew while on the pad (as far as getting out of the capsule). It was getting frustrating for the NASA crews who were very much participating in this due to mostly complexity of the proposed solutions. Somehow, Alan Shepard got my dad's name, called him direct and they spoke numerous times on this. Dad's ideas supported the other engineers, ultimately the hatch was redesigned where class C explosive bolts were used to attach the hatch to the capsule and in the event of an escape, the crew could literally "blow the hatch" with the push of a single button, get out and slide down a telpher line. Dad was the engineer who designed the explosive bolts.
@@jeffalvich9434 Thanks for sharing, it's an amazing story. Maybe Shepard got ahold of a directory and picked his name out to bypass all the organizational B.S. He was a test pilot used to close contact with his ground crew and the designers so it makes sense he'd want to check the guys doing presentations especially after the pad fire. Virtually all the fatal incidents NASA has had were a result of the organization getting too big to operate the same way as he was going for. Something about the organizational structure at that scale keeps mirroring that old Lee Iacocca quote about logic sometimes being a way to go wrong, with confidence. Just crunching the numbers carrying the one while at the team level inadvertently circumventing or disregarding key measures making prior tradeoffs workable. They could still learn a lot from your dad and Shepard.
An inward opening door? Serious?
@@foreverpinkf.7603 Yeah. It actually makes sense considering it's primary job is keeping air inside while in vacuum. _Unfortunaly_ you can't do a leak test unless the pressure inside is higher than outside. And everyone just kind of set to work putting a live crew in the one condition the environmental system was designed to avoid (er, other than vacuum and high CO2 I guess.) Nobody considered they could just install a check valve and pump in whole air for the leak test. Heck, they could put it in the middle of a window that could fit inside the standard door without replacing anything else for the test but that piece of glass. Nope. Instead they just dialed the pressure way up and made a passable crematorium.
I'm sure you've heard references to how stupid groups of people can be but it's usually referring to mobs not high level engineering efforts. It's a major design flaw evident in your Mk1 human being that I just can't get over.
@@johnassal5838 But was it NASA or the Contractors, best, don't answer !
Thanks Paul. Always great. Ah, what could have been, but wasn't. Oh and perhaps you can do one on the Space Transportation System, if which the Space Shuttle was just one of four parts -- and the only one made.
Fun fact: Originally, the Space Shuttle had a two-stage fully-reusable winged flyback design, but that was too expensive to develop on NASA's shoestring budget after Apollo. #FundNASA
@@HalNordmann That is correct. That is why the Shuttle was referred to as The Orbiter as there was also a Launcher
@@SaturnCanuck BTW, the first stage was more often called a Lifter or a Booster, as a Launcher is a term used for a full rocket. Too bad nobody wanted to fund the full version - some of the Phase B concepts could do everything the TAOS shuttle could, and be fully reusable.
@@SaturnCanuck Yes. The full assembly was called "The Space Shuttle". The actual manned spacecraft portion is the shuttle orbiter.
Thank you Paul for discussing the forgotten"I" Missions of the Apollo Program - the Lunar mapping missions. One time I saw that those missions would carry a module that carried a bank of high-powered cameras similar to the ones used on CIA satellites at the time. This module would have been carried into orbit tucked away in the S-IVB 3rd stage, and extracted similar to the Lunar Module during the coast phase to the Moon. It did not specify if a crew member later in the mission would conduct an EVA to extract the film from the module.
Ah, what Apollo could have been. You must forgive us Paul, us Americans tend to be short sighted in our goals.
You are by far the most interesting TH-camr on the planet, also how did I turn on TH-cam and get here within 2 minutes of it uploading, also would love to see more content on British history and technology (like harriers)
I'll second that.
The Simpsons episode "And now, for the pride of the US Air Force, the British-made Harrier jump jets!" (Yes, a few inaccuracies, but it's a cartoon...)
I think they were planning to use a Saturn 5 for the manned Venus flyby rather than a Saturn 1B
A Saturn V for take-off, surely, but I think he meant they wanted to re-use a part of the 1B for the module doing the fly-by.
