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, I'm your host, Will
Walden. And on this episode, we're going
to be talking about Space XS, Starship 4th Test, Flight, IFT.
Four, if you will. From Boca Chica.
Starbase, Texas at the tip of Texas.
By the Rio Grande and right on the border of Mexico.
Is going to be. A amazing launch and.
Also, there's some different things that they're going to be
doing. For this launch.
Compared to IFT. One IFT 2 and the IFT. 3
Starship flights and. Some of those things.
We don't really have the real reason for.
One of the reasons we'll get into.
This in a little bit, but I want to talk about what they're
actually going to be doing first.
And we're. Going to go through.
This. On the Starship website.
On the SpaceX website. Here we go, Starship's third
test flight. Made tremendous strides we're.
Going to go back to Starship 3. Ship three we're.
Going to go. Back in time here.
Tremendous strides towards the. Future of rapidly reliable
reusable rockets. Triple, quadruple Rs.
The test completed several existing firsts or exciting
firsts, including the first Starship.
Re entry from space. The first ever opening and
closing of Starship's payload door in space.
And a successful. Propellant transfer
demonstration. Now let's move forward.
The 4th test flight turns our focus from achieving orbit.
To demonstrating the ability to return and reuse Starship and
super heavy primary. Objectives will be executing a
landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico with a
Super Heavy booster. And achieving a controlled.
Entry of Starship. So here they say.
There's no reason that they should be doing a soft.
Landing of. The Starship right now, they're
going to. Do a controlled entry.
Of Starship in the Super. Heavy booster landing in the
Gulf of. Mexico is pretty important.
Some of these things. That they're trying to
accomplish. For this 4th flight are
absolutely necessary for Starships HLS.
Program for NASA and landing people on the moon.
Landing this booster also. There's another reason there's
like a. Sort of a secret.
Side mission. Side quest of SpaceX is doing
with. This and we'll talk about that
in a. Little bit.
But the Super Heavy booster? Landed in the Gulf of Mexico, is
going to be on an imaginary Starship.
Landing pad on a. Imaginary Mechazilla, if you
will. In the Gulf of.
Mexico and then. They're going to.
Have a controlled entry. Of Starship.
Which is impressive, right? How cool would it be?
If they could actually. Slowly on the Super Heavy
booster like it was being. Caught by the Mechazilla Arms.
And then drop it into the Gulf of Mexico.
Where it'll sink. And not be recovered.
Because it's deep in the Gulf of Mexico, and there's no reason
to. Recover it because they have
better. Engines and a newer booster that
they'll be. Flying after IFT 4.
Now they are almost. Ready.
They're a few days away. From flying IFT. 4:00 So I
thought. I'd go over some of this stuff
because it's going to be doing a similar.
Trajectory is IFT 3, Starship is targeting.
A splash down in the Indian. Ocean again, the flight path
does not. Require a de orbit.
Burn for re entry. Maximizing public safety while
still. Providing the opportunity to
meet our primary. Objective of a controlled.
Starship re entry now Elon. Musk has said that he wants this
thing to be as hot as. Possible when it's coming back
towards the. Indian Ocean testing.
The the heat tiles. Testing the resilience.
Of the Starship. As it plummets its controlled
way. Back down to Earth.
This is SpaceX. 'S next generation of Starship
or current. Generation of Starship.
The next generation will be even better, because they're gonna
be. Learning from flight.
Four here and. If they can.
Complete these two tasks if they can do a.
Controlled. Re entry of the Starship.
And if they can. Land the booster in the Gulf of
Mexico. Elon says he wants to have.
The booster land. Back on Meccazilla.
For Flight 5, I want to know in the comments down below if.
You think? That's a good idea.
Because I'm. Not a SpaceX.
Engineer, right? I am like you.
I'm one of us, right? We are.
Living in a time. Where?
This is the total possibility. SpaceX may.
Land this thing on Meccazilla. In a few months.
And IFT. 4. Could be the precursor.
To that. If this goes well.
