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.
And I'm your host. Will Walden Elon Musk has openly
discussed his prescriptions for ketamine, asserting its positive
impact on his mental health and consequently its benefits for
his company's investors. And Musk emphasized the
importance of consistent performance for his investors,
suggesting that his medication plays a crucial role in
maintaining his effectiveness. Now this all happened because of
a conversation with Don Lemon, formerly of CNN.
Musk explained that his intermittent use of ketamine
helps him manage what he terms chemical tides that can lead to
depression like symptoms, and this admission came during a
YouTube streamed interview highlighting Musk's transparency
about his mental health management strategies recently
Now, concerns about Musk's drug use were previously reported by
the Wall Street Journal studying apprehensions among executives
at Tesla and SpaceX, and Musk, however, counter these claims by
highlighting his clean drug test records and advocated for the
continuation of his current regimen on X.
Now, following this interview with Lemon, Musk's media company
X, formerly Twitter, decided to terminate a planned
collaboration with Lemon and this decision abruptly ended
what was intended to be the launch of Lemon's new talk show
on X. The interview, which lasted just
over an hour, saw Musk had Lemon engaging discussions on a
variety of topics, including immigration, politics, content,
moderation on social media, and Musk's personal experiences with
depression and also ketamine use.
Now, Musk went on to say that his social media platform is
competitive in the environment, similar to player versus player
video games, suggesting it's a space for robust engagement and
debates between people. He related this to his own use
of the platform for various types of posts, from humor and
memes to significant discussions about world politics.
And during the interview, Musk revealed his routine of late
night posting on X, stating he's almost always sober.
During these sessions, touched upon his lifestyle choices,
including abstaining from alcohol and his prescribed use
of ketamine for managing his depressive states.
While he posts now. Most candid discussion about
ketamine with Lemon raised some questions about privacy and
medical ethics as he noted the personal nature of inquiries
into one's medical prescriptions.
And despite this, he provided insight into how ketamine helps
him combat periods of negative mental health.
And on a separate note, Musk mentioned an unplanned meeting
with former President Donald Trump in Florida.
During the interview, describing it as a chance encounter, he
recounted that the meeting was dominated by Trump's
conversation without any significant topics discussed.
Musk has remained neutral during political endorsements,
specifically noting his current stance of not supporting Joe
Biden while keeping open the possibility of endorsing a
candidate. Later in the electoral process
and addressing the contentious issue of immigration and the
Great Replacement Theory, Musk clarified his disapproval of the
racist ideology. However, he speculated on the
potential impact of undocumented immigrants on the US elections
through their inclusion in the census count.
Despite the lack of evidence supporting this claim now, Lemon
countered Musk's immigration argument by pointing out that
undocumented immigrants are ineligible to vote, thereby
minimizing their direct influence on election outcomes.
Musk's theory hinges on the increased congressional
representation that could theoretically result from higher
population counts in states with large immigration populations at
The interview eliminated Musk's multifaceted personality, from
his innovative leadership in technology and space exploration
with SpaceX to his personal health management and political
viewpoints. And Musk's openness about his
Academy news shows that he's kind of into his own well-being
and taking care of himself now. Musk engagement with political
and social issues, though, alongside his leadership roles,
paints a picture of the CEO deeply involved in contemporary
debates, extending his influence beyond the realms of business
and technology. And the dialogue between Musk
and Lemon, especially on topics like mental health and substance
use, contributes to broader discussions about the
responsibilities and the lifestyles of high.
Profile corporate leaders. Musk's perspectives offer kind
of a glimpse into the challenges and considerations of leading
major technological ventures, and the termination of the
partnership between X and Don Lemon.
Post interview signals the unpredictable nature of Musk's
decisions for his businesses, and he sometimes makes swift
decisions based on interactions, evolving circumstances, and
possibly even emotions. Now, Musk personal health
disclosures and his interactions with meaty figures and political
personalities encapsulates the complexities of managing a
public persona while steering some of the most innovative
companies in the world. And his own disclosure of his
Academy news and his perceived benefits for his mental health
and work performance has sparked discussions on his personal
well-being and his professional obligations.
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transparency is key. So what you see is what you get
from savings pods to help you stash away your cash for
specific goals, to getting your paycheck a little bit early.
That's a nice one. Current's got the features that
matter the most to you now. If you got questions though,
current support is just a tap away on your phone ready to help
you. I've used them a few times and
I'll tell you what the best customer support I've ever seen
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Today's episode will feature one of my favorite interviews from a
few years ago. It's from a company called
Moonmark and the purpose of this company is to send remote
control cars and have a competition, a race on the lunar
surface. Enjoy.
Because we're we're here to share the information.
So Munmarg is a competition between high school teams across
the country and we are already getting a lot of interest from
across the world and students grades nine through 12 are going
to compete to become the final two teams that create built to
space worthy racers. They're not Rovers, they're
racers and they will go up on the intuitive machines known as
Sealander, which is going up October 11th of 2021.
Very, very cool. Yeah, like I'm said in chat, he
said. Oh, high schools, yeah.
Is it only open to high school people or can people outside of
high school older than high school, like college teams or
something like that? And or.
So about the the actual teams that are going to build these
racers are going to be high school students.
We are reaching out to those, like I say, in grades nine
through 12. However, the purpose is for
them, they're to, you know, if you get to, if you get to build
something, it's going to land on the moon and race on the moon.
There's a little bit of, you know, skin you got to put in the
game, right, or in the sport. And in this particular case, the
tuition, so to speak, is that they have to reach out and they
have to engage people across the globe and and what they're
doing, how they're doing it and why they're doing it.
And so there's a lot of opportunity for people of all
ages to engage with the students as they go through this process.
Now Moon, what Moon Mark is going to do is to capture the
content and the adventures of these young people and share it
in across television, digital streaming.
But you know our purpose is really to share what is about to
help and if you might kind through the eyes of these
students, meaning the accessibility of space, the
commercialization of space. So we're really excited about
this and we also right now I do want to mention we had a learner
race car design challenge that's going on.
We're working with intuitive machines.
We worked with them to develop the space specifications of what
these racers will need so that when they land on the mode,
they'll have the the, the right stuff, so to speak.
And then there those that are competing in the the design
challenge in the next few weeks actually through the end of
June, they will be able to put their own mark on those races
and we'll have a panel of judges that will judge the design, the
space worthiness and we'll also have an audience voting
worldwide. So we're pretty excited about
the the Lunar Race Bar Design Challenge.
As well, is this open to anybody around the globe or is it just
US based? No, it's open to anyone.
We we have had like a man mentioned a lot of really great
international interest so students really want to
participate and and we actually started the the design challenge
a little sooner than we anticipated and we did that
because so many young people and all all of us but mostly or
house them So and and we're looking to provide young people
and people that are interested in engaging with these young
people with something that has a really positive and exciting
focus at a time when we really need it.
Oh, very cool. So we have a.
Couple, and I do want to mention because I get this question very
often, is there a registration fee or a participation fee?
And the answer is no. You know what you have to have
is you have to have access to a computer and you have to have
access to the answer now and then.
You have to have some really cool and smart friends to get
together and and and you know, put the good stuff on the moon.
Oh cool. So we have a couple questions in
chat. What?
What is the race? What is the actual race?
Will they be racing for a target or an obstacle or what?
So is there a finish line of a great?
Question. So we we just this past week
heard from an intuitive machines as to where the the Lander is
going to touchdown and that's going to be in the the the
oceans or the store, the oceans of storms.
And so now what's going to happen is that when the Lander
is about 30 meters off the circles of the mill, it will
eject a sphere of 360° cameras. And that we don't know exactly
where that's going to land. But those cameras are #1 point
to capture the app to landing itself, which I believe will be
the first of its kind. And then that sphere of cameras
will serve as the rallying point where the the point at which we
will direct the races. So they will drive from the
Lander probably we will have some Geo about geometric
requirements along the way, but they're going to head to that
camera and they're going to turn around and they're going to come
back. Oh, wow.
OK. Yeah.
That's cool. So the actual, the actual race
track itself is still yet to be determined and there's a lot
that we won't know. I I say there's a lot of bulk
moments in this well, and there's certainly will be, no
doubt about it. It sounds challenging.
Is going to. Be where that sphere lands and
how we can line up. Yeah, sounds like a challenging
problem to solve for the racers, especially when you don't know
where that sphere is. Like, how are you going to find
the sphere? You know, you have to design a
vehicle that's going to be able to not alone, you know, go
across the lunar surface. Like, that's hard enough.
But you have to find this sphere of cameras and then you have to
then turn around and come back to the Lander.
What? That sounds incredibly
difficult. Well, it certainly does have its
challenges The the, the advantage that we have is that
the the experts that we're working with that intuitive
machines not only do they know how to build spacecraft and
launch it along with human flight.
They have years and years of experience both the NASA and and
and in commercial space. But they actually are working
with us to make sure that those erasures are space worthy.
And what we've discovered in in this process is that there are
some significant challenges and there are some things that we
we've determined that are a little bit easier than we
thought they would be. One of the things that I'm
really excited about is that we're going to be able to
perhaps accelerate some application of technology with
this project that would not we're going to be able to
accelerate, for example, communications.
Currently, the data streams or communication from the Moon and
elsewhere have a very, very specific scientific purpose.
Our purpose is to capture that race, which is going to require
much higher bandwidth or both on the Moon, on the lunar surface
and then back to Earth's. And so the companies that we are
are working with in the various communications aspects of this,
it's been clear that we are able to you know what what we one of
the outcomes of this is that we will be able to test and prove
communications on the runner's surface that will serve others
when they get there. OK, so this is a forward
thinking mission. It's not just just get the
racers of the moon race around, but it's actually to serve a
purpose for the future landing and other Rover missions in the
future, or racers even. And could we possibly see a
racing circuit like NASCAR on the moon in the future?
How cool would that be? That would be awesome.
You're you're, you're, you're talking to someone who truly,
truly enjoys motorsport and I also very much enjoy high
performance driving. And so that is a reason, because
of the of my involvement in the sport, it became clear to me
that there was really, you know, a really wonderful, you know,
analogy or analogous kind of set of disciplines that was
necessary both in in aerospace and in auto sports.
So you've got the, the teamwork that's necessary you, you've got
the physics, you've got the engineering, you've got the
timing, you've got the, the discipline and all of that and
and that belongs in, in in both of these areas and both of these
industries. And we thought that it would be
very interesting to apply those particular skills, science,
technology, engineering and arts as well as mathematics in this
competition. So not only are we, we are
forward thinking in terms of how along the way we can accelerate
technology and use of this for those that come behind us on on
the lunar surface. But also the journey along the
way, which is really, really exciting of an adventure for
these young people and and many people that they touch.
Well, that's very cool. I'm I'm glad you guys are doing
this because this is so. When I was a kid, I always
thought about, you know, having a moon colony and having
something like this, like sports on the moon.
You know, we, I had these books when I was a kid and they're all
illustrated and they're really cool.
And I would open them up and I would imagine something like
this happening, you know, and just that somebody's actually
doing this in my lifetime is insane in the in the best kind
of way, like in the happiest way that you could imagine that
there's going to be race vehicles on the moon.
Like that doesn't to me as a normal person that has nothing
to do with the engineering part of this.
And I'm I'm kind of like heading the clouds kind of person.
This is awesome and I really want to thank you for coming out
today. Now we have one last question
though. What is the winner win from this
race? Oh, that's a that's a great
question. The winner, the the two racers
that get there, OK are are both winners.
They will have gone through a a more really, really rigorous set
of qualifying rounds in order to get to the mouth.
And you know the what what they're going with the the team
that takes the checkered flag is going to get the checkered flag
and it's also going to have the the the honor of being the first
race winner on the MO. So we don't have a a cash prize
or something like that. This is much actually more of
them. He's deeper than that.
It's. Just.
They're not going to be motivated by cash.
That's that's if someone wants to.
Come and give them cash, then you know we'll we'll make it a
good scholarship. Yeah, and I'm sure somebody
might be interested in that something, you know, some sort
of sports drink or something like that might be interested,
or some sort of energy drink. May I share one more thing will
sure of what you you just shared about your your dream when you
were a kid. So when we when we looked at at
at women marketing we looked at the and and what we wanted to
achieve. Things have not occurred in like
what you experienced for many, many years and there's there's
lots of reasons for that. It's not that we haven't had
space heroes. It's not that we haven't had
incredible stories. There hasn't been a a an Apollo
moment since 19691972. OK.
