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SpaceX Starship V3 Launch Update · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  Spacex's upcoming rocket test is going to force the rerouting of
• 0:05
  commercial aircraft across multiple countries, affecting
• 0:08
  flights over the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, the Pacific Ocean and
• 0:11
  the Caribbean Sea. Yeah.
• 0:13
  And that scale of disruption is required because this operation
• 0:17
  is for Starship Flight 12, which is launching from a brand new
• 0:20
  pad in Texas. And this mission debuts the
• 0:23
  version three rocket stack, which represents a huge leap in
• 0:27
  engineering payload capacity and, well, engine power compared
• 0:31
  to the previous iterations. O How does like stripping away
• 0:34
  external rocket plumbing and chopping off a steering fin
• 0:38
  fundamentally alter our ability to live and work in space?
• 0:42
  Well, to understand the mechanics of that, we really
• 0:44
  have to look at the physical evolution of the vehicle itself.
• 0:47
  I mean, the V3 Starship has been stretched to over 124 meters
• 0:50
  tall. Oh wow.
• 0:51
  So for context, if you stood this rocket next to the Statue
• 0:54
  of Liberty, the rocket would tower over it by nearly 100
• 0:57
  feet. Yeah, exactly.
• 0:58
  It is physically larger than the Saturn V rocket that took humans
• 1:03
  to the moon. That's just wild.
• 1:05
  It is, but Despite that extreme increase in physical size,
• 1:09
  engineers somehow managed to decrease the emty mass of the
• 1:12
  upper stage to just 85 tons. Oh, OK, wait.
• 1:16
  And at the same time they increase the payload capacity to
• 1:20
  over 200 metric tons to low Earth orbit in a fully reusable
• 1:25
  configuration. Wait, back up.
• 1:27
  Getting the empty weight of a rocket down to 85 tons while
• 1:30
  stretching it taller is, frankly, A staggering
• 1:33
  engineering feat. Yeah, it really.
• 1:35
  Is we really need to look at why that matters?
• 1:37
  Because every single kilogram of steel you do not send to orbit
• 1:40
  is a kilogram of cargo you can. The physics of spaceflight are,
• 1:45
  you know, ruled by the tyranny of the rocket equation.
• 1:47
  Right, the math is just entirely unforgiving.
• 1:49
  If you add 1 kilogram of heavy brackets or say heat shielding
• 1:54
  to the top of a rocket, you cannot just add 1 kilogram of
• 1:57
  fuel to the bottom to lift. It because you have to lift that
• 2:00
  extra fuel too. Exactly.
• 2:01
  You have to add exponentially more fuel because you also have
• 2:03
  to lift the fuel that lifts the fuel.
• 2:05
  Taking weight off the physical structure of the rocket is
• 2:07
  literally the only way to win that equation.
• 2:10
  And SpaceX is doing this through a production paradigm they call
• 2:14
  Star Factory, right? Yeah, they transitioned from
• 2:16
  building these custom hand welded prototypes out in 10 to
• 2:21
  using standardized jigs and highly automated welding inside
• 2:25
  a massive factory. And this manufacturing precision
• 2:28
  allows them to create much thinner, highly optimized
• 2:32
  stainless steel skins. Right, because seamless joints
• 2:35
  require less overlapping metal for strength, which, you know,
• 2:38
  strips away unnecessary weight from the entire structure.
• 2:41
  And that structural weight reduction combined with the
• 2:44
  increase in volume from stretching the tanks, that opens
• 2:47
  up completely new operational mechanics in space.
• 2:50
  It does. Specifically, carrying 200 tons
• 2:53
  of cargo makes propellant depots highly practical.
• 2:56
  Well, we should probably clarify what a propellant depot actually
• 2:59
  is for anyone picturing like a floating gas station in orbit.
• 3:03
  Yeah, it's not quite a gas station.
• 3:05
  Think of it more as a massive parking lot in low Earth orbit
• 3:07
  where a specialized tanker simply waits.
• 3:09
  OK, when a ship leaves Earth, it burns almost all of its fuel,
• 3:13
  just fighting gravity and atmospheric drag to reach orbit.
• 3:16
  Right, so once it gets there, its tanks are nearly empty.
• 3:19
  Exactly, to travel further, say to carry heavy habitats to the
• 3:22
  Moon or Mars, it needs a complete refill before it fires
• 3:26
  its engines to leave Earth's gravity well entirely.
