Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The
Boring Company, and Neuralink. I'm your host, Will Walden, and
on this episode we're going to be talking about Starship, IFT
4, IFT 5, possibly IFT 6, but mainly we're going to be talking
about an environmental group that's going to be possibly
contesting Starbase down in Texas.
Could they be cancelling Starship launches in Texas?
We're going to take a look at that in a second, but let's
first talk about I, FT4 and IFT 5.
IFT 4 went off without a hitch, almost.
There's a little bit of a hitch. The landing of the booster was
great. The way that the ship came back
into the atmosphere looked great, but there were some heat
tile adjustments that need to be made for I, FT-5.
And Elon Musk has talked about this a little bit.
He said that the new heat tiles for I, FT-5 will be a little bit
better, be able to reduce the friction, reduce the heat on the
ship. And also they're going to be
putting like a secondary layer, like a secondary skin underneath
those tiles. So if there's any sort of
leakage from the plasma that goes through those tiles and
hits the actual ship, there could be another material there
that will hopefully stop it from rupturing the stainless steel
construction of the ship fuselage.
Not only that, they're going to take a look at the hinges, where
the wings and the hinges of the ship itself connect, and they're
going to be making some adjustments to those.
Because as you can see from the footage from IFT 4, when it
comes back into the atmosphere, that's kind of where things went
bad, but it made it, so it's OK, right?
But they're trying to get this perfect.
So when they put people in this, it's going to be a whole
complete safe ship. And they need to put Starship in
this category of safe for people because they need to send it to
the moon for the Artemis program, Artemis 3 in
particular. And of course SpaceX thinks
they're going to be able to do it in a few years.
But experts around the globe have said numerous times it's
probably going to be 20-30. And not just because of
Starship, but because of NASA and also Axiom putting
everything together and making sure that all the I's are
dotted, all the T's are crossed before they actually launch to
the moon. It's a big undertaking.
You can't just stick somebody in a rocket and hope it works.
You have to make sure that it's completely safe.
And if it's not completely safe, they have to not do it.
So there, there was a little margin for error, but this is
going to be a margin that SpaceX doesn't want to deal with.
So they're going to get this right in the next few flights
for the ship. Now, Elon also mentioned
something about landing the booster back at Starbase instead
of in the Gulf of Mexico. Did they get enough data?
Elon mentioned this in a in a post that he had on X the other
day. He did a live stream and he was
watching some games, watching some stuff and he just talked,
started talking about Starship. Basically.
He talked about will they be catching IFT 5 and he said they
don't quite have enough data yet to see if they're going to catch
this thing, but there's a possibility that they still
will. So what Elon was saying he got
excited after ift 4 landed after everything looked great he's
like we're going to try to lot we're trying to catch it in IFT
5 everybody blew up I went nuts I was like no this can't happen
like you're going to ruin everything can't do it.
I freaked out. So IFT 5 Elon's, like if we have
enough data that supports that we can actually land this thing,
we're going to do it. So on the way back to the
landing, the, the explosive mechanism that destroys the
booster on its way back down to Earth gets saved, right?
So at some time during the flight it gets saved.
So will they be able to change that?
Will the FAA be able to change that before this next flight?
Will they have to make they have to make sure that they destroy
the the booster if they get enough data that says it might
not make it back or they might do a landing in the Gulf of
Mexico again. So we're going to see that's
where we're at right now. We're going to see if we're
going to wait and see what Elon and SpaceX say.
But Elon said they're going to try to launch this thing in
July. How could they launch this in
July? Like within a month?
The turn around could be pretty quick if I mean, if that's the
case, if he thinks, but he's also said that in the past,
right? So Elon has said that in the
past that they're going to launch this thing in a month,
which of course they they've never done before.
So could this be the first time that they do a one month turn
around for Starship? That's another thing we have to
think about. One month turn around for
Starship would be incredible. They have other boosters ready,
They have a ship ready. They've done some testing
already, but they haven't done final testing.
They haven't done a final stack, they haven't done AD stack.
They haven't checked all the ground systems again, they're
just getting over IFT 4. They haven't even moved
everything to the pad yet and it's been a few days.
So what's happening? You know, if it were going to be
in a month, they would have that stuff down there already and
starting the testing out. So I don't think they're going
to make it in the month. I think they're going to be
close if they if they can figure it out really quick, They have
to pour through a bunch of data. They have to talk to the FAA to
get another license. You know, the, the incident
report for I FT3 was kind of it was pushed aside for the flight.
Why are they going to be doing that for IFT 4 two probably and
IFT 5 as well. So we're going to see what
happens with that. Right now it's a waiting game.
As much as everybody's excited about a July flight, I don't
think it's going to happen. I think we're going to be
getting like, you know, maybe, you know, maybe not an early
July flight, but maybe like a late July flight.
I think that might happen. So not quite a month, a little
bit over a month, I should say. So like a month and three weeks
or something like that. Could be the next flight of
Starship or a little bit longer. It could be two months.
They might have a lot of work to do and they might have to change
some things. So not only do they have the
hardware right, So we see the hardware testing on the outside.
We see the booster blast for the for the tests.
We also see the ship blast for the test.
You know, they check all the engines, make sure everything
works, make sure the ground systems work.
They cryogenically cool it. They make sure all of that
hardware works. But when you are inside of the
ship, there's electronics. And within those electronics
there's code. You know, the code that runs it.
It's important. And if something is a little bit
off, they might have to recode a bunch of stuff.
And sure, code is a little bit faster than building a rocket,
of course, but you got a debug code, you have to test it, you
have to QA it. There's all sorts of steps that
you have to do in order to make sure that the code works
properly every single time. So you don't get spaghetti code,
which is kind of a, it's a code word for just a bunch of garbage
code in there that nobody really wants or uses anymore.