Since then we we kind of let them run behind and and all of
that sort of thing. We want to create because we
can. Now we want to create an Apollo
effect for kids. We want kids to look at other
kids and say, wait a minute, if they can do that, I can do that.
And that is something that hasn't occurred for many, many
years. We can do that because yes, we
have accessibility through space technology that that civilians
haven't had before and we also have the ability through our
communications and technology to engage for worldwide.
So that's what we're going oh. That's great.
Yeah. You know, the the, the reality
of the situation is that, you know, these kind of things are
going to be happening more so in the future, you know, than what
I ever expected. Because we had, like you said,
we had the Arpella moment when we were, you know, in the 70s,
sixties and 70s and then we had the space shuttle.
We have people on the International Space Station.
We don't have anything that's like a big, big idea anymore.
And I think this is one of those big ideas where people can get
really inspired and get behind. And young people, especially the
way that you're marketing this and pushing this for young kids
to get involved with all of those amazing, amazing
techniques that they'll be using to get a racer to the freaking
moon and then race it and then race it and then maybe wind.
Who knows? I mean, if if they get one, if
they get the racer to the moon, that is huge.
That's a huge, huge deal for humanity.
Like it's not just a a huge deal for for your company or
intuitive machines or anything. Like it's a it's a huge deal for
people, and for young people in particular, to move these little
machines, you know, on the moon, like just getting in there and
having them land, That's kind. Of amazing.
That is absolutely our, our intent and we have all, since
we've been born, we have had every human on Earth has had an
experience with the moon and by and large it's been a positive
experience. And So what what we're doing
here is an intent is to, you know, a unifying experience
that's positive. And because we can, as I
mentioned, you know, communicate globally, we have the ability to
touch people in the way that that's meaningful to them and
that's that's something that we really aspire to.
That's really great. Well, I want to wrap this up for
you, Mary. Thank you so much for showing up
to the show today. And oh.
Thank you. Yeah, you're more than welcome.
And if anybody wants to check out the race, you can go to
Moon, Mark, dot, Space and get more information.
Is there any other place they can find you on the Internet,
social media, etcetera? We're we're on all all the usual
suspect places. We're on Twitter and Facebook
and LinkedIn and Instagram and check out Tiktok.
Coming up. Oh, cool.
OK. Oh, yeah.
All right. Well, thanks so much, Mary.
Appreciate it. And hopefully we will speak to
you soon. Thank you very much.
You'll appreciate being here. Have a great.
Day. Yeah, you too.
Bye, bye. If you're anything like me, you
appreciate when things are made super easy, especially when it
comes to managing your money. That's where current.com steps
in. It's not just any banking
service. It's designed for you, the
modern person. They blend technology and
finance in a way that just makes sense for our digital lives.
Here's the best part, When you sign up for current.com using
the special code that I'll drop in the show notes, you'll get a
free $50. Yep, 50 bucks for free.
Easy. Sign up.
Remember, there's terms and conditions, but we'll get to
that. Now it's quick to sign up.
You forget all the paperwork and you'd never go to a bank with
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and it's all from your phone. And the sign up bonus?
50 bucks. That's right.
Use the code from our show notes and boom, $50 is yours.
It's that simple. Every penny you put into current
is FDIC, insured through their partners.
Peace to mind. Now there's no nasty surprises
either. No hidden fees.
Current hates them too. I hate them.
I've been a current user for five years now, I think, and
transparency is key. So what you see is what you get
from savings pods to help you stash away your cash for
specific goals, to getting your paycheck a little bit early.
That's a nice one. Current's got the features that
matter the most to you now. If you got questions though,
current support is just a tap away on your phone ready to help
you. I've used them a few times and
I'll tell you what the best customer support I've ever seen
in a bank. So if you're looking to step up
your banking game and get a sweet $50 bonus in the process,
head to the show notes, use my special code, and join
thecurrent.com revolution. It's banking, but not as you
know it. It's better.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
I'm feeling a little bit under the weather for the last few
days, so I'm going to post this really cool podcast I did a
while ago with my friend Neil Thorne, and we discuss the
Starship as a space station. It's absolutely riveting to
think about a Starship you can launch to orbit and it's
immediately a space station. It's a huge, huge rocket.
So please enjoy this conversation I had with Neil
Thorne about Spacex's Starship as a space station.
SpaceX is collaborating with NASA on an integrated low Earth
orbit architecture to provide a growing portfolio of technology
with near term Dragon evolution and concurrent Starship
development. Now this architecture includes
Starship as a transportation and in space low Earth orbit
destination element supported by Super heavy.
That's the Starship Dragon and Starlink and constituent
capabilities including crew and cargo transportation,
communications and operational and ground support.
So joining me today is Neil Thorne.
And we're going to be talking about what this means from NASA
and what SpaceX is capable of, and how this is going to change
space travel and space exploration forever, and how
this can eventually turn into a thing that SpaceX could use for
their Mars transportation, be a Starship.
But before we get into this conversation, let's take a
moment and listen to a word from our sponsors.
How you doing today, Neil? I'm doing just great.
How are you? I am doing fantastic, thank you
for asking. So the Starship going into low
Earth orbit and it seems like base X and NASA are working
together to use this as some sort of transportation hub or
some sort of space station in the near term.
And do you think that's what they're looking at here?
I don't know. It's a very vague sort of
approach that NASA's taking. They're they're not saying build
us a space station, they're just saying help us out in low Earth
orbit. Hard to say exactly what it is
they're expecting out of this. I haven't thought for ever since
the Starship became a thing that putting this huge object into
space. This the Starship.
Which One Starship has more interior volume than the space
station does right now, but you link three or four of those
together, and suddenly you've got quite a bit of space up
there to your activities. Yeah, it'll be an interesting
next few years for the Starship and for NASA, because eventually
NASA will be the orbiting the International Space Station.
What is it, 20-30? I believe 20302032 or something
somewhere around there? It always seems to be a flexible
number. Yeah, that's it always seems
like. I think they wanted to do it in
2026 at some point. Yeah.
And then they. I think it's as long as it's
useful though. They're going to keep it going,
but. Yeah, I think so too.
I think as long as the taxpayers can pay for it and as long as
the they're seeing some returns. From it.
It's such an expensive thing to run every day to keep six people
up there. It's just such an expense and
everything in there is so outdated at this point.
The technology is advancing so fast here on Earth that even
something they've they started building 6 years ago that got
sent up there two years ago is so far beyond the technology
right now that it almost becomes irrelevant.
Yeah, and SpaceX is working currently on their Starship
program. And in the next, hopefully we
can see this in the next, as Elon said, 6 to 8 weeks, another
launch of Starship. And when that happens, we'll see
if it's actually going to be a possibility or feasibility that
this will make it to orbit. And once it does make it to
orbit, these studies that SpaceX and NASA will be working
together on could become a thing.
And they have to work together to get Space XS Starship onto
the moon as well for Artemis 3. So maybe this could be part of
that because they need to dock with the SpaceX Starship in
order to get to the Moon, so. As you say, everything that they
need to do to help NASA here, they have to do for the moon as
well. So it's going to be being built
in sequence, I think. In parallel I should say.
Yeah, they're going to be using Super Heavy, which is the
Starship program, a Dragon and Starlink.
So the Dragon will more than likely be docking with it and I
think the Polaris program will be using a Dragon to dock with
the Starship. I think what the what's going to
happen is they're going to send a Starship to orbit.
They're going to get it up there.
Then they're going to send the crew of Polaris program in a
capsule Dragon capsule on a Falcon Nine and then dock with
the Starship kind of mimicking what they're going to be doing
with the Starship in the Orion capsule.
And then they're going to, they're going to go inside the
Starship and do some testing and do some science and some
experimenting, some engineering and see if it's actually
feasible to live in one for a little bit and then do some
more, some more testing inside and maybe outside of the
Starship. So I think that's what they're
thinking here. I'm not 100% sure.
But yeah, it's very vague. It really is very vague this
whole wording. I think they kept it that way,
so. I think so.
So they can't be like Starship is going to replace the
International Space Station. Exactly.
And I think that would make a lot of companies very angry.
The blue origins, the Axiom space, all these people would be
very upset at that. So I think you keep it vague.
They're going to help us out. We're going to use their
capabilities to to further our goals.
That's it. Yeah.
And maybe if goal happens to be a new space station, then it has
to be a new space station. Yeah, maybe eventually they
will. Maybe eventually they will turn
a International Space Station, turn it away, get rid of it, and
then they'll put couple starships together.
Or even 1. Starship is a there's 1000 cubic
meters estimated in interior volume of a Starship, which if
built right can hold for Earth to Earth transport 100 people
according to Elon Musk. More than likely for these kind
of missions it'll be something similar to the International
Space Station where it's about 6 people.
Maybe the Starship can hold a little bit more because the
space station has 915 cubic meters of internal space and
it's not that much different. It's 85 cubic meters of
difference. So you could put some more
supplies in the Starship, but. Yeah, it's not much, though.
The space in the space station is more compartmentalized, so
it's more usable space. Yeah, than the Starship, which
would be a more open plan, but obviously much probably much
better for people's psyches as well.
Yeah, I think so. Most of the renderings we've
seen have has been a tube it through the middle with a ladder
or some sort of transport in the middle where you can go from
section to section. But it's pretty wide open
through the whole Starship. And I think just people spend a
year plus on the International Space Station and they're
segmented off doing their experiments.
Don't see anybody maybe all day, maybe throughout the day they
might see one or two people, but if they maybe there's 7-8 people
in a Starship. Maybe you can see all the way
through the Starship while people are working.
I think that'll be really neat. I don't know if that's how it's
going to. Actually have to.
I think it would be a much more enjoyable atmosphere to, even if
you're not working with somebody that they happen to be across
the 9m gap between you working on something else and you can
see them, I think that camaraderie gets built and then
again, people can also get on your nerves much faster.
That's true. So obviously when they select an
astronaut, they do a lot of psychological studies to make
sure they're going to live and play well with others.
So that will have to continue, yeah.
And sending 100 people in Starship to any long distances
is really difficult to conceive of.
What are we talking? 17/16/17 people per sort of
Starship if you all? I can't imagine traveling a very
long distance stuck in the same room my my sort of bedroom if
you will, the entire time. That would be very difficult
because it wouldn't be much room for anything else.
Yeah, that's true there. So there there's been talks of
how many people could go on of Mars ship to from any anywhere
from six people to some people were saying 30 people and there
were some people that were saying up words of 100 people to
Mars. I don't think it's going to be
100 people. I think that's ridiculous.
I think that's way too many. But I think if you have
something like this where SpaceX and NASA are working together
low Earth orbit, they can try different configurations for the
long term Mars transport because you could have two starships
docked together. What they're going to be doing
with the refuelling of the tankers for the Artemis
missions, instead of a tanker, you have just another Starship
where people can float between the starships.
There's a port, and there could be a section where it's like a
living section, where it's just you work out, you sleep, there's
maybe some entertainment, there's big windows.
And also there could be a variant where it's just cargo,
where there's just a like, so much food and you're gonna have
to bring a lot of water to Mars or even to low Earth orbit.
So sure, there's a possibility that's what they're gonna be
working on as well. And it's going to take, I wish
it were to happen really fast, but space transport, space
technology, engineering and science all take a long time.
So what they're building now, maybe 50 years from now, we'll
see the ultimate gain of we're going to be taking normal trips
to Mars. There's going to be just
numerous trips per year to get to Mars.
And I believe the next, the closest that Mars is going to be
to Earth is going to be 2024. So maybe if Starship gets to
orbit this year and then maybe next year, who knows, maybe
they're going to start trying to get to Mars.
Just shoot a Starship. Yeah, shoot a Starship without
any intention of landing it. Yeah, and.
Just. Try try to get into Mars orbit,
or at least use the orbit to slow you down so you could land
if you wanted to. Yep.
Obviously that's the hardest part about any trip to Mars,
it's making sure you hit the right spot so you don't burn up
in the atmosphere or get slingshotted out into space,
bounce off the atmosphere. So it's very difficult to do.
And that's where the majority of sort of things being shot at
Mars fail. So it's they're going to have to
practice that for sure. Yeah, right now they're
practicing getting things to orbit around Earth, which is
comparatively way easier. So it's gonna take some time and
some, yeah, who knows, Who knows?
We'll see what happens with the next Starship launch to see
whether they actually get to orbit and there's no
complications, and destroy the pad.
And if that all goes to plan, then yeah, I could potentially
see them trying to stretch themselves.
Obviously SpaceX is an iterative design company, and they're not
afraid to say, OK, we did it, let's move on.
