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.
So it's taken me a little while to record this episode, and
there are a few reasons for that.
One of them is I don't really like to do this and I need to do
something that I don't enjoy doing, but I'm going to need to
ask for your help. One of the things that keeps
this podcast going is your subscriptions, your follows, the
ads that are run on the on the show.
But I really need your help. I'm in a tough financial
situation with the podcast and I need to keep it going.
So I'm going to start a pledge Dr. I guess, if you want to call
it that. And first and foremost, I want
to say thank you to everybody who's already supporting the
show by listening to the ads and subscribing to the show and
being part of this great community.
I love you guys. I really do appreciate you.
And this coming from the bottom of my heart, I couldn't do
without you. I've been doing this for four
years, almost 1000 episodes, almost every single day, new
Elon Musk news. And I've never really asked for
anything like this. So it's weird for me to come out
and say this. And I also want to do it because
I just need the help me to keep this thing going because I'd
love to do it in love alone, even though it's powerful, can't
pay the bills. So I'm going to ask you for a
donation. I have a Venmo at Wil Dash
WALDON for any donations. Everything goes directly back
into the show. Everything from the time that it
takes to produce the show to new equipment to finding guests.
If possible, my bills for any software I use, things like
that. It all costs money and I do this
for free and I've been doing it for almost 1000 episodes now.
I think I'm over 1000 episodes to be honest with you.
But the Venmo again is at Wil Dash WALDON.
Any amount helps. If it's a dollar, if it's $1000,
if it's $1,000,000, whatever helps.
So I want to say thank you in advance to anybody who's going
to kick in and be part of this community and help the show
continue. Now, let's get into the real
news here because I think Starship is in a pretty tough
spot. I don't know if you've seen this
in the news. If you're an Elon Musk fan,
you've probably seen this or heard about this.
But the last ship that was going to be for flight 10 of Starship
exploded while it was testing. And Elon and company over SpaceX
kind of have an idea what it was.
But that's a moot point because most of the next ships are
already being built and also block 3 ships which are more
powerful are already in the production.
And what happened when the ship exploded took out some of the
test facility too. So as of right now, Starship is
postponed until SpaceX figures out what they want to do next.
What's their next move? Will they test the same block 2
type ship because they already have some almost ready?
Or will they just move on to block 3 because block two really
isn't working out well for them and the FAA after three failed
attempts to land the rocket the the Starship part of the rocket
stage 2 in the Indian Ocean. Every single one of those, the
last three blew up and then one blew up on the pad.
SO4 blew up in a row. The FAA has to take a very close
look at Starship right now. Is it worth it to continue going
down the same Rd. for SpaceX and Starship and Elon?
Go down the block to road and use the same ship and maybe
it'll work, but also the chance that it doesn't work.
So that's five failures in a row.
Not only did they fail with the Starship and it blew up, they
call it a red, a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
But also with the last flight, there's a thing, there's a Bay
door that was going to open for the Starling satellites.
There were dummy satellites that were going to be ejected from
the Starship and they were going to burn up in orbit and they
were going to do some testing on them to make sure that
everything works right before they actually send real star
links into orbit. The Bay door didn't open and you
got to think to yourself, if they don't know how to get a Bay
door to work properly in space and they keep blowing up ships,
why would they continue down the same Rd. with the same ships
doing the same thing? It makes you crazy right?
If you continue to do the same thing and get the same results,
you're never going to move forward.
So it looks like block 3 is pretty close to I would say 30%
ready as far as the ships go. The boosters not in that league
yet. There will be a booster within
the next few months, but this is postponed Starship's advancement
for months now. This also postpones the NASA HLS
missions. If Elon Musk and SpaceX don't
prove this, Starship can a well just survive and B orbit the
Earth, and then it also needs to refuel in orbit.
And then it needs to make a turn towards the moon, fly to the
moon, orbit the moon, stay in orbit, and then land on the
surface of the moon without fail.
And for me, I love SpaceX. I think it's the most wonderful
thing that's happened to spaceflight since the beginning
of spaceflight, since Sputnik and since, you know,
intercontinental rockets, you know, it's rocketry started.
I think it's an amazing company, and I think the people there
that work with SpaceX are amazing and I think they're
brilliant geniuses. But if they don't successfully
continue to launch Starships without incident.
Now, the booster that came back last time, there was an incident
with the booster too, but that was determined beforehand that
was going to happen. They knew it was probably going
to blow up on its way back to the Gulf of Mexico slash
America, whatever you want to call it.
