We're just about one month away from the next Starship launch
from Starbase Texas in Boca Chica.
The tip of Texas, the South most place on the Texas map that is
on the Gulf of Mexico right on the Rio Grande River.
Basics will be launching possibly and catching the first
ever booster at Starbase. Now, Kathy, leaders just
recently a few days ago had a talk in the area about Starbase
and about the future of the Starship and if they're going to
catch IFT 5 at Starbase. And the answer to that is from
Kathy maybe it looked like IFT 4 was really great pinpoint
accuracy on the landing, according to SpaceX engineers,
according to Elon Musk noting them.
So it looks like SpaceX is in a really good position to move
forward with the catch of the booster.
Now they're in a good position to catch it, but are they
really? I just want to send you guys
some information so you can think about it, because you and
me both, we aren't engineers at SpaceX, but we have to think
about this rationally and logically before we get our
hopes up here. And I don't want to squash
anybody's hopes because I really freaking hope that they catch
this booster at Starbase within the next month.
It would be insane, mind blowing if this actually happened in the
next month. Now what do they have to do?
They're doing currently do doing testing with a prototype article
on the on the arms. They're opening and closing the
arms around this article to make sure that the lift can work
properly, make sure that the arms close properly.
The perfect timing for this is absolutely crucial because if
they don't get the timing down, if the arms close early and too
much, the booster won't land properly and it might land off
center, it might land a little bit crooked and then you get a
blown up booster on the pad and you know, it's almost out of
fuel at that point. So the damage would be minimal
if something does happen, if something does blow up, but
there still could be some shrapnel and whatever that could
cut some pipes, cut some electric stuff.
They do have cladding on it, but I mean pieces of shrapnel going
so fast. We don't know what the speed's
gonna be, but it's gonna go so fast that it could shred
anything in its way. So this, this cladding around
the the base of the launch tower, of course very
protective, but you never know what could happen to the
surrounding area. There's little buildings and
stuff around there that the people work out of.
So something could get damaged in there too, could cause a
fire, etcetera, which could cause environmental damage.
We have to talk about that because the environment at
Starbase is crucial, and the environmental impact study that
was that happened before that allowed SpaceX to launch from
Starbase still is intact. So if they ruin that
environmental impact statement in any way, they have to go back
to the drawing board. The FAA might get involved, and
then we might have to wait a year for them to fix this.
I don't know how long it would take.
It depends on the damage done. So if they do any damage and
they catch a bunch of stuff on fire, SpaceX is in a lot of
trouble because it's going to slow down things at Starbase
tremendously for the next foreseeable future.
We don't know how long it would slow them down for.
So that's one thing that we have to be really worried about.
What would happen if there was a fire at Starbase?
And of course, Kathy Leaders, who's the manager at Starbase,
in her talk the other day talked about the catastrophic Starbase.
The the people that come in there with something
catastrophic hits, right? The the first responders, what
do they do? They come, they care.
They take care of fires, they care, take care of people, take
care of places, people, things. So those people would be called
in immediately, put out the fire.
Hopefully it's not too big so it doesn't get out of control.
But it's a wetland. And of course there's a lot of
endangered species down there and species that are just, you
know, on the almost on the endangered species list.
So there's birds, piping plovers, there's turtles,
etcetera. And if something happens to
that, they could be set back months.
Now, on a bright side, it looks like the tests are going really
well. And if the tests are going well
and it looks like the chopsticks could perfectly just just hug
that booster perfectly as it lands, that would be so cool.
I'd be so excited. It's going to be exciting no
matter what, no matter what happens.
So the the negative Nancy in me is like, oh man, I really hope
they wait for a couple more launches so they can land this
thing. But I really wanted to land this
thing as soon as possible so I can see this thing land.
Because if this booster lands, if it does land, this is going
to change everything. Everything about spaceflight,
the way that spaceflight is conducted.
Falcon 9 is obsolete almost at that point.
Of course there will still be missions until space XS Starship
is fully realized, fully tested numerous times, gets to orbit a
bunch of times, does some Starlink deployments, which
they're not going to do right away by the way.
But we were all hoping because they did the payload door.
Remember that when they did the payload door tests were like IFT
4, three launches, Starlinks. Everybody was like, dude, we're
doing it. They're going for it.
They're going for Starlinks, they're going to orbit, and
they're going to launch some Starlinks into orbit.
But that didn't happen. So IFT 5, Elon said no, no, no,
no, no Starlinks. But maybe in the near future,
maybe IFT 9, maybe 10, maybe 10's, the magic number.
That seems like a good run number for Starlink launches.
But if they land this booster at Starbase, everything changes
because if they can land this booster and if they probably
won't fly it again because it it did its thing, it did its
mission, they'll probably do another booster and they'll try
to land every booster after that.
We'll see what happens, right? They're building tower two.
Should they wait until more of tower two is built?
I mean, because if something does happen to the tower one and
they can't fix it for six months, they're way behind
schedule at that point. Build up tower two.
I know it's going to take six months for tower two to be
built, six months to a year for tower two to be built.
But just wait for a little bit at least because we want to see
this thing land and we don't want to.
We don't want to wait and nobody else wants.
NASA doesn't want to wait. NASA won't.
I mean, NASA has a contract with SpaceX.
And of course, if SpaceX does something stupid, NASA will get
in there and be like, Hey, we paid you good money for for the
Starship trip to the moon. So stop it, SpaceX, you got to
you got to stop being irresponsible.
We understand your test schedule.
We understand that you like to push things.
We like to push boundaries. But you don't have to do that
right away. I think NASA could step in and
be like, hey, talk some sense into Elon, even though he knows
what he's doing and the SpaceX and years know exactly what
they're doing. There could be a time where Elon
and company just get a gentle pushback just a little bit, just
a little nudge, a little nudge from NASA and NASA says, hey,
SpaceX, just hold off just a minute.
Just hold off for like two flights at least make sure you
get everything tested a bunch of times and maybe do like AI don't
know a hover test. I don't know.
I don't know what they could do, but I think SpaceX is in a
really good spot right now. And I think, I don't think
they're going to be landing this at the at the arms anytime soon,
chopsticks anytime soon. I think within the next three
flights, probably couple flights from now, we'll have a landing.
But I also believe that Kathy knows a lot more than you know,
anybody else in this. And she said this a couple days
ago. So couple days ago.
Kathy's like, I don't know. I, I, I really don't know.
She doesn't. They don't have enough data.
They haven't done the testing yet and but if everything goes
well, we could possibly see it within, you know, the by the end
of July, we could see a booster landing at Brownsville,
Starbase, Texas, Boca Chica. It'd be wild.
It'd be absolutely wild. So let me know what you think of
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listening today and watching. I appreciate your time and
please take care of yourselves and each other and I will see
you in the next one. Also, go SpaceX, go Starship.