Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / SpaceX Starship Postponed

Transcript

SpaceX Starship Postponed · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:01
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
• 0:04
  Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
• 0:07
  the critical crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The
• 0:11
  Boring Company, and Neurolink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
• 0:16
  So it's taken me a little while to record this episode, and
• 0:21
  there are a few reasons for that.
• 0:24
  One of them is I don't really like to do this and I need to do
• 0:31
  something that I don't enjoy doing, but I'm going to need to
• 0:36
  ask for your help. One of the things that keeps
• 0:40
  this podcast going is your subscriptions, your follows, the
• 0:47
  ads that are run on the on the show.
• 0:51
  But I really need your help. I'm in a tough financial
• 0:54
  situation with the podcast and I need to keep it going.
• 0:59
  So I'm going to start a pledge Dr. I guess, if you want to call
• 1:05
  it that. And first and foremost, I want
• 1:08
  to say thank you to everybody who's already supporting the
• 1:10
  show by listening to the ads and subscribing to the show and
• 1:14
  being part of this great community.
• 1:16
  I love you guys. I really do appreciate you.
• 1:19
  And this coming from the bottom of my heart, I couldn't do
• 1:21
  without you. I've been doing this for four
• 1:24
  years, almost 1000 episodes, almost every single day, new
• 1:29
  Elon Musk news. And I've never really asked for
• 1:33
  anything like this. So it's weird for me to come out
• 1:36
  and say this. And I also want to do it because
• 1:42
  I just need the help me to keep this thing going because I'd
• 1:45
  love to do it in love alone, even though it's powerful, can't
• 1:49
  pay the bills. So I'm going to ask you for a
• 1:51
  donation. I have a Venmo at Wil Dash
• 1:57
  WALDON for any donations. Everything goes directly back
• 2:03
  into the show. Everything from the time that it
• 2:06
  takes to produce the show to new equipment to finding guests.
• 2:12
  If possible, my bills for any software I use, things like
• 2:18
  that. It all costs money and I do this
• 2:20
  for free and I've been doing it for almost 1000 episodes now.
• 2:24
  I think I'm over 1000 episodes to be honest with you.
• 2:27
  But the Venmo again is at Wil Dash WALDON.
• 2:33
  Any amount helps. If it's a dollar, if it's $1000,
• 2:37
  if it's $1,000,000, whatever helps.
• 2:41
  So I want to say thank you in advance to anybody who's going
• 2:43
  to kick in and be part of this community and help the show
• 2:50
  continue. Now, let's get into the real
• 2:53
  news here because I think Starship is in a pretty tough
• 2:59
  spot. I don't know if you've seen this
• 3:03
  in the news. If you're an Elon Musk fan,
• 3:05
  you've probably seen this or heard about this.
• 3:07
  But the last ship that was going to be for flight 10 of Starship
• 3:11
  exploded while it was testing. And Elon and company over SpaceX
• 3:17
  kind of have an idea what it was.
• 3:19
  But that's a moot point because most of the next ships are
• 3:24
  already being built and also block 3 ships which are more
• 3:29
  powerful are already in the production.
• 3:33
  And what happened when the ship exploded took out some of the
• 3:38
  test facility too. So as of right now, Starship is
• 3:44
  postponed until SpaceX figures out what they want to do next.
• 3:48
  What's their next move? Will they test the same block 2
• 3:52
  type ship because they already have some almost ready?
• 3:56
  Or will they just move on to block 3 because block two really
• 4:01
  isn't working out well for them and the FAA after three failed
• 4:07
  attempts to land the rocket the the Starship part of the rocket
• 4:17
  stage 2 in the Indian Ocean. Every single one of those, the
• 4:21
  last three blew up and then one blew up on the pad.
• 4:23
  SO4 blew up in a row. The FAA has to take a very close
• 4:28
  look at Starship right now. Is it worth it to continue going
• 4:32
  down the same Rd. for SpaceX and Starship and Elon?