Really, what would be the point of a manned Venus flyby anyway, other than kudos.
@@sunnyjim1355 At the time the plans were made, automated vehicles were extremely limited. Having a crew would allow for adjustment of experiments and instruments in process.
That had changed by time the mission was scheduled to occur, but there's no way they could have known that would happen when they planned it. Technology was advancing crazy fast at that time.
@@sbvera13 I would have loved to go on that mission, pictures are awesome but I bet it’s nothing like the real thing
@@noahhess4955 Can be very uncomfortable. Do you get sea sick? :)
I really enjoy this video and the very gentle style they are put together!
Congratulations on 1M!!! Thank you for all your hard work!
Oh, and forgot to say, I love your shirts!
Great video! I really appreciate your content, the level of detail you cram into each episode is mind boggling! I really hope you will be doing an episode on the recent US military UAP disclosures, I can imagine it would be fantastic!
I second this request!
Great video Paul. Brings back memories of reading in articles and books during the 60s about further NASA programs with permanent moon stations and trips to Mars, all with improved Apollo type hardware. Well, for the politicians and funders, with Apollo 11 and the raising of the American flag on the moon, the job was done. Now it is up to private entrepreneurs such as Bezos or Musk to continue these ideas. I am glad that there is anyone at all who is tackling these projects and thus humanity is advancing further into space.
These videos are really interesting. I'm a space geek and I still learn so much from them - no sensationalization or whacky presentation, just good interesting facts.
Had thought of a concept for a lunar lander that uses drop tanks attached to the inside of a lunar Landers legs. As the legs are a good solid structure to anchor fuel tanks off of, rather than another structure being used. Then only a single center rocket engine is needed. Reduces weight and complexity. Could go moon direct with a reentry capsule that way. Would be compact, then able to shed weight when the fuel tanks are expended. To distribute weight, they would need to be dropped in two sets. Two to a set. Or four empty fuel tanks each time. Some tanks could be taken off manually while on the moon to further reduce weight and complexity for a mechanism for such an action if needed.
The original Dynetics Alpaca lander for the Artemis program had drop tanks.
@@sigkil Drop tanks have a potentially serious drawback. As studied in the early 1960's as the "Lunar Crasher", the idea was to have a decent propulsion module that would slow the vertical velocity but not bring it to a complete halt at the surface but jettison first at altitude. That is a make or break maneuver, if one tank doesn't drop at all (or drops later than its matching pair) the sudden change to the center of gravity could flip the vehicle over and be unrecoverable. It was passed over as an 'inelegant design'
The best thing about your videos is the lack of overused classical music drowning out the audio...it's amazing how much easier it is to understand talking without music blaring.
Paul keeps producing top quality videos, both - educational and interesting ! Personally I think he’s one of the most underrated TH-camrs
👍👌P.S. just shirts alone is fascinating enough to earn a subscription. I love that style, color and design, and personally have a few Robert Graham embroidered long sleeves shirts, similar kind.
Excellent and informative video as always Paul. Thank you for all your hard work.
I was born in 1974, I'm now the best part of fifty years old and in my entire lifetime no human has stepped foot on the moon.
I was born in 1964, I'm pushing 60 and in my entire lifetime no human has stepped foot on the Moon.
@@hankkingsley2976 Either you are bad a maths are you are bad a joking.
@@sunnyjim1355 1964 to 2021 is 57 years that's pushing 60 b****I love how people like you get all bent out of shape when you even suggest we didn't land on the Moon. you didn't land on the moon --what do you have in it? nothing. What difference is it in my life or your life if we landed on the moon or not? Nothing.
@@zeev Michael Jackson was a moonwalker and he's been dead for quite a while
For someone who is (a) expressing nothing more than their opinion and (b) has a BAD case of internet muscles, you're sure getting worked up over something you claim doesn't matter. Looks like they aren't the one acting like a bitch here.
Nice. Always love watching a new Curious Droid video. :-) Paul always talks about such interesting stuff.
