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Elon Musk believes that SpaceX has an 80% chance of having
fixed the engine bait issues that caused explosions in
Starship's last two flights. So he talked about the 9th
Starship flight South Texas recently.
As a question though, how close is Starship making a reliable
and reusable vehicle that can actually support future Moon in
Mars missions? Now the current Starship test
flight is focused on collecting data, especially at about the
spacecraft's heat shield tiles, teams experimenting with
different tile coatings, fabrication methods and
attachment techniques to see what performs best during the
intense heating of re entry. SpaceX also wants to ensure that
they have addressed the failures in the upper stage engine Bay
that previously led to explosions.
Now, this is going to be a step by step approach to making
Starship ready for repeated use, and they're going to continue
doing this until they get it right now.
Elon Musk said the team discovered that they needed to
tighten bolts connecting the thrust chamber to the injector
head after each engine firing. During earlier tests, some bolts
loosened slightly, creating tiny gaps that allowed fuel and
oxygen to miss where they should not have.
Now, that unwanted mixture led to engine explosions.
Now, Musk also admitted that while an 80% solution feels
good, the team won't reach full confidence without redesigning
certain engine parts. Now, SpaceX already demonstrated
that it can reuse boosters efficiently.
Starship's booster is designed to return to the launch site,
get caught by a tower, and reset directly out of the launch
stand. Now, Elon Musk has pointed out
that this method eliminates the need to transport the booster
back from a drone ship, saving days and reducing the work
needed between flights. Starship's design goal as
immediate reflight readiness, we're In principle, propellant
loading could begin just minutes after the booster returns and
lands at the chopsticks. Now, SpaceX aims to fly upgraded
Raptor 3 engines by the end of this year.
The new engine design eliminates the need for heat Shields around
the thrust chamber and the turbo pump.
This change will simplify the booster in upper stage
structure. The new design exposes more of
the engine hardware, creating a cleaner look of fewer parts that
can burn off. And this pushes his team hard to
remove any unnecessary secondary structures that could cause
problems during flight. Now Starship remains Spacex's
most important bet for the next decade.
It's a key to building a fully reusable orbital launch system,
something no one has ever achieved.
So things like the space shuttle, which despite its
reusable parts, proved very expensive and difficult to
refurbish. The shuttle's high cost per
flight and a Saturn 5 as well, which could carry four times the
payload. But it was expendable.
Now, the success of Starship will unlock the ability to build
a civilization, civilization on Mars.
It's kind of like the Union Pacific Railroad on California's
growth. We need to get supplies to Mars,
and SpaceX and Starship are the way to do it.
How do you get people to Mars? Right now you don't really do
it. There's no ship that can take
you there without extensive overhauls.
There's this is a reliable transportation that goes to
Mars. It's the foundation for creating
new opportunities from essential industries here on Earth all the
way to Mars and everyday businesses on Mars eventually,
and that's going to take a long time, That's not going to be in
our lifetime. There's not going to be a
Starbucks on Mars, by the way. But Spacex's main job is to
solve the transportation challenge so others can focus on
building everything else. A society will need to SpaceX,
build the Rockets and the transportation to get the stuff
there. And other companies will build
the stuff and the businesses that will be on Mars.
And so Elon Musk has also stated recently that the US space
program should aim beyond returning to the moon.
He believes that Mars should be the goal, given that the US
reached the moon more than half a century ago, over 50 years
ago, and the current lunar plans are lacking ambition and future
missions should aim for something more advanced than the
Apollo program. He thinks that people shouldn't
just go collect rocks on the moon anymore.
If the US goes back to the moon, Elon Musk thinks building a
permanent base would be a meaningful next step.
They can also launch rockets from the moon.
They can. They can mind the water ice on
the moon and make propellant and then send those rockets off into
space. Elon Musk also said that he
recently said that he's been spending too much time with
politics over the last year. The media coverage of his
political involvement, According to him, made it seem like he
larger distraction than it actually was.
