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Revealed: Elon Musk talks New Plans for SpaceX Starship's Future · Elon Musk Podcast

0:00
All right, it's been an incredible year.
0:04
The SpaceX team, I think is the best space team that has ever
0:08
been assembled on the face of the Earth by far.
0:11
And the achievements of the past year demonstrate that, I think
0:16
to a degree that is mind blowing, like what you have
0:19
achieved over the past year is nothing short of incredible.
0:24
And one day we will indeed occupy Mars.
0:33
So let's go through everything that SpaceX has achieved that
0:39
you've done. And it's actually going to take
0:42
a while. By the way, this is going to
0:45
take a minute. So first of all, with Falcon we
0:53
have achieved the most launches of any rocket in a single year
0:57
ever. So the next best is was the
1:00
Soviet Soyuz, which I think did a little over 60 launches in a
1:04
year and we did 96. So this this, yeah, so no other
1:15
family of orbital class rockets has launched more than 63 * a
1:18
year. That was Soyuz and we did 50%
1:21
more. The Falcon Heavy also surpassed
1:24
in terms of heavy lift vehicles, the record for Saturn 5, which I
1:27
think that, yeah, with five launches last year, we exceeded
1:31
the Saturn 5 record. So that was like pretty
1:34
incredible on Falcon Heavy. So this gives you a sense in
1:39
pictures of how incredible that was.
1:43
You know, for a while there I was like, when I was like I'd be
1:46
posting something, Is this like the launch that just happened or
1:48
the one that is happening or like because there were like 3
1:52
launches that happened in the space of a few days.
1:54
So, but this is all the launches on one page.
1:59
And yeah, so it's really, really incredible.
2:03
All made it to orbit, all landed.
2:06
So just a huge hand for the Falcon team.
2:08
That was incredible. So and 2/3 of the missions were
2:21
Starlink, but a third were for other customers, for NASA, for
2:26
other communication satellites. So it was a combination of our
2:33
of Starlink plus a lot of other missions.
2:37
So even if you just take the non Starlink portion of the flights,
2:40
that was more than any other vehicle.
2:42
Last year by a longshot, we launched NASA's Psyche, ESA's
2:47
Euclid, the X37B space plane, multiple transport emissions.
2:54
We launched did emissions for one web via SAT and we're
2:59
actually on contract to launch Amazon's Kuiper constellation
3:04
and we treat everyone fairly. So, you know just one so and
3:09
just and and and we we managed to do 19 flights on a single
3:14
Falcon 9 booster, which is really incredible in 3 1/2
3:18
years. So and and that that vehicle did
3:22
that booster did 860 satellites and delivered 260 metric tons to
3:27
orbit. So it's like, wow.
3:31
So there's a lot of wows and it's it's worth, you know, like
3:39
like how long ago was that we landed a a booster.
3:42
It was actually eight years ago and in December, roughly roughly
3:46
8 years ago. And since that time we've landed
3:49
260 times. So 260 landings, just like, wow.
3:56
I mean, there were a lot of people that said that it
3:59
couldn't be done. And then there were a lot of
4:01
people that said even if it could be done, it's going to.
4:04
It's a dumb idea. That note that it wouldn't, it
4:07
wouldn't pay off that it wouldn't, you know, wouldn't
4:09
make sense. But we've shown that, in fact,
4:12
it is absolutely the right idea. Reusability is the key to a
4:17
great future in space. It's essential.
4:19
We need reusability for rockets, just like we have reusability
4:23
for cars, for airplanes, for bicycles, for horses.
4:26
Obviously reusability is essential and the fundamental
4:31
invention that is necessary for humanity to become a multi
4:35
planet species is a full and rapidly basically rapidly
4:38
reusable reliable rockets. So like space pirate?
5:00
Rob, confirm you're ready for engine chill. 30 seconds.
5:02
Rob is ready for engine chill. Stace left R and internal power.
5:08
Stage wide locks. Stage wide fuel.
5:10
Stage 2 fuel rates. All them.
5:17
All stations verify. Ready for launch.
5:19
All stations acknowledge FTS. Rob, Rob, Carol, maybe.
5:23
I maybe I scope. G and CG.
5:25
And C go OSM go recovery landings, go LCLD go for lunch B
5:35
- 5 four 3/2 digital propulsion is dull
6:23
like a stage ignition. Stage one is entered into split
6:33
NH1. Newspad is starting
7:40
Spacecraft 1/2. I've been deployed final Orcom.
7:47
They were deployed. Why?
8:10
Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's incredible
8:17
how much has happened in eight years.
8:19
So, you know, I wonder what, what, what will things be like 8
8:23
years from now? Now hopefully we have, I think
8:29
we will have landed on Moss and I think we will have sent people
8:32
to the moon and and maybe if we get lucky we will have sent
8:36
people to Mars within eight years.
8:42
You know the and you know the. The key question sort of I think
8:49
about for civilization is the key test perhaps for
8:56
civilization is do we make it through this Bermie grade filter
8:59
of being a going from a one planet civilization to a multi
9:01
planet civilization? And if we do become multi planet
9:07
civilization we may go out there to other star systems and
9:11
discover many long dead one planet civilizations and we
9:15
don't want to be one of them. That's lame.