Ship 15 was the first one to land.
They didn't bother trying to land another one.
They said good, let's move on. Yeah.
I could see them getting to orbit and saying good, let's
move on. I can see that too.
Yeah, and saying, OK, we made the orbit, now we need a tanker
up there. Let's do that.
OK, now that's done. We don't need to do it 100 times
before they put people in the Starship.
They'll have to do it 100 times. But if they're just doing tests,
they're gonna be happy with what they got and move on to the next
challenge. Yeah.
And even between the first launch and this next launch
that's coming up, they switched. I think it, I think Elon said
hundreds of things, maybe 1000 things, something like that
between the Last Starship and a Super Heavy and the next one
that's going up. One of the most important things
is that they're going to be doing hot staging between the
booster and the ship, which is. I'm not sold on that just yet,
but we'll see how it goes, yeah. That seems like an incredible
feat. I don't see the the a lot of
Russian spacecraft have done that in the past, and it seems
to be pretty pretty well documented, but I think SpaceX
could pull it off. I don't know if it's going to
work this time. It's the first trial and error.
Exactly right. This is all trial.
This is all to be done, to be determined.
They'll have to. They'll figure it out.
It's not impossible to do, just a matter of figuring out how to
make their current build sustain that sort of blast as as they
separate. Yeah, obviously they'll need
some way to exhaust the flame as it comes out, but also the top
the Dome of the the booster's gonna be have to withstand the
all those engines lighting as well.
Yeah, I don't understand how they're gonna do it.
I don't really understand that technology that much, but it
seems like they have to reinforce like it's a stainless
steel Dome on this thing, so they have to reinforce like
something, yes. Yeah, it's not a thick stainless
steel either. Plus they want to reuse these
100 times. Yeah, So there really can't be
any damage from this separation. For this to be successful, there
can't be any damage. It has to be 100% perfect.
If it starts to wear away from the heat or there's any damage
whatsoever, then it's unsuccessful.
It's not going to be a long term solution.
Then fix it. So do you think this could be
something like a, for lack of a better term, a puck that they
put on top of the booster and they could replace it if needed?
So it's not going to be, it might not be 100% reusable right
away, but they could just use it just for that one time and then
the next booster is going to have a different puck on it and.
They could do something like the heat tiles that they've got on
the outside of the ship. They could plaster those over
the top of the booster and use those as an abrading,
replaceable part. Yeah, that.
But it would take some time to inspect those every time that it
lands. Yeah, that's true.
It's similar to the space shuttle.
So yeah, I think the, I think we're going to see some wild
stuff in this next lodge. But yeah, the NASA and SpaceX
collaboration here with this space station is going to be a
huge thing. And The funny thing is, NASA is
a government agency and for. Forever they've been using
taxpayers money to do things like this, experiments like
this. And Phil McAllister, the
director of commercial Space Flight at NASA, said it is great
to see companies invest their own capital toward innovative
commercial space capabilities. We've seen how these types of
partnerships benefit both the private sector and NASA.
So basically they're saying, hey, all of you companies out
here, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Space, SpaceX,
Special Aerospace Services, Think Orbital and Fast space.
You spend your money, you figure this out and then we're going to
partner with you to use your technology in the future and
we're going to pay for it. But you have to figure it out
like you're going to have to have a minimum viable product,
the MVP, so we can use it for our own services for the future,
whether that's a space station with SpaceX or if they're going
to be using it, of course for HLS and further missions.
But it's different than what it used to be for the longest time.
It's very different, absolutely. And it's really is a great
solution. NASA put so much money and
effort into developing things like the SLS and everything that
came before it, space shuttle and whatnot.
To have commercial companies do all that research, development
and testing, and then to just pay them a bunch of money at the
end or during it as a sort of seed money, it's just so much
easier for everybody as far as the government is concerned and
a lot less risk as well. Yeah.
And then you hand off that risk to private companies.
Absolutely. It leaves so much more, so much
more room for NASA to play around with different ideas,
too. They don't have to stick with
one thing like the SLS. They're stuck with the SLS.
They can't really diverge from that and say we're going to stop
doing that because Starship works now they have a contract.
They're going to be building these SLS rockets for the
foreseeable future. And what Starship surpasses the
SLS and technology and weight to orbit ratio, weight ratio to
orbit, but they don't care because they have these
contracts in place with Boeing and other companies, Northrop,
Brahman, etcetera, to build these SLS rockets and they can't
change it, you know? What I really like about the con
this commercial partnerships is that some someone who likes
SpaceX is going to pay for their materials what they should be
paying as opposed to what NASA pays for materials.
A screw, NASA's paying for a screw might cost them $100 a
screw because the companies that are selling them that screw know
that they can get away with it. Whereas SpaceX is saying we're
not paying, that we'll build a machine and make these for a
dime a piece, if that's what you're going to bother charging
us. It's a much more efficient from
an economic standpoint to have the commercial partners take
care of all the stuff because they're not going to get
overcharged the way NASA has traditionally been overcharged.
Yeah, I think that's an important step forward for NASA
and an important step forward for these companies because not
only do they get money for these initial projects, but they can
add things on to it eventually. So SpaceX could say, OK, we have
the Starship, we have a crew Starship, but we can also make a
space station Starship. Would you be interested in the
space station? NASA could be like, yeah, we
like that idea. That's a great idea.
We're going to give you the money for it, even if it's just
a concept right now. But since SpaceX brought it to
them in a capability in like in the capacity of a like a
commercial project, then they're going to pay like SpaceX is
going to pay for it and then NASA will pay them whatever
SpaceX wants to charge them. So for sure, I think it's going
to be a huge boost to the low Earth orbit economy, but also
the economy of deep space exploration as well.
Yeah. And keep in mind as well that
SpaceX has never had any interest in space stations orbit
beyond Starling. So this that would be a change
of tune and it would have to come with a obviously a big
check behind it for them to do something like that or they see
some benefit in having a station in orbit and they're willing to
work with NASA to get one. Does Is it a good starting off
point for a mission to Mars or something like that to have all
the tankers take all their fuel there and then you dock a ship
there and launch it from there? They'd have to determine whether
that makes sense or not. Yeah, I guess the tankers in
space will eventually assemble or serve the same purpose as
that space station, right? Just having a ship in space
that's gets refueled to refuel another space ship that's a
space station right there. Yeah, very basic one.
Yeah, minus the people. Yeah.
But yeah, I also think that if SpaceX does make some sort of
space station out of the Starship, they can charge rent
to NASA and that could be recurring income for SpaceX.
If they can see the ROI on a Starship that's in orbit and
they can make X amount of dollars per year from it to
continue development of better starships, Mars starships,
ground systems, infrastructure, whatever.
If it's going to pay for part of the development of these new
systems or even Starlink, then that might be something that you
would be interested in. Because it seems I wouldn't say
free money because they still have to have people manning the
systems and fixing up the ships and stuff as time goes by.
But once the once the ships are decommissioned they could in
theory outfit the ships with. I don't know like I wouldn't.
I don't want to say plug and play, but it could be a very
compartmentalized systems that they could take out of 1
Starship and put into a newer Starship.
And it could be really easy to transfer those things because
the docking mechanisms for the HLS Starship, it's pretty big.
If you think of not the docking the the elevator systems, it's
pretty big. So maybe that could be as part
of the docking system. It could be big enough that they
could transfer A people and B supplies from 1 Starship to
another. So decommission one, take it
back down to earth, refurb it, do whatever you got to do, and
then upgrade your Starship to a new one.
And it seems like you could have a.
You could have a space station forever in that case.
For sure, the beauty of Starship has, from day one has been its
cost effectiveness. It's extremely relatively
extremely cheap to make and to they could put up another one on
a moment's notice at some point, right.
Replace a part that of a ship that is malfunctioning can bring
it back down. What not as you say before,
there's a lot of others companies that are involved in
this partnership with NASA. So it's SpaceX is just one part
of that. There's all kinds of ship of
companies that would be doing similar things with them and for
them. Yeah, Blue Origin.
The project the Blue Origin is going to be used for with his
NASA liberation is integrated commercial space transportation
capability that ensures safe, affordable and high frequency US
access to orbit for crew and other missions.
That just does that mean that they're going to be using a
rocket to get to lower theraband the commercial space
transportation? Origin is the taxi.
That sounds like it. Or at least one of the taxis.
Yeah, sure, and nothing. It really says nothing else.
It says other missions, whatever that means, but it doesn't
really give them anything else. There's no other harder piece of
this future NASA, the space that they get out of this, you're
ferrying people back and forth. Yeah, Sierra Space looks
similarly too. Sierra's got Sierra gets the in
space superstructure as well. They're actually primed for that
next generation space station, so they'll get the space
transportation in space infrastructure and tailored
space facilities to provide a human a presence in orbit.
They are really the space station, provided that they can
meet all of their deadlines and whatnot.
To be honest, at that point SpaceX seems like they're in the
wings in case Sierra can't provide what they need.
And they could work together. This is is collaborative efforts
with NASA. So anyway.
Everything that goes up into space needs to work with
together. Yeah, universal locks and
universal lists and universal that you can't have anything
that is proprietary when you're when you talk about NASA and
space, it's all got to work together, yeah.
So one that's very interesting is VAST, and this is some cool
wording. Collaborating with NASA on
technologies and operations required for its microgravity
and artificial gravity stations includes the Haven One, which
will provide a microgravity environment for crew research
and in space manufacturing. The first crude mission, called
Vast One to the platform development activities for
larger space station modules will also take place out of the
Space Act agreement. So artificial gravity stations.
Pretty sci-fi if you ask me. That's very sci-fi.
That's your rotating stations for sure.
Yeah, and that'll take. That'll pretty cool.
Yeah, it'll be cool. They're gonna have to.
I think what they'll do is they'll set up a smaller version
of they're gonna have to incrementally set up smaller,
medium, large, etcetera. Anti gravity.
Artificial not anti but artificial gravity stations.
Anti gravity would be wild. Proof of concept is was one of
the first things right. You gotta get up there and prove
that it's gonna work and it's gonna be able to be stable and
and what do people how do people react in that situation.
We don't actually know why. We can guess based on experience
that we've done on Earth with spinning people around in a
circle, but how long term effects of somebody being spun
and just observing around them, right?
This part of the station is spinning slower than that part
of the station and it's all curved and how does that affect
somebody? Yeah, Curious to see.
Yeah. And they're gonna be, oh, go
ahead. Go, no, go please.
Oh, I believe they're gonna be using Starship as a
transportation system for the Vast one as well, or the Haven
one, so to. Get it up there.
Yeah, Nice. And they're gonna be using, I
believe, this Falcon Nine. Yeah.
So they're gonna be doing the Haven One on the Falcon Nine,
and then they're gonna be using the Starship eventually too.
So that's pretty cool. They're all going to be
collaborating with each other and also NASA.
So it's going to be, it's that's going to happen in 2025.
S Yeah. August 2025.
Apparently. That's going to be pretty soon,
Yeah. Couple years from now, yeah.
And the other ones we haven't talked about are the ones that
kind of interest me quite a bit. Northrop Grumman and Space,
Aerospace Services, special aerospace Aerospace services and
think Orbital are all on the robotic side of things.
That's getting things up there to build stations and to
manufacture things and not put people in danger of getting lost
in space or being subject to being out in space with the
radiation what not. So it's I'd like that side of it
as well. Curious to see how that helps.
So the the north of Grumman, the persistent platform to provide
autonomous and robotic capabilities for commercial
science research and manufacturing capabilities in
lower orbit. The manufacturing capabilities
part of that is pretty cool. I'm interested to see what they
do if they're going to 3D print things or if they're going to be
doing just take parts from Earth, like just say beams and
trusses and pieces and then put them together robotically.
I don't know what the actual mission is.
They don't have any more information about it, but it
seems like that would be something that they could do up
there, as many manufacture parts of a station or parts of
something with robots. Yeah, that's the dream we always
see, right? We always see in the future the
sci-fi things are being built right in space, that you've got
your sort of space dock where the ship is being built in place
up in space around in Earth's orbit, and that would be cool to
see something I was when I was a kid, I was really fascinated by
space welding, where you put two pieces of steel together that
are perfectly flat and as soon as they go together, there's
nothing stopping them from joining.
So it's a Weld that just happens because they're the molecules
just pass from one piece of metal to the other.
Oh wow, 'cause there's nothing stopping them.
There's no, there's no oxygen, there's nothing in the way these
molecules just passing from one piece of the next and the joins
pretty cool. I might have that wrong.