• 3:29
  And under previous payload limits, pushing tiny bits of
• 3:32
  fuel up at a time meant you would need dozens of tanker
• 3:36
  flights just to fill one orbital depot.
• 3:39
  I mean, you'd be launching rockets for weeks just to fuel
• 3:42
  up one single mission. Yeah, the logistics of doing
• 3:45
  that were borderline impossible, but with the 200 ton capacity,
• 3:50
  the math completely flips. You can.
• 3:52
  Fill a lunar Lander for a NASA mission with just a handful of
• 3:55
  flights. The V3 architecture basically
• 3:57
  allows for these massive tankers to function efficiently.
• 4:01
  But hold on, if the rocket is carrying vastly more propellant
• 4:04
  and cargo, and they are using much thinner stainless steel to
• 4:07
  build the walls, how is it physically getting off the
• 4:10
  ground without buckling under its own immense weight?
• 4:12
  Well, bigger rocket, more powerful engines.
• 4:15
  Fair enough. So we are talking about the
• 4:16
  Raptor engines here, specifically the Raptor 3.
• 4:19
  Yeah, this engine relies on a full flow stage combustion cycle
• 4:23
  using liquid methane and liquid oxygen.
• 4:26
  And most traditional rocket engines waste a portion of their
• 4:29
  fuel just to power the pumps that push the fuel into the
• 4:31
  engine, right? But full flow stage combustion
• 4:34
  means every single drop of fuel and oxidizer is turned into a
• 4:39
  high pressure gas to dry the turbo pumps.
• 4:41
  And then all of that gas goes directly into the main
• 4:44
  combustion chamber to generate thrust like nothing is wasted.
• 4:48
  Nothing. It produces 280 tons of thrust
• 4:51
  with an internal chamber pressure of 300 50 bar. 350 bar
• 4:55
  of pressure to put that in perspective for you, that is
• 4:58
  like balancing the weight of a heavy commercial car on an area
• 5:02
  the size of a postage stamp. The physical metal of the engine
• 5:05
  wants to blow apart at those pressures.
• 5:07
  Higher pressure forces the exhaust out at higher
• 5:10
  velocities, which you know creates more thrust for the same
• 5:13
  amount of fuel. But it pushes the absolute
• 5:14
  physical limits of metallurgy. Oh, absolutely.
• 5:17
  The physical design changes required to handle that extreme
• 5:20
  pressure without exploding are striking.
• 5:23
  The engine mass actually dropped to 1525 kilograms.
• 5:28
  Wait. Really.
• 5:29
  Yeah. They achieved this by completely
• 5:31
  internalizing the secondary flow paths and plumbing using
• 5:35
  advanced 3 dimensional metal printing.
• 5:37
  Wow. They use lasers to melt powdered
• 5:40
  metal layer by microscopic layer, building complex parts
• 5:43
  that are just impossible to machine with traditional tools.
• 5:47
  They eliminated the need for external heat Shields on the
• 5:49
  engines entirely. That reminds me of like an early
• 5:52
  desktop computer. You had massive external fans,
• 5:56
  messy cables, and bulky heat sinks just to keep the central
• 5:59
  processor from melting down. Yeah, exactly.
• 6:01
  That was older rocket engines, you had pipes running everywhere
• 6:04
  outside the main thrust chamber. But with the Raptor 3 they 3D
• 6:08
  printed those cables, the cooling channels directly inside
• 6:11
  the solid metal walls of the engine itself.
• 6:13
  Right, so the freezing liquid methane routes through the
• 6:16
  physical structure of the metal walls before it ever reaches the
• 6:19
  combustion chamber to burn. The fuel acts as the coolant.
• 6:22
  Exactly. It cools the engine from the
• 6:24
  inside out. Integrating all of that directly
• 6:27
  into a sleek, solid piece of hardware limits what aerospace
• 6:32
  engineers call induced mass. Induced mass is the extra weight
• 6:36
  from protective components, right?
• 6:37
  Yeah, components like fire suppression systems, heavy
• 6:40
  brackets and thermal blankets. You only need those because your
• 6:43
  engine has exposed vulnerabilities.
• 6:46
  The pipes on the outside can melt if they get too hot.
• 6:48
  But when you internalize the plumbing, you remove the
• 6:51
  vulnerabilities, which means you can remove the heavy Shields.
• 6:54
  And the consequence of that weight savings opens up the
• 6:57
  ability to pack 33 engines onto the Super Heavy booster.
