Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / SpaceX Starship IFT4 Launch Update

Transcript

SpaceX Starship IFT4 Launch Update · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast this.
• 0:05
  Is a. Show.
• 0:06
  Where we discuss the critical crossroads, the shape SpaceX.
• 0:09
  Tesla X, The Boring Company and Neuralink and I'm your host Will
• 0:15
  Walden if you want uninterrupted episodes of the Elon Musk
• 0:18
  podcast. Please go to.
• 0:20
  Clubelon.supercast.com to find out how there's a link in the
• 0:26
  show notes. And today's episode is about the
• 0:28
  Starship IFT 4 flight and also subsequent flights after that.
• 0:35
  We saw the success of IFT 1, IFT 2 and the most successful flight
• 0:40
  so far, IFT 3. They did some interesting things
• 0:44
  in IFT 3. One of them is the Hatch which
• 0:48
  is used for Starlink satellites. That's they open up the Hatch
• 0:52
  like a Pez dispenser, shoot out Starlink satellites into orbit,
• 0:56
  and then while they cash in on those satellites because it's a
• 1:00
  service that SpaceX provides to rural areas where people can't
• 1:04
  get high speed Internet. And this hat store was it kind
• 1:09
  of went OK. I talked about in the last
• 1:12
  video, it was OK. It had a little little hiccup
• 1:15
  while it was closing, but altogether it was a success.
• 1:20
  Now that's important because we have to talk about something in
• 1:23
  the Gwyn, Shotwell talked about who is the COO of SpaceX works
• 1:27
  hand in hand with Elon Musk, knows exactly what's going on
• 1:31
  with Starship at all times, and she just recently was on a
• 1:35
  paddle on the satellite conference and something really
• 1:40
  interesting, she said. So there's a timeline for AFT
• 1:43
  Four. She said SpaceX will be ready to
• 1:46
  launch in about six weeks. That's a month and a half.
• 1:53
  That's really fast. Most of these launches take half
• 1:58
  a year, four to five months. If they can be ready in six
• 2:04
  weeks, this is going to be incredible because Elon Musk has
• 2:08
  talked about having nine launches of Starship this year,
• 2:11
  and if they can turn these around in a month and a half, I
• 2:14
  can see that actually happening. This is a huge deal because
• 2:18
  before they only had clearance to do 5 launches per year, and
• 2:22
  now they're trying to up the ante to 9.
• 2:24
  Next year they'll probably going to go up to 30.
• 2:27
  Knowing SpaceX and building on the success of 12345, they're
• 2:32
  going to keep building on all of the successes of these Starship
• 2:35
  launches going forward. So she says right now that the
• 2:38
  teams are still reviewing the data from IFT 4 and that also
• 2:44
  remember the Bay door, the Hatch door, They're not gonna have
• 2:47
  satellites on board. I FT four.
• 2:49
  I thought they were gonna do maybe a dummy satellite, an I FT
• 2:52
  four. I knew they were gonna do
• 2:54
  another hatch test, but I wasn't sure about the about some dummy
• 2:59
  satellites. That's where I was kind of
• 3:00
  conflicted because they have so many other things that they have
• 3:02
  to take care of. So many other things that they
• 3:04
  have to work on, including possibly another propellant
• 3:10
  transfer. I'm not 100% sure about that
• 3:13
  because we don't have the data from the propellant transfer.
• 3:16
  They said it's successful, but was it 100% successful or was it
• 3:19
  99%? We're not 100% sure.
• 3:22
  So are they gonna be doing other transfer prep, pellet transfer
• 3:26
  for IFT 4? Possibly, possibly, just to make
• 3:29
  sure that they can use that for the Artemis program.
• 3:33
  And if you're not familiar, the Artemis program is NASA's next
• 3:36
  program to send people to the surface of the moon.
• 3:39
  Very important thing. And SpaceX will be landing those
• 3:42
  people using the HLS Starship. So this propellant transfer is
• 3:47
  super important because they have to transfer propellant in
• 3:50
  orbit from a tanker Starship to a flying moon Starship, a lunar
• 3:56
  Starship, the HLS Starship, which they will land on the
• 3:59
  surface of the moon with astronauts on it.