It's been a long time since I looked into that, but that was
one thing when I was a kid. It was really cool.
That would be wild. That would open up so many, so
many doors to stations and architecture and space.
And that's cool. That's really cool and
everything. I didn't even know about that
space welding. I'll have to look into that.
That's cool. I can look it up again too.
I could be totally wrong being completely ridiculed.
But that's OK. Leave it.
Leave it in the comments, people.
Yeah, I think we've touched on everything here.
Is there any, are there any other companies you'd like to
talk about? I know we talked about Sierra
Space, but you didn't get to talk about special aerospace
services much, but they. All do the same kind of thing.
Special Aerospace Services is is looking at autonomous
maneuvering units, astronaut assistance units.
So it's all servicing the station outside, helping
astronauts as well as perhaps doing autonomous work as well to
keep things running. Keep it serviced.
If somebody drops a hammer, if this thing can go and get it,
rather than astronaut having to risk something or it being one
more piece of space junk, maybe they're out there collecting
that stuff as well. That would be really cool to
see. That would be yeah.
And then think orbital, similar to just another piece of a space
station, but they do the orbital platforms and research
manufacturing astronaut missions, that sort of thing.
So it's building stuff in space, building more things on there.
So there's the the autonomous builders, if you will.
This is really cool to see, and it'll be interesting to see how
these all work together as well. Can they?
Can Blue Origin and SpaceX sit down in the same room and figure
out the best way to move humanity forward?
Wouldn't that be nice? That would be really cool.
I think all of these companies working together, building
platforms and building stations and sending things, they're
going to be working together in buying trips to space from
different companies, Blue Origin or through SpaceX or through
Sierra Space, If they need to send something up there, they're
going to be working together to send part of their send, part of
their space station or part of part of their platforms up
there. So it'll be an interesting time
for all of these companies to work together and also to work
with NASA. And they're going to be using
NASA's technology. They're going to be using NASA's
capabilities to innovate in space.
And all of the stuff that NASA has learned throughout their
time with the International Space Station and through their
time with the Apollo programs and the Space shuttle, all of
that, all of these companies can use that to better their
platforms too. So it's going to be really cool.
Very exciting, yeah. I hope that's the next 20 or 30
years are going to be very interesting space field and
hopefully humanity's still around to take advantage of it.
Yeah, I think we will be. I think there's we're not going
to stop. I think this is going to be a
really cool, interesting time. This is the stuff that I dreamed
of when I was a kid like like this.
It's finally coming true that we're going to people are going
to start building their own space stations like companies
are going to start building their own private space
stations. Who knows?
Eventually we'll be to the point where there's going to be a
private mission to another star system like Prometheus or
something like that Show the movie Prometheus, except maybe
they won't be bringing DNA down to Earth and dumping it into a
river be a little bit different. But it's going to, it's going to
be wild in the next 20-30 years what happens up there, because
not only is it SpaceX, it's all these other companies that want
to make money and they get, they make billions of dollars per
year from NASA and also from each other.
So it's going to be cool. Can't wait to see it.
Happen. Yeah, same here.
Thanks, Neil. Thank you very much for having
me on here. Will, yeah, of course.
Anytime. We're going to take a trip back
all the way to December 13th, 2022 when Elon Musk said he was
going to remove 1.5 billion Twitter accounts.
It's from the archives. Take a listen.
It's interesting. So, Elon?
Musk bought Twitter a little bit ago for about $45 billion, and
ever since the purchase it's been kind of a roller coaster of
emotions. He fired half of the staff, so
half of the people that were on the moderation team and also
engineers and also business people behind the scenes,
they're all gone. So it's a slim line team and
they're working forward in a way that is going to bring Elon's
vision to life. And this vision is going to be
something that's never really been done before, which is an
all in one platform, which is going to be chatting, text,
crypto king, video, audio, everything under one platform.
So that really hasn't been done. It's been done in WhatsApp, but
it's also something that's never been done sort of in America at
this point. So Elon is building that
platform and this gets back to SpaceX eventually.
So I wanted to let you know that that is not just about Twitter
today, but we have to set it up so we know what's going on with
Twitter and how it's going to affect SpaceX.
So Elon can have the staff trying to cut money, you know,
trying to trying to get the money situated because he spent
$45 billion on this and he has to move forward with his plan to
build this thing and to make it profitable.
But since he has joined up, there's been other things that
have been happening at Twitter as well.
So Elon kind of opened up the floodgates for all the people
that have been banned before to come back out of the platform.
You know, all the people with hate speech etcetera have been
let back on the platform. And he's a, you know, he's a
absolutist when it comes to free speech.
So he wants everybody to speak their mind.
He wants everybody to talk about the things that they want to
talk about and he wants to give everybody no matter what your
leaning is. And he wants to give you a
platform to talk about what you want to talk about.
And I understand that. You know, it's it's a noble
thing to do. Everybody should be free to say
whatever they want to say. Then the consequences of those
things should be with the other people that are on the platform.
And you should be able to talk it out.
You know, like that's how that's how he feels.
You know, just talk it out, figure it out.
Now, some of this stuff, some of this speech is, you know,
protected under the Constitution.
Of course you can't incite violence, things like that.
You're not supposed to do that stuff.
There's laws about that. You're not supposed to do that.
And he said he's going to follow the law of the land as much as
possible on his platform. Right.
But this is where it gets kind of dicey.
When those people came back in, there was a flood of trolls as
well that came back through. And apparently those trolls
started off on 4 Chan, which is a place where if you're not
familiar with it, it's full of trolls.
And if if you've never been there, don't.
It's like if you don't want to see it, don't go there.
It's it's not a not a pleasant place but it is an interesting
place to visit on the Internet and if you, if you're really
inclined, go check it out. But I would, I would suggest
highly against it. But it's it's interesting.
So they all hung out there and they thought of an idea, hey,
let's troll the Internet and let's make a fake Eli Lilly
account, right. And this account is a
pharmaceutical manufacturer. So they said, hey, we're going
to make insulin free. This was a fake account, a
verified fake account. You know, you can pay the $8 to
get a verified account. They paid the $8, got a verified
account and duped everybody into thinking that that's the real
Eli Lilly. And the real Eli Lilly was like,
no, we didn't say that. What are you talking about?
So the $8 check mark thing on Twitter kind of got canned,
right? Immediately it got cut off.
Eli Lilly lost a bunch of money. Investors pulled out of the
company because they thought that this was real.
So the stock price tanked a little bit and people pulled out
and they were like, we can't really trust this.
So Elon in his wisdom said, OK, $8 check mark not good enough.
So we're going to put more check marks.
We're going to check mark the people that are paying the $8
just to verify that you're a human, you're going to have to
pay more if you are. You know, if you work at a
company, say if you're an executive at a company, you're
going to pay X amount of dollars, you're going to get an
executive check mark and the name of the company will be in a
little icon underneath your profile.
And also a government person, you know, somebody that works in
the government, you can have that attached to your Twitter
profile. So you're going to have to pay
for that check mark as well. So different check marks for
different people. Understandable.
You know, hey, if you could take a second and hit the subscribe
button and the like button, it would really help out the
channel. But it's going to help you out
even more because you're going to start seeing more SpaceX NASA
Space Flight content in your feed, not just for myself, but
from other creators as well. And it's going to help you out
actually a lot more than it's going to help me out.
So please just take a second hit, subscribe, hit like and
let's get back into the Elon Musk content.
So you can discern between a real account and not a real
account. And you have to have those
certain sort of e-mail addresses or some sort of way to identify
yourself in order to get that check mark.
So if you're Eli Lilly, you know, for, for instance, you'd
have to have an Eli Lilly e-mail address verify your Twitter
account so you can verify that you work there.
OK. So no more of the trolls getting
a hold of the other people's accounts because they're not
secure anymore. OK.
So that's the thing that Elon's working on right now.
OK, so this all comes back to SpaceX, I promise.
So those are the things that advertisers on the platform on
Twitter looked at and they said, hey, this doesn't look like it's
very stable anymore. And we don't really want to
spend our money on a place that is going to give everybody,
including the trolls, ways to say racist things and bigoted
things and horrible things to other people.
We don't want to be associated with that.
So we're going to pull all of our money out.
Half of the advertisers, the big advertisers that were spending
millions of dollars per month pulled out of Twitter and said
we don't want this anymore, we're going to pause our ad
spend on Twitter, right. So there goes millions of
dollars down the drain for Twitter immediately since Elon
took over. Now when Elon saw this, he got,
he got mad. You know, he was just like, how
can't, like, why can't you understand what I'm doing here?
And also, look, we've had these working relationships for a long
time. There's always been trolls.
So he confronted the people and he berated them, according to
some news article that I read. I can't remember where I read
it. I'm sorry, could be the
Financial Times. I apologize.
I don't have that up right now. But I read it this morning and
it was a reputable source. So take my word for it.
Sorry, I don't have it up. The fact is that apparently he
went in there and he kind of yelled at people and, you know,
kind of said, hey, you should be spending your millions of
dollars here and not postponing it because I got this under
control. So take that with a grain of
salt as well because you never know where the Internet
information is coming from, right?
Could be just somebody, also a troll, could also be somebody
that works there but also has a, you know, has a vendetta against
Elon or one of his companies or something like this, right.
So millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars are going
away from Twitter. So I think you know where I'm
going with this moving forward, the Internet has kind of turned
on Eli Eli Elon and has turned him from this person who's going
to rise up and pull people out of horrible places such as, you
know, with Tesla, you know, you're trying to remove carbon
emissions from the, from the auto industry, right, by using
electric vehicles. That's cool.
Like EVs are great for that, you know, and they're like they're
great technology. So moving that forward was a
huge deal. And also, you know, solar panel
roofs, great idea, use the energy from the sun, renewable
sun comes out every day. You know, there's there's
unlimited source of power from the sun.
Use that power from the sun to generate battery power and your
house, and you continue to have continuous operation of your
home and the energy and that you need for your appliances and the
other things in your house. OK, that sounds like an awesome
idea, right? And then you have SpaceX, which
is this gigantic rocket company that's sending rockets to the
International Space Station. People on board those rockets,
they're going to be sending people to the moon in a lunar
Starship variant. And also people that are
investing in SpaceX think, you know where I'm going here, the
people that are investing in SpaceX are investing billions of
dollars every year to keep the company moving forward.
So some of those people, and I'm not saying this is actually
happening yet, I'm just saying this could happen in the future.
Some of the people that may have wanted to invest in Tesla and
there could be, you know, since let's just put a a random number
on here, let's just say 1 billion dollars, 1 billion with
AB dollars and that's a a certain amount of people.
That said, I don't know what Elon's up to now I'm kind of
sketched out. I don't know what's happening.
So I'm gonna pull back my 300 million or yeah, my $300 million
for now and I'm not going to put it in the next round of funding
for SpaceX. Now, can Elon bring in other
investors to help him out and get that funding anyway, or
could he sell off some of his stock in Tesla to fund SpaceX
going forward? There's a possibility of that,
but the sentiment about Elon, Elon has changed tremendously
from this person that was going to help revolutionize everything
and change humanity as a whole to somebody who's cutting jobs
and also now he's a horrible person.
And the sentiment online is that it it's completely changed.
If you look at the rhetoric on even on Reddit from the last
three to four years, even a couple months ago, everyone was
100% for Eli. You know, there was a a couple
of detractors here and there, but most people were like, hey,
that's a there's a guy doing some cool stuff, you know, he's
making those rockets. That's cool, including myself.
I'm like, hey, he's doing some cool stuff.
He's making those rockets. He's making those rockets go to
the International Space Station and also Starship, etcetera.
But now people are kind of changing their tune.
You know, they're they're saying things like he's not fit to run
so many companies because he's so, he's so stretched between
all of these companies doing all these things that he can't do
all of it. You know, they've they've been
saying that for a long time, but now it's kind of showing through
a little bit. People are seeing it through the
cracks, but it's out public. And Elon even puts it out in the
public and talks about it in the public on Twitter all the time.
Like he's he's kind of a guy that was like, hey, I love
Twitter, I love to talk on here. I love to make memes, I love to
make funny things go on on Twitter.
But now he owns it so he can kind of do whatever he wants
with him. So it's a private company now.
He owns, you know, Twitter, so he can make it whatever he wants
to make it. And he doesn't need to rely on
outside investment other than advertisers or the investment
that was already put into Twitter in the 1st place.
And the reason why he bought Twitter, The user base is huge
one and if it was the technology that they had, you can build
that. Like I could build Twitter.
