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 Neuralink.
And I'm. Your host.
Will Walden if you want uninterrupted episodes of the
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notes. This morning SpaceX launched
their massive Starship rocket and they completed 1/2 world
journey after launching from South Texas Starbase Boca Chica.
Now this is a low Earth orbit launch.
It's a crucial capability for future launches for Starship,
and the launch occurred from Starbase at about 8:25 AM
Central time. This is the third iteration of
the full stack Starship rocket flight.
It's 397 feet tall and its width is bigger than a 747 jumbo jet
is huge. It's about 30 feet around and it
had its take off time adjusted to ensure the surrounding waters
were clear of any vessels. So people in boats were hanging
out in the no fly zone and SpaceX had to take extra little,
a little bit extra time to move those boats.
Get those boats out of there. They were supposed to launch in
about 7:30 AM Central time, so 8:30 AM my time and Eastern
Time. And they had to push it back
about an hour to get those boats out of there, which is very
crucial, very beneficial to those boats because it's very
dangerous to be under the giant shrapnel tube that is Starship.
That is if it didn't work out right.
But this launch went pretty well actually.
So this flight built on previous test, there's marked
improvements, and now they're moving closer to operational
satellite launches for the Starlink.
They're going to accelerate Starlink satellite deployments,
and this will contribute to the company's expansive network of
satellites orbiting the Earth right now and also accelerate
their bottom line. They make money from Starlink
and if they can deploy hundreds of Starlinks more per month,
they will have more coverage and people will be able to get the
the coverage more and they'll have better coverage for the
people on the Earth and therefore make more money.
So Elon Musk celebrated this launch.
He's prideful about what happened with the team.
He said Starship reached orbital velocity, which is a huge deal
for a Starship because the next, probably the next phase is to
get it to orbit. IFT 4 to get it to orbit, make
sure that everything works right.
They open up the Hatch door today, they did a propellant
transfer demonstration. They closed the Hatch door.
It was a pretty big milestone, a bunch of little milestones that
were pretty big. And there's several firsts that
happened during this flight, and one of those was the payload
door. That happened.
The payload door opens and closes sort of like a Pez
dispenser. That's what they call it.
And that was that happened for about 20 minutes straight, and
there was also an internal transfer liquid oxygen
propellant. They're stepping stones towards
in orbit fuel refueling, which is a necessity for more extended
space missions, including the Artemis missions for NASA lunar
landings and also Mars missions. Now, not all objectives were
met, though. The Super Heavy booster failed
to execute a controlled splashdown leading to an
uncontrolled descent into the Gulf of Mexico, which is you
know, they plan for these things and they'll learn from it.
Additionally, a planned Raptor engine restart in space did not
occur with SpaceX yet to provide any explanation about why that
happened or why they didn't happen.
So Starship also allows for substantial payload
capabilities, promising to deliver up to 150 metric tons to
lower Earth orbit and an expendable configuration.
This capacity nearly double S to about 300 metric tons, which is
an absolutely massive amount of things to send to the Earth
orbit. It's it's incredible how much
300 tons, 300 metric tons of things are.
Now Musk is talking about Starship.
Recently he envisaged it as a cornerstone in his plan for
interplanetary human settlement, particularly Mars, and in the
shorter term, Starship will play a crucial role in satellite
deployment in an integral role in NASA's Artemis program for
lunar exploration. Starting with Artemis 3 in about
2028 probably, the flight demonstrated the reliability of
the Super heavy booster's 33 Raptor engines, all of which
performed great. The thrust powered the rocket on
its initial climb and subsequent trajectory over the Gulf of
Mexico, now approximately 2 minutes and 42 seconds post
launch, the booster began shutting down its engines,
initiating a hot staging process.
Now this technique, which was inspired by Russian rocketry,
allows for a seamless transition between stages, avoiding any
interrupted thrust. So basically the booster is
still going up and out and as that's happening the stages
start separating, but when they separate the ship actually
ignites its engines and it pushes the booster back a little
bit while also pushing the second stage, the Starship
vehicle itself up towards orbit faster.
Now the upper stage is 6 Raptor engines then propelled the
vehicle to a near orbital velocity reaching a peak
altitude of 144 miles and like Elon said, they did get to
orbital velocity. Eventually the design trajectory
ensured that the spacecraft would re enter the atmosphere
before completing a full orbit, preventing it from becoming
space debris. We don't want that.
We don't want it to burn up. We want to test all the systems
on the way back in. Now comparing the 1st 3 orbital
test flights of Starship though, a clear trajectory of
improvement is evident. The initial flight faced engine
failures and caused huge damage to the launchpad.
The second flight saw no engine failures, though a propellant
tank led to the Rockets destruction.
Now also the reliability of the Raptor engines has been
confirmed over the last two flights, addressing earlier
concerns regarding their performance.
This is a huge achievement for Space XS rocket technology.
It shows that they can continue to build these and they're on
the right track to build hundreds of these.
According to Elon Musk now on boards, cameras during this
flight were unprecedented, including the hot staging
process and the rocket. Its whole journey across the
gloom, their valuable insights into the rocket's performance
and the behavior in various phases of the flight for SpaceX,
but also we got to see them as well.
So that was a really, really great treat for all of us rocket
fans out there. And this flight was a success,
but it concluded over the Indian Ocean where Starship Re entered
the Earth's atmosphere and was ultimately destroyed.
But we also got great video of that.
So if you haven't seen that yet, please check it out on Spacex's
X account. But despite all the failures, it
was deemed the most successful today, fulfilling several
crucial objectives. And NASA's anticipation for this
mission stems from $4 billion investment in Starship for lunar
missions. The test represents a
significant step forwards for humans to return to the moon,
especially with that propellant transfer.
That's something they'll have to do for the Artemis missions to
get people back to the moon. Now SpaceX has several more
starships in production. They're continuing to aim for
test flights throughout the year.
Elon said he wants to have nine test flights.
Realistically, if they can get to 9 test flights, that would be
ridiculous. Everybody that I've talked to so
far in the Space Flight category has said six at best.
More than likely they'll have four more this year, but six at
the best. But if they can get nine, they
still have to get approval for the 9 as well, which they
probably will get approval now with each subsequent flight,
though, they're going to be refining Starships design and
capabilities every single time. The iterative process is crucial
for developing the future success of Starship, and every
single ship will be better, faster, more powerful, more
reliable, and be able to get things to low Earth orbit in a
more timely manner. And each test is a learning
opportunity. Hardware is evolving, Software
is evolving, The ground systems are all evolving every single
launch. And SpaceX advances its mission
of space exploration, and they're inching closer to its
goals of interplanetary travel and also habitation.
Every single launch of Starship. Hey, thank you so much for
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