Countdown to SpaceX launch as astronauts board Crew Dragon capsule

SpaceX is slated to launch its first passengers into space Wednesday afternoon. Jim Cantrell, who was part of the founding team at SpaceX and currently the CEO and President of Phantom Space Corp, joins Yahoo FInance’s Zack Guzman to discuss.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: And, folks, we are just a few minutes away, if all goes according to plan here, from seeing history as SpaceX is preparing to launch what is now or what will be the first-ever commercially flown mission with humans to the International Space Station for NASA. It'll be the first human launch from US soil since 2011 and an interesting shift to the way that NASA is now leaning on the private sector for a lot of these space missions.

And for more on this, I want to bring on Jim Cantrell. He was part of the founding team at SpaceX as well as a former NASA veteran himself, and he joins us right now via the Google Meet. And, Jim, appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. What does this signal to you not only as, you know, one of the founding members of SpaceX but also a former employee of NASA and looking at the way that we've come so far from shifting more into leaning into some of these private entities.

JIM CANTRELL: Right. Yeah, so on a personal level, this is something that's pretty significant. You know, I had a small role in SpaceX way back in the very beginning, and I never honestly ever imagined it would result in what we're seeing today. Which is really, on a national level, it's a watershed moment because what we have is a public-private partnership that has been talked about for years, but we're seeing the fruits of that today.

And if you look at the kind of money that NASA put into this alongside what SpaceX put into their own money, it's something like 50 times less than what NASA's tried to spend to replicate the same basic function. So we have what we hope is a very reliable system that can transport astronauts at a much lower cost and do it much faster.

And I think this signifies a watershed moment for not only the space industry but for defense as well. We're starting to see this kind of private-public partnership happening in the defense world where because of budgets, because of technology being what it is that even the Defense Department is looking to commercial companies to help them meet national-security needs in a very similar way.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, and you're looking right now at a live shot being provided by NASA TV to see the two astronauts getting ready to go into what is called the Crew Dragon capsule from NASA. But, I mean, you raise a good point. When we talk about, you know, just past the couple decades looking back and the way that the shift has been away from government money going into this to fund everything themselves, they've shifted into putting money into these private entities, whether it be SpaceX or Boeing. What do you make of that shift in terms of now finally seeing the return on that investments? And SpaceX, as you know, has been working on this for a while. So what does that shift kind of make America maybe better than what we've seen in the past and Russia being a very big space giant and shifting their model right now? What's the-- what's the advantage that it gives us?

JIM CANTRELL: Yeah, I'm relieved to see it finally happening, right? The wider world can see what many of us who were considered lunatics 20 years ago were saying that we could actually do this. And what it really means is that the United States, I think, can recover its competitiveness in the space of business worldwide with this kind of capability because, you know, what this-- what SpaceX is doing is it's inspiring a whole new generation of young Americans to join space, to become part of it. I mean, it's making it sexy again.

And the result of that is our brightest minds are coming to work for this stuff. And it's arguable that this is one of the most important things we can do for humanity. This is Elon's argument, but it's also, I think, one of the most important things we can do for our economy. And given what we've been through this year in this dumpster fire of 2020, this is one of the first very, very positive things coming along.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, as we noted off the top, the first human launch on US soil in almost a decade. A lot here to look forward to as the launch gets ready for about 4:30 PM Eastern Time here. But Jim Cantrell, very much appreciate you taking the time to share your insights with us on that.

JIM CANTRELL: Any time, Zack.