But Elon Musk also said that he has now shifted his attention
back towards his companies, with SpaceX once again at the top of
his priorities. He described reducing his time
spent on government matters within the last few weeks.
Now Spacex's flight 10 is coming up, hopefully within the next
month. That's projected next month ish
and if the FAA is good and SpaceX Starship is being tested
at Massey's within the next week.
Booster is down at the launchpad and if they can get the booster
in the ship ready I don't see why they shouldn't be able to
launch it in around a month. Everything seems OK.
You know, if the FAA signs off on the next launch, that's great
and we'll start seeing signs of the launch as far as, you know,
the the test flight plans and also the no fly zones, no
boating zones, things like the keep out zones, basically we'll
start seeing those things pop up pretty soon.
But they're going to basically do the same thing they did with
Flight 9. There were some Starling
satellites that they wanted to launch with Flight 9, some dummy
test satellites that they didn't get to do because basically the
easiest part of the flight, which is the Bay door didn't
open. And you think to yourself, it's
a door. You just built this gigantic
rock that's around 400 feet tall that can launch into Earth's
orbit, can launch to the moon, into Mars, but you just can't
get the door right now. They didn't get it right in
Flight 9. Also, the booster exploded on
the way back down to Earth, and there's reason for that.
They wanted to push that booster, which is a reused
booster, the first time it's ever been reused.
They wanted to push it to its limits so they can test for
data. They want to see how far they
could push it and what kind of data they can collect with this
thing. And also, the ship blew up.
That's what we're talking about earlier with the leaks and that
caused the explosions. They have to figure that out.
And if they can figure this out, like Elon Musk said, there's an
80% chance that they can successfully do Flight 9's
mission and then move on to Flight 10 and 11.
So right now it's going to be 10, but they want to redo Flight
9's mission. Basically, except for the
expendable booster. They're going to send the
booster back to Starbase so they can keep testing the landings of
these boosters. No reason to land in the ocean
or in the Gulf. Nobody, nobody really wants to
dig that thing out or pull that thing out again.
They want to land that back at Starbase.
So when this flight 10 happens, booster will land, Starship will
make it to the Indian Ocean and do a soft landing in the Indian
Ocean. And if they can figure those two
things out, Flight 11, Flight 12, Flight 13, they're all going
to see. I don't know if there's going to
be an exponential growth here. They do need to do some really
interesting things for the next few flights, but I don't think
there's going to be a big jump as far as technology goes.
Elon Musk wants to land a ship back at Starbase by the end of
the year, but we're going to see how that goes.
The they've already landed a booster, but they also have to
orbit the Earth. You have to get into Earth
orbit, deorbit the ship. They have to also do in orbit
refueling. There's so many things that they
need to do in order to get the NASA contract, or they have the
NASA contract, but they need to get the Starship to the moon.
So they need to refuel in the Earth's orbit.
So there's incremental small steps along the way that they
need to do. It's not like the way that
somebody like Blue Origin does it, which builds the whole thing
and then launches it. They do all the tests in, you
know, on computers. They test all the scenarios they
do in wind tunnels that they do, you know, all those things.
So they do all the tests before they fly.
And basically SpaceX is testing as they fly.
They're gathering data as they fly.
They think it's the best way, Blue Origin Ula etcetera.
I think it's a different way to do it.
It's still a good way, though. You know ula sends things to
Mars. That's cool.
SpaceX hasn't sent a Starship to Mars yet, so there's a direct
comparison. And Starship is built for humans
to go to Mars Ula does not have a plan for that.
So what we're expecting for Flight 10 is going to be pretty
impressive. But SpaceX continues to move
forward, making Starship the first truly reusable orbital
rocket, while also working to resolve the final technical
challenges with engines and heat Shields from Flight 7-8 and
Nine. And hopefully Flight 10 coming
up will be a success. Hey, thank you so much for
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