If this goes perfect. Elon says he wants to do it for
IFT 5. I don't think it's a good idea.
I really don't. I think they should.
Wait for a few iterations of Starship.
I think they should get three or four.
Like soft landings in the Gulf of.
Mexico under their belt? I don't know why they would want
to rush it. Don't destroy the Don't destroy
Starbase. There's no reason to.
You know, I know it's going to be coming.
Back in not so hot. But in the case that it does,
you know what if it swings and destroys?
Something you know it. It's not easy to replace that
stuff is all I'm trying to say. The the booster itself.
Won't have a lot of fuel. In it when it gets back down
here when it gets back down to Starbase.
But the the the option of just waiting a few times and learning
from every. Single flight as opposed to
doing it the one like the the single flight after seems
pretty. Dangerous, but I think Elon's a.
Hype man too. So if you.
Think about that, Elon. Is like the biggest hype man.
And if Elon wants to do this and he wants to wants.
Everybody to be excited. Because it's a pretty like it's
a cool flight for like the normal.
Person, it's like, oh wow, this giant rocket's flying.
That's cool. But it's like, cool, it's coming
back in again. It's.
Very similar to I. FT3 what they want to do with I
FT three they would have done this.
For with I FT3 if the booster would have landed properly in
the Gulf of Mexico, it was soft landing it.
Would have been fine. You know, that would have been
fine. They could have moved on from.
There to do another test, but here they're like, we didn't
really quite nail it. On I FT3.
So we're going to refocus. We're going to.
Focus on just the things that we.
Need to do incremental. Steps.
Incremental steps move forward when we can and then when we can
do that, we're going to we're going to move on to.
The Starbase. Touchdown, you know, with Mike
Azilla. Crazy crazy.
So the 4th flight of Starbase or Starship?
Will aim to bring us close to the rapidly reusable.
Future on the horizon? Etcetera, etcetera, another.
So what I was saying is. Starship needs to land.
Booster it, absolutely. Needs to land a booster for HLS.
They need all the boosters they can get as quick as they can.
Rapidly reusable. So they can send.
Fuel to orbit for. Starship to refuel.
And then head to the moon. For the HLS program.
So this booster thing? Absolutely important.
Absolutely important the re entry of a Starship.
Not. As important for the.
HLS mission and SpaceX has been focusing on.
HLS recently. Because this is a.
Huge contract for them. They don't want to let NASA
down. You wouldn't want to let NASA.
Down either so. Why are they doing re entry
though? What's the point of doing?
Re entry if your main. Objective is to get.
People back to the moon. Well, they have a few years to
do that, a few years to do that. And they have a.
Thing called Starlink. Everybody that's watched
Starship. Launch.
Probably knows what Starlink is, right?
It is Spacex's. Cash cow.
It's the way. They're going to make money in
the future. They're in the.
Global. Rural.
Internet. Is going to be huge for SpaceX.
Absolutely massive. It's gonna bring in the most
amount of money of any program they have and.
If they could rapidly. Reuse the booster.
In the ship. That's why they're doing this.
It's capitalism. Baby, they're doing.
It for the money, they're doing it for the green.
You know they're. They're they are.
A for profit company. They are working with NASA to
get people. Back to the moon.
But they're doing it so they can use the Starship.
To launch. A a massive amount of Starlinks
into orbit, which is a great thing because people in rural
areas. Like in the middle of nowhere in
the desert. Someplace.
And there's no Internet, ever. Starlink can be a way for them
to connect with the rest of humanity.
That's what they want to do. They want to connect everything.
But. Starlink Bigger thing.
Starlink on the moon, Starlink on Mars.
Huge thing They're. Testing it here on.
Earth first. They're making sure it works.
They'll send those satellites to deep space.
They'll send them to Mars. They'll be.
Freezing. In orbit around Mars.
And they will send. Internet to and from the surface
of Mars. To and.
From the surface. Of the moon.
And it'll be absolutely wild to see that happen.
