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 Space XS Starship rocket launched
successfully from Starbase in Texas.
This marks the 4th test flight aimed at missions to the Moon
and to Mars in the future. This rocket is 400 feet tall and
it flew over the Gulf of Mexico. It achieved a controlled
splashdown. This marks the longest and most
successful flight for Starship to date.
Now, another thing that happened which was very cool is Spacex's
Super Heavy booster did a soft landing successfully in the Gulf
of Mexico, which is an important milestone for the company.
Now, the Starship, known as the most powerful launch vehicle
ever built, completed its fourth test flight with a successful
landing, burn, and splashdown by the booster.
This flight received approval from the FAA and included
upgrades and software changes to enhance performance.
Now, despite some of these challenges in the Starship
lineup, the flight was successful, showcasing the
rocket's resilience and the potential for future space
exploration to the moon and beyond.
Now for the first time, both elements of the nearly 400 foot
tall rocket launched successfully from Spacex's
Starbase facility near Brownsville, TX and return to
Earth for controlled splashdowns at sea.
This demonstration paves the way for future Starship test
flights. They'll bring the booster and
eventually the upper stage back to land at Starbase for rapid
reusability. Now the two stage rocket took
off from Starbase it's 7:50 AM CDT and headed E over the Gulf
of Mexico with more than £15,000,000 of thrust, roughly
twice the power of NASA's Saturn 5 rocket from the Apollo lunar
program of the 1960s and 70s. And the success of the flight is
crucial for SpaceX as it aims to develop a fully reusable
transportation system for crew and cargo to Earth orbit the
Moon, to Mars, and into the outer solar system.
Now, NASA also has a significant interest in Starship success
because the agency selected it to serve as a human rated lunar
Lander for the Artemis program, which aims to ferry astronauts
to and from the surface of the moon.
However, dozens more Starship flights will be necessary before
it can carry astronauts, likely not before the latter part of
this decade. Now the 4th flight of Starship
made major strides to bring us closer to a rapidly reusable
future, said SpaceX on its website.
Also said its accomplishments will provide data to drive
improvements as we continue rapidly developing Starship into
a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry crew
and cargo to Earth orbit the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Now this flight was the 4th launch of a full size Starship
rocket and was the first to end with the booster in the ship
reaching Earth's surface in one piece.
While it wasn't perfect, the flight success cannot be
overstated. The payload for this test was
the data says SpaceX in Starship delivered.
The launch involved two of the 33 methane fueled Raptor engines
of the Super Heavy booster, failing one on ascent and 1:00
during the boosters final breaking burn just before
splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
And despite these failures, the remaining engines guided the
booster to a gentle splashdown after a vertical descent just
off the coast of Starbase about 7 1/2 minutes after liftoff.
Engineers identified a filter blockage in the lines feeding
liquid oxygen propellant into the Raptor engines as the cause
of the landing failure in March. However, this did not appear to
be a significant issue. On Thursday, SpaceX also made
another change to the booster descent by jettisoning the
Rockets hot staging ring where the Starship's upper stage
attaches to the Super Heavy booster for launch.
The Starship's upper stages 6 Raptor engines burned a few
seconds longer than planned to compensate for the boosters
performance shortfall. This adjustment put the ship on
the proper suborbital trajectory, reaching a peak
altitude of 132 miles before Earth's gravity pulled the 160
foot long vehicle back into the atmosphere around 47 minutes
after launch. During Spacex's third Starship
test flight in March, the scorching heat of re entry
destroyed the rocket as it descended into the upper asses
here over the Indian Ocean. Clogged thrusters caused the
ship to lose control of its orientation, leading to its
destruction, but this time, Starship maintained control
throughout the flight. Dazzling live views from cameras
aboard the rocket, relayed to the ground through Spacex's
Starlink broadband network, showed purple and orange plasma
pouring over the vehicle as it glided through the atmosphere
over the Indian Ocean. And although some ceramic
thermal protection tiles peeled away, the damage control flap
still functioned, allowing the vehicle to maintain control
during re entry. Starship made a controlled re
entry, successfully making it through the phases of peak
heating and Max aerodynamic pressure, and demonstrating the
ability to control the vehicle using its flaps while descending
through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
These were mission objectives as outlined by Elon Musk before the
launch. Finally, three of the Raptor
engines on Starship reignited, flipping the rocket from a belly
down orientation to a vertical position a few 100 feet above
the Indian Ocean. Despite these challenges, the
rocket managed a soft landing in the ocean.
And despite loss of many tiles at a damage flap, Starship made
it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean.
Congratulations to SpaceX on an epic achievement.
Now SpaceX employees celebrated at the company's headquarters in
Hawthorne, CA. It was a little bit of use your
imagination as you were going down with what we could actually
see, but we were able to hear the ship do its landing burn,
said a spokesperson for SpaceX during the flight.
And Starship made it through re entry and did its first ever
landing burn from South Texas to the other side of the Earth.
Starship is in the water. SpaceX engineers were
particularly interested in observing Starship's heat shield
performance during Thursday's flight.
The thermal barrier consists of around 18,000 hexagonal ceramic
tiles, similar to those used on NASA space shuttle temperatures
during re entry can reach 2600 Fahrenheit.
Now that's hot enough to melt aluminum, a metal commonly used
in launch vehicles. Engineers selected a stainless
steel alloy for Starship's primary construction.
This material, though heavier than aluminum or carbon fiber,
is strong at cryogenic temperatures, an important
characteristic because Starship consumes methane and liquid
oxygen chilled to several 100° below 0.
Stainless steel also has a higher melting temperature than
other materials commonly used in rockets.
For a reusable ship, you're coming in like a meteor.
You want something that does not melt at a low temperature.
You want something that melts at a high temperature.
And this is where steel is extremely good as well.
Now looking ahead, the 5th test flight of Starship could occur
within a couple of months. The FAA ordered mishap
investigations following the 1st 3 Starship launches, but this
likely won't be necessary this time.
SpaceX has already test fired the ship for the next flight,
and the booster could be hot fired soon.
The successful soft splashdown of a Super Heavy booster in the
Gulf of Mexico has made Musk confident enough to aim for an
onshore landing next time, he said.
I think we should try to catch the booster with the Mechazilla
arms next flight. We'll see how that works out.
Other priorities for the next phase of Starship testing
include demonstrating the ability to restart a Raptor
engine in space. This capability is crucial for
putting Starship into a stable low Earth orbit and guiding it
back for reentry. Now, once in orbit, Starship
could deploy Starlink Internet satellites and perform refueling
tests necessary for SpaceX to fulfill NASA's lunar Lander
contract. Now, SpaceX may also make
changes to the Starship heat shield to address the loss of
tiles encountered on Flight 4. Engineers will investigate the
reasons behind the two Raptor engine failures during the
launch and landing of the booster, aiming to refine the
design and improve future flights reliability.
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