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.
SpaceX is preparing for its fourth test flight of the
Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in Texas.
It's approximately 2 months after the third flight reached
space but was lost upon re entry.
This upcoming test represents the fastest turn around for
Spacex's mega rocket and Super Heavy booster from its launch
site in Boca Chica along the Texas coast, the southernmost
tip of Texas if you will. Now, since April of 2023, SpaceX
has been attempting to achieve orbit with the Starship.
The third attempt in March saw the Starship make it to space
but failed during re entry. Now, following each test flight,
SpaceX undergoes a mishap investigation led by the Federal
Aviation Administration or the FAA, and it implements necessary
changes before the next launch. The FAA, alongside NASA and the
National Transportation Safety Board, has been conducting a
mishap investigation since the March test flight.
Now, should the FAA grant SpaceX a modified launch license, the
company aims to attempt the 4th test flight of Starship and a
Super Heavy booster as soon as June 5th.
Now, SpaceX has released its findings from the third test
flight and detailed the modifications made to the
Starship to address previous issues.
Now the third flight was the most successful yet, with
Starship reaching space and attempting a landing burn for
the first time, although both the rocket and the booster were
ultimately destroyed before achieving a controlled landing.
Now during the third flight, Super Heavy booster began its
boost back burn for landing, but encountered issues when 6 Raptor
engines shut down prematurely. The booster was lost
approximately 1500 feet above the Gulf of Mexico about 7
minutes after launch. And SpaceX identified the root
cause of the boost back burn shut down as filter blockages in
the liquid oxygen supply to the engines, which led to a loss of
inlet pressure in the oxygen turbo pumps.
And engineers have since added more hardware inside the oxygen
tanks to improve filtration and prevent blockages.
Additionally, the third flight Starship rates the coast phase
in space and successfully conducted a payload door test
demonstrating propellant transfer by moving fuel from one
thing to another. And this fuel transfer
capability is crucial for future missions, including Nasas
Artemis program for lunar missions.
However, each entering the coast phase Starship lost its ability
to control its position, which led to a unplanned re entry.
The lack of altitude control caused more heating than
anticipated, resulting in the vehicles destruction about 40
miles above Earth nearly 50 minutes into the flight.
Now SpaceX traced the issue with Starship to clogging in the
valves responsible for vehicle roll control, and in response,
the company has added additional roll control thrusters to
provide redundancy and improve the liability during future
flights. Now the FA as review process was
expedited this time because neither the Starship nor the
Super Heavy booster were destroyed by the vehicle's
automated flight safety system. They said during Flight 3,
neither vehicles automated flight safety system was
triggered and no vehicle debris impacted outside of predefined
hazard zones. Now, pending the FA as finding
of no public safety impact, a license modification for the
next flight can be issued without formal closure of the
mishap investigation As SpaceX has conducted a launch dress
rehearsal in May and is aiming for a launch as soon as June 5th
providing regulatory approval is received and if the 4th test
flight achieves its landing goals, the Starship will launch
from Texas and splash down in the Indian Ocean.
The SpaceX has fueled its Starship mega rocket stepping up
preparations for the upcoming test flight.
Now the latest pre launch operation known as a wet dress
rehearsal or AWDR took place on May 28th at Spacex's Starbase
site in Texas and the company loaded large quantities of
liquid oxygen and liquid methane into Starships first and 2nd
stages known as Super Heavy and Starship or just chip and
Starship and Super Heavy loaded more than £10 million of
propellant in a rehearsal ahead of flight 4 launch is targeted
for as early as June 5th pending regulatory approval.
This is the second W jets rehearsal for the Starship
vehicle, the first occurring on May 20th.
Now these tests are part of the pre launch preparations for
Starship's fourth flight which could launch on June 5th,
pending approval of course. Now the first three Starship
test flights took place in April 2023, November 2023 and March
14th of this year. Each flight was demonstrated
improved performance and this first flight saw the vehicles
two stages failed to separate ending 4 minutes after the
flight and it was pretty spectacular.
Go back and watch it on YouTube, it's pretty amazing and in
contrast the third flight lasted about. 50.
Minutes ending when the Starship broke apart during RE entry into
Earth's atmosphere. That's a pretty big jump, but
the primary goal for the 4th flight, according to SpaceX.
Is to. Get through Max re entry heating
when fully stacked Starship stands nearly 400 feet tall.
It's 122 meters, making it the largest and the most powerful
rocket ever built. It's designed to be fully and
rapidly reusable. And eventually, Starship will be
transforming spaceflight, potentially enabling Mars
settlements and other ambitious exploration feeds by making them
economically feasible. NASA supports this vision,
having selected Starship as the first crude lunar Lander for its
Artemis moon program. And Starship is scheduled to
land NASA astronauts on the moon and around 2025 as part of the
Artemis 3 mission. However, the vehicle must
successfully complete several test flights before carrying
astronauts. Hey, thank you so much for
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