Using the fuel tanks or modifying fuel tanks. For habitation or the use as additions to modules is genius
I always click to see what shirt Paul is wearing, then stay for the amazing content.
The proposed Venus fly by was a bold idea and would have clearly pushed the current technology and experience in space to the very limit. Would've been either a bold move or merely reckless. We'll never know.
I'd say it would have been completely pointless other than kudos.
Automated probes of Venus to increase our knowledge should be done but I can't understand why any nation would want to send crews anywhere near that hell hole.
It would be absurdly cruel to send any crew on a year long interplanetary mission in a craft with so little internal space. For that length of time that's too little space for even one person. Same thing for Orion. Orion might be good as a reentry vehicle but BY ITSELF, it's no good as an interplanetary transfer vehicle. You'd need a transfer HAB, at least an inflated one. A Venus round trip (no landing) would be shorter than a Mars mission, but not ENOUGH shorter. Even the week plus long Apollo missions were pushing it. Inevitable hardships and risks are bad enough without adding torture. Apollo didn't have the exercise facilities of Skylab, ISS, and (for some missions) the Shuttle. Apollo didn't even have a microgravity toilet (though I think Orion has one).
The proposed "Apollo Applications" manned Venus flyby would also need a completely different Service Module, The Apollo ones didn't have enough volatiles to provide life support for even one person that long.
I like the idea of having a Moon base established before the '80s, however.
Magnificent. So informative about the real context of the Apollo era! Thank you!
I really wish the time line in the Apple TV + show For All Mankind is what NASA and the USA did after the Apollo 11 moon mission.
The USA teamed up with Optimus Prime to defeat Megatron.
Yeah, having the US and Soviets duking it out in the moon would be fun to watch
@@AureliusLaurentius1099 Russia vs. China would be a cool movie matchup to see.
My thoughts exactly. The timeline of the show sure beats reality. I do believe commercial space would have happened anyways in All Man Kinds timeline.
FAMK is stupid. Just the premise - there was an such a perception of Soviet space superiority that if they claimed another "first", there is a decent chance the whole space program would've folded. It would be enough if the Soviets landed on the Moon at all - they wouldn't even need to be first to force bigger American commitment to space exploration.
I clicked the thumbs up with gusto this time. Love this channel!
Duuuuude... your shirts are killing my bandwidth! 😘
Best looked into subjects in science on yt.
thanks!! very interesting
Congratulations Paul on your amazing subscription milestone. Awesome content as always and exciting to wonder what the next video will feature. Maybe a ‘Project AURORA’ video next..? 😏
Great stuff!
Topic option….Avro Arrow?
I think the audience would like it a lot.
One of the best kept secrets in military history.
🤞. Thanks Paul
>Avro Arrow
there are still some old Canucks griping about when Diefenbaker cancelled that program.
This channel deserve much more appreciation.
I've been an Apollo aficionado since I was a wee lad (insert Benny Hill joke here), and really enjoyed this very informative video. 👍 👍
good one Paul.
In hindsight, it seems unlikely that the big post-Apollo program would have been funded in any circumstances, except, maybe, if Soviet cosmonauts landed on the Moon too. Even then I wouldn't give it very good odds.
The Apple TV series ‘For All Mankind’ covers this scenario and as a similar alternative time line to the one discussed in this video.
@@SteveGrason59 Yeah, I've heard that. After a lifetime of fending off why-don't-we-spend-the-money-on-Earth, and seeing the same line in things written in the 60's, it's still implausible, but that could be my bias.
@@SteveGrason59 FAMK is stupid. Just the premise - there was an such a perception of Soviet space superiority that if they claimed another "first", there is a decent chance the whole space program would've folded. It would be enough if the Soviets landed on the Moon at all - they wouldn't even need to be first to force bigger American commitment to space exploration.