Yeah, I got to have clean code. So every single flight they
probably look at the code and go, how can we improve?
You know, if they're not doing that, then I don't see, you
know, why did they, why they, why wouldn't they do that?
They have to do that every flight.
How can we make the code better to make things more efficient?
We don't want to use as many lines of code.
You know, we want to use as few lines of code as possible.
The best part is no part, right? So I have T5, possibly late
July. That's what I'm guessing.
Let me know in the comments what you think, what you think about
that. I think late July, good estimate
for IFT 5 flight, maybe early July too or early August.
So that'll be a hot one. That'll be really hot 1.
So I also want to talk to you about this.
There's another thing. Starship launch damage, shore
bird nests, environmental survey finds.
OK, so we've had some stuff like this before, right?
Environmentalists love to hate on Starship and the surrounding
area because it's a protected environmental zone.
It's a protected beach. It's a they're in a protected
area, this giant rocket factory and giant rockets are in a
protected area. So wildlife here is very
precious now. Piping plovers and turtles and
things like that are protected species.
Now here I'm going to zoom in a little bit for you so you can
see some of this text said last week, launch of Starship from
South Texas damaged or destroyed numerous shore bird nests in the
area surrounding the private space company's launch
facilities, according to a new report that also noted other
environmental damages. The nonprofit Coastal Band Bays
and Estuaries Program said its survey found that each of nine
nests it monitored South of the launchpad had missing and broken
eggs after Thursday morning's launch.
OK, ongoing here. What's they say down here?
Ongoing and annual monitoring. A Boca Chigari has documented
shifts and overall reductions in shore bird nesting activity in
recent years since rocket testing and launch activity
began. OK, so they do surveys around
the Texas Parks and Wildlife Area, where SpaceX is planted,
where they where they have all of their facilities.
And this is what the environmentalists and the
environmental studies are going to be looking to do possibly in
the future. So if they can show enough
evidence that SpaceX is damaging endangered species under the
Endangered Species Act, some populations of snow plovers are
considered a near threatened species.
The Texas population is not among them, but the Snowy and
Wilson's plovers are, however, considered species of greatest
conservation need under the state Wild Wildlife Action Plan
monitored by the Texas Park and Wildlife Department.
OK, So what does that mean? It means there's really
endangered species near Starbase, and if SpaceX destroys
any of their habitats, they could be at fault and
environmental groups could sue them.
They could go to court for this. Could they possibly halt
Starship operations and launches from Starbase until SpaceX
figures this out and how to protect these animals?
The answer is probably. They've done it before.
Remember when they had the environmental study a little
while ago and it took them months and months to figure this
out. So Elon and company, along with
the government came to a conclusion that they didn't
really damage anything environmentally.
So they had to put in some measures to protect it so they
didn't damage it in the future. And that's kind of where we're
at with these environmental or endangered species here, is if
they can prove enough that SpaceX is destroying these
species of birds and becoming a detriment to them, they could
possibly halt production of Starships and halt launches of
Starbase while there's another environmental review.
Could this happen? If there's enough evidence?
I believe it could. I believe it could because if,
and they already did an environmental review, but it's
not unheard of to do numerous environmental reviews if there's
more evidence shown. It's not, it's not like court.
You don't go to court and you know, say if you did a crime,
you're like, Oh yeah, you got off, you know, like, cool,
you're not guilty. OK, so then you then you're
free, right? The court said you're free, but
there's more evidence because this is an ongoing thing.
So they said at the time SpaceX had altered a wild or a habitat
on a Wildlife Refuge. So if they're building a case
here with if they can do hundreds of, if they can show
hundreds of pieces of evidence for this, could they halt
Starbase for a little while? SpaceX, as you can see in the US
Fish and Wildlife Service in Texas Parks and Wildlife
Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Of course they wouldn't. This could be a big deal.
Could be a big deal if they, if they're shown to destroy some
endangered species, either A, they would just pay a fine,
which is probably going to be the case.
Probably going to pay a fine to be like, oh man, we didn't know.
We didn't know this was going to happen.
Or if they do it enough, they pay a bunch of fines, which, you
know, they should pay for what they did wrong.
Of course everybody should. That's the right thing to do.
But if they really destroy some stuff and then these habitats
and these birds never come back and SpaceX is at fault.
Look, I'm with you. I understand we need to go to
Mars, right? We need to go to Mars.
And I, I want us to go to Mars. But we only live on Earth,
right? We live on Earth.
We should protect it and take care of it.
This is our home. We don't live on Mars yet.
So at least protect this stuff. And I, I think what was what
would actually happen is the Department of Wildlife in the
Texas Parks Wildlife Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service and
SpaceX. But I'll come to a conclusion of
how to protect these these species and what can SpaceX do
even more than they've already done to protect these species.
And I think that's the case. What would happen here as
opposed to them shutting down operations?
Unless it's really bad, If it's really bad, then SpaceX could do
something. You know, it could be, could be
something really bad. So we'll see.
We'll see in the, that's pretty much where we're at right now.
We'll see what happens, see if there's any sort of if there's
any sort of Wildlife Conservation department and
these environmentalist groups, if they talk to each other and
if there's a lawsuit, we'll see. But I'm excited for IFT 5
because it's not going to happen before IFT 5.
I'm excited for IFT 5I. I would love for them to catch
the booster, but I don't think it's going to happen.
I don't think it's, I don't think it's worth it.
That's not worth it for SpaceX to do that.
So I don't think IFT 5 is going to be a catch.
I think IFT 6 is going to be a catch, maybe IFT 7, maybe
they're going to wait a little bit, which they probably should.
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