9:17
We don't want to be one of those lame one planet civilizations.
9:21
But I think we should always regard civilization as fragile.
9:27
That's not something that not a situation where there is an
9:30
inevitable upward trajectory. I mean, I read a lot about
9:35
history, and if you look at, if you read read history, you you
9:37
see that civilizations are anything but permanent, that
9:41
many civilizations have risen and fallen over the years, over
9:44
the centuries in millennia, and eventually the sun will expand,
9:55
boil the oceans and destroy all life on Earth.
9:58
Now admittedly that's, you know, several 100 million years in the
10:01
future, but it's only about maybe 10 or 20% of the existence
10:10
of Earth itself. If Earth is 4 1/2 billion years
10:13
old then another ten 1020% longer and life would or
10:21
intelligent life would not have evolved because it's taken us a
10:23
long time to get to this point. So you know that's that's really
10:30
that's that's really the key test do we become a
10:32
self-sustaining multi planet civilization while while
10:39
civilization still exists or or or don't we that that you know I
10:43
think that's that's really the key question.
10:50
I think we've got a good chance but it's not a sure thing.
10:57
That's why time is of time is of the essence.
10:59
I think we want to make Mars self-sustaining as quickly as
11:04
possible. It's not just a question of
11:06
getting people to Mars, but it's getting enough tonnage and
11:10
equipment to Mars to make enable Mars to be self-sustaining.
11:15
The key test being that if the resupply ships from Earth stop
11:19
coming for any reason do we does Mars die out or does it
11:24
continue. That's the that's the really the
11:27
fundamental threshold to pass the the Fermi Paradox grade
11:32
filter. You know Fermi Paradox is where
11:34
are the aliens you know if if if life is common, if intelligent
11:38
life is common, shouldn't we see a lot of evidence of it Now I
11:40
get asked a lot about, you know aliens actually and I usually
11:47
say I am one. Well, actually I used to be,
11:50
according to, you know, Homeland Security, it's an alien
11:54
registration card. Literally.
11:55
I was like, OK, so but but but the truth is, I actually have
12:04
not seen any evidence of aliens, which I think is maybe a bit
12:07
more troubling than if I had I I have not seen any and I'd be on
12:14
it. And I can pretty much guarantee
12:17
that I'll post about it instantly.
12:19
OK, I was like, Yep, this is we. We got one.
12:25
This is a spaceship for sure, but I have not seen anything.
12:30
So that leads me to think that we're more likely to be a tiny
12:35
candle of consciousness in a vast emptiness, a vast darkness.
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You know that the civilization that we have is really just this
12:44
very, very small candle in a vast darkness, and we just must
12:47
do everything possible to ensure that that candle does not go
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out. Yeah.
12:55
Anyway, I think we can do it. So, you know, but we need to
13:00
move fast because you just never know.
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I mean, there could be, you know, at any given point there's
13:05
a, like Stephen Hawking actually, I believe said that he
13:09
thought there was like roughly a 1% chance in any given century
13:12
of civilization ending. That was his rough estimate.
13:16
I think it actually might be higher than that.
13:18
So we just want to go there fast.
13:20
So this is the getting back to Falcon 9, back to reality.
13:26
This is these are all the launches we've done and you can
13:30
see how the cadence of launches has rapidly increased over time.
13:41
I think people online have actually assembled videos
13:45
showing every, every launch and it just gets like crazy fast as
13:48
you get to 2023. So yeah, so we've and we've
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we've done a 19 three flight. We're now qualifying Falcon 9:00
13:58
to be able to do 40 flights and we're aiming for maybe as much
14:03
as 150 flights this year. So and then let's not forget
14:08
Ferring recovery because actually a lot of people don't
14:10
realize we recover the fairing as well.
14:12
This was actually very difficult to recover the fairing.
14:16
So, Kessler, an immense amount of effort, but we now quite
14:20
regularly recover the fairing and we've reflown fairings 300
14:24
times. So Congrats to the ferry
14:27
recovery team. That was actually pretty damn
14:29
hard. Oh, and then of course, we do
14:40
operate basically a small Navy. I think people don't, don't
14:44
always know that, but we have, you know, drone ships and
14:49
support ships of various kinds. So we've got a small fleet of
14:55
ships and we operate them very efficiently.
15:00
I think a lot of people also sometimes don't know the size,
15:03
Like you can see the size of the ship by the person walking
15:06
around on it. It's not small though.
15:11
It looks cool. I like this sort of, it's kind
15:13
of a Darth Vader aesthetic, but it's like it so.
15:20
And we're also getting much better with the pad.
15:22
Turn around, we achieved a three day pad turn around and I think
15:25
we're aiming to hopefully I think get under 24 hours pad
15:30
turn around by the end of this year.
15:34
So in terms of. Yeah, launch rate, yeah.
15:38
So it's been 15 years since Flight 1 of Falcon One.
15:43
I'm sorry, should Flight 4 of Falcon One the first one to
15:45
reach orbit? So 15 years since we got
15:51
anything at all to to orbit. Yeah.