If I really want to do it, I can sit down and I can read a or
watch a a React build, build Twitter with React JS tutorial
on YouTube. So it's not the technology.
I can get that done in an afternoon, you know, that's no
big deal. Elon could do that himself if
you wanted to. But it was for the user base,
the millions and millions of people of active users that he
bought Twitter so he can build his x.com platform moving
forward. Now is this going to hamper some
people from investing in SpaceX in the future?
I think the diehards will always be there.
I think people that are interested in Space Flight and
interested in Starship will always be there.
And possibly this could shift the focus from private
investment of SpaceX into SpaceX going to a more public route if
the sentiment dies down from the private investors.
And I'm not an an investment guy, you know, so this is not
financial advice. I wanted to let you know that
now, not financial advice, but I want to let you know that
there's a possibility that within the next X amount of
years, SpaceX could be thinking about going public where you
could buy shares of test or sorry, SpaceX, and you could buy
shares of SpaceX because of this fallout from something like
Twitter is if Twitter goes bust, if Elon just goes like, I can't
save it and we're going to lose a bunch of money.
Sorry everybody, you know, what are you going to do?
But you know, Elon's, you know, he's not perfect and nobody is.
So moving forward, if that happens, maybe the vision of
Elon, maybe the outlook of of Elon is going to be a little bit
changed. And maybe they're going to have
to move SpaceX from, say, a privately owned company and
privately funded company to something that's more public
like Tesla, where you can have thousands of investors and, you
know, you could, you could build a gigantic successful company
sort of like Boeing. So maybe SpaceX is going to be
the next Boeing, who knows. But I'm, I'm excited and I'm
eager to see what happens in the near future because it could be
really interesting or it could just be nothing.
You know, there's there's a whole part of it that's just
like, maybe this is just Internet drama, you know, maybe
it's just Internet drama for now.
And people will wake up and they'll say, hey, you know, this
is going to be a a, like, no big deal.
And we're still gonna invest in SpaceX because we understand the
value of SpaceX, which is bringing humanity to space and
bringing like sending humanity to Mars and sending people back
to the moon and sending people to the International Space
Station and also launching satellites, launching Starlink
satellites, bringing connectivity to everybody in the
rural areas of of the world. There's a possibility people are
just gonna be like, yeah, we understand, like that's cool,
and we're going to spend our money there because we know that
that's a successful business. They keep making money, and it's
a whole other thing than Twitter.
Like, Twitter's kind of a it's a technology company.
SpaceX is a technology company, too, but they're a very
successful technology company. And Twitter is his new kind of
hobby thing. You know, like that.
You think? A lot of people think like that
too. Good morning, and welcome back
to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for a second in a
series of three briefings today, all talking about NASA's Boeing
Crew Flight Test. This mission is a flight test of
the Boeing Starliner spacecraft scheduled to launch in early May
with our two NASA astronauts, Sonny Williams and Butch
Wilmore. Our briefing today will focus on
the details of that mission. Our guests here with us today.
We'll discuss the timeline and all phases of flight that
they'll be keeping an eye on here with us today we have Mike
Lammers, Starliner Ascent Flight Director, Ed Vance ICE,
Starliner Rendezvous Flight Director, and Vincent Lacourt,
International Space Station Flight Director.
We'll be taking some questions here in the room, on the phone
and on social media. If you're joining us from the
phone bridge, please press * one to enter our question queue.
And on social media, if you have a question, please use hashtag.
Ask NASA. When you're asking your
question, please state your name and media affiliation as well as
who you would like to address your question to.
But first, we're going to start off with some opening remarks.
I'll kick it off with Mike Lammers.
OK. Thank you, Chelsea.
Again, I'm, I'm Mike Lammers. I've, I've been a flight
director in Houston for about 15 years and a number of programs.
But today I'm kind of excited to come talk to you as the
Starliner Flight Director. I'm the lead Flight director and
I also do the ascent phase of the flight and in that role I I
lead the Boeing and ULA United Launch Alliance operations team
that gets the the crew both into the vehicle pre launch as well
as gets them into space. And it's it's been a culmination
of a number of years of developing how this flight
system works with Boeing and United Launch Alliance as well
as developing procedures operation techniques and
training especially here at the end where we go through a lot of
the details of the mission and it's it's it's really just
outstanding to to talk to you about and I know we're all we're
all really excited to get into the details of the mission.
Just up top again we're we're targeting launch of the early
May and we will have a rendezvous 24 hours later and
we're going to do a minimum of an 8 day mission and test
flight. And I stress it's it's a test
flight right. The the mission is to shake down
the vehicle with the crew on board.
We've flown it twice before, but this will be the first time with
the crew when we want to learn about it and and make it
available as a tool to transport crew up and down to the
International Space Station. Again, it's targeting a minimum
of an 8 day mission, but the total length is going to be
defined by orbital mechanics and the weather at our landing
locations which are in the Southwest United States.
I'll talk about that in a little bit.
Again, I'm here with with Ed and Vincent.
What we're going to do is we'll talk about each phase of flight.
I'll start with ascent. Ed will go into the rendezvous.
Vincent will talk about what what we're doing docked, then
I'll hand back over to me, I'll go through kind of the landing
phase and then we'll get into questions.
Again, real happy to go into all sorts of detail.
We we, we live and breathe this stuff.
So if you have any questions or things that you want more
amplification on, we're we're more than happy to go into that.
So what I'll do is I'll talk verbally a little bit before we
go into the video, but I'm going to start with the day before
launch. The way this system works is the
the vehicle's going to be stacked on the Atlas Five at the
at what we called the VIF, the vertical integration facility.
I believe that stands for out at pad 41.
And the day before launch, in the morning, the stack will be
rolled out to the launchpad, brought down hard on the
launchpad and they'll do some checkouts.
And then we have a Boeing team in Florida at the Boeing mission
BMCC, Boeing Mission Control Center.
They actually handle. They're the team of engineers
and technicians that do all the integration and test of the
spacecraft. They power up the spacecraft,
powered up and down all the time.
In fact, just over these last few days, they've been doing
that to fuel the spacecraft. They will power up the
spacecraft. My team in Houston will come on
and watch with that as well as the Boeing engineering team
that's that's based in Houston will be right down the hall from
me and we'll bring the vehicle up.
We'll do some checkouts. We'll make sure it can
communicate through T Driss and the communications network and
do some file up links to the vehicle and just generally make
sure it's ready for launch the next day.
We'll also do a briefing for the crew just to give them any last
minute things that may have come up and kind of a look at the
what the weather. What we're going to do on launch
day is Butch and Sunny will will wake up on launch day, go
through some of their preliminary activities.
They're turned over to Boeing at about 4 1/2 hours before flight,
right? Then Boeing manages all the crew
activities both to get them ready and out to the pad.
At that time we'll do a, we'll do a basically a weather check
with the crew. I'll run out a weather briefing
with them and then they'll go ahead and go into the suit room
and get suited up with the the Boeing and that David Clark
technicians that do that. As the crew is getting ready,
the Boeing team in Florida will do the final activation of the
spacecraft and that involves bringing the propulsion system
up to pressure and activated and then they're ready to turn it
over to the team in Houston who will manage the spacecraft.
Keep in mind that the way that this system works is we've got
the spacecraft managed from Houston in flight and then of
course the launch vehicle is is activated and run in Florida
until we hit the point of launch.
At 4 hours before launch, again, we're going to hand over to
Houston, a little bit different than Shuttle and Artemis.
We manage a lot of the last activities as far as commanding
to the spacecraft actually from Houston, the there's also
besides that Boeing team in Houston and Florida, we also
have a small team in Denver that works for United Launch Alliance
that handles what gives me some information on what the rocket
is going to be doing during flights.
So we're all coordinating. The crew arrives at the pad two
hours and 50 minutes before launch.
They'll go up to the white room. You'll see the padtechs help
them strap in. That process takes a little bit
over an hour. They'll start closing the Hatch
at one hour and 20 minutes before flight.
I should note too, that the the rocket is actually fully fueled
before the crew gets out there. So that's one of the last things
we do is we load the rocket with the cryogenic propulsion while
we suit up the crew. Again, we're at an hour and 20
before launch. We'll get the crew in and then
the get the Hatch closed. We'll do a leak check on the
spacecraft and the pad team will clear the pad about 50 minutes
before launch. OK.
The real meat of the countdown where you'll hear a lot of
things on the on the audio that they provide, that's.
At l -, 18 minutes, we'll begin the transfer to internal power.
That's where we go from the external power to the onboard
batteries. That's commanded from Houston.
You'll hear some calm checks between the crew and the ULA
launch conductor Doug Libo. A number of poles going through
the count and then in the final four minutes you'll hear the
launch conductor give the crew an instruction to do a switch
throw. It's called last arm to auto.
That'll that's last is the launch abort system.
The crew will alarm the abort system at 75 seconds and then
they'll go ahead and launch. OK, so it's already been a a
busy day but now we have liftoff.
So that's where my real work starts.
This is going to be the first crude ascent that's been flown
out of Mission Control in Houston since the STS 135 in
2011. Can we go ahead and roll the
first video? I'll just talk for about a
minute and 1/2 through the ascent activities on the Atlas
5, the animation ascent. OK, again, we've got the Atlas 5
on the pad. Crew access arms retracted at 11
minutes, by the way, so there's a liftoff from pad 41.
OK, On the Atlas 5, most of your energy to make orbit actually
comes from the first stage with those two SRBS and the RD180
engine. Actually, one of the first
things you'll hear from the crew here is roll program while we're
going through Ascent. Looking forward to hearing Butch
talk to us right off the pad again.
RD180's got 2 engine bells. That's actually a single engine
there in the first stage. First stage will burn.
The Sr. BS will burn for about a minute
and a half. You'll see them burn out.
We actually carry the empty casings for another minute.
Goes a little faster on the video, but we got to get above
the atmosphere to jettison them. We'll get through first stage at
4 1/2 minutes. There's about a 15 second pause
as first stage separates. That's the ascent cover that
covers the docking system. It'll be jettisoned and the
Arrow skirt will jettison as well.
And then the two RL 10s on the Centaur will take us on a nice
easy cruise to space. That'll take us up to about 12
minutes into the mission. Miko is 12 minutes.
We'll stay on the booster for about 3 minutes, and then we'll
have a separation at 15 minutes into the mission.
Again, we're sub orbital still here.
We got to do another burn. Starliners actually got a pretty
spectacular orbital maneuvering system.
You'll see the four engines kick in there.
We'll do that at 31 minutes into the mission, and that'll push
the crew into orbit and get a get them heading on to
rendezvous. OK, so with that, as in the real
world, we do one more burn at an hour and 15 minutes.
But then I had it handed over to Ed and his rendezvous team.
All right. Thanks, Mike.
My name is Ed Van Sis and I've been a flight director since
class of 2009, certified in 2010.
So like Mike, about 14 or 15 years as a flight director.
Experience International Space Station, Artemis 1A, little bit
gateway flight director for for about a year.
Lots of projects inside the space station and now I've been
working Starliner since 2016. So really all three of us up
here have maybe different exact projects that we've worked on,
but we all have significant experience across multiple
programs for the agency and also been working Starliner for for
quite some time. It's been really an honor and
actually humbling to be able to work on Starliner from the days
of when it was a PowerPoint presentation all the way up now
to having two flights behind us to get ready to go put crew into
orbit on on this third flight. The the teams that we get to
work with are are truly amazing and highly capable and
everything that they do and getting to be at the forefront
of leading the teams, not just the flight controllers but and
and the real time engineering teams as well.
But all the all the folks that are working in the factory and
with ULA and and all the other organizations we work with and
of course with NASA as well and the commercial crew program and
and the ISS program, just having that capability and and
experiences is just quite a pleasure.
Like Mike said, we're we're getting ready to put this
vehicle and this crew through a test flight and various phases
of of a test. So that's what you're going to
hear a lot about as we are working through the missions.
Obviously the primary goal is to get the crew up to the space
station and to get them back home to the Southwest US safely.
But in that process we are doing a lot of purposely, doing a lot
of tests of the vehicle as you would with the test flight of an
aircraft or anything else. So you'll you'll hear a lot
about from Vincent, you'll hear a lot about different test
things that we're going to do while we're docked.
But we also want to put the vehicle through some some
experiences that we don't anticipate being needed on a on
a normal 6 month mission to the space station.
But we know the vehicle should be capable of handling them if
the crew were to to need them. And so we want to check them out
on this test flight as well just to be able to say that yes, not
only then the normal mission will go fine, but then all of
the capabilities the vehicle has on maybe not a good day, all of
those work as well. So that's going to be the focus
of the bulk of the cruise afternoon after launch.
