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 Neurolink. I'm your host Will Walden, a
President Trump's inauguration Last night, Elon Musk and also
President Trump both highlighted that they want to send humans to
the surface of Mars within the next 4 years.
Now, Elon Musk has broad ambitions, grand ambitions to
send people to the Red Planet and he has since starting
SpaceX. The first thing that he wanted
to do when he first started SpaceX was build a rocket, or
buy a rocket, I should say, from Russia, that would send just a
plant to inspire people to visit the planet of Mars.
But that didn't go through. And then he started his own
space company, SpaceX, and we all know the history of that.
Now they're building a Starship down a star base in Boca Chica
Star Base, Texas. And The thing is massive, 400
feet tall. It is built specifically to go
to Mars. It is built specifically to go
to the moon. It's a deep space rocket.
Now it's also a low Earth orbit rocket, which will see it
sending Starlink satellites to Earth orbit.
So SpaceX can make trillions of dollars from the broadband
satellites, but that will fund future Starship development.
Now, President Trump wants this to happen in his four year term.
Elon Musk has stated numerous times, back in 2022 actually,
Elon has said that he wants to put boots on the surface of Mars
by 2029. Is this a realistic goal for
Elon? Is this a realistic goal for
SpaceX? And also, is this a realistic
goal for humanity? Now, the furthest that we've
been out in space is the moon. 12 people have stood on the
moon, have done science on the moon, have dug holes in the
moon, driven Rovers, played golf and jumped around, fallen over
things that humans do on the moon.
But we're going to be going back there for the Artemis missions.
And NASA thinks the Artemis missions are an important factor
for us as humanity to get to Mars.
Now, if that's the case, you know, NASA wants to send people
to the moon in 2028, probably 20-30 ish probably is the best
bet that we're going to be sending people back to the moon
due to budget constraints, scheduling.
I mean, so let's just let's break this down a little bit.
They're making space suits, Axiom is making space suits for
this. Other companies are making the
the lunar outpost, which will be orbiting the lunar orbiter,
which will be orbiting the moon. And they have to have a Lander,
right? So they have to have people that
land on the moon, but they also have to have a big rocket to
launch those people to the moon's orbit where they will,
that'll be on the SLS rocket. They'll be going to the moon's
orbit from the SLS and joining up with Spacex's Starship in the
orbit. And then SpaceX will lower them
down to the surface of the moon where they do science discovery,
all the things that we did before on the moon.
They'll be doing them again. And there's a buggy that's
that's going to be built as well.
And it's in the process of being built right now, which will be
pretty cool for people to move around on the moon.
But what is that? How does that translate into
Mars? One of the things was we have to
get people to Mars and get them home, right?
So one of the things that we're going to be doing on the moon is
trying to make in situ fuel for a Lander.
And in order to do that, you have to use ice, make it into
hydrogen, make some liquid oxygen, and therefore you make
that out of the ice. You may have a a production
facility up there where you make that into some rocket fuel and
you get back into the moon's orbit and launch yourself back
towards Earth. Is that realistic for people to
do that within the time frame that Elon and Trump are in
office? That's four years from now.
Right now it's 20252029 is when Elon wants to send people to
Mars, and if we don't have the ability to do in situ fuel on
the moon, there's no way as of right now that Elon and his crew
have planned or at least published in any way how they
would get people back from the surface of Mars.
Now they're still testing Starship.
They just launched flight 7 with a block 2 Starship on top of a
booster. The booster made it back to star
base totally fine, landed on the chopstick arms and can be
refurbished. Not reflown yet.
We don't think of this one's going to refly but the ship
itself. The Starship deteriorated.
It blew up over the Indian Ocean.
There is debris scattered for hundreds of miles.
Now The thing is, Starship doesn't have an eject mechanism
either. And this isn't even the people
Starship yet. This is the cargo Starship,
which is specifically designed to just launch Starlink
satellites into orbit. So going for and I'm not a hater
here. I want this to be known that I'm
not a hater of SpaceX. I've spent over a year or about
a year down at star base as an on the ground reporter on the
side of the road filming Starship.
I'm a huge fan of space exploration.
I'm a huge fan of SpaceX. So don't get me wrong here.
So when they're building these Starships and they will build
them relative. I mean, as far as rocket go,
rockets go, they built them extremely fast.
They could build, you know, tens, 1520 of them in a year.
How many launches can they do a year?