• 4:37
  Go down the block to road and use the same ship and maybe
• 4:43
  it'll work, but also the chance that it doesn't work.
• 4:48
  So that's five failures in a row.
• 4:51
  Not only did they fail with the Starship and it blew up, they
• 4:57
  call it a red, a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
• 5:01
  But also with the last flight, there's a thing, there's a Bay
• 5:05
  door that was going to open for the Starling satellites.
• 5:09
  There were dummy satellites that were going to be ejected from
• 5:11
  the Starship and they were going to burn up in orbit and they
• 5:16
  were going to do some testing on them to make sure that
• 5:19
  everything works right before they actually send real star
• 5:21
  links into orbit. The Bay door didn't open and you
• 5:28
  got to think to yourself, if they don't know how to get a Bay
• 5:32
  door to work properly in space and they keep blowing up ships,
• 5:39
  why would they continue down the same Rd. with the same ships
• 5:43
  doing the same thing? It makes you crazy right?
• 5:46
  If you continue to do the same thing and get the same results,
• 5:50
  you're never going to move forward.
• 5:53
  So it looks like block 3 is pretty close to I would say 30%
• 6:03
  ready as far as the ships go. The boosters not in that league
• 6:10
  yet. There will be a booster within
• 6:13
  the next few months, but this is postponed Starship's advancement
• 6:17
  for months now. This also postpones the NASA HLS
• 6:23
  missions. If Elon Musk and SpaceX don't
• 6:28
  prove this, Starship can a well just survive and B orbit the
• 6:35
  Earth, and then it also needs to refuel in orbit.
• 6:41
  And then it needs to make a turn towards the moon, fly to the
• 6:46
  moon, orbit the moon, stay in orbit, and then land on the
• 6:52
  surface of the moon without fail.
• 6:57
  And for me, I love SpaceX. I think it's the most wonderful
• 7:01
  thing that's happened to spaceflight since the beginning
• 7:05
  of spaceflight, since Sputnik and since, you know,
• 7:08
  intercontinental rockets, you know, it's rocketry started.
• 7:13
  I think it's an amazing company, and I think the people there
• 7:18
  that work with SpaceX are amazing and I think they're
• 7:20
  brilliant geniuses. But if they don't successfully
• 7:27
  continue to launch Starships without incident.
• 7:32
  Now, the booster that came back last time, there was an incident
• 7:35
  with the booster too, but that was determined beforehand that
• 7:38
  was going to happen. They knew it was probably going
• 7:40
  to blow up on its way back to the Gulf of Mexico slash
• 7:44
  America, whatever you want to call it.
• 7:46
  But if and so the booster is OK, but the ship is the thing that
• 7:52
  they really have to worry about. I want to know if you're on a
• 7:57
  podcast platform that has comments, leave a comment.
• 8:00
  Let me know what you think, but I'm just rifling off at the cuff
• 8:05
  right now. And if SpaceX can't make it to
• 8:09
  orbit, if they can't land a Starship successfully and
• 8:14
  they've landed plenty of boosters, but if they can't
• 8:17
  orbit the Earth and then come back to Starbase and land a ship
• 8:23
  and refuel it and reuse it, I think the Starship program is
• 8:28
  going to be dead in the water. This has happened before.
• 8:34
  The N1 rocket that had a few not successful launches, everything
• 8:43
  blew up. It was a massive explosion.
• 8:47
  But they canceled that immediately because things
• 8:50
  happened and they were kind of on the same timeline as SpaceX.
• 8:53
  They wanted to make the world's most powerful rocket more
• 8:57
  powerful than the Apollo program, but they just cancelled
• 9:01
  it because it was just too much money.
• 9:03
  It cost too much and it's too dangerous.
• 9:04
  So they just cancelled it all. And now considering Elon Musk
• 9:10
  has the most money, the the money thing isn't a big deal.
