Hey everybody, 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 I, FT 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 I FT4 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's 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. Where 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 it's safe 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 safe 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 I guess. One mainly is the booster in the
Gulf of Mexico, because that's gonna 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 Landit, sort of 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 IFT 4 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 and it wasn't prepared
to land yet. I'm just, I'm terrified that
they could blow something up or something could happen.
They have to Rudd as 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 going to be a wild ride.
It's going 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 Rudd, it
did a 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
opened 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 try to land the Starship in the Indian Ocean.
Now I have T4, 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 they're,
I think they're going to explode in the in the Indian Ocean.
So we're expecting that right 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
from the previous launch and then the FAA will look at it and
do a public safety review depending on that mishap
information. Any investigation information
that they send over, you know 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 I FT Four
and I FT-5 going forward. The flight path, if it's changed
the trajectory, FAA might assess the flight path and trajectory
to ensure a minimal risk to populated areas and also debris,
what could happen, you know, 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 kind of AI mean it's
a big rocket to us, but to the ocean it's nothing.
So I don't think Elon and company and the FAA 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 FAA
works on is the launch abort system, the Rudd system,
basically the FTS basically like 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 thing spun out of control, now they
know what they're doing. IFT 2, IFT 3, both worked great.
So the they're working forward, they're working with SpaceX on
this. EFA and SpaceX, they're 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 to know your comments down below.
I want to see what you say because I want to know how the
how the public feels about this. 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, SpaceX, they're killing it right now, They're
doing great work, so there's no reason why they should not
continue doing this in the future.
Now let me know in the comments down below.
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