Hey everybody, welcome 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 Neurolink.
I'm your host, Will Walden. So is NASA about to cancel their
gigantic SLS Space Launch System rocket?
This is the rocket that's going to send people back to the moon
and eventually send people to Mars.
It's built on legacy systems from the old space shuttle.
And how would that impact Boeing?
Who is their primary contractor for this?
It sounds like they're going to be laying off hundreds of people
because there's a possible cancellation of the SLS rocket.
Now, this is a successful rocket.
It sent a probe, which is the first capsule that people would
be using around the moon. And they came back down to Earth
and there were some problems because it was the first ever
flight of this thing. But they're finding solutions
for those, and they're headed for the second launch in the
next few years. Now, my dear, SpaceX is
developing the Starship down in Boca Chica Star Base, Texas, at
the tip of Texas on the Gulf of Mexico.
And the Starship, even though it does have a few problems and has
some some iterations that it needs to go through, a lot of
iterations that it needs to go to in order to send people back
to the moon into Mars, there's no reason why NASA should
continue building the SLS in my opinion.
Now that being said, if they cancel the SLS, that would mean
that they are. NASA is going to be using SpaceX
and probably Blue Origin for some of the Artemis program.
For most, the Artemis program, the Starship would be sending
people to orbit. Actually, you know what they
could do, and this is a thing that we've talked about numerous
times on our space channel on YouTube, Space News Pod.
They would send people to orbit in a Falcon 9 rocket where they
would rendezvous with a Starship.
And a Starship has to refuel between 10 and 20 times.
We're not exactly sure what the number's going to be yet because
SpaceX still has to finish the Starship.
It's right now, it's in the testing phase, and Flight 8 is
coming up in the next month, according to Elon Musk and
insiders of SpaceX. So the fact that they already
have the capable hardware to send them to orbit is a huge
thing. Now, the Starship would be
parked in orbit, similar to the space station, but not as high
up, and they would rendezvous with a Dragon capsule with the
Starship. Now, those systems are already
there, so they could use the universal adapter that they
already use on the International Space Station to dock with the
Starship. So the Dragon capsule would have
the adapter on it, so it could dock with a Starship already.
So it's already the hardware's already there for that.
Now the Starship, mind you, hasn't made it to orbit yet,
like a full orbit, hasn't made a full orbit, hasn't made re
entry, but also hasn't made it to the moon yet.
But this system wouldn't be the same system as they're testing.
Now. This is the whole new Starship.
And the Starship that they would be using would be the lunar
variant, which is the HLS, a human landing system.
And I want to remind everybody that the Starship is huge.
It's around 150 to 200 feet tall and imagine a 15 story building
landing vertically on the moon's surface.
Is that terrifying to anybody else?
I'm not a naysayer. I think SpaceX has done amazing,
amazing things for space exploration, and I see this as a
way for them to build a space station on the moon with
Starships. Now, this is a whole other
thing. But because the Starship is so
big, they can use those as temporary space stations on the
moon, or lunar stations, I should say.
So what they're going to do, this is the plan, like we
discussed before, rendezvous in orbit with the Dragon, then the
Dragon separates from the Starship, and then the Starship
makes its way to the moon. Therefore, there's no other
systems in place, there's no Boeing capsules, no SLS is just
two SpaceX rockets. Now if they can get a Blue
Origin rocket to do the same thing, I believe NASA will
contract Blue Origin to do the first part.
It's going to take a long time for Blue Origin to get people
rated for the rocket, but New Glen as a possibility could get
human rated. But there's no reason why they
should do that because Falcon 9 already exists and Falcon Heavy
already exists. So it depends on what orbit they
want us, what they want to park a Starship in.
But landing 150 foot tall Starship on the moon seems
incredibly, incredibly difficult.
They're having problems landing in a on Earth already.
They haven't made it back into orbit or out of orbit back down
without destroying the Starship. It did land in the Indian Ocean,
but it wasn't in good shape and they don't know how to
propulsively land a Starship yet.
They're figuring it out and it could take them a few years to
do this. Could take 5-6 years to do this.
But the reason why they're cutting off Boeing and SLS is
because it cost so much money to launch that gigantic NASA rocket
every time. It's billions of dollars.