Laser Starlink Absolutely important for the future of
space. Travel to the Moon and to Mars.
So. Getting.
You know, thousands of these. Starlink satellites into orbit.
Absolutely. Paramount for the booster.
And for the ship? To work properly.
That's why they're. Doing this.
And as you can see from from this latest SpaceX update on
their website. It's a very.
Similar mission to IFT. Three, they launch Ascent.
Means they're. Going up the hit.
Max Q Hot staging. Here is where they.
Separate and then the. Booster does, sort of.
A flip. Does like a.
Does like a 180 comes back down, knows. 1st.
And then lands down. Or sorry.
Yeah, comes down, knows first, flips over.
And then lands in the water. Water landing in a controlled
environment without a mechazilla.
But in a precise place with the hover.
That they would be doing over Mechazilla and of course the.
This ship itself. Flying all the way to the re
entry area. And then it's going.
To do a water. Landing too.
But I don't think. They're.
Really care that much about the water landing.
They just want the re entry to work right?
Water landing is like. Cherry on top, right?
It's like, it's like. You got whipped cream or you
got. You know you have your cake.
And you're like, oh man, I could.
I just want something even a little bit sweeter.
Want more sweets on my cake? I want that cherry.
So that's what they're doing with the water landing.
They're getting that cherry on top.
Can they do it? Time will only tell.
But landing, Flip landing. Burn and exciting landing.
According to SpaceX, this is going to be a wild ride I want.
To know what you think. And also I want to ask.
You for a favor. Just a real.
Quick favor. Hit the like subscribe button.
Super quick, super easy. Not for me, not for this
channel. I mean, you could.
Stay here if you want to, I would love you here.
But it's going to start suggesting, you know, YouTube's
going to start suggesting you. More Space Flight channels that
you don't even know about yet, or different Space Flight
channels that you might not have checked out in a while.
So. And you still like them?
You forgot about them. I do.
That all the time. So if you hit the like and the
subscribe button and also leave a comment, that'll give you more
access to other Space Flight. Channels in the future.
So please if you could. Just help me out a little bit
there. That would be absolutely.
Amazing, amazing, amazing now. What do you think of Elon being
the hype man too? Do you think he hypes this?
Stuff up too much. There's there's different ideas
here because if you don't. Have a hype man, no one's going
to watch you. No one's going to You don't work
in secret. It's like what's?
Blue. Origin doing right now, do you
know? What Blue Origin is doing?
If you're not a. Hardcore Space Flight fan.
You probably don't know what blue.
Or or even. You probably don't even know
what Blue Origin is or. You might have heard it like
Reddit or something, or on Twitter or something, I don't
know, Or on the news. Maybe.
Do you watch the news still? Maybe I mean.
What's Blue Origin doing? We don't know, but.
Elon. Is the hype man.
And he's hyping this thing up like it's unbelievable and it's
going. To be.
An exciting time. For.
IFT 4 and IFT. Five is going to.
Build on IFT. Four and I think.
IFT 5 is going to be absolutely amazing too, but we don't know
what's. Going to happen with IFT 5 but
I'm. Going to make a prediction.
Let me. Make a prediction.
Here for IFT 5. Since I believe IFT 4 will go.
Pretty well, I think. What's going to happen?
Boost back burn. Of course, the booster.
Didn't make it. To the soft landing last time.
They're going to learn from that.
They're going to learn from that, and it might.
Take an iteration. Or two.
Before they actually. Do the.
Soft water landing. Now I want to believe.
In my heart of hearts. The SpaceX will be.
Able to do the boost back. Burn the flip maneuver, get that
thing back. Here into a very.
Soft water landing. With the booster in the Gulf of
Mexico. And.
Complete this mission one. 100% with.
The water. Landing of the Starship.
In the Indian Ocean and then they can move on to the next
step. The.
Quest that they're on right now. Which is rapid reusability.
Of. This massive.
Rocket, Could they move? On from this after this.
Water landing the soft. Water landing.