@@HalNordmann Calm down Hal 😂, it’s just a fictional show with an interesting premise whether realistic or not. I enjoyed watching the two seasons.The show sort of delivered what I thought would happen as a kid who grow up in the sixties ie we would go to moon ,establish moon bases and then head onto Mars. As a 9 year old boy who watched the moon landing live I was always disappointed that the Apollo program didn’t progress. I never liked the space shuttle program.
@@SteveGrason59 Fun fact: Originally, the Space Shuttle had a two-stage fully-reusable winged flyback design, but that was too expensive to develop on NASA's shoestring budget after Apollo. #FundNASA
The problem was 100% O2 at 1 full atmospheric pressure. As designed in space, 1/5 atmospheric pressure in the capsule results in very close to the same "partial pressure" of O2 in air at sea level, which is 21%. What matters is not so much the actual % of O2, but the combined aspect of the % in the gas medium, AND the pressure of that gas medium.
The capsule, at sea level pressure inside, with plain air that is 21% O2, would have had the same "partial pressure" as pure 100% O2 in space at 1/5 normal atmospheric pressure. At sea level the pure O2 in the capsule has 5 times the oxidative effect as air, resulting in extreme combustion once a source of ignition is triggered. Note also that in higher pressure O2, spontaneous combustion of oils and some plastics will happen, without the need of a triggering event.
As far as I am aware there is no problem with 100% oxygen at 0.2 bar as would be the case in space. The problem was that the O2 pressure for the ground test was raised to 1.2 bar to simulate the correct differential pressure on the capsule. What could possibly go wrong? Edit: sorry - this has been mentioned already :-/
Indeed. O2 at 1 atmosphere with all the rework in the CM electrical wiring. What could possibly... Still, the atmosphere in the CM was ultimately vented to 0.2 bar and nitrogen ultimately purged. Not entirely sure what was done during reentry. N2 introduced to increase the CM internal pressure?
Which means there was no reason at all for having pure O2 in the command module for a test launch...
@@fiddledotgoth Well, hindsight = 20/20; one bar pure oxygen is bad news. And yes, there was a reason. Nitrogen has mass. Support hardware complexity - more mass/weight. Apollo was fighting for every ounce (no grams at that time). The test was a launch simulation where "Test as you fly, fly as you test". Pesky earth atmosphere pressure got in the way along with whole bunch of rework of harnesses which ultimately - most probably - resulted in short and fire. Remember the news vividly...
Apollo 13 is another good example of "should have, would have, could have". And (way too) many more...
Space is hard.
@@milantrcka121 Hindsight ??? Are you kidding me ? These people are supposed to be top scientists; it was murder plain and simple...!
You provide an amazing service. Thanks for what you do.
Great video- but you mentioning SLS without mentioning Starship is a bit of a miss there.
Always love Curious Droids documentaries.
Good switch from the bad news stories all over the place.
00:33 This shirt matches nicely with the background - or is it the other way? 🤔
Anyways a very good video about space history.
I just noted how well cut is the fabric of your shirt, that the pattern continues perfectly in the middle. A lot of thinking and expertise, like in the apolos;)
They wanted to shoot the next Kubrik movie on the moon.
Great content, really enjoyed this!! 👌🏻
2:02 "The most powerful machine for over 50 years, until the upcoming SLS rocket"
Starship: *am I a joke to you?*
If Starship will fly. There is a pretty good possibility it will blow up on pad, or they will need to close their unauthorized testing site. Starship isn't good for anything, really. It is too heavy to go beyond LEO, and for LEO trucking a winged vehicle would be better. A winged flyback/aluminium construction Heavy-lift Vehicle from NASA's SPS study has similar payload to Starship, yet only 4000t mass when full (less than simply the mass of fuel for Starship)! And that is even with some mass reserve!
Oh shit @@HalNordmann let me get you on a conference call with SpaceX ASAP so you can explain to them all the horrible mistakes they're making.
@@ShadetreeArmorer For one, Starship has terrible dry mass. Steel may be cheap, but it is simply too heavy. And in spaceflight, mass is everything, every gram counts. Remember the orange tank on the Shuttle? It used to be painted white, but they later left it orange, just to save those few kilos. The weight limits on rockets are far more strict than the ones on airplanes - and you don't see any airplanes made of steel, do you?