But if and so the booster is OK, but the ship is the thing that
they really have to worry about. I want to know if you're on a
podcast platform that has comments, leave a comment.
Let me know what you think, but I'm just rifling off at the cuff
right now. And if SpaceX can't make it to
orbit, if they can't land a Starship successfully and
they've landed plenty of boosters, but if they can't
orbit the Earth and then come back to Starbase and land a ship
and refuel it and reuse it, I think the Starship program is
going to be dead in the water. This has happened before.
The N1 rocket that had a few not successful launches, everything
blew up. It was a massive explosion.
But they canceled that immediately because things
happened and they were kind of on the same timeline as SpaceX.
They wanted to make the world's most powerful rocket more
powerful than the Apollo program, but they just cancelled
it because it was just too much money.
It cost too much and it's too dangerous.
So they just cancelled it all. And now considering Elon Musk
has the most money, the the money thing isn't a big deal.
He does have investors. You know, there's private equity
firms and private people with billions of dollars that have
invested in SpaceX and Starlink is going to be making a profit
for the next foreseeable future. So that's going to fund at the
Starship program and continue to be a money sink if it doesn't
work. I have all the belief, I have
all the goodwill for SpaceX engineers, all the coders, all
the people that are building, everybody in the office,
everybody that works at SpaceX, they have nothing but love for
them. But when is a good time to halt
progress? I don't think they should.
I think they should continue and I think they should figure it
out. And it may seem like I'm a
doomsayer at this point, but I'm not.
I'm really not. I really want this thing to
work. I really want SpaceX to move
forward with Starship and land some people on the moon again.
When I was a kid, there was a space shuttle.
There's also the Apollo program. I caught sort of like the end
ish of the Apollo program. The Apollo program ended before,
around when I was born. So that means that I was kind of
an Apollo kid, but I was a little baby.
But I saw the reruns and I saw the documentaries on TV and I
read about it in books. So I know it's possible to go to
the moon. I know it's possible for people
to do incredible things. But when you keep sinking money
into it, you keep sinking resources into it, and you don't
get the result that you want, is it time to move on to the next
version of Starship? My answer is it's it's difficult
because if they move on to the next version and it doesn't
work, what do they do then They they just have to fix block 3,
which is a more powerful version of the Starship.
And then they just work on block 3 forever until they fix it.
Because what black Black one was the most successful so far?
Black 2. They've had all these issues
with exploding rockets, exploding second stages and
Block 3 hasn't launched yet. So they don't know.
But should they cut their losses and just get rid of Block 2?
Because the Block 3 tower at Starbase is almost ready.
It's it's winding, it's coming up on like probably a month or
two before it's completely ready.
And by that time, I think the hardware for Black 3 will be
mature enough that they could get it ready to launch when the
tower is maturing and getting ready to launch.
And but you have to remember the first tower, which is still like
that was a total test alpha, like the 0.000001, a alpha
version of the tower. That one took forever to test.
Now they're testing the strength of the chopsticks, they're
testing, you know, the lift capabilities, they're testing
all the speed, they're testing the infrastructure, and they're
testing the ground systems for the second tower at Starbase.
Should they get rid of the Block 2 tower which is the first tower
and just use the new tower? RIP down the old tower, Build a
new tower that's also in the cards.
SpaceX has it's in. It's in their documentation for
Starbase that they can continue to produce new towers if needed.
So it's a possibility that the second tower at Starbase Pad B,
actually becomes the main pad from now on.
And then from there, they ripped down the old tower.
They build it up to a Black 3 tower, then they're back in
business. Now if the new tower doesn't
function properly with the new rocket, they're in a world of
hurt because what are they going to do?
Then they have nowhere to go. They have nowhere to go because
it's Black 3. This is the final version
Starship. So there was block one, block 2,
block 3. There's no talk of a block 4.
There's no nobody's ever said anything a block about a block
for Elon's like kind of joked about like a really huge rocket,
like a double or triple size Starship, But that's not
actually a thing. So the, I think the the outcome
for Starship would be to move on from block 2, maybe give it one
last whirl. I don't know.
Yeah, I think Block 3 is the way to go though.
I think they have to RIP down that old tower, move on with the
new tower and just move forward at Cape Canaveral with AV2 tower
and you know, just keep building new towers for Block 3 because I
think that's the way to go. I think they have to ditch all
Block 1 and Block 2, get rid of them, but too dangerous and it
takes too much time. What they could do is finish
Block 3, stuff the tower in the rocket in a few months, you
know, maybe even six months tested.
You know, they have to finish the test facility again, have to
fix it. There's no test facility down at
Starbase anymore at the launchpad anymore.