• 7:00
  Plus they also increase the upper stage to 9 engines.
• 7:03
  The upper stage now uses 3 sea level engines for atmospheric
• 7:07
  maneuvering and six vacuum optimized engines for efficiency
• 7:10
  in space. Having 6 vacuum engines means a
• 7:13
  higher specific impulse once the ship leaves the atmosphere.
• 7:16
  And specific impulse is essentially the miles per gallon
• 7:19
  rating for a rocket operating in the vacuum of space.
• 7:22
  Right. It maximizes the efficiency of
• 7:24
  all that extra propellant they're carrying up in the
• 7:27
  stretch tanks. But getting that massive
• 7:29
  structure to orbit is only half the equation.
• 7:32
  You also have to bring the booster back down.
• 7:33
  Yeah, you have a substantially heavier Super Heavy booster
• 7:36
  plummeting back to Earth and you still have to catch it out of
• 7:39
  the sky without crushing it. Which brings up the recovery
• 7:42
  method, catching the Super heavy booster mid air using mechanical
• 7:46
  tower arms. And to accommodate this on the
• 7:48
  V3, engineers completely redesigned the grid fins used to
• 7:52
  steer the descending booster. Wait, hold on.
• 7:54
  They went from 4 grid fins down to three.
• 7:56
  Yeah, they did. Why remove a steering surface
• 7:58
  when you need absolute pinpoint accuracy to thread this massive
• 8:03
  falling building between 2 metal catching arms?
• 8:06
  I mean, we are talking about catching a structure the size of
• 8:09
  a 20 story skyscraper as it falls out of the sky.
• 8:13
  It sounds a bit crazy, but the engineering logic relies on
• 8:16
  aerodynamics and structural efficiency.
• 8:18
  During descent, the booster falls through the atmosphere at
• 8:21
  a high angle of attack. It is essentially belly flopping
• 8:24
  to use its massive cylindrical body to generate drag and slow
• 8:28
  down. Exactly.
• 8:29
  You are using the rocket itself as a giant air brake in 1/4 in
• 8:33
  configuration. Because of the steep angle of
• 8:36
  booster is falling, one of the fins ends up completely
• 8:39
  shattered by the airflow over the rocket body.
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  So the air hitting the belly of the rocket creates A turbulent
• 8:46
  wake. Right.
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  And that fourth fin sits right in the dead zone where no clean
• 8:51
  air is flowing over it. It renders the fin
• 8:53
  aerodynamically useless. So you remove the dead weight,
• 8:56
  yes. The three remaining fins are
• 8:58
  arranged in AT shape. They're 50% larger and much
• 9:01
  stronger than previous designs. They also move the fins lower on
• 9:05
  the booster. But moving them lower creates a
• 9:07
  unique problem because of how the rocket separates in flight.
• 9:11
  They use a technique called hot staging, right In a traditional
• 9:14
  launch, the booster engines shut off, the vehicle coasts for a
• 9:17
  moment, the two have separate, and then the upper stage
• 9:20
  ignites. But that brief coasting period
• 9:23
  causes a momentary loss of upward momentum against gravity.
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  So hot staging solves that momentum loss.
• 9:29
  The upper stage engines ignite while still physically attached
• 9:31
  to the top of the booster. That blasts the top of the
• 9:34
  descending booster with super heated rocket exhaust from those
• 9:37
  9 upper stage engines. If you move the grid fins lower,
• 9:41
  closer to that blast zone, the mechanical components that pivot
• 9:45
  those fins are going to melt. And that leads to a brilliant
• 9:48
  design solution. To protect the fin actuators,
• 9:51
  the heavy electric motors that actually steer the fins from the
• 9:55
  extreme heat of hot staging, the engineers placed the fin shafts
• 9:59
  and motors completely inside the boosters main fuel tank.
• 10:02
  Wait, the main fuel tank holding the liquid methane?
• 10:05
  Yes, submerging the sensitive mechanical components inside the
• 10:08
  cryogenic fuel tank limits the thermal damage from the rocket
• 10:11
  exhaust. Oh, that's clever.
• 10:13
  The freezing liquid methane acts as a natural heat sink.
• 10:16
  Exactly. It absorbs the extreme heat
• 10:18
  transferring through the metal shaft, keeping the motors from
• 10:21
  cooking. Right.
• 10:22
  Optimizing the strength of these three larger fins opens up a
• 10:25
  completely new function for them.