Please @@HalNordmann I have SpaceX on the phone right now, what is your phone number so I can conference you in. You simply must relay all this earth-shattering information to them ASAP.
@@ShadetreeArmorer I suppose you think that is funny. But really. Even a lot of experts say there is a ton of problems with Starship, mass being one of them. Besides - either you want fast reusability, or cheap construction. You don't need both at once, and if you try that, you risk your system will be neither.
What a fantastic photo of the three..🌹
Wow.., first human to walk in space.. to be outside our atmosphere and spacecraft….. to have seen in it in it all
Isn't Starship more powerful than Artemis?
Lovely video, as always :)
You mean SLS (the rocket), not Artemis (the program). And it depends on how you want to define things. Starship is unquestionably more powerful in terms of thrust - but SLS can deliver a larger payload in a single launch (indeed, Starship cannot deliver *any* payload direct to lunar orbit). That's not a failing of Starship of course... it just reflects that it's designed with orbital refuelling in mind, and is therefore optimised for that use case.
@@simongeard4824 or SpaceX can do it in expendable config
@@thex9165 Theoretically, perhaps, but they have no intention of expending boosters with Starship, so not a factor...
@@thex9165 even expendable starship still has very high dry mass, and with 380s Isp, it may still loose at some distances with EUS with like 460s Isp and lightweight AlLi tanks
@@_mikolaj_ Fun fact: A winged flyback/aluminium construction Heavy-lift Vehicle from NASA's SPS study has similar payload to Starship, yet only 4000t mass when full (less than simply the mass of fuel for Starship)! And that is even with some mass reserve!
This channel is amazing.
Feels like you've had a second wind of inspiration and amazing content ♥️👌
Maybe slightly off topic for the video, but related. If anyone hasn't seen it, try and see "The Right Stuff" film, or at least read it. Gives some great background the start of the space programme
So they effectively ended the Apollo program by saving $328 million a year.
Now over 50 years later there is talk of doing the things they were planning to do in the 1970s.
50 years ago the only nations interested in space were the usa and the soviet union. that has now changed, and now technology has advanced so much that a lot of the things that they wanted to do in the 70's that would have been extremely expensive are actually almost affordable now. who knows, if they discover a big deposit of lithium or gold on the moon that could really change things up dramatically. keep in mind nobody has ever taken a soil sample more than a meter or so deep on the moon.. there could be more there.
It was always a cover for milspec spending on ballistic missile tech… it continued, just not ‘productively’ as far as space exploration.
Fun fact: Originally, the Space Shuttle had a two-stage fully-reusable winged flyback design, but that was too expensive to develop on NASA's shoestring budget after Apollo. #FundNASA
I knew the North American Aviation technician that installed the pyrotechnic batteries in the Apollo 1 command module. He told me the cables were routed too close to metal parts on the seat and were a likely cause of the fire. Pyrotechnic batteries were there to blow the explosive bolts for capsule separation, and have plenty of energy to start a fire. And during a static test, the astronauts are a source of compression and vibration, right on top of the seats. So if this fire didn't start on the pad, it's likely one would start at ignition or liftoff.
Wait I thought an O+N mixed air system was already planned for real missions when Apollo 1 happened?
Or did they originally plan to implement it much later?
One of the greatest presenters on TH-cam imo
What about the whole NERVA program? I thought this was supposed to be the much more efficient nuclear thermal 3rd stage to the Saturn V that was never built. Do the Moon bases incorporate this to get extra performance for more payload or was this for something else like going to Mars?
They actually did build a prototype and test fired it. You can find the video on youtube. th-cam.com/video/eDNX65d-FBY/w-d-xo.html The idea was it would be the engine used for Mars missions but maybe also carry larger payloads to the Moon.