15:56
And now we're aiming to have 150 flights with airbass this year.
16:01
So. And these are big rockets at
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this point. Falcon One is a little rocket.
16:07
In fact, when I see Falcon One right now, I was like, man, I
16:09
think I'd probably tuck that under my arm and just take it
16:11
home with me, you know, it was like launch it in the backyard
16:14
or something. It looks so cute.
16:18
But at the time, Falcon One did seem like extremely, it was
16:21
extremely difficult. It took us four flights to reach
16:23
orbit and it did seem kind of big at the time.
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But now, now it's like you look adorable thing.
16:31
So yeah, so the the most, I think the most profound metric
16:38
or the the metric that really describes the magnitude of what
16:44
SpaceX achieved in 2023 is the master orbit number.
16:48
So and you can see that the incredible change just year over
16:51
year. So 2021 we're slightly below
16:54
rest of world 22. We I think roughly doubled what
16:59
the rest of the world did and last year we were 80% of all
17:04
mass to orbit. So the rest of the world, we
17:09
mean like the rest of US industry, you know, Europe,
17:13
India, China, Japan, everyone. So there's there's not a lot of
17:19
industries where a company is doing like 80% of everything.
17:24
And and then the what's really mind boggling is that that that
17:29
number should increase by 50% this year.
17:32
So I guess on order of like 90% of all mass to orbit, not count,
17:37
not counting Starship. So if we start, as we start
17:40
launching Starship, Starship is like, you know, roughly 100 tons
17:43
to orbit with every flight. There's a path to getting
17:47
Starship to do over 200 tons with full reusability to 200
17:53
tons to useful orbit with full reusability.
17:56
And yeah, it's really an incredible amount, 1200 tons of
18:01
useful load to orbit last year. Yeah, that's that's just
18:08
astounding. So I I think that that really
18:10
deserves a round of applause. Like wow, I mean that's just
18:13
that's the most mind blowing and the rate of increase is just
18:23
astonishing. Now these numbers will actually
18:27
look very small in the future in order to build a city on Mars
18:32
will will need to be kind of in the million ton to orbit range.
18:39
So maybe a little higher, ideally a little higher, but
18:43
it's sort of if you just try to get things to the right order of
18:47
magnitude, like not trying to get to exact number, but try to
18:50
get the order of magnitude right, I think it's on the
18:53
order. It's roughly 1,000,000 tons to
18:55
Earth orbit that'll that'll get you roughly 200,000 tons to the
19:01
surface of Mars. So roughly you know
19:04
approximately 20% of whatever you get to Earth orbit you can
19:06
get to the surface of Mars. So and figure like maybe we need
19:14
at least 1,000,000 tons of useful load to the surface of
19:18
Mars for this for it to become self-sustaining.
19:21
That self-sustaining threshold is is actually a very tough
19:24
threshold to meet because even if you're missing a tiny thing
19:28
then eventually that Mars will die out.
19:32
So you've got to be able to not just build for example computer
19:35
chips, but you need to be able to build computer chip
19:40
factories. Because you can't build computer
19:42
chip factories, the factory that you do build will eventually
19:46
breakdown and then you'll have no chips and then you're that's
19:50
it. So it's kind of like a long sea
19:53
voyage where if you're just missing vitamin C, yeah, you'll
19:56
cruise on for a while, but then you know your teeth will fall
20:00
out and you'll die. So that was a real problem in
20:04
the old days. So anyway, it's quite a high
20:12
threshold and like Mars is is Mars is a fixer upper of a
20:16
planet. You know, need some work, but so
20:20
it's not like you can just run around outdoors and like, you
20:23
know, fish or live off the land, you know you can't live off the
20:27
land on Mars. So it's it's really quite a lot
20:32
of work that's required to make that work.
20:37
So Dragon, an amazing amount of progress with Dragon and an
20:42
incredible track record of success.
20:46
So by as of last year, the Dragon's fleet time on orbit
20:53
exceeded the space shuttle fleet.
20:56
So we had a cumulative of 1300 / 1300 days of time on orbit last
21:00
as of last year. So it's that's pretty mind
21:03
boggling that Dragon has now had more days in orbit than the
21:07
entire space shuttle fleet. It's like wow.
21:10
So yeah. And we've we've had now Dragon
21:17
has visited the space station more times than the space
21:19
shuttle as well. So it's an incredible incredible
21:22
achievement by the Dragon team. So once again like as I was
21:31
saying this really has been an incredible 2023 was like maybe
21:36
the best year in company's history.
21:37
I mean it was the best year in the company's history actually.
21:39
So there's a lot of great things to go through.
21:43
So and I'm, I'm not one who gives out false praise.
21:46
So it's really mind boggling what what you've achieved.
21:53
So all of the missions last year used a a flight proven dragon.
22:00
So these were all these are all these Dragons are all flown
22:05
before and and this year we're looking to fly maybe 7 or 8
22:10
dragon missions. So it's really been, yeah, a
22:14
fantastic success by the Dragon team.
22:20
This doesn't have audio, There's no sound in space.