• 9:13
  He does have investors. You know, there's private equity
• 9:16
  firms and private people with billions of dollars that have
• 9:19
  invested in SpaceX and Starlink is going to be making a profit
• 9:24
  for the next foreseeable future. So that's going to fund at the
• 9:29
  Starship program and continue to be a money sink if it doesn't
• 9:34
  work. I have all the belief, I have
• 9:38
  all the goodwill for SpaceX engineers, all the coders, all
• 9:44
  the people that are building, everybody in the office,
• 9:47
  everybody that works at SpaceX, they have nothing but love for
• 9:50
  them. But when is a good time to halt
• 9:55
  progress? I don't think they should.
• 9:58
  I think they should continue and I think they should figure it
• 10:00
  out. And it may seem like I'm a
• 10:02
  doomsayer at this point, but I'm not.
• 10:04
  I'm really not. I really want this thing to
• 10:06
  work. I really want SpaceX to move
• 10:07
  forward with Starship and land some people on the moon again.
• 10:11
  When I was a kid, there was a space shuttle.
• 10:13
  There's also the Apollo program. I caught sort of like the end
• 10:16
  ish of the Apollo program. The Apollo program ended before,
• 10:21
  around when I was born. So that means that I was kind of
• 10:27
  an Apollo kid, but I was a little baby.
• 10:30
  But I saw the reruns and I saw the documentaries on TV and I
• 10:34
  read about it in books. So I know it's possible to go to
• 10:37
  the moon. I know it's possible for people
• 10:39
  to do incredible things. But when you keep sinking money
• 10:45
  into it, you keep sinking resources into it, and you don't
• 10:48
  get the result that you want, is it time to move on to the next
• 10:52
  version of Starship? My answer is it's it's difficult
• 10:58
  because if they move on to the next version and it doesn't
• 11:02
  work, what do they do then They they just have to fix block 3,
• 11:07
  which is a more powerful version of the Starship.
• 11:10
  And then they just work on block 3 forever until they fix it.
• 11:16
  Because what black Black one was the most successful so far?
• 11:20
  Black 2. They've had all these issues
• 11:22
  with exploding rockets, exploding second stages and
• 11:25
  Block 3 hasn't launched yet. So they don't know.
• 11:28
  But should they cut their losses and just get rid of Block 2?
• 11:33
  Because the Block 3 tower at Starbase is almost ready.
• 11:41
  It's it's winding, it's coming up on like probably a month or
• 11:46
  two before it's completely ready.
• 11:48
  And by that time, I think the hardware for Black 3 will be
• 11:53
  mature enough that they could get it ready to launch when the
• 11:58
  tower is maturing and getting ready to launch.
• 12:03
  And but you have to remember the first tower, which is still like
• 12:09
  that was a total test alpha, like the 0.000001, a alpha
• 12:16
  version of the tower. That one took forever to test.
• 12:22
  Now they're testing the strength of the chopsticks, they're
• 12:25
  testing, you know, the lift capabilities, they're testing
• 12:29
  all the speed, they're testing the infrastructure, and they're
• 12:34
  testing the ground systems for the second tower at Starbase.
• 12:39
  Should they get rid of the Block 2 tower which is the first tower
• 12:44
  and just use the new tower? RIP down the old tower, Build a
• 12:48
  new tower that's also in the cards.
• 12:53
  SpaceX has it's in. It's in their documentation for
• 12:58
  Starbase that they can continue to produce new towers if needed.
• 13:04
  So it's a possibility that the second tower at Starbase Pad B,
• 13:09
  actually becomes the main pad from now on.
• 13:13
  And then from there, they ripped down the old tower.
• 13:16
  They build it up to a Black 3 tower, then they're back in
• 13:19
  business. Now if the new tower doesn't
• 13:25
  function properly with the new rocket, they're in a world of
• 13:29
  hurt because what are they going to do?
• 13:30
  Then they have nowhere to go. They have nowhere to go because
• 13:34
  it's Black 3. This is the final version
• 13:37
  Starship. So there was block one, block 2,
• 13:44
  block 3. There's no talk of a block 4.