Well, that depends on how many accidents they have along the
way. So because of this incident
report that needs to be done because this Starship blew up,
it's going to possibly set them back a few months.
And every few months that they're set back, even though
the Rockets are ready, you know, pretty soon the Rockets will be
ready to fly. Elon Musk said about four weeks
between the last flight, the flight 7 and flight A.
He said about a, a month before the next hardware is ready.
And I believe him. It'll be about a month before
they get all the, the testing done and they're in, they're
tested. Most of it, the boosters been
tested, the ship's been tested already.
So they're going to continue testing and move him down to the
launch tower as soon as possible.
Now, the FAA and the incident report, this is for current
events. So we have to really think about
what's happening right now and then think about what could
happen for the next six months to a year before anything
happens with Artemis or even getting star links into orbit.
The Block 2 Starship, there was a leak of some sort and it
exploded. Elon thought, thinks they can
fix it out. There's going to be a fire
suppression systems added, There's going to be venting
added. So there's a possibility that
they fix this for the next flight.
But if they don't, that would push them back a few more months
too. And also, this incident report
is something that SpaceX does. So SpaceX figures out what
happened to the Starship, exactly what happened to the
Starship. No guessing.
They figure out everything in fine minute detail.
They reported to the FAA, and if the FAA is OK with the result of
that investigation, then the FAA will allow them to fly Starships
again. Could the FAA put a lot of
pressure on Starship and on Elon Musk and SpaceX?
Yes, they could. With the Trump administration
trying to, I wouldn't say dismantle these operations, but
kind of tone it down a little bit so they can allow these
launches to happen at a faster pace.
The FAA might have to step back a little bit.
And it depends on, you know, if there's executive orders issued
or if Elon and company, because Elon is really close with the
president. Elon has doge, Elon has in his
pocket right now the the most wealthy person in the world is
right next to the president. So back door deals going on,
they talk a lot. And I'm not, you know, it's not
conspiracy stuff here. This is just what happens to
people. You know, it's a job.
So when people talk to other people and Elon's like, hey, do
you want to be the person that sends people to Mars?
Do you want to be the president while humans set foot on Mars?
This will go down in history for the rest of humanity.
How can we get this done? How can we get these people to
Mars on your term? Four years.
They have four years to build a ship.
They can send people to Mars and they can survive everything from
the Earth all the way to Mars. Can you build that ship?
I believe SpaceX could do it. Is it going to take a lot of
time? Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely. It's going to take a lot of
time. Can they send an uncrewed cargo
mission within the next few years?
Possibly. There's a window for them to
open up travel in 2026. But if they missed that deadline
in 2026 to send anything to Mars and Elon wants to send cargo in
a, you know, to the to orbit Mars or possibly a few Starships
to land on Mars, the next launch window is in late 2028 into
early 2029. And if they miss that window,
it's another 26 months. So if they don't do this, this
is a rapid iteration of Starship, 4 years of building
this thing. It's been about 10:00-ish years.
I'm gonna this broad spectrum here. 10:00-ish years of them
from the very beginning of like the planning stages of Starship
until now. Now we see physical starships
launching, We see physical starships blowing up.
We also see the booster not landing properly.
We, you know, and this is early, early development right now too.
So I'm not throwing any shade at these guys.
And the, the fact that we're still in early development means
if they have 100 launches in a year, which good shot, well
said, They have to do in order to be safe.
You know, they want to do thousands of launches to be safe
in order for people to be inside of a Starship.
They haven't even launched a human Starship yet.
They don't. They can't even get the cargo
Starship right. Which isn't a bad thing because
we all know it's iterative design and we just have to take
that into consideration. Do I want them to do it?
Absolutely. I want them to launch uncrewed
ships in 2026. I want them anything they could
send anything. It doesn't have to come back.
You know, it doesn't have to come back to Earth because if
they don't figure that part out, the coming back to Earth.
But if they figure out how to launch and land something on
Mars, it took NASA decades to figure out how to launch and
land something on Mars successfully in the way they did
it. If you remember, they did it in
numerous ways. If it was a small Lander, they
surrounded it with basically Lander bubble wrap.
You know, the, there was a Rover and it had balloons around it.
And as it fell into, onto the surface of Mars, it bounced and
the, the balloons deflated basically when they came to a
stop. And also the seven minutes of
terror, which is one of the Rovers that had a sky crane.
So it was a hovering sky crane that dropped the Rover from
chains basically and lowered it down to the surface of Mars.