They've spent roughly $3 billion annually on the rocket and its
associated ground systems. SpaceX, for example, has
developed and launched 2 heavy lift rockets, the Falcon Heavy
and the Starship, while Blue Origin has introduced its own
competitor, the New Glen. These private sector rockets,
which incorporate reusable technology, are estimated to fly
at a fraction of the cost of the SLS, which further undermines
its long term viability. But there's people that are
supporting the SLS. They argue that it provides
unmatched capability for crude deep space missions,
particularly in carrying large payloads to the moon, into Mars
and beyond. They also contend that the
government backed program like Artemis needs a reliable,
dedicated launch vehicle rather than relying solely on
commercial providers. But this argument is losing
traction as SpaceX demonstrates their ability to deliver cost
effective, high performance, gigantic massive launch systems.
Super high power, the most powerful rocket ever.
Now, we all know, you and me, everybody listening to this
knows that Elon Musk and Trump are buddy buddy.
The Trump administration will move to eliminate the SLS.
If they do, and if they move to eliminate the funding in its
budget proposal, the final decision will be on Congress.
Now, lawmakers have historically supported the rocket due to his
ties to key aerospace contractors and the thousands of
jobs it supports across multiple states.
However, shifting political priorities and mounting budget
pressures could change that calculus.
And Donald Trump doesn't just want to go to the moon.
He wants to go to Mars. And Elon Musk is the biggest
proponent of that on this planet.
He started a rocket company, in particular, to send a plant to
Mars to inspire people. Now, what does Elon have to do
with all of this? Well, we all know that Elon
talks to Donald Trump regularly. Elon has been in his ear
obviously about the SLS system, the cost effective and Elon, of
course, he's in charge of Doge. So he could cut the budget if he
wants to. And at least he can, he can
justify the budget cut knowing that his company and Blue Origin
could save the government money, $3 billion a year on this
system, the ground system and the rocket.
So the ground systems are everything that launches the
rocket. So the water deluge system, all
the people on the ground that would be fired, you know, like
they're be terminated, they'll be fired.
They won't have jobs. Their families will suffer.
If all of this happens and the SLS has been a jobs program for
a lot of states, hundreds of employees, thousands of jobs
will be, they'll be fired because of this.
And if they're trying to cut government spending, I can
understand that. And these people, some of these
people may be shuffled around in the system.
But even if Boeing secures a short term extension for the SLS
program, the long term outlook remains uncertain.
NASA is already exploring alternative pathways for
Artemis, including increase reliance on SpaceX.
They've contracted SpaceX to develop human landing systems,
the Starship. The growing interest in
leveraging private sector launch capabilities for future lunar
missions, too. Because they're going to send
Rovers and they're going to send all sorts of equipment.
And if Blue Origin can, Jeff Bezos's rocket company can send
things to the moon just like SpaceX can, at a fraction of the
cost of the SLS, because they need to build infrastructure up
there too. You can't just send people the
moon to live and not have water and shelter and the things that
we take for granted down here and food.
You can't send that send people up there without those things.
Same to Mars. You can't send people to Mars
without all those things. You have to build a year plus of
infrastructure for the Martians that will be Martians, the
people that live on Mars for over a year.
You know, because the the gateway back, it takes so long.
It's about nine months before a return trip can happen.
So they need a reliable commercial partner to build the
systems and also send the systems to Mars.
Jeff Bezos has historically talked about people living and
working in space. And with Blue Origin, he can
make that dream come true. He's been talking about it since
he was a little boy. You know, the first thing that
he wanted to do instead of Amazon was try to get people to
live in and work in space. He was trying to find ways to do
that before he just happened upon Amazon.
He had this idea of like, hey, why don't we send books through
the mail And it worked. And now he has all the money to
build his Blue Origin company, which is his lifelong dream.
So Elon and Jeff Bezos, 2 of the richest people in the world have
rocket companies and those commercial rocket companies,
they're shaking hands with Donald Trump right now.
Both of them. They're both of the
inauguration. Big tech was at the inauguration
and we know how that works. We all know how the government
works. You're buddy buddy with
somebody, you get in their ear. And if you're influential like
Elon Musk, of course people want to be your friend.
They trust you because you have the track record of succeeding.
