Elon Musk just announced the timeline for launch for the IFT
3 Starship launch from Starbase, Texas.
Now it came in a weird way though, and we'll get to that in
a just a minute. But let's talk about some of the
things that have been happening down at Starbase recently.
Now first and foremost, we have to talk about upcoming Rd.
closures, because with the road closures, we know there's going
to be some testing down at Starbase.
Now Starship is fully stacked right now with a ship stacked on
top of the booster and that is in a flight configuration.
So we have to know what's going on next.
And the way we do that is we look at Rd. closures, of course,
primary date February 12th, 2024, it's been canceled, closer
revoked. It was from 8:00 AM till 8:00 PM
at night, which is a full day of testing for Starship, which
means we'll probably do a full wet dress rehearsal.
And on the 13th we have the closure being revoked between
8:00 AM and 8:00 PM. But on the 14th, on Valentine's
Day, closure is still scheduled. Hwy. 4 and Boca Chica Beach will
be closed. So it looks like SpaceX has
alerted Cameron County that they will be doing some testing on
the 14th of February on Valentine's Day, which is pretty
cool. That's also the anniversary of
this channel, so that'll be a really nice anniversary present
for the space news pod. Also, a really nice anniversary
present would be a thumbs up on this video.
Wink wink. Now let's check something else.
We got to check this out too because we know they don't have
a flight license yet, but this is the TFR list.
Basically, the FAA puts this out and tells everybody when things
are going to be flying. So if there's going to be a
rocket flying, we would see it in this.
But the only time we see this, it's way back here 12/29/2023
and that's for a security flight going into Brownsville, TX and
that is nothing to do with SpaceX or you know or the
Starship. So let's move on to some other
things that SpaceX has done. Flight 3 Starship, this is the
flight like startup for an in space burn.
They've already tested this as a single Raptor engine test.
So this is already done. Starship has been stacked on top
of the booster, so they don't need the they don't need to
static fire this anymore. There's also some photos of A6
engine static fire that they've already done.
So they know the engines work. They know that the booster works
as well. We have a 33 Raptor engine ahead
of flight 3 Raptor engine test from the booster.
Now let's move on to the next one flight.
Like wet dress rehearsal at Starbase today, that was from
January 23. This is what we're going to see
on Valentine's Day. It's going to be similar to
this, very similar to this. The full stack, the booster and
also the ship will be at Starbase at the launchpad ready
to go. So this full wet dress
rehearsal, they're going to load the thing up.
They're going to do everything that they're going to need to do
on launch day, but the one thing they're not going to do is
they're not going to launch the rocket.
So they check out all the plumbing inside the rocket,
check out all the electronics, check out the staff.
Everybody that works there has to be part of this as well.
So they go through all the routines that everybody has to
do on flight day. They also make sure that
security is in place. There's so many moving pieces
and parts to this, so they have to make sure that everything is
absolutely perfect. Because when all those systems
run perfectly, then the flight will go well.
And if the flight goes well, hopefully they can make it to
Hawaii, off the coast of Hawaii with the Starship this time.
They're going to do 2 cool things this time too.
So Starship in the future will be launching Starlink
satellites, and they'll be launching hundreds of these
things a month, possibly thousands of Starlink satellites
per month. And they have a mechanism within
the Starship to launch the Starlinks.
And apparently this round Flight 3, they're going to check out
one of the mechanisms or some of the mechanisms within the
Starship during this flight. We don't know exactly what
mechanisms it is, but we've heard different rumors and
different murmurings that it could be the the mechanism
inside that pushes the Starlink down.
Every time that a new Starlink flies out of the front, it's
going to push the mechanism down and it kind of goes around in a
circle. So it'll loop.
Sorry, not in a circle. So they may be testing that this
time. They're also doing a propellant
load test, doing from tank to tank propellant load test.
And that's for future flights, when Starship will be
transferring propellant from a Starship ship to from a transfer
vehicle to a Starship ship, from a tanker to a Starship.
So in the future, that's going to happen, and this is what's
going to happen in Flight 3, IFT 3 of Starship.
Now we have to look at some other thing too.
I want to show you this because the massive scale of this thing
is just out of this world. It's absolutely the biggest
thing ever. And I want to show you this
tweet that Elon did, this post on X that Elon did Starship
super heavy rocket booster people for scale.
OK, so you can see the top of it looks pretty big, right?
This building is quite large. It's about 300, maybe 350 feet
tall or something like that. It's, it's massive building.
And then these people way at the bottom, tiny, tiny people.