Now can you get a 40 story building?
Actually it's a 25 story building.
This is about 200 plus feet tall to land vertically on the
surface of Mars with no landing gear.
Because right now Starship doesn't have landing gear.
What they want to do is make an in situ landing pad for Starship
to land. There's no landing gear right
now. We haven't seen any landing gear
other than the Moon variant, the lunar variant of Starship, and
we haven't seen any indication that the Mars Starship would
have any landing gear. So how are they going to do this
by 2029? Because they're not going to
build another. They're not going to build a
tower on Mars, of course. Could they build a land?
Could they send things in this first cargo mission or the 1st
cargo missions to make an Institute landing area for
Starship on Mars? Could they just land on the
rocky surface of Mars? And there's the possibility, but
how do they do that without damaging the rocket itself or
the engines? Because imagine those Raptor
engines floating down to the surface of Mars, and as it's
floating down, it's kicking up rocks and dust and debris, and
those could kick up and destroy one of the engines.
Those astronauts are stranded there forever.
They would likely die on Mars. There's no coming back.
There's no rescue missions. When you go to Mars, you have to
wait for the next launch window. And if you can't make it for the
26 months, watch the movie The Martian.
That's very similar to what would happen.
You'd have to use whatever tools you have available to you, or
you have to use whatever food is available to you to grow more
food. But if you can do uncrewed
starships beforehand, you could make that a possibility now.
There's so many logistics to do. Could they send people around
Mars in the time that Trump is in office?
4 years for people to fly around Mars.
Remember, the first flights around the moon weren't
spectacular. There were just people in pods
flying around the moon. The pods themselves flew around
the moon just to see if it would work.
Their test pilots. These people, their test pilots,
the first people to fly around the moon.
It's going to be a whole different situation then what
happens in Mars. At Mars 20.
It takes months to get to Mars, 6 to 9 months to get to Mars,
and therefore 6 to 9 months to get to Mars.
And you also will do a fly by. You probably have a crew member
of five crew members with you, four or five crew members with
you. It's going to be a, it's going
to be a long trip. And could you imagine, just
think about this, you go on a road trip with your family and
you're gone for, you know, maybe it takes you a day or two, a day
or two. And you know, you get to your
destination and by that time you're exhausted, right?
And like you get to the destination after two or three
days of driving in a car, you're bored, you're exhausted and you
just want to chill for a little bit.
You know, you're excited though, right?
But imagine doing that for nine months.
That's like staying in your room, your bedroom, because it's
not going to be a big space. But think about that.
Like, could you do it yourself? Astronauts do it on the
International Space Station all the time.
They spent about a year up there.
So could they spend nine months to get there and then nine
months to get home? That's, you know, over two
years. You know, it's around 2 years.
So yeah, it's going to be A, it's going to be a tough one,
like a year and a half in flight to go to Mars.
And then you'd probably park in an orbit, either A, around the
moon or B, around Earth when you come back.
So you'd have to park in orbit. And then because they're not
going to have landing gear, they're not going to have any
way for these people to land Starship unless they figure out
a way for it to flip to the flip maneuver and land on the surface
on the chopsticks, which they're working on.
Elon says he wants to do it in the next few flights.
So if they can figure that out and they can use a very dumped
down version of a Starship to go to Mars with just a few
portholes, you know, because what we see from the renders are
huge windows on the nose cone. But that's not going to happen
for the first flight. There's no way they have.
They don't know how to do the technology for that yet.
They're still working on that. They're working on all of this
behind the scenes, but it hasn't been tested and it won't be
tested. At least if they're going to be
flying in within four years. They have to test this for the
2026 flight. So in about a year, they have to
be able to fly a full Starship with Windows.
You know the full, the full thing where people will fly in
it to Mars in order to test it just to send cargo there.
And then by 2029 20 late 20/28/2020 9:00 they have to
have a full rocket ready to go. Now, mind you, they can send
things like the window is a window where it's the fastest to
get there, right? They can send things before and
after take a little bit longer to get there, but they could do
it. They could possibly do it.
So it takes nine months to get there at the fastest, 6-9 months
the fastest time. And if it's not the fastest time
or in the fastest window, that could be, you know, a year to
get there. And that's, you know, that's
still something that they should test for.
And if they can launch, you know, they have two launch
towers at Starbase, pretty soon they're going to be the second
tower will be a fully operational.