I don't. Think they're going to do it in
IFT 4? I don't think they're going to.
I'm going to predict. My prediction I'm not I'm.
Not a wizard or anything I can't predict.
This for real but. We know how Elon and.
SpaceX iterate the Rockets. This thing hasn't come.
Close to a. Water landing yet?
It disintegrated last one. IFT 1.
Disintegrated IFT. 2 disintegrated IFT. 3
disintegrated IFT. Four, it's going to get closer.
I think it's going to do the flip.
Going to do the boost back burn. Is going to start descending,
and I think something's going to happen on descent because they
haven't really. Gotten to that point, yet they.
Haven't gotten to descent yet. For the water landing.
They've gotten. There a little bit.
But shortly after they did the. Flip and the boost back burn
last time. The.
The booster blew up. It disintegrated.
It was gone. Shrapnel everywhere in the.
Gulf of Mexico. So they haven't really done the.
Full. Super heavy descent.
So what? Are they going to?
Do are they going to land? In the Gulf of.
Mexico is the hype. Man over hyping this so we can
get people interested or is he just super?
Optimistic because it's Elon. Musk and that's.
How he is, he always is optimistic about the future, if
you think about it. The things that he's building.
Are going to bring people together.
Not only on Earth, they're already doing it on Earth.
Tesla is bringing people together with their vehicles.
There's kind of a. Cult like following.
For Tesla is. Bringing all the other
automakers together to build competitors.
For Tesla, because Tesla was so good that they just kind of beat
them at their own. Game and beat them at a
different game, but they didn't know they were playing.
And now Starship is doing this for.
All the other Space Flight companies.
Destroying, eating their lunch ula they have a.
Certain sort of skill set ula does.
And Rocket. Lab and all the other ones that
you have certain skills that they're really great at, but
SpaceX is going to. Devour them.
If Starship works perfectly, that's what they're.
Hoping for for IFT 4 if they. Can get past this.
They're already devouring. The Space Flight industry.
They've already destroyed it with all of the.
The. Landings and the reusability of
the Rockets. It's a whole.
Different game now and if they can.
Figure out this booster. Landing.
And they can successfully land in the next, I think three tries
of booster and ship. It's game over for everybody
else. If it's, it's done.
Nobody else can compete. With that.
ULA Done. They do have contracts.
With NASA and the. Government for certain sort.
Of flights but. Everything else Starship can do
that. Rideshare, yes.
Lower throbbing, Yes. Go to the moon.
Yes. Go to Mars.
Absolutely. Outer planets, yeah.
Let's go there too. Let's refuel.
Mid flight maybe?
That's refuel a lot before we stay.
Before we take off. Might take a little while to get
there. But they can make it to anywhere
else in the solar system. Go to Saturn man.
How cool would it be if you saw a?
Starship around the rings of Saturn.
I would be so. Pumped if one day.
We saw Saturn. With a semi live live feed from
Starship I would I would probably cry.
I would probably cry. I've seen Saturn through a
telescope if we could see it in. Real time ish.
Not with a Starship. It would.
Change the way we. Do.
Close. Astronomy in those planets.
So instead of a. Government sending.
A probe like. Voyager One and Voyager.
Two out into the furthest depths of our solar.
System SpaceX could. Do the same thing.
With Starship, we could. Learn so much because they could
pack so many instruments in a Starship compared to these
little. You know they're not little,
but. These in.
Comparison to Starship, they're tiny probes that we sent out.
It was. Like the the wonder of what?
We could. Do in the future.
With Starship. Is.
It it's just mind. Bending because I can't even.
Understand how much we're going to be able to do.
It's not even invented. Yet what we're going to be able
to do the. Things that we've done.
In the last. 50 years won't even exist.
When Starship flies to the outer solar system and people have to
invent new things to do. It's like, what are we going to
send out there? We can't just send the old.
Technology. We have to.
Invent something. Really amazing, I mean.
If they. If they get these ships to fly.
Rapidly reusability is going to work.