So they they got up early, they went through everything that
Mike just described. Now they're in space.
They just completed the the first Co elliptic burn and you'd
think that now it's just a a great relaxing ride to the space
station and it will be for that six month increment mission.
But like I said, we're putting the crew right to work getting
them out of their seats, out of their suits and then right into
some demonstrations. And we will be doing a bunch of
things with the spacecraft to make sure that it can help the
crew and the crew can also maneuver the spacecraft as they
need to. So we'll be doing things like
purposefully pointing it in a in an orientation that's say, not
exactly the the nominal the normal orientation for the
mission, and then having the crew manually fly the spacecraft
back into the the direction it should be pointing.
We also want to make sure that if for some reason the vehicle
doesn't know where the communication satellites are
located, that the crew can manually fly the spacecraft to
point the antennas at the satellite.
Another another thing that we'll be doing this day is tricking,
if you will, the spacecraft into thinking that it doesn't know
where it is in space. So we're going to deallocate a
couple of its Inertial measurement systems to they're
still running, but the vehicle computers are not actually
looking at them. So effectively the the computers
don't necessarily know where they are.
And then the crew will manually fly the spacecraft to look at
stars and use our star tracker to then rebuild its inertial
navigation base. And we'll see how their manual,
manual way of doing it compares with what the still running
computers are are seeing and see how well that compares.
And they should all compare very equally and we should be able to
run off of that solution that the crew comes up with.
But again, it's a test flight, So we want to see how well the
vehicle does and all these scenarios that we've thoroughly
tested out on the ground with all our avionics systems down
here, but want to see how the spacecraft is really performing.
And one other final thing that what we're doing is we're
putting all all of our thrusters through a a human manual flying
checkout. So we want to make sure that not
only can we point in space, but also can we do translations as
well. So if we're close to the space
station and the computers have a hard time controlling Starliner,
we want to make sure the astronauts can manually fly
away. And to ensure we have that
capability, we're going to give the crew full manual control on
this first day and just test everything out.
So we'll do some demonstrations of that and that last part is
really important for the safety of the space stations.
We have that manual capability and we talked about the, the
engineering teams that are here in Houston, the ones that are in
Florida as well and the other NASA programs involved.
We're going to take a look at all this data while the crew's
sleeping and have the the Boeing teams that that we are embedded
with. We'll take a look at all that
data, bring recommendations to our mission management team and
ultimately take that to NASA to certify that this manual flying
capability is also something we're ready to use in proximity
to the space station if we were to need it.
So all that's happening while the crew's asleep and then
they'll wake up the next morning and we can go ahead and show the
video here for the free flight and the orbit.
So this is kind of the end of the cruise day.
There is the kind of representation of what they're
doing at the in those tests that I was talking about.
So we're pointing the nose towards the Earth trying to see
where we are with respect to the communication satellites.
We also fly in this tail to the sun attitude.
So our our solar arrays are at the the back of the Starliners.
We want to make sure we keep those pointed at the sun.
But the crews inside there and they're getting ready for bed,
and we'll do some more checkouts overnight while they're
sleeping. They'll wake up in the morning.
We'll be pretty close, you know, a couple couple 1000 kilometers
away from ISS and do a rendezvous.
That was exactly the same automated rendezvous we did for
the last flight. We'll fly up underneath the
space station and then around out in front.
And we'll we'll actually pause a little bit out in front of the
space station, do some more manual flying just to make sure
that's exactly the way the crew expects it.
Then we'll press in, and at 10 meters we'll do our final
approach and dock. And then Sunny and Butch will
get to get everything situated inside the cabin and get ready
to come into their new home for the next few days.
And Vincent's the expert on the space station side, so I'll hand
it over to him to explain all that to you.
Thanks, Ed. So good afternoon, everybody.
My name is Vincent Lacorde. I'm the lead International Space
Station Flight Director for CFT. I was selected into the office
in 2015. I'm going to walk through our
dock time frame with International Space Station.
Our main goals of the dock mission are a few.
There's the practice and validate the planned operations
for long duration missions. We're also going to perform some
contingency operations just in case we were ever to need those
in contingencies. And then we'll do some cargo
operations. Our lead planners who are Richie
Chantlos and Izzy Lasky did a great job of trying to fit all
the puzzle pieces together and have figured out that we can do
our mission in a minimum of eight dock days.
So we have a few graphics I'm going to show you to kind of
show you how the mission will look day by day.
So the first of all, just as Mike said, we usually dock about
24 hours after launch. Once you arrive and dock to the
space station, you're going to get the crew is going to egress,
get out of their asset and entry suits.
Then they're going to repress the vestibules and be able to
open the hatches. And then they'll go on to the
space station and we'll have our welcome ceremony that you'll get
to watch on NASA TV. Then the ISIS crew members
conduct a safety briefing. Will they'll be able to take
Butch and Sunny and remind them of where all the emergency
hardware lives on the International Space Station, in
case we have any contingencies when they're on board.
Now let's go ahead and go to flight day three, which is dock
day #2. On this day, we're unloading all
of the cargo and we're also configuring the vehicle for
quiescent operations. If you can imagine when you're
when the Starliner is there for six months, you don't want to
use all the power and leave all of your equipment running the
whole time. So what the quiescent OPS does
is it basically powers off all the redundant equipment that you
don't really need. The crew will still be able to
go inside the capsule. They have good lights, good
displays, good ventilation, things like that, but all of the
extra computers and stuff like that will be powered off.
We'll also get to do some emergency hardware transfer.
I'm getting ready again for some of the contingency operations
that we're going to practice later in the mission.
Let's go again to dock day #3. On dock day #3, we're going to
do some of our operational checkouts.
The first main one we're going to do is called our Safe Haven
Checkout. If you can imagine if you have
an emergency on ISS, you want to be able to get in your Earth
return vehicle, isolate yourself and make sure you're in a safe
environment. So that's what we'll practice.
Butch and Sonny will go into Starliner, they'll close the
Hatch. They'll basically completely
power up the vehicle on their own to practice if they were
getting ready for an emergency undock and return.
So basically, make sure all that all that stuff works in a kind
of a steady environment. On entry, we have a system
called a supplementer that provides cooling for the vehicle
that uses water. If for some reason there's any
kind of leak or any kind of where we need additional water,
we have the capability to refill that on board even though you
normally would not need to do that.
So we'll get to practice that again, just to make sure all the
hardware connects correctly, make sure all the procedures are
accurate. So that way if we need that in a
contingency, we're ready for that.
On a long duration mission, we'll have 4 crew members.
And So what we'll do is we'll borrow a few ISIS crew members,
have them float into Starliner with Butch and Sunny, and we'll
practice that that day of free flight to see how would we
Orient ourselves with four crew members.
So we'll get to practice that before the the long duration
mission. And then we'll get to do a
Boeing event where we'll have all of the engineers and
employees who worked really hard to get Starliner on board.
They'll get to interact with the crew and spend some time with
them and see all that great hardware they built in space.
We'll go to the next day, dock day #4, so usually seven day in
the six month mission. Seven days before the mission
ends, you'll take that quiescent config and do a complete power
up and basically check out all the missions systems to make
sure all the computers come on, make sure all the the equipment
is working. We're basically going to test
that out on dock day #4. Butch and Sonny will basically
sit in the capsule and watch all of displays and watch all the
units come up so that way they can understand how all the
systems are working. Now let's go to flight day
number 6, which is dock day #5. We put this sample day in there.
As Mike said, Orbital Dynamics will really drive what day we're
able to undock. So if it's longer than eight day
mission, this is one of the days we'll put in.
So we'll give the crew 1/2 day off.
Again, they're very busy on all these days, so they'll get a
little bit of rest. We've also trained Butch and
Sonny to be able to do basically all of the key International
Space Station tasks that could exist for them.
So they're ready for any preventive maintenance,
corrective maintenance tasks as well as a lot of science tasks.
So we'll we'll ask the space station program what extra
activities are available and Butch and Sonny will go back to
their International Space Station lives on their previous
missions and get to do some of those tasks that they remember
doing. Let's say, let's go to dock day
number six. At this point, we're really now
focused on the end of the mission.
So we're going to load all the cargo that's going to come home
on the Starliner and start some of that undock preparations.
That emergency equipment that was in Starliner, when I'll take
that out and put it back on the the ISS where it lives.
One of the other training simulations we fly on Starliner
is on entry. It's all automated, but there is
the capability that if needed the crew can take manual control
and fly an entry for Butch. He's just going to practice that
right before a launch. So he doesn't need a lot of
practice, but on six month mission you want the crew to be
able to to get in that simulator and really practice those
entries to make sure they're ready in case they need it.
We'll get to practice that on dock day number six.
Let's go to the next day. Now we'll really do a full
undocked power up, make sure the vehicle is completely ready.
We're going to have a conference with the crew to walk through
all of their flight test objectives, make sure they give
us feedback. So that way if we need to adjust
any procedures or just any hardware, we can do that before
Starliner 1 and then we'll have our standard departure news
conference. Then we go to our next day.
What we did is we went ahead and put in a sleep shift day because
again because of order dynamics, you don't always get to undock
at the same time of day. So this give us a chance to
sleep shift the crew for any anytime we need.
And then we go to dock Day #9, which will be our last day on
the International Space Station. We'll get to do our farewell TV
events. The crew will get in there as an
entry suit. We'll close the Hatch, and then
we'll get ready to leave. And at this point, we'll hand
back over to Mike who will kind of walk you through the
operations of how you undock and how you entry and land.
OK. Thank you, Vincent.
So again, we mentioned where we are now.
It's we're on, we're on undocking day and the crew is in
the vehicle. I'll show a short video here in
a second. But undocking happens about 6
1/2 hours prior to landing. That's a little bit longer on
this test flight than it would be for a direct descent mission
at the end of a six month increment.
We added some time for the crew to do a couple more flight tests
and these are really important ones.
Starliner is really unique in that it has a backup system.
We called it a backup system where the crew, you know, they
have a rotational and a translational hand controller
and they normally go through three flight computers that fly
the vehicle automated. But as it turns out, we can have
the crew engage backup control where they're actually firing.
The the commander can fire The Jets directly, bypassing the
computers. And that's just designed so if
you had a really unlikely computer failure, the crew can
actually manually control the vehicle in this backup mode by
what I like to call stick and rudder flying.
In fact, they can even de orbit and and land in that mode.
So what we're going to do is we're going to spend about an
orbit with the Butch, engaging the various.
There's a couple of different jet manifolds that they can they
can engage to get some experience flying and back up
And just to make sure that get some feedback on how the vehicle
flies with respect to all the experience that he has, both,
you know, and our training Sims on the ground.
And then, of course, the other spacecraft and even aircraft
that he's flown before. So again, we'll go ahead and do
that. Over a couple of Revs, we do a
deorbit burn, and you'll see this in the video.
But we do a deorbit burn over the Pacific and we target a
landing in the Southwest United States.
We've got 3 landing areas, White Sands Missile Range in New
Mexico. There's actually two spots that
we can land there. It's a it's a really quite a big
place and the the other and that's where the previous two
Starliners have landed. There's also a landing area at
Wilcox Playa that's an area east of Tucson, AZ.
It's actually just off of I-10 or a Dugway proving Ground which
is West of Salt Lake City and that gives us kind of a spread,
geographical spread that allows us to to get.
Opportunities every day depending on where orbital
mechanics puts us. So we'll go ahead, we'll roll
the video here. This is only about a minute and
then we'll be finished. OK, so there's undocking.
I think you'll see. Right after we undock, we back
down the corridor. There's a cover that this is a
little early in the video. There's a cover that closes over
the docking system. We fly 1/4 lap, we get go up
over the zenith of ISS and then we do a departure burn.
I don't believe we show the deorbit burn here, but this is
some of the tests that we're doing with the the backup
control that I mentioned. When we do the deorbit burn,
it's pretty quick. It's less than a minute and the
deorbit burn will happen. The service module is separated,
it does a disposal burn and it burns up over the Pacific.
The capsule will go ahead and do a guided the orbit using its own
propulsion system, which was activated shortly before this
landing sequence begins at 30,000 feet.
There goes the forward heat shield and then we put out a
couple of drogues. You'll see those jettison here
in a second. Hopefully we'll have video from
the NASA WB 57 for this when it happens.
Mains go out reefed at 8000 feet and then they'll dis reef 3
mains and takes about. That's the bucket handle that
gets us in the correct attitude for landing.