And when that's fully operational, they will be able
to launch two rockets, I'm assuming not simultaneously, but
within a specific launch window of each other, probably within
24 hours of each other. So they'll be able to crank
these things out at a phenomenal rate, have two or three launches
per week at the best. I mean, that would be, that
would be remarkable if they got to that point.
Making the Raptor engines, that's their choke point.
If they can reuse the engines, you know they're going to be
able to reuse the boosters once they get that nailed, and they
can reuse every single booster. Then it'll be just making ships
and engines. So the boosters will be fine for
10 flights and making more ships is the you know is the would be
the choke point at that at that time.
Because having the the engines being reusable and the booster
be reusable and eventually the Starship being reusable.
The top part that will be clutch in doing the testing that they
need in order to fly people to Mars.
Now, are they going to get to that in the next year so they
can ship a cargo ship to the surface of Mars or around Mars
orbit? That's a wait and see kind of
thing. They've caught 2 boosters.
The first one they caught and they were, they said that they
were telemetry was off and their systems were off.
Like some of the systems were like a little bit acting a
little bit wonky. So when they landed the first
one, it wasn't 100% precise. They landed it, but they didn't
land it super precise. The second one after that, the
one after that, they had a ditch it into the Gulf of Mexico,
which Trump is going to call the Gulf of America, apparently.
And then the third one, they landed it on the on the booster
catch arms. And then that's the one that the
Starship blew up over the over the Indian Ocean.
So there was definitely precedent that the Starship
booster, his land, the Super Heavy booster has landed twice
and that is huge as far as reusability goes.
Now, if they can nail that within the next, you know, if
they nail every single one for the next 10 flights and they
start reusing boosters after the fourth attempt of landing, a
successful attempt at landing, I believe they can start reusing
these things after 10 flights. You know, I, I don't see a
reason why not. As long as the engines are
intact, they can refurbish the booster.
They could reuse it, they could re fly it.
And then once they start catching Starships too, there's
a possibility that they can just reuse the same Starship.
They wouldn't reuse the same Starship in order to go to Mars,
of course, because they need kind of like, I mean, a flight
tested Starship is a, a, a tested Starship.
It's like it's a test drive for a car.
You don't get a car off the lot without testing it and testing
it. You have to drive it a little
bit unless it's, you know, a higher end car.
But you get they do have to do tests before you fly a rocket to
Mars. So a flight tested rocket and a
flight tested booster might be better than a brand new one
that's never been tested before. And that's what they found out
with Falcon 9. Is that the flight proven
boosters work just as good as a brand new one?
And they're kind of hesitant. They're like, I don't know, like
an untested booster. We don't know if it's going to
work. So the Starship, the tested
Starship is probably going to be their first flight to Mars.
But I want to, I want to say thanks to everybody who's
listening to this. And we have a super cast that
you can check out, and it's going to be in the link and the
description below. There's a Discord you can join
up to continue this conversation.
I'm going to post this ad free on Patreon and on Supercast 2.
So please take a second and join both of those things to help
with the cause of promoting this show.
And also, if you're listening on YouTube, please give it a like
and a subscribe helps out the algorithm.
And I think that's it for today. Everybody just want to get my
thoughts out there about the Starship and Elon Musk because
there's some huge, huge news with the Trump administration
coming into play that there's a possibility they could like they
could just throw all everything at Starship.
Like not government funding, but they could push, you know,
government agencies to just let Elon and SpaceX do what they got
to do, you know, relax some government stuff.
So Elon can launch 100 rockets in a year from Starbase.
And also they're going to start building, they are building the
infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center to launch more rockets.
So if they could launch two starships from Starbase and then
two starships from Kennedy Space Center even, I mean, even one
Starship from Kennedy Space Center.
So only have one tower there to begin with.
Three rockets in a day. The FAA is going to be really
busy. That's all I got to say.
The government agencies have got to step it up.
So Elon is ready to take the next step.
Is humanity ready to take the next step?
I don't know. That's a question we all have to
ask ourselves. All right, thanks for listening.
Everybody. Take care of yourselves and each
other and I'll see you in the next one.
Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
I really do appreciate your support.
If you could take a second and hit this subscribe or the follow
button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
miss an episode. And each episode is about 10
minutes or less to get you caught up quickly.
And please, if you want to support the show even more, go
to patreon.com/stagezero and please take care of yourselves
and each other and I'll see you tomorrow.