Same with Jeff Bezos. You're a winner and people want
to surround themselves with winners and they want to be on
the winning team. So if they know that Jeff Bezos
and Elon Musk can produce a product that can send people to
the moon and Mars, of course they're going to get behind
them. Of course Boeing, even though
they've been leader in the aerospace industry for decades,
the SLS program cost way too much money.
It's it takes years to build 1 rocket.
Elon has flown 7 rockets in the time that the SLS rocket has
flown one now. The SLS rocket went to the moon,
went around the moon, and came back down to Earth in the
capsule that was on top of the rocket made that made that trip.
Not the rocket itself, but the rocket propelled it around the
earth, around the moon. Now Starship hasn't made it to
orbit. Starship hasn't made it to the
moon. Starship hasn't made it out of
the Earth's gravitational pull. So using a Starship at this
point, canceling SLS and using Starship alone is a little bit
tricky considering it might not work.
I'm not doubting the engineers of SpaceX.
I'm not doubting Elon Musk. I'm just saying there's a
possibility that something doesn't work out.
They'll find they'll they'll probably figure out the
engineering of it in the logistics of it.
But if something doesn't work out and they throw away the SLS
program, it's, it's a doomsday scenario for us going back to
the OR back to the moon, from Earth and to Mars.
But I think SpaceX can do it unless something dramatically
happens that would cancel Starship, which I don't see it
happening or postponing Starship.
The only thing I can think of is an accident with the ship itself
with the last flight when the ship blew up over the Indian
Ocean. There's some islands that were
scattered with debris. There were debris, like hit
cars, hit houses, reportedly so. And we don't know if those
reports were real because they're still investigating.
And the FAA has to investigate all that stuff.
So if that continues to happen, if they can't figure out the
Starship for some reason, then, you know, in that regard, if it
keeps having accidents, then they will, you know, FAA will
ground the Starship until they figure out what's wrong with it.
And the FAA historically has been on Spacex's side.
No matter what anybody tells you, the FAA is slow to move as
it always has been. It's a government agency.
They usually are slow to move. But they have been working with
SpaceX for 1213 years now, and they have the best interest of
SpaceX at heart. So they will work with SpaceX to
figure out flights and safety and Starship will be able to fly
again. And they will eventually, I
believe if this all works out, if the tanker system works out
with SpaceX, they'll be able to dock in orbit, refuel, and then
send people to the moon and eventually to Mars.
And I don't see why in the future.
SpaceX and Elon Musk has said this as well, that in a few
years when the transfer happens, there's a possibility that
SpaceX could just launch a Starship there.
It's harder to see in orbit than it is to send something to
another planet. The the physics of it to like
stop a rocket, basically stop your momentum and it's like get
into like the perfect orbit. It's harder to do that than
this, to send something to another planet and catch their
orbit, because you can catch their orbit from, you know,
there's a little bit more leeway.
You should be on track to do it properly.
But you have all that time to fix things.
And going to space, it takes, you know, a couple minutes to
get to orbit. So, you know, you have the same
amount of time to get into Earth's orbit or you have two
minutes, two or three minutes to get into Earth's orbit.
You know, because that propels you so fast.
It takes a little bit longer than that.
Of course, you know, I'm just saying two or three minutes
because that's the flight time of the initial launch.
But that's how much thrust you have until you get to orbit.
So trying to stop all that getting to like a certain spot
to get into orbit, incredibly difficult.
But going flying yourself all the way to Mars takes nine
months to get there. So how long they had?
Nine months. You have nine months to course
like course correct and recalculate.
So SpaceX can figure out that tanker system, which will take
12 to 20 refuels in orbit and then fly a Starship once it's
docked in orbit. Once they can figure out this
orbit thing, once it's docked in orbit, then they can send people
to Mars. And I don't even know if the
Artemis program is going to be changed from the moon to just
focus on Mars. That's that's still up in the
air too. Right now it's pretty cemented
in then NASA will stay on the moon.
They'll send people to the moon to live and work on the moon
because it's our nearest neighbor.
And it's it's a good testing ground for all the systems that
we would need to get to Mars. But the overall huge mission is
going to Mars. And that's what Elon and Jeff
Bezos has been working on for have been working on for their
whole lives, basically. Hey, thank you so much for
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