Very well, and they can send. Huge payloads anywhere in the
solar system this is gonna be It's gonna change humanity in
our understanding of our cosmos. It's gonna.
We're gonna understand more about our planets, more about
our neighbor, the moon, our. Closest neighbor.
Maybe send one of these things to?
The Sun. Learn about the sun.
More. I mean, it might burn up.
But on its way, it's gonna get a lot of data, right?
That's what I'm looking for. I'm hoping.
Because before.
We went to Pluto. Right before we sent a.
Probe to Pluto. It was just some.
Boring rock. Boring ice rock, right?
When we got there though with a probe.
We saw that there's. The structures.
And not not made. Structures.
The structures. That were made by.
The solar system that were made by space on Pluto due to
collisions due to just abrasion. Wearing down of it, of the
thing. And it has.
Little micro moons too. We didn't know that before.
We didn't know all about it before.
And now we can send a big ship. Maybe with people.
To Pluto. Out there into.
The asteroid belt maybe? Maybe send some miners out there
to drill some holes and get some really rare things.
Bring them back to Earth in the Starship, and then of course if
it's gold or. Something like that totally.
Collapse the market and. Ruin everything on Earth?
That's not a good idea, but you know what I'm saying?
Like we could go out there and we could.
Do amazing things. At the edge of our solar system
that we. Couldn't even think about.
We couldn't even. Imagine it's sci-fi.
Right now, a sci-fi. Right now, but in the next 10
years, it's not going to be sci-fi.
We'll be sending. A Starship with probes.
And we'll be sending possibly. I mean, I don't know how I.
Don't know. When we'll be able to send?
People out that far because that's.
That's pretty far away. Maybe 10-15 years we'll be able
to send people to the outer reaches of the solar system once
they figure out like because it's it takes a long.
Time to get there. Right, it takes a.
Long time. It takes almost a year.
You know, with favorable. Conditions to get to Mars 9, you
know. 6 to 9 months. Something like that So.
That just to Mars. That's pretty close.
But going out to the asteroid belt would.
Take a long time, how do you? Do that.
You send a bunch of starships with equipment and supplies.
You send one Starship with supplies, food, water,
everything else then you send. A habitable Starship with the.
People in it, they can dock. They can mate.
That's another reason why they're figuring out the.
Mating. Of a Starship with the Dragon
capsule because in the future. And also the Orion capsule.
Because in the future, people. Will be docking with.
Other starships so they can it's.
Like a a space. Station that flies together, you
know, out to the outer. Reaches of the solar.
System, absolutely. It's paramount that they get
this thing working. So this we're.
Here, right at the beginning, this is the beginning.
I was. I was there.
For four. 20. For ship 4.
Ship 20, Booster 4. I was there.
Watching it being built, I was on the side of the road getting
destroyed by the. Texas heat is 100 and. 10° every
day. Not fun, not fun, but.
It was awesome. I was excited.
About every single day I went down there to Starbase.
I was down there about 100. Days.
And it was. Pretty cool and it was the.
Very beginning. Of this thing I.
Mean. Of course we have Hoppy, which
is the very, very beginning of this thing.
But I was there for the 1st. Decking, you know.
It was. So cool.
It was so cool. So I saw that.
And I'm going to stick. Around so I can.
See the rest of this mission which is sending people.
Into the solar system. And I hope you're.
Enjoying this journey too, because SpaceX isn't.
It is. A for profit company.
But it's kind of for all of us, right?
Because we watch this stuff go down and we're like, this is the
future. We're going to.
We're going to make something cool.
Humanity has a place to go. We're going.
Further than we've ever gone before.
We're going to places that we just thought weren't even.
Possible to go to we? Couldn't get to Mars.
With a. Apollo program.
We couldn't get to Mars. There's no way we went to the
moon. That's it.
We didn't. Know how to get to Mars?
The hardware wasn't there. The reason?
Wasn't there. If we get sent people to Mars on
a Starship, NASA and SpaceX are going to work together.
To do that, they're going to figure it out.
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