Hey everybody, checking back to the Elon Musk Podcast, this is a
show where we discuss the critical Crossroads, The Shape,
SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, and I'm
your host, Will Walden. One more thing before we start
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Elon Musk podcast. Let's talk about some SpaceX
news here. The FAA and SpaceX are working
very hard together to make sure that the next flight of Starship
happens without a hitch. Now Starship IFT 3, the
integrated flight test that just happened a little while ago was
pretty much a success, right? So now they're moving forward
with the IFT 4 launch and hopefully everything goes well
with that launch. Now the FAA has to work with
SpaceX in order to give them a flight license.
They have to make sure that everything's safe for SpaceX,
the rocket, the workers and also people in the way of the Rockets
flight. That's important.
They don't want to hurt anybody, any property or anything going
forward with these flights. Now this is important because
SpaceX launches the Starship over the Gulf of Mexico and
apparently according to the IFT 3 flight path, it was going to
land in the Indian Ocean. The Starship was, the booster is
going to land in the Gulf of Mexico.
OK, so the Starship might land in the Indian Ocean.
Again, we're not 100% sure what's going on with this.
We are guessing. Everyone's guesstimating that it
will happen similarly, but there is some FAA hinting at what may
happen for this next one. So before anything happens, FAA
and SpaceX will be working together to make sure to save
the whole operation. They have to make sure that
SpaceX uses the time between this flight, the last flight,
IFT 3 and IFT 4, to save the area and make sure that they put
anything in place that they found was wrong in the last
flight. So anything in the booster or
anything in the ship, they have to fix it.
They have to change it in order to make it a safer flight for
the future. Now there's a possible flight in
May, but it's not guaranteed. Right now the FAA needs to
modify the launch license due to changes, potential changes in
the flight profile. We don't know exactly where this
is going to land, but it might land similarly close to where it
was going to land in the Indian Ocean, depending on the mission.
Now the FAA will prioritize the public safety over anything
else, and public safety is paramount, for one thing,
mainly. But mostly there there's two
things. One mainly is the booster in the
Gulf of Mexico, because that's going to try to do a soft
landing on a virtual tower. According to Elon on Flight 4.
And I made a video about Flight 4 and Flight 5 of Starship.
So flight 4, they want to do a virtual tower in the Gulf of
Mexico. This means that they're going to
do the normal flight like normal, like IFT 3, fly the ship
to the Indian Ocean, get the booster hot stage separation,
all of that stuff. But after the hot stage
separation, they're going to send the booster into the Gulf
of Mexico, land it vertically in the Gulf, similar to what they
would do with a launch tower. Land it.
They're going to make a virtual tower.
Maybe they're going to use some sort of a RVR set up so they
know exactly what's going to happen.
I don't know what they're going to do at that point, but
hopefully they have a really good understanding of the
landing mechanics of the booster because they haven't even gotten
it close to landing now. Ift 1 ift 2, ift 3 We haven't
even seen the booster get close to landing in the Gulf of
Mexico, so I have T4 if they can nail this.
Elon has said in his latest talk that he wants to land the
booster at Starbase and I don't know if this is a great idea.
I'm. I don't know.
I'm so scared of this. I don't want them to move back
six months because they landed a booster but it wasn't prepared
to land yet. I'm just, I'm terrified that
they could blow something up or something could happen.
They haven't got to Rudd at Starbase and they could set
themselves back six months. Now I know this is a thing that
they have thought about. They're rocket scientists after
all. They're engineers.
They're scientists. They do this for a living.
They make a bunch of money doing this.
And I'm not that guy. I am a coder.
I know how difficult code is, but landing a rocket, not 100%
an expert at that. And that's why I default to the
engineers and the scientists at SpaceX.
And I trust them that they'll do the right thing.
But I'm also scared that they're going to set themselves back.
I just don't want them to do that.