Really. I guess they could test it on
the tower, but that's why they have the Massey's test facility,
so they could test all the Rockets there and then move them
down to the to the launch site. So I'm, I'm not 100% sure what
they're going to be doing, but I think block 3 is the way to go.
It just makes more sense, you know, logistically thinking, I
think it makes more sense just to move forward, get rid of
block 2, go to block 3. I know I keep saying the same
thing, but it just makes more sense that way.
They take a lot of time and money too.
I mean, if block 2 keeps blowing up, they're putting them,
they're they're risking FAA halting all launches of Starship
if it keeps blowing up because then it gets dangerous and
they're like, what are you doing, dude?
You know, what are you doing with your Starship is you're not
do you're not accomplishing anything.
And it's dangerous for all the people around you in the boats
and whatever. And there's debris in the ocean.
They don't want all that stuff. They don't want that drama.
So the FAA would probably, you know, slow them down or halt
them until they get it fixed. And if they don't get it fixed,
they could just put a hold on the whole Starship launch from
Starbase until further notice until SpaceX can really prove
that it's fixed, that everything's fixed completely or
they move on to block 3. So they might as well just move
on to block 3. And then if something happens
with that, then that's whatever, you know, Then they fix that.
Then they finally have a rocket that they can launch into orbit,
they can refuel, they can go to the moon, they can go to Mars.
But if Elon Musk wants to make it to Mars in 2026 when the next
window opens, they got to really move fast because it's June,
like the end of June, it's the beginning of July soon.
And next year, they have one year and a few months before
they can make it to Mars. Now mind you, they don't have
to. They're not going to try to land
the Starship. If they go to Mars, they're
going into orbit with a Starship.
So the booster will launch the second stage, which is the
Starship will go into ORIS orbit and then it'll mate with a
tanker which will refuel it and then refuel it a few times and
then they're going to go to Mars.
After that, they point towards Mars and they go towards Mars.
If they can't get the Starship to orbit right now, there's no
way they can make it to Mars. It just, it just stops dead in
the air, you know, if they blow up again.
So if Block 3 can make it to orbit, I think they're set.
I think they're good, but I don't think Block 2 is worth it
anymore. I really don't.
It's not worth the hassle, not worth the money.
It keeps, you know, the sunk cost fallacy where if you just
keep putting money into something, it's going to work.
Just keep doing the same thing over and over and over, it's
going to work. Even if you know what the fix
is. Then why would you keep doing it
though? Because there's only a few more
launches of Block 2 before Block 3 comes out anyway.
I think there's three maybe of block 2.
And like, why would they? Like they're not going to get so
much data from those launches if they keep blowing up.
They're not going to get enough data to even be worth launching
these things. Sure they get data on the way
up, but there's no data in like a pseudo orbit or even getting
into Earth's orbit. They haven't got into orbit yet.
They've had orbital velocity, but they've never hit actual
orbit yet. So move on to block 3.
Hope it works. Make sure you take all the time
in the world to do every check every, you know, make sure
everything's tight. That's the problem.
Nothing's tight, everything he's blowing up.
So make sure everything works and then from there, just keep
going with Block 3. I don't know, what do you think?
If you have comments on your podcast platform, let me know in
the comments. I really want to know what you
think. I want this community to tell me
what you think. Also, I have to ask you one more
time, please. Favor.
For me, after 500 plus episodes, it's the first time I've ever
asked for anything really. If you get Venmo at Will Dash
Walden with any sort of donation, that would be great.
I can continue doing the show that way and if you don't, I
can't tell you if I'll be able to do the show.
So if you've been listening to the show for a long time, if you
get, if you've gotten anything out of it, a tip, you know, a
tip would be really nice just so I can keep the show going.
We're in dire straits here, guys.
We might not be able to keep doing the show.
So if you're a fan of the show, you know, do whatever you can
and I would really greatly appreciate it.
So I. The technical aspects of
Starship didn't really want to get into them today because the
the idea of digging into the technical stuff, one, it's a lot
to think about. Two, it didn't need to be said.
This is a a question of should we move forward with this
version or move into a new version?
That's it. Like it's nothing.
It's not rock. I mean, it's rock science, but
it's also not that hard, not that difficult.
Something doesn't work, you ditch it.
You pivot, right, move fast and break stuff.
It's the Silicon Valley way. Something doesn't work, Ditch
it, man. Go to Block 3.
Elon, you should know this. Anyway, let me know what you
think of the comments. Appreciate everybody and secure
yourselves, please. Thanks for listening.
Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
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