• 10:27
  The grid fins now serve as the actual lifting and catch points
• 10:31
  for the mechanical tower arms. Because the fins are already
• 10:34
  robust enough to handle the extreme aerodynamic forces of
• 10:37
  falling through the atmosphere, you can use them to support the
• 10:40
  entire weight of the empty booster on the launch tower.
• 10:43
  Exactly. That eliminates the need to
• 10:45
  install heavy landing gear at the base of the rocket, again
• 10:49
  removing deadweight from the bottom to increase payload
• 10:52
  capability at the top. So we have spent time exploring
• 10:55
  the internal fluid dynamics and the aerodynamics of the rocket.
• 10:59
  Pulling back to look at earthly logistics reveals a completely
• 11:02
  different set of challenges. Oh, for sure.
• 11:04
  SpaceX is seeking Federal Aviation Administration approval
• 11:07
  for up to 25 annual launches from their Texas facility.
• 11:11
  And the airspace impacts of that frequency are enormous.
• 11:14
  Yeah. When you look at the aircraft
• 11:15
  hazard areas, which restrict where commercial planes can fly
• 11:19
  and during a launch, they stretch for thousands of miles.
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  During a launch requiring a Florida overflight, domestic
• 11:25
  flights taking coastal routes have to be rerouted far inland
• 11:29
  for flight paths. South of Cuba, 99% of affected
• 11:32
  aircraft are on international connecting routes.
• 11:35
  The logistical rerouting footprint is just vast.
• 11:38
  I mean, I look at these FAA hazard zones and see a nightmare
• 11:41
  for commercial airlines. Rerouting that massive volume of
• 11:45
  international and domestic traffic heavily penalizes
• 11:49
  everyday traveler. It's definitely looks that way.
• 11:51
  You are talking about forced ground stops at major airports
• 11:54
  like Miami or Orlando, increased fuel burn for planes forced to
• 11:58
  take longer paths over the ocean, and significant routing
• 12:02
  delays for passengers. You are asking thousands of
• 12:05
  people to sit on tarmacs. Also, one company can test a
• 12:08
  rocket in Texas. Well, the Federal Aviation
• 12:11
  Administration views the situation differently.
• 12:14
  Their documentation operates on the principle that airlines are
• 12:17
  essentially highly advanced routing algorithms.
• 12:20
  They adapt to predictable constraints.
• 12:22
  Predictable constraints, like a severe Stormfront moving across
• 12:25
  the Midwest. Exactly like that.
• 12:27
  Just like routing around regular weather patterns or known
• 12:29
  military airspace exercises, airlines incorporate these
• 12:32
  temporary closures into their automated scheduling systems
• 12:35
  well in advance. So the industry adapts its
• 12:38
  routing behavior to known variables.
• 12:40
  Right. And because of this high level
• 12:42
  of adaptability, the socio economic impact on the airlines
• 12:46
  was determined by the FAA to be insignificant.
• 12:49
  But that relies heavily on the launches being highly
• 12:51
  predictable. It still requires the entire
• 12:54
  global aviation network to flex around a single launchpad.
• 12:58
  That's true, but the regulatory framework limits certain
• 13:01
  operations to minimize the disruption.
• 13:03
  The approval restricts the company to only three night
• 13:06
  launches per year, and it's strictly prohibits nighttime
• 13:09
  booster catches at the pad entirely, largely to control
• 13:12
  noise levels for local communities.
• 13:14
  So the physical hazard areas are huge, but the framework limits
• 13:17
  the most disruptive activities to specific manageable windows.
• 13:20
  Yeah, and accepting those localized limits opens up a
• 13:23
  predictable rhythm for frequent heavy lift Space Flight.
• 13:27
  By standardizing the hazard areas and the notification
• 13:29
  processes, the airspace closures become routine events rather
• 13:33
  than emergency disruptions. So by stripping away external
• 13:36
  complexity and, you know, internalizing components, the V3
• 13:40
  rocket maximizes every ounce of lifting power.
• 13:44
  This design creates a vehicle robust enough to be caught in
• 13:47
  mid air and rapidly relaunched, fundamentally changing how much
• 13:50
  cargo we can push into orbit. Right.
• 13:52
  And as airspace closures for orbital refueling flights become
• 13:55
  as routine as a runway holding pattern, how will global supply
• 13:59
  chains shift when the shipping lanes extend into low Earth
• 14:02
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• 14:04
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• 14:06
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