This is about 250. Let's just round it to 250 feet
for the booster. That's a huge thing. 25 story
building. They're going to try to land
that back at the launch site. When they get to a point that
they can do that. Not this flight, it's not going
to happen. This flight they're going to try
to do a a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico though, a
propelled soft landing of the Gulf of Mexico.
Last time IFT 2, they did the boost background, they do a flip
basically, and during that flip the booster blew up.
So they didn't make it back, but hopefully for IFT 3 they can do
the flip and the booster will make it through and they can
soft land in the Gulf of Mexico. And if they get to that point,
that's a game changer. Elon Musk, SpaceX want to make
life multiplanetary and this is the first step to do that, make
sure that the booster comes back.
They need all these boosters. They need to be able to have a
fully reusable rocket so they can send thousands of these
boosters up and thousands of ships to another star base,
which is on Mars. They also need this technology
to get people to the moon for the Artemis program.
So if they do that flip and they land this booster, this is a
game changer. This is a huge deal for Starship
and for SpaceX and for all of humanity.
We're going to go be a multiplanetary species someday,
and this is the rocket that's going to do it.
Now I want to show you this thing too.
This is from SpaceX themselves. It's the booster again with the
people below it. But here's another Here's
another image. Look at how tiny those people
are down there. There's a person, I don't know
if you can see this, There's a person down here, right here.
This is a little, little person right here.
Look at how big that is compared to that person.
Absolutely massive. And then of course, they had to
move the ship down to the launch site.
They were moving the booster, and now they're moving the ship
down. Now they're stacked up.
Last night they de stacked them and they did a fit check before
they actually did the wet dress rehearsal.
They usually do that. So they do a fit check.
They have the booster on the stand and then they put, they
raise the ship on top of it. They make sure everything fits,
All the plumbing goes well, all the electrics go well.
All the these things move around a lot.
You know, they're going down the roads, they're moving in and out
of construction facilities and production facilities moving all
over the place. So things may warp a little bit
and they have to make sure that they all fit.
So they did that last night. They took it off.
They're going to put it back on and then when they put it back
on, they make sure that fits again.
And if it fits, that's great. And then they're going to go
forward with full wet dress rehearsal.
And then after that, basically when the FAA gives them the go
ahead and when they give them the thumbs up to launch this
thing, they're going to put on the flight termination system,
get it ready for flight and then they'll be ready to go.
Now the important thing is though, Elon Musk announced at
one point what? What time will this launch?
What time frame is this? How much more time do we have to
wait until this launch? Well, a really weird tweet
actually showed up from Kanye West.
He said Elon where my rocket ship.
Elon commented back Starship were meant to fly and our next
one launches in about 3 weeks. But I recommend waiting for a
few more test flights before hopping on board.
Then he tagged Nicki Minaj too. So from Elon Musk to Kanye West,
we have a sort of behind the scenes three weeks for the
Starship to fly. So early March, maybe mid March.
I mean it's it's the 13th, it'll be the 14th when they stack this
thing up and maybe do a wet dress rehearsal.
So we're just waiting on the FAA to give them clearance.
And a few weeks ago the FAA said SpaceX didn't even put in all
the paperwork yet. So we're waiting on SpaceX and
the FAA to to continue boosting this through and get it through.
But there's another weird thing too.
I want to show you this before we go it.
It is a Starship esque thing but I want to show you this tweet
from Elon Musk just so we get the the air clear here because
it's been a lot of stuff going on now number of false news
reports claim that SpaceX is selling starlink terminals to
Russia. That is categorically false.
To the best of our knowledge no starlinks have been sold
directly or indirectly to Russia.
So there's a there's a few things going on here.
There's a bunch of people saying that people in Russia, you know,
the Ukraine, Russia thing, that Russians are using starlinks to
communicate or to, you know, do whatever they have to do over
there. And Elon is saying we've never
sold any to Russia. We don't know what's going on
here. Does that mean that people in
Russia can't get starlinks? No, they could get a Starlink.
I'm sure they can. You know, to their knowledge,
though, to the best of our knowledge, SpaceX doesn't know
of anybody who is sold directly or indirectly anything to
Russia. So does that mean they're not
using it? You know, we'll find out.
We'll find out later, I'm sure. But as of right now, they
haven't sold any to Russia. So that's like a little side
thing. It's a it's a SpaceX, it's a
Starship because Starship will be launching Starlinks in the
future. So I just want to point that
out. But we have three weeks until
Starship launches, possibly. How excited are you?
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