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SpaceX Starship Flight Update · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  SpaceX says we've recently we've received approval to develop
• 0:03
  Space Launch Complex 37 for Starship operations that Cape
• 0:07
  Canaveral Space Force Station construction has started with
• 0:12
  three launch pads in Florida. Starship will be ready to
• 0:16
  support America's national security and Artemis goals as
• 0:20
  the world's premier spaceport continues to evolve to enable
• 0:24
  airport like operations. We'd like to thank the
• 0:26
  Department of the Air Force, 45th Space Force in the US Fish
• 0:30
  and Wildlife for their effort on the environmental review.
• 0:33
  Now, Elon, I want to show you where this is for let's you know
• 0:40
  what, let's read this Elon tweet, then I'll show you where
• 0:42
  that is on the map. SpaceX is accelerating rapidly
• 0:46
  when Starship is launching several times a day.
• 0:49
  In a few years SpaceX will be 99% of all Earth payload mass to
• 0:54
  orbit, even if the others triple their current launch rate.
• 0:58
  And this is from a tweet from Steve Jurvetson.
• 1:04
  The quarter three launch report just came out.
• 1:06
  For kilogram launch to orbit. SpaceX has 97% share for the US
• 1:10
  and 83% globally. The Chinese launchers add up to
• 1:15
  8.6%. Looking into the graphs
• 1:16
  magnifying box. IDF just nudged past Rocket Lab
• 1:20
  and this is in. That's insane.
• 1:26
  Look at this graph. They are so far past everybody
• 1:30
  else that it's not even close, not even close for SpaceX.
• 1:35
  They are destroying everybody. And when Elon says they're going
• 1:39
  to be launching several times a day, I want you to think about
• 1:42
  this. They're going to have their two
• 1:44
  launchers at the Cape. They're going to have two
• 1:47
  launchers at Star Base by that time.
• 1:50
  So then they may even have more by that time too.
• 1:55
  They may have 6 launchers at any given time in the next few
• 2:01
  years. Now Starship were to launch six
• 2:05
  times in one day. They would land 12 times that
• 2:10
  day if everything returns properly.
• 2:15
  Think of that for a second. You see airplanes coming in and
• 2:19
  out. You know, you go to an airport,
• 2:21
  you can sit under the airport, like the launch area, right?
• 2:25
  We have one nearby where you can drive underneath and you can
• 2:28
  kind of see it. You can park sober, close and
• 2:32
  the launch has happened where the flights happen every X
• 2:36
  amount of minutes, right? Like 1520 minutes, thirty
• 2:39
  minutes, whatever. Now, if you have 6 rockets going
• 2:44
  to space, two of those could be tankers, two of those could be
• 2:49
  starships that are getting ready to go someplace.
• 2:52
  They got 4 already, and then you've got two more.
• 2:58
  We're doing something else. Who knows what they're doing.
• 2:59
  Maybe they're a tanker in another Starship and they're
• 3:02
  fueling up and they're trying to get to Mars.
• 3:04
  Maybe they're trying to get to the moon.
• 3:06
  Maybe they're trying to do some other science work.
• 3:07
  Maybe they're launching Starlink satellites, some of them.
• 3:11
  But you can have 6:00 to 12:00. You can have six launches per
• 3:15
  day, which is incredible. You could have a morning launch
• 3:19
  and a night launch of the Starship, or you could have two
• 3:23
  launches almost simultaneously, like hours apart if the if the
• 3:28
  ground crews are fine. Or you could just scatter them
• 3:32
  out throughout the day and you could have numerous launches
• 3:34
  from across the southern border of the United States, Florida,
• 3:43
  Texas. It's just like they just can
• 3:47
  launch so many. And it's going to be incredible
• 3:50
  that this is what's going to actually happen.
• 3:52
  And I believe Elon here in a few years, SpaceX will be 99% of all
• 3:57
  Earth payload master orbit several times a day.
• 4:01
  When he says several, what does he mean though?
• 4:05
  Does he mean two launches per day?
• 4:07
  I think what's going to happen, and this is this is what I'm
• 4:11
  hoping happens in the next few years.
• 4:14
  I hope they nail block 3 pretty soon now with this poll in our
• 4:20
  chat. Will Starship launch in January?
• 4:23
  I don't think so. I don't think they can.
• 4:26
  I think they that set back from the last booster that blew up,
• 4:29
  that's going to send them back a few, you know, maybe 3 weeks,
• 4:35
  something like that. So by that time this year is
• 4:41
  going to be over, they still have to test a booster, 100%
• 4:45
  test it. This is a new version of
• 4:48
  everything, right? So they have a new booster, new
• 4:51
  ship, everything's brand new. They have to do extensive
• 4:55
  testing on either one of these things.