22:37
Yeah, that's a great, that's a great looking space suit and in
22:41
Dragon interior. So yeah, so we've now sent 42
22:54
humans to orbit to be precise. Space is space is relatively
22:57
easy, but orbit is very difficult.
23:00
So we've now taken 42 humans to orbit and back.
23:03
And I have to say, like, yeah, if there's one thing I wish for
23:13
it is that we bring them all back safely.
23:16
That's like some of us people like say look what is the one
23:18
thing you wish for? I said I wish we'd bring this
23:20
astronauts back safely. That's one thing.
23:22
If I had one wish, that's what it would be.
23:29
So we also have now completed a second crew arm in in Florida.
23:35
So we've got two towers that are capable of two launchpads that
23:39
are capable of sending astronauts to to orbit.
23:44
And this is going to be great for being able to shift missions
23:47
between pad 40 and Pad 39A. We've got this year our first
23:55
spacewalk and so we've got to redesign the suit so that you
24:02
can actually move around in it. And you don't just like because
24:08
if you just inflate the suit, you know you just basically you
24:11
know you're kind of like one of those like balloons at a party
24:15
or something you know. So it's it's quite hard to make
24:18
the to still be mobile in an inflated suit and have have the
24:24
joints move and stuff and and then we we will actually
24:28
evacuate the whole spacecraft. So everyone even those that
24:32
don't go on the space walk will still be in vacuum.
24:36
So obviously very important that it work.
24:40
You know we don't have like a little hole in the suit or
24:42
something go flipping around. So but I I think you know
24:49
obviously we're going to put a lot of testing into this and but
24:52
this is going to be another significant milestone which is
24:55
to have a suit where you can be in like the the vacuum of space
24:58
with just nothing, nothing at all and just be out there.
25:05
It's hard to It's actually hard to conceive the concept of
25:08
nothingness, and it's not technically nothing like there's
25:10
a small number of particles per cubic meter, but it's pretty
25:14
damn close to nothing. You know, if you lose too much
25:23
air, too much oxygen, that's it. There's no place to get oxygen
25:27
from. So like an airplane even at high
25:31
altitude can increase the the the pressurization pumps and get
25:37
more more atmosphere from because it's in the atmosphere,
25:41
dragon springs an oxygen leak and that oxygen leak is too
25:45
significant. There is no place to get oxygen.
25:48
You're just going to die. So the requirements for getting
25:53
everything perfect are insane. It's everything's got to be
25:56
absolutely perfect to work. I mean we did not you know
26:03
evolve to live in space obviously.
26:06
So it's a tough one, but this is, this is really going to be
26:12
another great milestone is to actually have be able to have
26:15
someone floating out there, you know, in the vacuum of space and
26:25
come back. And we do want to actually have,
26:29
we want to have a space suit that you can walk around in
26:32
because if you're on the moon, you're on, you want to be able
26:34
to walk around the moon, walk around on Mars.
26:36
So having a high mobility space suit that actually isn't crazy
26:41
expensive ideally and that you can walk around in comfortably
26:46
is is a big deal. It's actually an important thing
26:48
that needs to be developed and ultimately made in large numbers
26:52
because if we send say a million people to Mars, then that's a
26:57
million space suits, 1,000,000 Mars suits that you need.
27:00
So we'll have to make a lot of these things and we're also
27:04
going to launch Starlink on that flight.
27:06
So then coming to Starlink, this is this is only a whole separate
27:11
company, but we we're basically building, rebuilding the
27:17
Internet in space, which is pretty wild and now it is, I
27:23
want to emphasize, supplemental to the terrestrial Internet.
27:26
Sometimes people think, well is Starlink just going to take over
27:28
and destroy all the terrestrial Internet?
27:30
It definitely will not. But what it will do is Starlink
27:34
will give access to the Internet to people that either don't have
27:38
access or where their access is extremely expensive or very bad
27:43
access. So this is a massive enabler for
27:48
improving and enabling people in remote locations to learn
27:52
anything. Like, you can basically learn
27:54
almost anything for free on the Internet right now.
27:56
Like for example, MIT has all of its lessons on YouTube.
28:00
You can you can learn almost anything if you've got an
28:03
Internet connection. But if you don't have an
28:05
Internet connection, you're limited to, I guess book you
28:08
know what, Maybe you got some books or something.
28:09
But not it's a it's a basically Starlink is a game changer for
28:13
improving people's quality of life around the world.
28:15
Like it's this might be the single well certainly one of the
28:19
I think it might be the number one over time technology that
28:25
improves people's standard of living around the world.
28:28
It's certainly a candidate for potentially being the most
28:31
profound thing that actually improves quality of life for
28:35
people around the world which would be really something to be
28:39
proud of obviously. So let's see and we're we're now
28:45
introducing the the V2 money's. So this is the next generation
28:50
satellites that we've introduced with the constellation and yeah
28:55
these are twice, twice the capacity of last year or so from
28:59
88 terabits per second to 165. And our goal the the the, the
29:07
biggest single goal for stalling from a technical standpoint is
29:09
to get the mean latency below 20 milliseconds.
