Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Elon Musk talks about HUGE new rocket and why it's made of Steel

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Elon Musk talks about HUGE new rocket and why it's made of Steel · Elon Musk Podcast

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  Hello, and welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast.
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  This is the daily podcast about everything, Elon Musk from
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  SpaceX Starship. Starlink boring company.
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  Tesla flamethrowers, we love those flamethrowers.
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  Do we and memes, let's talk about samim.
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  Sometimes Ilan has some great memeing going on and we'll get
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  into that some other time. But today this is a clip from
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  Elon Musk talking about The Starship and the construction of
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  the Starship, I should say how it's going to be made of steel
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  as opposed to something like carbon fiber.
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  And the heat shields is going to be talking about how big it is,
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  you know, the size of the thing. How absolutely gigantis it's
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  going to be. So, let's sit back and listen to
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  Elon. But first, I have to tell you
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  So check that out in the show notes and let's listen to some
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  Elon Musk. Talk about Starship and how cool
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  steel is. So it would have gone through
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  various iterations of heat shield.
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  There's a lot of ways to skin the cat here.
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  The ultimately we decided to have a heat shield hexagonal
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  tiles, ceramic tiles that are basically like a tiny glass
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  vermicelli out of microstructure level but there's a very light
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  but very Crack resistant, essentially, glass tiles and
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  their be cut because the Starship isn't isn't a steel
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  construction. But yet, like, at first, it
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  feels like old steel. Is that mean it's heavy?
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  No, actually, it's the lightest construction.
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  This is steel is the best thing is that, I think the best thing
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  about Best design decision on this whole thing is 301
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  stainless steel. Because at cryogenic
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  temperatures of 301, stainless actually has about the same
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  effective strength as an advanced composite or aluminum
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  lithium, unlike most steals, which get brittle at low
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  temperature 301 stainless gets much stronger and if it's in the
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  in the in the extra hot condition, meaning it's cold
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  role to extra heart condition. So it also gets way stronger, so
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  they're gets its actually gets its its strength to weight ratio
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  at cryogenic temperatures is equivalent or even perhaps
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  slightly better, then then Advanced Composites or aluminum
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  lithium. This is, this is not well
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  appreciated because if you just look at the materials manual and
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  say, like, what is the strength of stainless steel?
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  It's it looks much weaker than it.
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  Is you say, what is the strength at cryogenic temperature?
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  Oh, much much stronger. You know, at very low
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  temperature, almost twice as strong.
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  That's when it becomes better than carbon fiber or aluminum
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  lithium, and this is another benefit.
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  It also has a high melting temperature.
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  So for a reusable ship, you're coming in like a meteor.
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  You want something that does not melt at a low temperature, you
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  want something that melts at a high temperature and this is
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  where steel is extremely good as well.
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  So it's still has a melting temperature around sort of 1,500
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  degrees Centigrade, whereas aluminum, you know, maybe 300 or
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  400 degrees. And same thing for carbon fiber
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  and that's really pushing it, you know?
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  So this is having that much high melting temperature means that
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  you don't need any shielding under the leeward side of their
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  of the ship when it comes in for entry and and the shielding you
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  need on the windward side. Side.
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  The hot side is massively reduced because the the
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  thickness of the tile is actually for a reusable system
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  is dependent on what backshell temperature like how hot does
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  the back of the tile that interfaces with the airframe
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  guest and because the steel can take a much higher temperature,
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  your heat shield even on the windward side is much.
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  It is much lighter. But the net effect is that is
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  301, stainless steel rocket is actually the lightest possible
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  reusable architecture. Then then it comes down to cost.
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  The carbon fiber, we were using was $130 a Time.
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  The steel is 2500 dollars a ton. But it's are 22 to 25 sorry.
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  The 130-thousand dollars a Time versus 2500 his time there was
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  one percent so it was it's a hundred thirty thousand dollars
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  a ton for the carbon fiber. And twenty-five hundred dollars
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  a ton for the steel. The steel is about two percent
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  of the cost of the carbon fiber. So this is good thing.