Running the mains for about 3 minutes.
You should see here in a second the forward heat shield is
dropped and then the airbags deploy and the crew touches down
and the crew will jettison the chutes manually.
They do a switch throw. That'll cause a lot of the
vehicle systems to power down. Well, as they power down, we'll
bring the crew up. Actually on a satellite phone.
The landing team is 4 kilometer on a on an offset on on a on the
edge of something we call the four kilometer circle just to
make sure that they're safe from the falling parts that are
coming off the vehicle. There are things like mortar
lids and those droves that you saw before.
Once the vehicle's on the ground, that team will approach
and they're actually on the SAT phone call with me and the and
the crew. And they'll we'll go ahead and
turn the vehicle over once they're at the location.
And then they'll go ahead and make sure that do the usual
safety checks that you do around the capsule.
And they'll take the crew out, they'll do the medical checks
and then the crew will be helicoptered to a landing field
and then they'll be flown back to Houston.
So that's that is the mission summary.
Great. Thank you so much.
That was a huge wealth of information.
Thank you to all of our briefers for that in depth.
Going over of the timeline, we're going to switch over to
some questions now. We're going to be taking
questions here in the room. So if you have one, go ahead and
raise your hand. We'll also be taking questions
on our phone bridge. So if you are on the phone, go
ahead and press * one. If you've got a question for one
of our briefers, again please state your name, affiliation and
who you'd like to address your question to.
We can go ahead and start right here in the room.
Hey Mike, I made Rick Wall Street Journal, not sure who
this would go to. Steve and Mark talked a little
bit earlier about how Boeing is using NASA flight OPS for for
this mission. First of all, just to be crystal
clear, that's you guys, that's your team's and then second.
Could you talk a little bit about decision making during the
mission if there is an anomaly given that given NASA flight OPS
role in the Boeing's like ultimate responsibility and
authority and management over CFD, how does decision making
work and something goes wrong? Thanks.
So I'll take a little bit of that, but I'll also let like
Vincent to weigh in too. So what you really have up here,
you have three members of the Johnson Space Center Flight
Operations Directorate that are NASA civil servants.
But we also have APR 2 Starliner mission operations flight
directors that are operating out of the white flight control room
embedded with Boeing for design, development, test flight mission
execution of Starliner. And you have one space station
flight directors. He's running his flight.
Vincent's running his team down on flight control Room 1 just
like space station 24/7. 365 is being run from there and his
focus and his responsibilities are for the safety and
protection of the space station and execution of the entire NASA
mission. So I'll let and I'll let him go
into details on that versus our side of things is focused on the
crew safety vehicle safety mission success of the Starliner
mission for and with Boeing. But also of course since we are
providing a service to NASA and the commercial crew program
primary focus for us too is of course safety and and mission
success for the space station. So it is a partnership with
Vincent and his team and NASA and ISS team but there are some
pretty clear distinctions. So we have for those of you
familiar with our operational products, we have flight rules,
we have launched commit criteria that are Boeing products that
tell us the limitations going on goes things like that for
Starliner that are part of Boeing process.
We we work in developing those with our mission operations,
flight control teams, the mission engineer, the Boeing
engineers and then the Boeing management.
So Mark and Leroy that you talked with earlier and we get
all those approved so that we know how to go operate in the
Starliner spacecraft at the nitty gritty level.
But we also then work with commercial crew program and ISS
to ensure that what we're doing is within the requirements and
and safety paradigm of of what NASA needs for really taking
care of their astronauts. Even though they're our friends,
they're the NASA astronauts, we need to take good care of them
so that it is a collaboration. But there's still a distinction
on the the extent to which were embedded within Boeing and and
their design and development test versus Vincent's role.
Yeah. So I think from the
International Space Station flight director role, it's very
similar to how we do SpaceX, right.
Once we get inside integrated operations, the International
Space Station Flight Director has operational authority and
they're making the ultimate calls on, again, go being go to
dock, go to undock. Those kind of decisions.
The same way we would work with a SpaceX mission director
because they are the experts in the SpaceX capsule.
The same way I'd work with Ed and Mike that they're the expert
in the Starliner capsule. So if there's any anomalies on
the Starliner vehicle, again, my team is not the expert.
We will listen to them and get their to get their advice.
And then we have space station flight rules where we document
if they have failure of X computer or we still go or we
not go based on what we're done and see what risk we will take.
So again in a lot of ways for us we've practiced this for years
but it's very similar how we do other vehicles where again my
job is to make sure the ISS is in the right configuration for
docking, make sure all of our systems are at the right
redundancies and then to communicate with Ed, Mike, Chloe
and Rick and on their side to make sure that I understand the
situation and what what their vehicle is doing.
And again the the good news for us is we we sit right down the
hall from each other right so off console it's very easy to
work together and and get good situation where it's on any
anything they're working. So that's the benefit right of
working at Johnson Space Center where Boeing has has contracted
NASA to fly their vehicle. It's easier to be sometimes
easier to be on the same page because we do work at the same
place and and see each other all the time.
Great. Thank you.
We'll take a question on the phone real quick.
Marsha Dunn with The Associated Press.
Hi, I'm wondering how long could the Starliner and it's crew stay
at the space station if something goes amiss during AS
then in the initial part of the flight?
Are you taking up extra rations just in case?
And is Boeing, NASA working with SpaceX to be on emergency
standby just in case? I'm just wondering the backup
plans. Thanks.
I can go to answer first like the cargo so we have, we
basically bring a lot of supplies for the crew for for
kind of that initial mission. We have some extended supplies
and caves they stay, but obviously ISS has has plenty of
food and water for example. So really we're prepared for
them to stay as long as they need to.
Obviously there's certain weather requirements that we
need to meet on on CFT and so we have no issues if we need to
stay stay any longer. Yep.
As far as duration goes, this this is there's really no hard
constraint on the vehicle. This is the spacecraft that's
designed to stay at space station for six months, and
there's nothing essentially limiting that if you needed to.
As far as being on standby, you know those are.
I'm not aware of of any of that. OK.
We're going to go to a question in the room.
Go ahead. Hi Elizabeth Howell from
space.com. This is probably for Ed.
So can you talk about during the close proximity operations to
the ISS aside from obviously the flight activities of flight
activities Sunny and Butcher doing, are there any key
difference with how a SpaceX direct and close proximity
operations those? So I'm first going to admit that
I've been focused on Starliner for a long time and have not
been a flight a NASA flight director for a Crew Dragon
mission. So I don't have tremendous depth
of detail to really give you a point by point comparison.
But I have worked a couple of Dragon cargo missions in in
previous years. So at a high level, the
trajectories are basically the same because largely because of
what Benson described with the way that ISS wants to have
vehicles approaching and the way they want to manage the traffic
plans. So at a very high level, all the
spacecraft that come up to the ISS are going to come up from
below and behind and then do some sort of rendezvous.
If you're docking to the forward part of ISS, obviously you'll go
below, behind, in front and then and then kind of come up.
The way that we do that with Starliner is a little bit
different than with the Dragon. So the profiles will look a
little bit different just because the sensors that we use,
the sensor suites for rendezvous are all, you know, different
technologies, different way of doing things, different mission
rules, different waypoints if you will to to to get on that
trajectory. The way that the space station
is monitoring the approaching vehicle is very similar.
It's obviously not exactly the same, but it's very similar and
then largely from that level I can say that it's pretty close
to the same. I can't really do a good
comparison for you on you know timeline of events or the the
manual capabilities of the manual actions that crews might
be doing. But from that perspective it's
it's pretty pretty similar. We'll take another question in
the room. Thanks.
Hi, Irene Klotz with Aviation Week from Mike.
Two questions. The first one is considering
that redundancy in Starliner, do all systems need to be
operational to meet the launch commit criteria or are you able
to fly? If something is operational, you
can provide any detail on that? And then the second, just to
clarify again the relationship between Boeing and NASA for the
Starliner missions, for all intents and purposes, are you
all sort of on leave from NASA on your official jobs and
working as subcontractors to Boeing?
So Boeing is your customer during these missions?
You're no longer sort of representing NASA as you would
if it wasn't a Starliner mission going on?
Thanks. Yeah, I'll good questions.
I'll I'll take your second question first because maybe
here's here's another way of of of of thinking about it and I
realized that that it it can be it's challenging to describe
sometimes the relationship but I'll give it to you another way.
When when I'm working Starliner right Ed and I, we actually have
a charge code right and that that that is you know funded by
Boeing. I mean ultimately it's part of a
NASA contract but but but it's it's being managed by Boeing and
we're providing them service right.
And then that goes into even how the mission is run.
When I report to the mission management team, the mission
management team is chaired by Leroy Cain who's a Boeing
employee. Boeing runs the mission until we
get into the joint OPS with with with Vincent as he as he
described then you know NASA's got an oversight role like they
do for all of the of the vehicles.
But, but once, if we're outside of this area around ISS, it's
it's a Boeing run mission that is done in partnership with
their customer who is NASA. As far as the launch commit
criteria, you know there's kind of two sets.
There's the ones that ULA has United Launch Alliance on the
Atlas Five. I'm not as familiar with those
except to say that they do their own set of checks that's
identical to all the commercial and government missions that
that they do for the rocket for the spacecraft In general, all
the systems have to be up and running.
I think I could probably get into some details where there's
there's some small things that we can fly without.
I was just you know talking yesterday about about 1 criteria
is how many. You know the crew uses tablets
for their procedures, right. And we fly with four of them.
Well if something happened to one of them we can fly with
three. So there's there's there's a few
places where there's sufficient redundant systems that can go
ahead and launch. But, but in general all the
flight computers, all the Imus have to be running to to to
launch and we, I mean we're evaluating those right down to
liftoff. Thank you, Mike.
We're going to switch to a question on our phone bridge,
Jeff Faust with Space News. Right.
One, is there anything like the dry dress rehearsal that SpaceX
does for true Dragon missions for Starliner?
And then you mentioned the timeline for undocking the
landing is a little bit longer on CFT versus an operational
mission. What would be the the time from
undocking to landing for an operational mission?
Thanks. Let's see for the the dry dress,
the answer is yes, there is an activity and I forget the exact
date right now, but it's about 8:00.
It's it's eight days before launch, seven or eight days
before launch and it's called the crew training activity.
It's really a full up run where the crew we we have the whole
team there. The crew suits up in the suit
room. They get get in the suits we
take them down to the spacecraft.
The one difference is is the the spacecraft and the rocket aren't
at the pad, they're in the VIF, the the integration building.
But we we have them practice out in the pad in the white room on
some other activities. But the crew will get into the
spacecraft. The spacecraft is going to be
powered. In fact, we're commanding it
from Houston just as we would on launch day and we go through the
entire launch count, including things like having the crew do
suit checks, working with the pad team.
We'll do all of that and get a chance to to practice it.
So that is being done and is similar.
It is a dry dress. Let's see, the second question
was the amount of time for a post certification mission as we
call it, when when Starliners coming down it would be the
shortest possible time to get from undocked to landing would
be about four hours. There's a little bit of a
dependency on whether or not there's a fly around done.
So Starliners got the capability to do a full fly around of the
entire space station to to do photography of space station.
We're not doing that on this mission.
Potential to do it on the next mission if NASA requested, and
if they do, it'd be, I think, closer to the six hours.
Thank you. Got a question right here in the
front ABC News for Matt. What are the weather and
lighting constraints for landing?
Was that so the question was weather and lighting
constraints. The the weather constraints for
landing are we essentially want the lowest wind that we can to
to undock and then that's just to give it a gentle, the
gentler, not not have a a large lateral component.
When we hit the ground also we do things like we account for if
a parachute fails or an airbag fails.
And so you tend to be a little bit more conservative right now.
I think we, we want limits that are less than 10 knots for that.
And that kind of ties into the second part of your question
which was lighting. There are no requirements for
lighting. In fact we tend to like to land
at night and that's because two reasons, one is the wind is
lower at night in the places that we're landing.
Also you got to think about the safety of the of the people that
go out and meet the spacecraft after it lands.
Some of them are in things called scape suits which are to
protect them if there's a leak of of fuel or oxidizer from the
vehicle. They're actually pretty hot and
you know we land in the desert and so we it's a lot easier on
the landing team to land at night.
And it turns out we found in previous missions it's actually
I when I started working this program years ago.
We're a little bit worried about operating at night, but they've
actually come up with a really nice setup with the lights and
of course if you see the the video we've got the infrared
tracking both from the ground and the and the aircraft it's
it's it's it's kind of funny. We've got to the point where we
almost prefer the night so. OK, got another question right
here. Or with CVS.