• 4:58
  As if anything happens to this pad, which isn't even completed
• 5:02
  yet by the way, they just ripped down the first pad.
• 5:04
  It's pretty much gone. And pad 2 is going to be up
• 5:12
  sometime in the near future. We don't know when they could
• 5:16
  be, could be months, could be 3 months.
• 5:19
  I mean, they're, they're working hard.
• 5:20
  But I, you know, I saw them build the first pad.
• 5:25
  I was there, I was there on the side of the road when they were
• 5:28
  building the first pad. It took a very long time.
• 5:31
  Now engineering is very difficult and they learned a lot
• 5:35
  from pad 1. Pad 2 is for a different rocket.
• 5:39
  Pad 2 is for Block 3. What they learned from Block 1
• 5:43
  and 2 they can transfer over to the Block 3 pad, but it's going
• 5:48
  to be different. So they need to do different
• 5:51
  things. And Zestyzop says Block 3 will
• 5:54
  have hiccup hiccups. I agree with you.
• 5:56
  There will be times when they scrub a launch.
• 5:58
  There will be times when things just don't work out right?
• 6:01
  And there will be things like what just happened to that last
• 6:04
  booster. It it, it exploded on the on the
• 6:07
  test pad. And those kind of things will
• 6:12
  happen. It's a new rocket and
• 6:15
  understandably, it's going to take a long time to get it ready
• 6:19
  and comfortable enough, get the crew comfortable enough to
• 6:22
  launch this thing. And I'm not a Starship hater at
• 6:26
  all. I just try to think
• 6:29
  realistically and logically about things that happen in the
• 6:32
  aerospace industry. It's a, it's not done yet.
• 6:39
  The the ship. Of course, we have very talented
• 6:43
  people, much more, much more talented than me working on
• 6:46
  these things. They know more than I do about
• 6:48
  this. But also we've seen some things
• 6:51
  happen. How many times has Block 1 and
• 6:55
  Block 2 failed? And some people would say it's
• 6:59
  not a failure. They, they learned, it's true,
• 7:02
  that's true. But they also failed a bunch.
• 7:05
  And I'm not a hater, but it's what happened.
• 7:09
  And you have to realize that you can't just sugarcoat things
• 7:11
  because it just makes you feel better because that's not how
• 7:15
  life works. That's not how engineering
• 7:16
  works. Sure, they learned things, but
• 7:18
  did they want it to perfectly execute the plan?
• 7:21
  Yes, 100%. Were they planning on that on
• 7:25
  maybe not 100%, but they didn't want to be held back by
• 7:30
  failures. And I'm sure there are some
• 7:32
  people and they're just sugar coating everything.
• 7:35
  If you're sugar coating everything because you'd say
• 7:36
  it's not a failure, it's it's a learning opportunity.
• 7:39
  Yes, I agree with you. But there are winners and losers
• 7:43
  and the fact that sometimes things don't work out well.
• 7:48
  Oh, it's going to be a bad day for Starship if something
• 7:52
  doesn't work out well on the pad for Block 3.
• 8:00
  I don't know. It's, it's a, it's a risky bet
• 8:04
  to say anywhere before March for the next flight of Starship.
• 8:09
  It's going to take a month to get that launchpad ready,
• 8:13
  unfortunately. And they're going to be building
• 8:16
  the Starship in tandem with that.
• 8:18
  And I think it's going to be March at least, but more so
• 8:22
  probably late March, early April by the time they get this thing
• 8:25
  ready to fly. And Elon said quarter one of
• 8:31
  2026. I agree with them quarter one,
• 8:33
  but it's going to be like late quarter one.
• 8:35
  I think I, you know, I've been covering Starship for since the
• 8:41
  inception, basically since it was basically a tent and a dirt
• 8:45
  pad. I've been covering this stuff.
• 8:47
  And I think the fact that they are building a brand new rocket
• 8:52
  with ideas and engineering from another set of that same rocket,
• 8:58
  block one and two, and the things that are different are so
• 9:03
  different between block 3 and Block 2 upgrades are so
• 9:08
  different. It's it's bigger, it's more
• 9:10
  powerful, and you can't just get it right the first time.
• 9:13
  If you can get it right the first time, that's great.
• 9:16
  Maybe you're Blue Origin and you can launch, you know, maybe you
• 9:19
  can launch a perfect rocket and land it.
• 9:21
  That was cool, right? That was really cool.