• 13:47
  There's no nobody's ever said anything a block about a block
• 13:51
  for Elon's like kind of joked about like a really huge rocket,
• 13:55
  like a double or triple size Starship, But that's not
• 13:59
  actually a thing. So the, I think the the outcome
• 14:05
  for Starship would be to move on from block 2, maybe give it one
• 14:10
  last whirl. I don't know.
• 14:12
  Yeah, I think Block 3 is the way to go though.
• 14:14
  I think they have to RIP down that old tower, move on with the
• 14:17
  new tower and just move forward at Cape Canaveral with AV2 tower
• 14:25
  and you know, just keep building new towers for Block 3 because I
• 14:29
  think that's the way to go. I think they have to ditch all
• 14:32
  Block 1 and Block 2, get rid of them, but too dangerous and it
• 14:36
  takes too much time. What they could do is finish
• 14:38
  Block 3, stuff the tower in the rocket in a few months, you
• 14:43
  know, maybe even six months tested.
• 14:46
  You know, they have to finish the test facility again, have to
• 14:49
  fix it. There's no test facility down at
• 14:51
  Starbase anymore at the launchpad anymore.
• 14:55
  Really. I guess they could test it on
• 14:58
  the tower, but that's why they have the Massey's test facility,
• 15:03
  so they could test all the Rockets there and then move them
• 15:04
  down to the to the launch site. So I'm, I'm not 100% sure what
• 15:12
  they're going to be doing, but I think block 3 is the way to go.
• 15:15
  It just makes more sense, you know, logistically thinking, I
• 15:20
  think it makes more sense just to move forward, get rid of
• 15:23
  block 2, go to block 3. I know I keep saying the same
• 15:26
  thing, but it just makes more sense that way.
• 15:30
  They take a lot of time and money too.
• 15:31
  I mean, if block 2 keeps blowing up, they're putting them,
• 15:35
  they're they're risking FAA halting all launches of Starship
• 15:39
  if it keeps blowing up because then it gets dangerous and
• 15:43
  they're like, what are you doing, dude?
• 15:44
  You know, what are you doing with your Starship is you're not
• 15:47
  do you're not accomplishing anything.
• 15:49
  And it's dangerous for all the people around you in the boats
• 15:52
  and whatever. And there's debris in the ocean.
• 15:55
  They don't want all that stuff. They don't want that drama.
• 15:57
  So the FAA would probably, you know, slow them down or halt
• 16:00
  them until they get it fixed. And if they don't get it fixed,
• 16:05
  they could just put a hold on the whole Starship launch from
• 16:14
  Starbase until further notice until SpaceX can really prove
• 16:20
  that it's fixed, that everything's fixed completely or
• 16:23
  they move on to block 3. So they might as well just move
• 16:25
  on to block 3. And then if something happens
• 16:28
  with that, then that's whatever, you know, Then they fix that.
• 16:31
  Then they finally have a rocket that they can launch into orbit,
• 16:35
  they can refuel, they can go to the moon, they can go to Mars.
• 16:37
  But if Elon Musk wants to make it to Mars in 2026 when the next
• 16:41
  window opens, they got to really move fast because it's June,
• 16:47
  like the end of June, it's the beginning of July soon.
• 16:51
  And next year, they have one year and a few months before
• 16:56
  they can make it to Mars. Now mind you, they don't have
• 17:01
  to. They're not going to try to land
• 17:04
  the Starship. If they go to Mars, they're
• 17:07
  going into orbit with a Starship.
• 17:09
  So the booster will launch the second stage, which is the
• 17:13
  Starship will go into ORIS orbit and then it'll mate with a
• 17:19
  tanker which will refuel it and then refuel it a few times and
• 17:25
  then they're going to go to Mars.
• 17:29
  After that, they point towards Mars and they go towards Mars.
• 17:33
  If they can't get the Starship to orbit right now, there's no
• 17:38
  way they can make it to Mars. It just, it just stops dead in
• 17:41
  the air, you know, if they blow up again.