29:15
So that would, but it actually makes for immediacy of for
29:21
actually the quality of Internet experience, this is actually a
29:23
really big deal. Also if you play video games
29:25
like I sometimes do, this is also important, otherwise you
29:30
lose. So this is anyway.
29:36
So that's actually a very, very hard problem, but because we are
29:38
low Earth orbit constellation, the speed of light, what do you
29:43
think the speed of light is 300 kilometers per millisecond.
29:48
So if we're at 550 kilometers, figure it like roughly two
29:52
milliseconds up, two milliseconds down.
29:54
So if you go up, down, up, down, it's 8 milliseconds speed of
29:56
light limitation and then almost everything else we can actually
30:01
address like we can't go faster than the speed of light.
30:06
Yeah, you know but yeah probably ever but we can, we can we can
30:14
get the rest of the the time I think below below 10
30:19
milliseconds and so then it basically it'll be it'll be more
30:23
responsive than ground Internet in most cases, which is really
30:26
what we're after here. So yeah, this is really amazing
30:32
work. We also have now launched the
30:35
Argon hole thrusters, which are very low cost and use argon,
30:41
which is plentiful. So we've gone from using
30:44
Krypton, which is not that rare. I mean, if Superman did come
30:48
here, it'd be like you can get it some Krypton, you know,
30:51
squirt gun or something like that.
30:52
And OK, now what? So Krypton is a noble gas that
30:59
is it's moderately rare, but we would actually be using a huge
31:05
percentage of the world's Krypton if we were launching
31:07
that with the Gen. 2 satellites. And so we moved to argon and
31:12
argon is actually extremely plentiful.
31:14
In fact, right now you are breathing approximately 1%
31:16
argon. So Argon is, there's a lot of
31:21
argon and but this is really the I think the first significant
31:29
argon hole thruster and certainly by far the most cost
31:32
efficient and the most power efficient and it was a really
31:36
great job by the Starlink team to create this thruster and many
31:41
other upgrades to the then there's the in space laser
31:45
stuff. I mean so this is by far, I
31:49
think we've now sent at least 1000 times more data, maybe
31:54
10,000 times more data over laser links in space than any
31:58
other system before. And I think we'll we'll soon be
32:03
like a million times more data transferred, maybe more than
32:05
that through this, this, this the Starlink laser interconnects
32:12
between the satellites. So we now have 99000 active
32:16
space lasers. So sort of vaguely reminds me of
32:20
Doctor Evil, you know, lasers from space actually.
32:25
Well, I guess I made that joke a long time ago.
32:27
It's like Dragon does have LIDAR.
32:29
It has like a laser for, you know, docking with the space
32:35
station. So it's like it's like Dragons
32:37
with lasers. I mean like be better than
32:40
shocks with lasers. And each link, each laser link
32:46
is capable of 100 gigabits per second.
32:48
And we're looking to increase that.
32:52
So let's see. This is animation of all the
32:56
places where Starlink is active. So obviously a lot of the
33:05
stalling activations depend on country approvals.
33:08
So as we are able to get a country approval, then you see
33:12
rapid adoption within a country and hopefully we'll get to most
33:18
countries, most of the rest of the countries will get the
33:21
approval hopefully this year and we'll be able to go almost
33:26
worldwide. Some countries are probably
33:28
unlikely to approve our system, but yeah most countries we think
33:33
we should be able to get to so and our goal this year is to
33:38
activate service in more than half of the world's population.
33:42
So that would be definitely fantastic.
33:46
But I do want to emphasize because we're all going to put
33:48
this this presentation on online that Starlink is supplemental to
33:54
terrestrial Internet. It is not does not replace it.
33:59
It is stalling does it does really well for like low
34:05
population density areas, but it is it is really not going to be
34:09
competitive in high density cities or it's it's really low
34:14
low, low density situations, which is really where the need
34:17
is. So anyway, works well with,
34:22
works well with other Internet providers is what I'm saying.
34:30
Then we go to community gateways.
34:32
I'm told this is a town called Unalaska in Alaska.
34:36
So that's a real place. So we're putting a lot more
34:42
gateways down as we increase the number of gateways that improves
34:45
latency. So we've now shipped our next
34:50
Gen. hardware that's a version four of the user terminal.
34:54
So that's allows us to lower the cost of Starlink and we'll be
35:00
introducing the Starlink many later this year, which can fit
35:03
in a backpack. So that'll be pretty cool for
35:06
anyone who wants very portable Starlink.
35:11
And then we just opened our Starlink factory in Bachelor of
35:16
Texas. So that's just a little, you
35:19
know, about 20 minutes away from Austin and this is this is going
35:23
to be. Yeah, I guess.
35:25
I guess some of you guys are part of that.
35:29
Yeah. In general we're going to we're
35:31
going to have like a massive round of applause for Starlink.
35:34
That is for sure because there's like the achievement level there
35:37
is is amazing. Actually.
35:39
Let's just have a massive round of applause.
35:40
It's like, God damn. Yeah, right.
35:46
It's hard to clap on this thing. Yeah, this the Starling
35:51
achievements are really mind blowing.