@@steverogers8163 I meant it was never built into a working rocket stage to fly. It was just a prototype engine on a test stand. Prototypes are built all the time and then discarded without ever becoming the full end product. At some point the line needs to be drawn between developing something and saying you are ready to go with the completed product. I tend to draw that line when someone claims they are ready for the intended use, not just when some tests were done on a test stand with a prototype. Getting too far into prototypes, one could say go on about how Blue Origin has the BE-4 rocket engine and say a ULA could promise to fly rockets that use the BE-4 engine. Then various customers, say the US military could book up launches with said rocket. Obviously with only prototype BE-4 engines so far and this remains the case years after Blue Origin promised they would be done prototyping and testing the BE-4 engine, the real BE-4 engine does not exist. On the other hand Elon Musk can claim that he has Raptor engines with this criteria because he has flown and landed rockets using these engines and at least the last time he flew a rocket with them, they all worked great and got the job at hand done. At this with all of that instrumentation for the version 1 series, it is still kind of a prototype and the version 2 has a lot less crap hanging off of it, so it is probably getting closer to what the eventual mass production units will look like.
Stupendo! Bravissimo!! (Just seen the intro but already loving it for the topic.), wowowowow
The issue for Apollo 1 during the plugs out test was, because the test was conducted at sea level, the cabin was pressurized to approximately 16.7 psi, not 5 psi used during actual missions. This made the internal environment much more combustible.
Curious Droid programming is ALWAYS first class quality - never disappointing.
Another issue NIxon started the war on drugs and created the DEA which ended up being a two trillion dollar failure.
The irony is they could have afforded to keep to Apollo applications program and spent more on the shuttle's development.
At they very least they should have kept the Saturn IB in production eventually replacing the CSM with a lifting craft.
The War on Drugs was a jobs program for rural America. Lots of people out this way work in "corrections". Once people in rural areas get used to such things you need a crowbar to get them away from it.
Nixon was a boozer. Drank a lot. To him Hippies were moral degenerates. Sending the DEA after them seemed to make sense. I still remember the Paraquat program. The US would spray "marijuana" fields with the the gunk. Smokers got dosed with it.
Joe Biden, of all people, helped create "Civil Forfeiture" . Any money or property, including cars and land, were to be taken if it were ALLEGED to be "drug related". I put alleged in capital letters. When Police take this stuff, you have to go to court to prove that it was not drug related.
In 2014 police took more private property than burglars. Outside of the places where weed is legal, people continue to use it. They use lots of it.
@@jamallabarge2665 A space jobs program would have been better for the country.
Some of the contractors can be operations in small towns.
Fun fact: Originally, the Space Shuttle had a two-stage fully-reusable winged flyback design, but that was too expensive to develop on NASA's shoestring budget after Apollo. #FundNASA
@@HalNordmann The SRBs were a budgetary shortcut as they felt they would be cheaper to develop but proved to be problematic on a vehicle of that configuration.
@@Patchuchan They were indeed a budgetary shortcut. There were plans to replace them with liquid fuel boosters, but those were also too expensive to develop.
Thank you, Asid Varys! Grate video as always.
America has so much money, it has to spend billions on a program to find out what to do with the billions spent on other programs.
And don't forget that Vietnam was going on at the same time...... Just because money is being thrown about doesn't mean they had it
That handshake (actually plural) in the space station really says a lot. Perhaps the Cold War was a bit too much of a distraction but if one looks back at history with a longer view, Russians and most of the previous Soviet nations have been friends and allies with Western Europeans (apart from one or two awkward exceptions), North Americans and us Anglo Antipodeans, much more than we've ever been enemies.
As usual, an excellent production.
Yeah, and world war 2 would have never ended the same way without the valor and sacrifices of the Russians against Germany
@@Niaaal
I won't argue that they sacrificed, both the troops and the citizens.
And there was valor to spare as well. But the fact is, a very large percentage of Soviet loses, military and civilian, were the direct result of Stalin being batshit crazy.
They lost millions killed or captured for the sole reason that Stalin wouldn't allow troops to fall back to keep from being encircled.