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  We changed from carbon-fiber to steal by far and and very easy
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  to weld stainless steel, the evidence being that we welded it
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  Outdoors without a factory. So, Great skills by the team,
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  but with with carbon fiber, this is impossible with aluminum,
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  lithium it also impossible, but steel is very, is, is easy to
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  weld and it is resilient to the elements.
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  And also actually, as a touring Austin earlier, say like on
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  Mars. Yeah.
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  You can like cut that up. You can weld that you can modify
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  it, no problem. Yeah, that's a good point.
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  You're out there on the moon or Mars, you want something that
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  you can modify that you can cut up and use for other things
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  that's like, for sure, great things.
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  So anyway, still obviously, I'm in love to steal.
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  It was, you know, as time I had to say it, you know, so great.
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  So let's see. Go on to the booster.
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  So, the booster is designed to take up to 37 rafter engines.
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  I'm not sure if we'll go that high, but you can really have
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  31. I think like the minimum number
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  you'd want is, you know, maybe around 24.
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  But the booster is that is designed to be able to take
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  multiple engines out. So you can actually add or
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  subtract engines as you would like you to basically just need
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  a lot of force pushing up. um, over time, I think that you
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  probably went around to 7500 ton Force rocket which is about
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  twice. The thrust of a Saturn 5 little
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  more than twice to start thrust. And and on a roughly 5,000 ton,
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  liftoff gross, liftoff Mass. So for a roughly one-and-a-half
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  Thruster wait for a reusable rocket.
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  You actually went to high thrust-to-weight rather than it
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  with an Expendable rocket where you want to low thrust to weight
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  because any thrust-to-weight below one is not useful like if
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  you have a less thrust than your weight you don't move.
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  So you actually want a high thrust-to-weight for a reusable
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  rocket. This is a very important design.
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  Optimization change. So that's why I think, you know,
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  more inches, probably good and getting up to around 75 returns
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  over time. And it won't have to wonder why
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  don't have thrust-to-weight ratio or more.
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  So, and what we think we're probably going to adjust the
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  great been designed to be kind of like a sort of like a diamond
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  shape looks cooler. Works better to and then the
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  rear fins are actually just legs, so they're not They don't
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  need needed for stabilization or guidance there.
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  They're essentially their forelegs All right, so some
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  let's go into some of the development testing.
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  This is a raptor firing. All right, and then obviously,
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  we had a raptor fire on the star Hopper.
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  Yeah. It's kind of hard to cease to
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  appreciate scale but it's the same diameter is Starship and
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  obviously it's right over there. So it's kind of hard to tell if
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  it's the size of a trash can or this is you know how big it is.
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  But it's a that it's about the body diameter is about 39 meters
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  or 30 feet not including the leg span
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  This gives you a sense of size. So the little pixels there,
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  that's a little, little pixels are human.
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  And then this the hopper next to it, the Millennium Falcon for
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  comparison, then Starship, which is what you see before you.
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  And then that's what it's look will.
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  Look like, with the full stack, which is almost two and a half
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  times this tool. Is this vehicle?
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  Hey, thanks for listening to the show.
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  I really do appreciate your time.
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  That was really cool. The breakdown for that is, this
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  thing is going to be huge. It's going to be cost-effective
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  and they'll be able to make a lot of them much quicker than
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  they can, with carbon or any other material, to make these
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  giant star ships. And it's going to be easy to
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  easier to make, I should say because like he said in the
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  show, you can just make this in a freaking parking lot.
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  You didn't have to have a giant facility.
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  It was just amazing. A parking lot by a shed. you
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  know, like not a big deal, you just make this thing wherever
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  you can and as much easier to build a spaceship wherever you
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  can, then you know, in a highly secured facility someplace so
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  you can just buy some land and build it in a parking lot.
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  How cool is that? So I would say thank you again
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