35:54
So it's a like the Starling system is an anomaly in the
36:01
Matrix. And then we also just recently
36:05
launched our first direct to sell satellites and we were able
36:11
to send text messages directly from a phone to the satellite
36:15
and then back down again. So we did intentionally spell
36:20
these things by the way. So although actually when I
36:23
first saw it, I was like, is this real?
36:27
It turns out it is, in fact, real.
36:29
This is, yeah, some Dogecoin jokes, basically.
36:36
So yeah. And anyway, so it's it's it's
36:39
kind of amazing that you can actually close the link between
36:42
a phone in your hand and a satellite that's hundreds of
36:47
miles away. And the the satellite can hear
36:51
the tiny signal that your phone is outputting, which is like
36:56
such a faint whisper, it's ridiculous.
36:59
But I can actually somehow hear that faint whisper and be able
37:03
to communicate with a phone Is is.
37:05
I think it's one of those things like I was sure is that actually
37:08
physically possible? But it is.
37:12
Now I do want to emphasize this is also a not a competitor to to
37:19
phone companies. This is something that will be
37:21
supplemental. So it's it's going to be very
37:26
helpful for remote areas where there's no cell connectivity or
37:29
once in a while within a city. If there is a place that has no
37:32
connectivity within a city, then Stonic will be able to
37:36
communicate with with phones. But it's I think it's something
37:42
on the order of seven megabits per second within within a cell
37:47
and the cells are sort of hundreds of square miles of
37:52
kilometers in size. So it's really, it's good for,
37:56
you know, text messages. You could technically do video
37:59
if you're the only one or if there's only a few people in
38:02
that cell like if you're in the middle of the Pacific or
38:05
something like that, then but it but it is something that is
38:09
going to be very helpful and well I think save lives of
38:12
people. You know, if somebody's sort of
38:13
hiking in a remote region and they get lost, well now their
38:18
phone could actually work and I could.
38:20
I think it will actually save a lot of lives, which is cool.
38:29
And then we, we have 7 announced partnerships.
38:33
So we've got T-Mobile in the US, Rogers in Canada, Optus in
38:36
Australia, 1 New Zealand, Assault in in Switzerland, KDDI
38:42
in Japan and Intel in Chile and Peru.
38:45
So and we expect to announce a number of other telco
38:48
partnerships this year. So this is definitely something
38:51
where we're again in partnership with telcos.
38:54
I just basically don't want telcos to get really mad at us.
38:56
That's what I'm saying, you know, we want to, we want to
39:00
support the telcos and then of course this is slowed down a
39:15
little. But that first launch did did
39:20
take a take a while to get off the pad.
39:22
Don't worry there for a second. I mean, when that took off, I
39:49
was like, wow, I can't believe it took off.
39:51
That was my reaction. So I think it's incredible that
40:37
it we, we took off twice last year.
40:44
I mean, even though I've been very, you know, closely, you
40:48
know, involved with the Starship program from the beginning and
40:52
actually like I lived out here, this is my, my primary residence
40:55
for three years. This used to be a sandbar,
40:59
basically what we're looking at here.
41:02
And now it's got a, an advanced rocket factory and and a
41:06
gigantic launchpad and we've got a whole bunch of rockets out
41:09
there. But I still amazed that it
41:15
actually got put together and it took off.
41:18
I'm like, wow, I mean, the Starship is more than twice the
41:25
thrust of a Saturn 5. It is by far the biggest flying
41:29
object ever made. And for, you know, with with
41:35
some upgrades down the road, it'll it'll actually be, I think
41:38
probably over 20,000,000 lbs of thrust.
41:41
And Saturn five is 7 1/2, so it'll it'll end up being three
41:45
times the thrust of Saturn 5. And it's going to fly a lot.
41:53
It has to fly a lot, so it's it's going to end up flying
41:57
several times a day from many different locations in the
42:01
world. And I think there's a pretty
42:04
good chance that it does Earth to Earth transport as well,
42:08
because the fastest way to get from one place to another on
42:10
Earth is, you know, to get from here.
42:12
To the other side of Earth is an intercontinental ballistic
42:14
missile. But just make sure you delete
42:17
the nuke and add the landing part.
42:20
Basically, it's the fastest way to get somewhere.
42:27
Yeah, wow. And then between Flight 1 and
42:33
two, we made a number of massive upgrades.
42:36
So the IT was obviously a massive upgrade to the
42:38
Launchpad. So we've got like our mini
42:41
Niagara Falls here. I mean the the water pressure is
42:50
so much that if it went straight up it would actually destroy the
42:52
rocket. That's how much water pressure
42:54
it is. So it's like wow and it worked
42:58
like oh actually it went looked at.
43:00
One of the first things I went and looked at after the second
43:04
launch was to check out the launchpad.
43:06
Because obviously after the first launch we dug a pretty big
43:08
hole and and honestly it looked like you could just it looked
43:16
like there was no damage at all, like you could just launch a
43:19
game basically for the pad itself.
43:22
So it's great work by the team to radically improve the
43:26
launchpad overnight. Yeah, the people always like
43:37
want to use the Statue of Liberty for stuff.
43:40
Statue of Liberty is not that big.