Much the same with civilians. Stalin should have had them moved out of the cities, but he didn't give a damn about them.
The VAST majority of the weapons/equipment the Soviets manufactured, they did so using American steel, aluminum, copper, etc.
When America joined the war, the outcome was decided. The Soviets fighting saved millions of lives of the other allies. But the Soviets weren't mandatory to win at all. America alone out-manufactured all the Axis nations, and in fact, even with a late start to the war, America produced ~49% of everything war related made by All countries involved in the war.
You could pretty much get anything to burn in a pure oxygen environment.
NASA's internal review found the cabin to be lined with a total of 34 square feet (3.2m2) of velcro, which is flammable in a 100% oxygen enviroment. Once that fire is started any plastics would catch fire very fast.
Alternate perspective:
Perhaps the amazing thing is that there was an Apollo 12, and that the plug wasn’t pulled completely after the main objective had been accomplished with 11.
In each of those missions, 12-17, the USA risked killing yet another crew. So the safe option would have been to simply have stopped after success had been achieved. And we all know how close we came to losing Lovell-Swigert-Haise. So NASA rolled the dice and won. Continuing beyond 11 is what amazes me. Something to consider for everyone lamenting that we didn’t continue beyond 17.
It almost was. Most Americans couldn't grasp the concepts of extended moon missions and actually thought the only reason for going to the moon was to "beat the Russians."
There are times I wish the Soviet Union had beaten us to the moon like in "For All Mankind"
It's kind of amazing what some of this equipment is capable of looking like a box with 2 hangers and aluminum foil taped on it.
Edit: Also, great video as always Paul!
Great content as always!
As always a banging video Paul 👏 along with your usual snappy threads (though it does look slightly like an illustration for how the coronavirus multiples&spreads 😉) Just kidding mate - I’m just jealous 😉 😛 👍 Warmest wishes from South Wales 🏴- Jonathan 😊 👍
The Space Transport System (STS) deserves its own film.
In the movie Apollo 13 Tom Hanks's character was asked by a reporter why should we go back to the moon since we already have been there. He replied "imagine if Columbus discovered the new world but nobody ever went back." Well the truth is we never did go back!!!
Nice Job! covering the Apollo Applications Program would've loved to seen a lunar base we missed out on.
Pity they waited until the docking to shake hands. If they had done it on the ground and cooperated a bit, it might have been a better solution. Waring politicians are the scourge of the world
Good monday sir! Thanks for a excellent video!
I disagree that the fire ended the plans for the followup programs.
What willed it was that congress didn't have the backbone to fund it when they could spend that money instead on things that would help them get reelected.
and a war nobody wanted.
@@hankkingsley2976 Some people wanted it.
Lots of the members of Nancy Pelosi's extended family made millions.
Fantastic topic. My mind blew when I saw the 3D image on the magic eye image of your shirt.
2:02 yeah.... no
starship is more powerful than sls. even more powerful than the previous reckord holder, the n1
and starship will very likely fly before sls anyways
NASA should leave launches to SpaceX and the other private companies. Focus on science and leave the basic launch capability to companies
SLS is already fully stacked at Cape, and could fly anytime if they wanted to. And BTW, the BN4/SN20 test isn't planned to reach full orbit, assuming it doesn't blow up on pad.
@@HalNordmann that is correct.
but the first starship will still fly first most likely. it will definetly be able to launch, even if it doesn't have permission. so by the time artemis 1 launches, the sls won't be the most powerful rocket
this could all turn out to be wrong and starship needs to take more time, but that is very unlikely. i'd say it is about as unlikely as elon musk and jeff who playing monopoly together n low earth orbit
@@FoxBoi69 As I said, the BN4/SN-20 test DOESN'T REACH ORBIT! So, the SLS will be the most powerful.
@@HalNordmann kinda ture. the first starship launch to space won't be orbital, but it is still the stronger rocket, even tho it is flying a suborbital trajectory
Another great topic and video!