But the landing attempt in the Gulf of Mexico, let me know what
you think about it in the comments below.
I think it's scary. That's all I'm going to say.
It's got to be a wild ride. It's got to be excitement
guaranteed, as Elon says. But we do have some information
from an FAA spokesperson, Jim Coleman said that I think we
could possibly get there, which means a launch in May.
I'm not going to say we will get there absolutely, but I won't
say it's out of the question either.
On the possibility of a May launch, he said that the other
day, three days ago. He also said they're going to do
some different things with this particular missions, referring
to changes in the flight profile.
So IFT 3, they did normal flight profile booster back to the Gulf
of Mexico and it did a red and today it exploded over the Gulf
of Mexico, which is fine. They expected something like
that and they did. Hot stage firing was great.
They did the Starlink door. They open up the Starlink door,
which was fantastic. And they did some communications
with the ground we've heard about.
They did some live video feeds, which we didn't expect them to
do, but it was fantastic as well.
And then they tried to land the Starship in the Indian Ocean.
Now IFT 4, they're going to, as Elon said as well, they're going
to try to get the Starship to the height, basically a melting
point of the Starship as it reenters the atmosphere into the
Indian Ocean. And then it's going to their.
I think they're going to explode to Indian in the Indian Ocean.
So we're expecting that. Now there's other things, the
virtual tower landing, not exactly sure what that is, but
Elon has said it, they might do a public safety review.
The FAA might do a public safety review with a full mishap
investigation or from the full mishap investigation that SpaceX
does just to speed up the process.
And I think that's what's going to happen from here on out.
Elon and SpaceX and company will do a full mishap investigation
form the previous launch and then the FAA will look at it and
do a public safety review depending on that mishap
information and investigation information that they send over.
They're both willing and able to do this fast.
FAA say they are willing to go fast by may they want to and the
separation of the public safety review.
Hence it a potential difference between public safety flaws and
broader mishap investigation details.
Now SpaceX is going to have to do some things though before
they launch this rocket. Pre launch checks FAA likely
conducts conducts a thorough review of the launch vehicle and
launch procedures to ensure that they meet safety standards as
normal. They should do this.
It can involve inspections, simulations, and analysis of new
potential risks for IF T4 and IF T5 going forward, the flight
path, if it's changed the trajectory, FAA might assess the
flight path, a trajectory to ensure a minimal risk to
populated areas and also debris. What could happen?
Debris and blast radius. So if they run somewhere in the
Gulf of Mexico, what's that blast radius look like?
What's the debris going to look like?
And where's the good debris going to end up since the ocean
is so huge? The debris from it's a big
rocket to us, but to the ocean it's nothing.
Don't think Elon and company and the FEA are going to worry about
A1 rocket booster or one rocket in the Gulf of Mexico or the
Indian Ocean. Now another thing that the FEA
works on is the launch abort system, the Rudd system,
basically the FTS. Basically this thing blows up a
rocket if something goes wrong. And Elon and company have shown
that it works. After the IFT, one mishap where
it didn't work and the things spun out of control, now they
know what they're doing. I FT2I FT three.
Both worked great. The they're working forward.
They're working with SpaceX on the CFAA and SpaceX are working
on this critical safety flaws. Elon and company are working on
those. The FAA might want to confirm
there aren't any critical safety flaws for the next rocket flight
profile. Like I said before, overall
public safety is a paramount for the FAA and SpaceX as well.
If anything happens, public safety wise, Elon and company
are going to be pushed back, possibly for months, maybe a
year or two depending on the severity of the public safety
incident. Now IFT 5, this is going to be a
wild ride. If they do that booster landing
in the Gulf of Mexico, what's going to happen?
I want them to go as fast as possible.
And of course iterative design is the best way to do rocket
design, apparently because we know that Elon and Sace X,
they're killing it right now, They're doing great work.
O There's no reason why they should not continue doing this
in the future. Hey, thank you so much for
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