43:42
I was like, I was like been there.
43:43
I actually climbed up the Statue of Liberty in the tiny staircase
43:46
a long time ago. But anyway, this this is a big
43:49
rocket and it will get bigger over time.
43:54
So yeah, so that's, I don't know if you guys watched Kong versus
44:06
Godzilla. It's like the one of the most
44:08
insane movies I've ever seen. But it's like kind of
44:11
entertaining and it's sheer madness.
44:14
And the crazy thing is that that our launch tower is bigger than
44:19
Mechazilla, and it's going to do basically like the same thing
44:23
but with the arms, you know, like, catch the rocket.
44:26
And when I tell people like, yeah, we're going to catch the
44:28
largest flying object ever with giant mechanical arms, they're
44:33
like, there's no way that's real.
44:37
I mean, we could give it legs too.
44:41
Just give it legs and have it tromp around.
44:42
That'd be pretty cool. So and then we're also going to
44:49
build a second tower. Yeah, so we're going to this is
45:01
this is we're going to really be launching a lot and up and we're
45:03
going to be upgrading 1 tower while we launch from another
45:05
tower. So two towers is important and
45:11
there there are actually so many upgrades between Flight 1 and
45:14
two that it would actually take it like hours to go through them
45:17
all. But one of the biggest upgrades
45:19
was going from hydraulic to electric actuation of the
45:24
engines. So that actually saved a lot of
45:26
mass and complexity. So yeah, the electric TVCI mean
45:33
it it it was just that this is one of the biggest upgrades.
45:36
We also massively upgraded the heat field.
45:39
The engines themselves were massively upgraded.
45:40
Literally everything on the rocket was like, there might
45:44
have been thousands of upgrades between flight 1:00 and 2:00.
45:47
So really gigantic improvement between flight 1:00 and 2:00.
45:51
And also made obviously many improvements between flight 2:00
45:54
and 3:00. And then we've got, we've got a
45:56
whole development plan to, like I said, ultimately get to a
46:00
fully reusable rocket that does over 200 tons to orbit on a
46:03
regular basis. Full reusability.
46:10
Yeah, hot staging, I mean hot staging was was a change that
46:21
was basically, I don't know just really within the space of like
46:26
three or four months maybe less going from or roughly that going
46:31
from previously. Just kind of like separating the
46:38
rocket without anything and to to actually lighting the upper
46:43
stage engines while the first stage engines are still
46:47
thrusting and not blowing up the ship, which is that was an
46:51
amazing achievement. So I was like, wow, that's and
46:54
it worked. So I was like, wow, so, so then
47:01
let's look at flight 2. Potential operators on Countdown
47:06
One. It's the final go go for Flight
47:09
2 of Starship and their two zeros at 7:00 AM.
47:12
Central Raptor One go Raptor 2GO Stage 1.
47:17
Go stage two. Copy go for plate.
47:21
Clock is rolling 10987654321. We have liftoff.
48:08
Boost stretcher cut on. Stage separation.
48:55
So yeah, big round of applause guys.
48:57
Wow. So flight flight 2 actually
49:07
almost made it to orbit. So in fact, ironically if if it
49:12
had a payload, it would have made it to orbit because the
49:16
reason that it actually didn't quite make to orbit was we
49:18
vented the liquid oxygen. And the liquid oxygen ultimately
49:23
led to fire and an explosion because we wanted to vent the
49:27
liquid oxygen because we only wouldn't have that liquid oxygen
49:30
if we had a payload. So ironically, if it had a
49:34
payload, it would have reached orbit.
49:37
And so I think we've got a really good shot of reaching
49:39
orbit with flight 3 and then a rapid cadence to achieve full
49:44
and rapid reusability. And I mean, what kind of the
49:48
mind blowing thing is like there is an actual path that we are on
49:52
to make life multiplanetary. Can you freaking believe that?
49:58
Like what hype? Yeah, we just got to get it done
50:08
before civilization ends. But but like, I think we, I
50:11
think it's going to happen. Yeah, right here.
50:19
So anyway so in terms of getting there, we're going to obviously
50:24
want to accelerate the production and testing get to a
50:28
high cadence. You know for for any given
50:30
technology development there it is you know how many iterations
50:36
do you have and what is the amount of time between each
50:38
iteration. So every time we launch we
50:40
learn, every time we launch we do a test, we we learn something
50:43
more. So increasing that cadence of
50:46
launching and testing and it's always better to sacrifice
50:50
hardware rather than sacrifice time like time is the true the
50:54
one true currency. So it's sort of the fastest path
51:00
to, as I was saying earlier, rapidly rapidly reusable
51:05
reliable rocket. Yeah.
51:11
So and we've got yeah a block sort of a version 2 ship that
51:18
will be more reliable, better performance endurance.
51:20
We've got a version 3 ship design that will stretch the the
51:25
be even taller, probably end up being, I don't know, 140 meters
51:30
before it's all said and done. Maybe 150 in the end in in
51:34
length. So yeah, so be even taller than
51:44
it currently is. Yeah and so with with flight.
51:51
With flight 1 the goal was not to blow the the pad up and
51:54
ideally get get some distance which we did.