• 17:45
  So if Block 3 can make it to orbit, I think they're set.
• 17:47
  I think they're good, but I don't think Block 2 is worth it
• 17:52
  anymore. I really don't.
• 17:54
  It's not worth the hassle, not worth the money.
• 17:56
  It keeps, you know, the sunk cost fallacy where if you just
• 18:01
  keep putting money into something, it's going to work.
• 18:04
  Just keep doing the same thing over and over and over, it's
• 18:07
  going to work. Even if you know what the fix
• 18:09
  is. Then why would you keep doing it
• 18:13
  though? Because there's only a few more
• 18:14
  launches of Block 2 before Block 3 comes out anyway.
• 18:17
  I think there's three maybe of block 2.
• 18:20
  And like, why would they? Like they're not going to get so
• 18:23
  much data from those launches if they keep blowing up.
• 18:27
  They're not going to get enough data to even be worth launching
• 18:31
  these things. Sure they get data on the way
• 18:34
  up, but there's no data in like a pseudo orbit or even getting
• 18:39
  into Earth's orbit. They haven't got into orbit yet.
• 18:45
  They've had orbital velocity, but they've never hit actual
• 18:48
  orbit yet. So move on to block 3.
• 18:52
  Hope it works. Make sure you take all the time
• 18:55
  in the world to do every check every, you know, make sure
• 19:03
  everything's tight. That's the problem.
• 19:06
  Nothing's tight, everything he's blowing up.
• 19:09
  So make sure everything works and then from there, just keep
• 19:15
  going with Block 3. I don't know, what do you think?
• 19:19
  If you have comments on your podcast platform, let me know in
• 19:21
  the comments. I really want to know what you
• 19:23
  think. I want this community to tell me
• 19:24
  what you think. Also, I have to ask you one more
• 19:28
  time, please. Favor.
• 19:30
  For me, after 500 plus episodes, it's the first time I've ever
• 19:33
  asked for anything really. If you get Venmo at Will Dash
• 19:38
  Walden with any sort of donation, that would be great.
• 19:44
  I can continue doing the show that way and if you don't, I
• 19:47
  can't tell you if I'll be able to do the show.
• 19:49
  So if you've been listening to the show for a long time, if you
• 19:51
  get, if you've gotten anything out of it, a tip, you know, a
• 19:55
  tip would be really nice just so I can keep the show going.
• 19:59
  We're in dire straits here, guys.
• 20:00
  We might not be able to keep doing the show.
• 20:02
  So if you're a fan of the show, you know, do whatever you can
• 20:06
  and I would really greatly appreciate it.
• 20:09
  So I. The technical aspects of
• 20:14
  Starship didn't really want to get into them today because the
• 20:24
  the idea of digging into the technical stuff, one, it's a lot
• 20:33
  to think about. Two, it didn't need to be said.
• 20:42
  This is a a question of should we move forward with this
• 20:49
  version or move into a new version?
• 20:52
  That's it. Like it's nothing.
• 20:53
  It's not rock. I mean, it's rock science, but
• 20:55
  it's also not that hard, not that difficult.
• 21:00
  Something doesn't work, you ditch it.
• 21:02
  You pivot, right, move fast and break stuff.
• 21:05
  It's the Silicon Valley way. Something doesn't work, Ditch
• 21:09
  it, man. Go to Block 3.
• 21:11
  Elon, you should know this. Anyway, let me know what you
• 21:14
  think of the comments. Appreciate everybody and secure
• 21:18
  yourselves, please. Thanks for listening.
• 21:20
  Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
• 21:22
  I really do appreciate your support.
• 21:24
  If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow
• 21:27
  button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
• 21:29
  on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
• 21:32
  It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
• 21:34
  miss an episode. And each episode is about 10
• 21:37
  minutes or less to get you caught up quickly.
• 21:40
  And please, if you want to support the show even more, go
• 21:43
  to Atreoncom Stage Zero. And please take care of
• 21:48
  yourselves and each other. And I'll see you tomorrow.