• 4:01
  Then they'll do science all over the place on the moon.
• 4:05
  So it's gotta be it's up in the air about the propellant
• 4:10
  transfer. But it's possible now, since
• 4:13
  Gwen said six weeks, we know that we could possibly get a
• 4:19
  bunch of Starlink and Starship flights this year.
• 4:24
  I don't know when they're going to start launching Starlinks,
• 4:26
  but more than likely at the end of the year.
• 4:29
  But Gwen said that the goal of the Starship this year is to
• 4:32
  reach orbit, deploy satellites, and recover both stages.
• 4:38
  So that means they're building the second tower at Starbase
• 4:42
  right now. I believe that's gonna be the
• 4:45
  catch tower. Right now.
• 4:47
  They cannot. There's no way, there's no
• 4:50
  reason for them to use the current tower as a catch tower.
• 4:55
  Anything that happens to their launch tower right now, it's
• 4:59
  gonna put set them back a year, six months to a year.
• 5:03
  So there's no reason for them to do that.
• 5:05
  What they have to do is build on the success of the tower.
• 5:09
  One for the tower 2. Build it out so there's just
• 5:14
  catch capabilities. Make sure that the catching is
• 5:18
  perfect, and then from there, launch from tower one, catch on
• 5:23
  tower two. Transfer the booster back to the
• 5:28
  production facility, scrub it off, get it ready for the next
• 5:30
  launch. Fix up whatever needs to be
• 5:32
  fixed. Same with the ship.
• 5:35
  Full orbit. Come back down to Starbase,
• 5:37
  Texas. It's gonna be impressive when
• 5:40
  they catch 1. A 250 foot tall booster.
• 5:44
  Huge. Bigger, like wider than your
• 5:47
  house. Think about your house right
• 5:49
  now. How long does it take you to do
• 5:52
  a lap around that? That's that's as big as a
• 5:54
  Starship. It's 30 feet in diameter, 9
• 5:57
  meters. It's a gigantic thing, also 250
• 6:00
  feet tall. It's massive.
• 6:01
  The thing is a skyscraper. And they're going to be landing
• 6:04
  this at Starbase Tower #2. Now, according to Gwen, they're
• 6:08
  going to recover both stages. Now, if they're gonna be doing a
• 6:11
  tower catch, they're gonna have to really speed up Tower Two's
• 6:15
  production. They could possibly get it done
• 6:17
  in six months. Possibly, but it might be later
• 6:23
  this year. So what they're going to do in
• 6:25
  that meantime is they're going to land the booster precisely in
• 6:30
  the Gulf of Mexico. They're gonna orbit the Starship
• 6:34
  and possibly land the Starship precisely.
• 6:39
  Maybe in the Gulf of Mexico, but more than likely not.
• 6:42
  They have a bunch of. And the the FAA did an
• 6:46
  environmental review for the subsequent launches of Starship
• 6:51
  FT 45678, and all of them were going to be landing in the
• 6:55
  Indian Ocean. So we have a little bit of
• 6:58
  information about that. And right now we know that it's
• 7:02
  not expected for the ship to survive the landing in the
• 7:07
  Indian Ocean. It's probably gonna break up in
• 7:10
  orbit. It's probably gonna burn up or
• 7:12
  something is gonna happen and it's gonna blow up in the Indian
• 7:14
  Ocean. The FAA had to take care of
• 7:16
  that. They had to work with SpaceX and
• 7:18
  they had to work, you know, together to figure out if it's
• 7:21
  going to cause any damage the Indian Ocean.
• 7:24
  And what they find out is that it's not going to do any damage.
• 7:26
  Not not much damage, actually. Most of the ship will sink to
• 7:31
  the bottom of the ocean and the the wildlife, the sea creatures,
• 7:37
  the fish, etcetera will not be harmed.