Minor nit though at 7:55, the original Apollo design used a high-pressure (16PSI) pure-oxygen atmosphere. That was subsequently changed to a low-pressure still-pure-oxygen system.
It’s a shame nothing came of the Apollo applications. Instead we got stuck in low earth orbit with the space shuttle and blow untold trillions of dollars on useless wars in the Middle East. At age 52, Space X is the last hope I have to witness space travel in my life time.
Blue Horizons and Virgin Galactic too!
@@DouglasLippi Useless toys for billionaires.
@@tomw0815 sure right now. Give it a few years and like anything the price will come down. 15 years ago I remember seeing a flat-panel plasma TV at Costco for $10,000. Better and bigger TV today is $500.
As always, great job!
I believe this overlooks the fact that Congress cut funding because the Apollo mission's prerogative goal was met: to assure the American public and as of yet decided nations that in the race to develop militaristically advantageous space technology the USA wasn't just playing catch-up or merely on par with Soviet Space Technology, but better, and more capable.
Lyndon B. Johnson didn't think the "War on poverty" would eliminate racial injustice. *Funding and support for the Apollo program primarily came from the Military Industrial Complex, as they were the only ones negotiating for the proceeding funding of up to 1 in every 22.6 dollars of tax spent, or capable of convincing congress.*
I used to dream of going into space. I even thought I would love to live up there. I'm old enough to know better now though. My dream has evolved to living on EARTH as if I were living in SPACE. The problems are the same: clean water, grow food, place to live, a LIFE worth living for.
I want to build my own "Earthship" like they're doing in Arizona. Sustainable living will be the wave of the future, and the path to long term living in space. That's a dream that EVERYONE can join in!
Hello first
Thanks for sharing and open talking, I was curious :-) why there were no new videos. I'm glad everything went well. And you also advertise to be tested.
Wernher von braun 💪💪💪
I was in my teens in the U.K. when Apollo 11 landed. It was amazingly exciting - still have copies of all the newspapers announcing the landing today. By Apollo 17 everyone was getting bored with it and at the time it felt like that was why it was cancelled. Space exploration has to keep reinventing itself and chasing new goals or the same could happen again.
That boredom is how I felt watching the space shuttle and hearing that the millionth mars rover landed. I kept thinking, "Enough of the rovers, hurry up and send people". I want to see bold adventures, going to low-earth orbit is not adventurous. Space is incredibly vast, let's keep pushing.
This was by design. The goal was never expansion of the human paradigm. The goal was bankrupting the USSR.
Nearly 50 years on we are celebrating flights to 62 miles and back.
explain the height of the ISS
@@aeroflopper Tourist Flights 62 miles - ISS 220 Miles - The Moon 220,000+ miles
@@markbellinger apologies i though you was saying man had only made it up the the carmen line, i miss read your reply.
Even at 1.03M subs, this channel is criminally undersubbed.
God: so why didn’t you continue out and explore the rest of the universe?
Humans: we decided to stay home and fight each other.
God: but why?
Humans: you mostly.
😆 Humans make the decision to fight each other regardless of the reason.
Human beings are innately flawed.
@@endutubecensorship yes, we are flawed because gahd made us that way…
@@TesterAnimal1 Little thing called free will...
Great vid, Paul...👍👍
So sad that it took almost 50 years later with Elon Musk to revive any hope of interplanetary exploration.
And with the reusable Starship & Superheavy it's going to be much more practical to move large payloads to orbit, the moon, and Mars, as well as the fact that it has the equivalent living area of the ISS in each Crew/Lunar Starship, hopefully it's make serious space exploration, construction, and colonization much more practical.
It's also deffinitly good that SpaceX has a rather fearless testing methodology that isn't worried if it brakes a dozen Starship prototypes if it makes the next dozen even better and more reliable (before they get tested to the limit too), and the fact that they intend to mass produce Starships instead of making far more expensive one-offs will probably let them scale up way past what anyone else has even come close to achieving, Falcon 9 is already demonstrating a lot of the benefits of all this even with an expendable upper stage
Thanks for this