Well, we prefer the daytime, but that's OK.
It is prettier. I I will give you that.
Two quick ones from me and I know this isn't about, this
isn't a dragon briefing, obviously, it's it's, it's star
liner. But are there any things in your
minds that are clear advantages that Starliner brings to the
table, things that you particularly appreciate in terms
of how it flies and how you control the spacecraft, how the
crew does that? And secondly, can do any of you
have any idea what what sort of TV we can expect from the
mission between launch and docking?
I know what we get on once it's at station, but is there any
live down links during the mission that you're aware of or
do they have the capability to do that?
Thanks. I haven't talked lately the the
the for the second question there is with the the current
Starlight for CFT, there is not the capability to do live video
downlink. We do have the camera system
that you saw on the last flight that'll provide streaming video
when we're docked to the space station.
And that camera system is running during the free flight
phases as well. And the crew will actually be
conducting some public affair affair events during the free
flight on both the 1st and 2nd day of the mission.
But they'll be recorded on the video system and then played
back after we've docked. So there might be some some
audio of that that comes down live, but there's for this
flight, there's no live TV capability in the free flight
phase. Comparing capabilities between
Dragon and Starliner, again I have to plead a little bit of of
Dragon lack of knowledge just because I haven't really worked
in depth on those vehicles to really give a good comparison.
But I can tell you that they are different and some obvious
differences are the fact that Starliner lands on the land
versus in the ocean. Starliner has tactile hand
controllers for manual flying, whereas Dragon doesn't, and
those are those are kind of some of the more obvious aspects and
they're just differences. They're not.
One's not really better than the other, one's not necessarily
more capable than the other, but they are different capabilities.
The rendezvous sensor suite is different between the two
vehicles. Just the way that the two
companies have approached how they want to approach and depart
from space station are also differences.
And that that then factors into how you train the crews, what
you focus on with the crew training and that really rolls
into exactly what NASA of course wanted with the commercial crew
program is you didn't you didn't want just one spacecraft or one
provider that you know all your eggs are in that basket.
You provide a couple of different capability from access
to space perspective but you also provide a couple of
different venues for industry to design solutions in their own
way using their own ideas that are different from each other.
And you you start to have this low earth, low Earth orbit
economy that NASA has been talking a lot about where now
you have different options if you want to get a ride into
space. So we we are definitely going to
be exercising those that Starliner has as much as we can.
And then maybe the best way to answer your question is going to
be after the mission when the the services they're looking to
provide access to the Earth orbit can then compare between
the two and and see which of the two menu options, if you will,
for accessing space are are to their liking and meet their
mission needs. Thank you, Ed.
We do look forward to seeing those live down links once they
get to the space station. We have a question here in the
room in the back. Thank you.
Stephen Clark, Ars Technica. Just a follow up on Bill's
question, what is the vehicle lacking on this particular
flight that doesn't allow you to do the live video downlink and
will that come online like with Starliner wine?
And secondly, my main question, Mike, can you talk about the
abort modes during ascent? Can you walk me through
different abort phases, different types of aborts you
would conduct if you have to, hopefully not at different
stages? Thanks.
I can answer the first part and then I'll let Mike do your part.
Really the only thing that the system is lacking is just
connection from the the data, the video recorder to a
transmission system. So the transmission antennas and
the ground stations to receive those transmission transmissions
are just not online yet. So the the capability within the
capsule, the infrastructure for it is all there.
They just we just haven't progressed enough into getting
the the operational post certification piece to where we
have that capability yet to. Answer the second part of the
question, the aborts. So we spent a lot of time
working on aborts. Boeing and United Launch
Alliance have spent a great deal of effort making a safe system.
The the way aborts work is it's kind of joint between the
spacecraft and the launch vehicle.
The launch vehicle is monitoring itself and if it needs to abort,
it will tell the Starliner to abort.
Additionally, we've got, you know, I've got a team of United
Launch Alliance flight controllers are actually in
Denver and they're reporting to me in real time and they will
tell me if they see an abort approaching.
We can do some things like perhaps abort early if we need
to, just to put the crew in better weather over the ocean.
It's a very large swath of the world we're flying over.
But what you'll hear is that lift off, as I mentioned
earlier, the abort system goes active 75 seconds before launch.
And then as we lift off and you gain more energy, you land at
different places, right? So the one of the you'll hear
them call the abort boundaries one of them is CM forward and
that's just has to do with how how the the service modules
jettisoned after an abort but that's still in the in the pad
area around Florida as you get more energy right when the first
stage goes at 4 1/2 minutes you'll hear Ecal that's East
Coast abort landing. The it's a heritage term you
actually end up in the ocean generally east of Cape Cod and
then as you gain more energy you will hear a call for St.
John's and that is in the area of the ocean near St.
John's NL. You'll do a guided landing there
and then once you have enough energy to get up over the North
Atlantic, which is by design vehicles designed to avoid that,
you'll hear Shannon and that's your Shannon, Ireland.
And then once you obtain enough energy to make orbit, we've
actually got a mode called Ato or abort to orbit and that'll
get the the Starliner. If if there's a low performance
case, the Starliner can burn its own engines and get into into a
low orbit that's 200 kilometers high.
And actually in a lot of cases we can give it a little bit of
time. We can actually figure out how
to get a rendezvous out of that if we need to.
But those those are the kind of the top level how abort modes
work. So I want to go to our phone
bridge because I know we don't have all that much time left.
We'll go to Robert Pearlman with Collect Space.
Great. Thank you.
Two questions. Given the flight rate, is there
just one NASA team assigned to Boeing for all of the Starliner
flights in terms of Mission Control?
Or are there different assignments of different people
assigned as you progress from CFT to Starliner One?
And second quick second question in terms of referring to the
vehicle on orbit, since there is a name of this spacecraft
Calypso once you see me referring to it as Calypso or as
Starliner as you call back and forth from space to ground, I'll
get the first one. So I'll get a book.
Hey, the first question as far as the NASA team we that that
supports Starliner. This is a really good question
actually because you talk about the flight rate and Starliner is
kind of interesting in that you know Boeing flies this crude
mission and the the team that we use, we have a very small core
group of people that work this full time.
But actually most of the team that flies this vehicle does
other things right. Both Ed and I do space station
shifts and we do, we've done Artemis shifts and it actually
really helps with this flight rate because as I'm a guy that
does operations, one of the things that's really important
for people that does the kind of work that we do is you got to
fly things right and it and it's all about how often you get to
fly things that really builds a team that knows how to manage a
spacecraft and space and do it safely.
And the way this works out is that we can almost ebb and flow
on this program as we're needed, right?
So right now we're coming up to a flight and we surge.
When you get into some of the time in between these, in
between these year long missions, we can allocate people
to do other things And that ultimately, you know, saves
resources as far as having a team that otherwise you'd need
that have completely stood up to cover you know 24/7 OPS of a
spacecraft that that is free flying only a very short short
period of time. As far as the naming, what we've
been using in all of our simulations is, is Starliner.
That's kind of what we're used to and what we've been training.
So I'm sure the the, the name that Sunny used will come up.
But in general, in our training we've been using Starliner and I
think I expect that's generally what you'll hear.
Great. So we only have a couple of
minutes left, but I do want to get one more question in the
room if it could be a quick one. Yeah, hopefully this will be
brief. Will Robinson Smith for Space
Flight. Now for Mike, assuming that the
airbags deploy as nominally, can you describe what the the impact
the Butch and Sonny will feel like, what that sensation will
be? And if one of them only
partially inflates or doesn't fully inflate, what the
difference for that might be? Thanks.
That'd be an excellent question for Butch and Sonny this
afternoon because they have both landed in well Butch has landed
in a Soyuz which has got an interesting way of landing as as
as we've we've seen you know they land on land too and but
they're using rockets instead of airbags but I believe the
descent rate is about 25 feet per second.
I would say that it's likely a firm landing but but you know
the requirements for these vehicles that both the NASA
crude vehicles as far as the conditions that the crew see it
impact is fairly gentle. It's it's not going to be I
think something that is puts the crew at risk in any way and that
includes with an airbag out, right.
All those requirements there, we call them the Health and Human
performance requirements, but they were all there and the
vehicle is certified to do all these things even with an airbag
out and that was part of the requirements to to build it.
So I I suspect it's going to be pretty gentle.
Great. Thank you so much.
That is all of the time that we have today.
Thank you to our awesome briefers for talking about an
overview of NASA's Boeing crew flight test mission.
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tomorrow. A lawsuit filed by X, owned by
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Now the CCDH faced legal action from Musk following their
publication of research indicating a rise in racist,
homophobic, Neo Nazi, anti-Semitic or conspiracy
content on X, particularly from paid accounts which allegedly
remain unmoderated now. This action came during a period
when advertisers were withdrawing their support from X
Musk's legal team, during a court hearing in February hinted
at the possibility of refiling the lawsuit against CCDH.
However, Judge Breyer dismissed the suggestion, finding the
argument that the group's data collection methods threatened
the platform's security unconvincing.
The judge expressed doubt regarding the lawsuit's basis,
suggesting that X's concerns lay more with CCDH's express
viewpoints than with the actual methods of data collection
employed by the group. The skepticism was apparent
during the February hearing and was reiterated in Breyer's final
ruling. Now, despite Musk's public
commitment to absolute freedom of speech on X, the lawsuit
against CCDH reveals a less tolerant stance towards
criticism, particularly when directed at Musk himself.
This is further exemplified by Musk's legal action against
Media Matters for America, another group that reported on
the platform's failure to filter out anti sabetic content on the
CCDH. Victorious under California anti
slap statutes, which aim to prevent baseless lawsuits that
suppress free speech, is set to receive coverage for the legal
expenses from Musk. The exact amount is yet to be
determined through court proceedings, though, and Musk's
purchase of Twitter in 2022 led to several controversial
decisions, including the reinstatement of accounts
previously banned for harmful contact and changes to the
platform verification system. These decisions have sparked
discussions about Musk's management and the platform's
direction under his leadership. Now, Musk's inconsistent
commentary on X's financial health further complicates this.
While he occasionally claims the business is thriving, he's also
acknowledged a significant drop in advertising revenue and
speculated about potential bankruptcy.
The CCDH's work which led to the lawsuit involved using third
party tools to analyze publicly available data on X, and Musk
contended that this constituted unauthorized data scraping,
thereby infringing on the platform's terms of service and
contributing to financial losses.
The legal dispute between X and CCDH shows that there are big
concerns here regarding the accountability of social media
platforms for the content that they host now.
This case in particular focuses on the tension between corporate
interests and public research on digital platforms and their
societal impact. Now, the court's dismissal of
the lawsuits, It kind of. It reinforces the importance of
protecting research and discourse on the rule of social
media. In propagating hate speech, it
emphasizes the legal protections afforded to such work,
especially when it challenges powerful entities.
Now, Musk's aggressive legal strategy against organizations
like CCDH and Media Matters is a broader attempt to control the
narrative surrounding X and its handling of contentious content.
This approach has raised questions about the balance
between free speech and the responsibility of the social
media platforms themselves, and the CCDH's victory in this case
is seen as a significant affirmation to the right to
conduct public interest. Research on social media's
influence highlights the legal safeguards in place for entities
investigating and critiquing the operations of platforms like
Musk. I have to ask you, is this
freedom of speech? Is using the data that you find
on a platform and creating speech out of it?
Is that freedom of speech? Are they allowed to talk about
this? And it seems like in some ways
Musk is trying to stifle their freedom of speech.
I'm not sure if that's the case, but it seems like he may be
trying to silence them with his court case now.
The ongoing legal battles here involving Musk and X, including
disputes over former executive severance and accusations
against a law firm for excessive billing, show a picture of a
platform embroiled in controversy and litigation.
The outcome of this lawsuit may set a precedent for how research
organizations can study and report on social media platforms
without fear of retribution. Now, the judiciary's role in
upholding free speech and research in the face of
corporate opposition is paramount.
Here, we have to make sure that free speech, including research
organizations, are protected. This ruling also draws attention
to the broader implications for social media governance,
particularly regarding how platforms manage and respond to
hate speech calls into question the effectiveness of self
regulation and the potential need for more stringent
oversight. Now, the dismissal of Musk's
lawsuit against the CCDH by a federal judge affirms the
essential role of free speech and research in scrutinizing and
holding social media platforms accountable.
This case highlights the legal protections available to those
who critically examine the impacts of digital platforms on
society, reinforcing the importance of transparency and
accountability and our digital age.
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