• 7:41
  So from what we know right now, SpaceX is going to do a bunch of
• 7:45
  launches this year, possibly a catch land in the Indian Ocean
• 7:50
  with the ship, land in the Gulf of Mexico with a booster and I
• 7:54
  believe IFT four or five, they're probably going to do a
• 8:01
  successful booster landing. They looked really great last
• 8:04
  time. They're really close, so I'm
• 8:07
  assuming what they can do with hardware and software.
• 8:09
  They probably upgraded the hardware and the booster and
• 8:13
  software upgrades as well. So they could more than likely
• 8:16
  land the booster in the Gulf of Mexico, soft landing in IFT 4 or
• 8:19
  IFT 5 and then the ship. It's going to take him a little
• 8:23
  bit longer, so I'm assuming IFT 6-7, maybe 8.
• 8:28
  But getting RE entry nailed is very important as well, very,
• 8:33
  very important. So Starship has to get the RE
• 8:37
  entry and the orbit down pat before they can do a soft
• 8:40
  landing. And once they get the RE entry
• 8:44
  and the D orbit figured out, then the RE entry and the the D
• 8:51
  orbit will lead them into the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf into
• 8:56
  the Indian Ocean. Softly.
• 8:59
  Right now it's going to blow up. Like that's where we're at right
• 9:03
  now. This thing's going to blow up
• 9:04
  and we know it's going to be a Rudd.
• 9:06
  It's going to be a rapid unscheduled, actually.
• 9:11
  It might be a scheduled disassembly, but the rapid,
• 9:14
  unscheduled disassembly. But they may schedule it by
• 9:17
  blowing it up on purpose because they may run out of fuel or, you
• 9:21
  know, whatever it is at this point, but they need to get it
• 9:23
  into orbit. That's what they plan on doing.
• 9:24
  That's what Shotwell said. So we're looking forward to the
• 9:27
  IFT 4 flight and we're looking forward to.
• 9:31
  I want to see, I don't know what you think about it.
• 9:34
  What you think about Gwen talking about this six weeks.
• 9:39
  Do you think it's possible this isn't Elon time that we're
• 9:41
  talking about? Elon time is like when he says
• 9:43
  six weeks, we're like, OK, dude, six weeks.
• 9:48
  All right, bro. We're thinking more like he says
• 9:52
  six weeks. We're like four months.
• 9:54
  Elon, bro, does he, does he own a watch?
• 9:58
  I don't know. I don't know.
• 9:59
  Let me know what you think of the comments down below.
• 10:01
  But Gwen says six weeks the teams are working on the data
• 10:05
  from IFT 3 and they're working now.
• 10:08
  SpaceX is also working with the FAA because there was a, you
• 10:14
  know, after the FT3 flight, things blew up and there's an
• 10:18
  incident report SpaceX, SpaceX has to work with the FAA in
• 10:22
  order to fix the things that went wrong.
• 10:25
  And then the FAA has to tell them, OK, cool, good job, good
• 10:28
  job fixing the things that blew up or something wasn't working
• 10:32
  properly. So good job.
• 10:34
  Do that. And then I FT four will be
• 10:37
  cleared for flight once the FAA gives them a flight license.
• 10:40
  So lots of things happening at Starbase, lots of testing
• 10:44
  happening in the next two weeks, 2-3 weeks.
• 10:47
  And if Gwen is going to be right about the six weeks thing,
• 10:51
  they're going to rush this thing through.
• 10:52
  There's going to be some cryo tests, there's going to be some
• 10:54
  pressure tests, there's going to be some static fires of the
• 10:57
  booster and the ship. Everything is going to be
• 11:01
  bonkers for the next month and there's going to there's going
• 11:04
  to be a lot of activity down there.
• 11:06
  Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
• 11:08
  I really do appreciate your. Support if.
• 11:10
  You could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow
• 11:12
  button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
• 11:15
  on right now. I greatly appreciate it.
• 11:17
  It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
• 11:20
  miss an episode. And each.
• 11:22
  Episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you caught up
• 11:25
  quickly. And please, if you want to
• 11:27
  support the show even more, go to Atreoncom, Stage Zero, and
• 11:33
  please take care of yourselves and each other and I'll see you
• 11:36
  tomorrow.