51:57
With flight 2 it was to get past staging.
52:00
So we achieved the goal of getting past staging and almost
52:04
to orbit and then flight flight 3 we've got well we want to get
52:09
to orbit and we want to do an in space engine burn from the
52:14
header tank and and prove the that we can reliably deorbit.
52:18
We want to do a tipping point header domain propellant
52:23
transfer. This is important for the NASA
52:28
Artemis program and we wanted to also demonstrate the the payload
52:33
door for the sort of PES dispenser for delivering the
52:38
Stallings, the the the V2 non money, the actually probably VI
52:42
guess V3 technically but really the really giant satellites to
52:46
orbit. Yeah so like I said the the the
52:57
the master orbit ultimately of Starship will be you know over
53:01
time I think millions of tons of of payload to orbit.
53:07
So it's I mean compared to present day master orbit it'll
53:13
be more than more than 1000 times.
53:16
I mean, you know, more than 1000 times greater than master orbit
53:21
currently. That's what it will be
53:24
eventually or needs to be. So we also want to demonstrate
53:33
on orbit refilling. This is very important for the
53:36
NASA Artemis program. So we're very proud to be part
53:40
of the NASA Artemis program. I'm always incredibly grateful
53:43
to NASA for their support and for trusting us to do to take
53:49
take astronauts to orbit to take cargo to the space station and
53:54
to be an integral part of of getting astronauts back to the
53:57
moon. One of the other questions I get
54:01
a lot is did we really go to the moon?
54:04
I've gotten that from a lot of people.
54:06
And I'm like, yes, we went to the moon more than once, in
54:08
fact. But the crazy thing is that it's
54:11
been over half a century since we last went to the moon.
54:16
So, you know, that's I think what maybe that's what what
54:23
causes people to be skeptical, like how come we, we can't go to
54:26
the moon Now it was 66 years from the first controlled
54:33
powered flight of the Wright brothers in 19 O3 to landing on
54:39
the moon in 69. So only 66 years.
54:42
But you know like 50 years have passed since we last went to the
54:46
moon, but now we're going to go back there and we're going to go
54:51
back there soon and we're not going to go just I think like we
54:55
want. The next step I think is to
54:56
build up a a moon base like Moon base Alpha, make sci-fi real,
55:02
not to add remove the fire part of sci-fi so but now one but in
55:10
order to go and land on the moon one of the technical challenges
55:15
we have to solve is orbital refilling where we dock the
55:19
starships, dock on orbit and transfer propellant.
55:23
Now we've gotten very good at docking because we've we dock
55:25
with Dragon to the space station which is actually more
55:28
complicated than docking with our own spacecraft.
55:31
So we have a lot of expertise in docking.
55:34
So I'm confident we will solve this and we just ideally want to
55:38
solve it hopefully by the end of this year but certainly by by
55:42
next year and that's a big deal. This is one of the fundamental
55:46
technologies that's necessary to to build a city on Mars and to
55:51
have a Mars, a moon base. And then, yeah, we'll also be
55:58
launching some very big satellites, world's biggest
56:06
peasant, Spencer. And we do hope to do this by the
56:15
end of this year. And then yeah more about the
56:20
NASA human landing system. So as I said we're extremely
56:24
grateful to NASA for entrusting us with a fundamental part of
56:28
the Artemis program. We want to make sure we do a
56:30
great job for NASA and and really the we like we are a very
56:36
fundamental part of the the Artemis program.
56:39
So if we if we do not succeed wish we will but but we in order
56:44
for the Artemis program to succeed we must succeed with
56:48
with with Starship and like I said we actually want to far far
56:54
far exceed what NASA has asked us to do.
56:57
So so the we want to go far beyond the NASA requirements and
57:02
actually be able to put enough payload on the moon with enough
57:07
frequency that you could actually have a permanently
57:09
occupied moon base. That's that's the next really
57:12
big threshold from Apollo is have a have an actual moon base.
57:18
I remember seeing this like I guess kind of cheesy sci-fi show
57:23
long time ago called moon base alpha.
57:25
I don't know if you know we've seen that but like the moon
57:28
actually drifts away from Earth. Now this is not going to happen
57:30
but but it was a cool show moon base alpha but we need a real
57:37
moon moon base alpha and we're going to do it.
57:42
So then yeah, as I was saying the this is the long term goal.
57:46
This is what we want Mars to look like is starships coming
57:51
and going, an incredible beautiful Mars city and a
57:57
flourishing civilization on Mars.
58:02
And you know ultimately we can transform Mars into an Earth
58:08
like planet with the terraforming just needs to be
58:12
warmed up really. And then you could, it could be
58:15
ultimately an Earth like planet and we could bring the life from
58:19
Earth, we could extend life from Earth to Mars.
58:25
And really it has to be, you know, it has to be humans
58:27
actually, yeah, 'cause it could be the dolphins.
58:32
So but we can bring, we can bring all the creatures with us
58:35
and we can ensure that life on Earth continues on Mars even
58:40
After Earth becomes unlivable in the in the distant future.
58:44
So anyway, I'll go into questions.