Great. I think the social per performed very well and the space six teams
done an incredible job. Talk about the views from starlink, I want to
give a shout out to starlink hat powered my live stream and obviously the three
plus million people who watched on X. Yeah, we actually had I think
sixteen video feeds or thereabouts from starlink, some of which were external, most
of which were internal. Just looking at the internal systems for cadevagging issues and
yeah, we had almost continuous starlink coverage. For the next flight, we
make some adjustments to starlink so we'll actually have completely continuous the entire way.
I'm sure everyone at home would love that. Would you say that fourth time
is the charm? Maybe for SpaceX As we look at Falcon one's history,
the fourth launch is certainly great. I mean third launch was we solid too.
I mean we did make it to orbit. By normal standards, that
would be a successful launch. For this launch, we we hit two key
reusability milestones, which was having the booster boost back to a precise location and
execute a landing burne and land softly in the water, which it did,
and getting the ship to go all the way through the super high heating of
re entry where it's coming in like a meteor and uh, and then maintain
control subsonically and land in a pretty precise precise location. Well it was technically
six kilometers off geographically, but it was able to was able to maintain control
and then relight the three wraftar engines for for a for landing. So that's
uh a super successful days. Yeah, as you were watching, people are
saying on X the little flat that could, what was going through your mind?
I was surprised that the flat lasted so long. So it's uh,
you know, because it's once the heat shield tiles are gone, you really
just have bare steel is mostly the sort of SX three hundred steel alloy,
and it was actually quite surprising how well the steel held up despite the extreme
heating. So I thought the flat would fail because it's not supposed to be
able to survive, but it did. I think a lot of us were
surprised. Does that validate your choice to use stainless steel? Yeah? Absolutely.
If we'd use colbon fiber or aluminum, they both would have failed due
to high heating. Now, we saw you post on X that maybe flight
five you'll attempt to catch how what do you think is the likelihood of that.
Well, I need to regroup with a team and confirm that there aren't
any other known issues. But I think given that the booster came back,
came to a precise location, came to potentially zero lasty landing on the ocean,
think we I think we should probably try to catch it with the tower
arms on the next flight. Absolutely, I was lucky enough to take a
tour of Starbase, and it's amazing that you guys are able to manage construction
and production at the same time. Tell me about the team down here at
SpaceX. Yeah, well we've foased on. We've been doing continuous construction of
the factory and the launch site while belt doing development of the rocket. That's
been the case, you know, ever since we came out here. For
three years, this was my primary locate, primary residence. I lived here,
kind of building up this Starbase factory and launch site from basically nothing,
from just being a sandbar. And and we're just trying to figure out how
to do how to work with standless steel as opposed to aluminum, mi lithium
and carbon, and how to deal with the methane as a quadrantic fuel instead
of kerosen or fine jet fuel. So yeah, so it's really always been
a case of build the factory, build the more site, and keep developing
the rocket. And if people have never been down to starbas this is much
more than a factory. You're trying to maybe build out a city. Can
you tell me more about your vision? A city would be a strong word,
but maybe a small town. Does having a young workforce benefit SpaceX by
not having preconceived notions? Well, we have people that range from you know,
sort of seventy to eighteen, so it's really a wide range. I
don't know about age. I mean, really it's a question of mindset.
Is somebody gung ho about the future and wanting to drive advanced technology as fast
as possible. That can be true at any age. What kinds of missions
do you think SpaceX could accept that will act as development stepping stones towards Mars.
We're seeing the development stepping sense towards here. Which is the fundamental breakthrough
that is needed for life to become multiplanetary is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.
So that means that the boost stage and the upper stage or ship must
both come back to the launch site and be immediately able to fly again with
no refurbishment. This has never been accomplished. The closest that anyone's ever gone
is Falcon nine, where the booster comes back and is quickly available for flight
in really less than a week, and the Pheromone nose cone is also a
refurbished full flight. The only thing that's lost is the upper stage. So
in terms of so Falcon is the first rocket ever to demonstrate commercially feasible reusability.
In fact, or another way of saying it is reusability that actually mattered
and was useful. Now Falcon nine is still we lose the upper stage.
So Falcon I is about eighty percent reusable, but it's also not rapidly reusable
in terms of enabling immediate reflight. So with Starship, the whole thing will
be reusable and it's designed for immediate reflight' that's a very profound thing. That
is the fundamental thing that is necessary to make life multiplanetary. There is I
put everything else in the category of being really a different order of magnitude or
difficulty. You know, I don't think it will be very difficult to survive
on Mars frankly, I think it'll from technology challenge standpoint, that is,
that is small compared to full and rapid reusability. We live in a planet
with a deep gravity, well in a thick atmosphere. This makes full reusability
extremely difficult. If gravity was even ten percent lower, it would be easy,
and if it was ten percent higher, it would be impossible. So,
uh, you know, we it. It's not as though uh,
prior rocket designers, you know it. It's not like people before me thought
y D didn't realize that re reusability was a thing. Bonovon Brown was actually
big on reusability. He really wanted to push a reusability design and he was
a brilliant guy, and and he had many sort of design ideas for that,
as did others. Uh. But uh, thus far, for whatever
reason, uh, no rocket organization has been able to execute on reusability until
SpaceX and Starship is the first rocket design where uh, full and rapid reusability
is in fact possible cause w W. What this does is drop the cost
of space transport by at least a hundredfold, maybe a thousandfold. So it's
a gigantic difference, uh, as would before any motor transport. If it
was cars, horses, bicycles, airplanes, imagine if you needed to get
in your airplane with every flight, airflight would be impossible for almost anyone.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is there's not enough people that really
know what's going on with Starship and why is it important to generate public interest?
It's not. I mean, I do think we want the public on
our side and supportive, but we're not trying to maximize public awareness. I
think the large portion of public is aware of it, and I think when
we start taking Ashwaltz to the Moon and especially Mars, it will be everyone
on Earth will know about it. At what point do you think it would
be safe for people to bring or have children on Mars? Well, I
think you can have children on Mars as soon as you're able to. I
wouldn't bring children initially because it's dangerous. The first flights may not succeed.
It's a hazardous environment. But I think within I don't know, less than
ten years of the initial landings, I would expect that it's safe to bring
kids. Do you think that you'll go to Mars in your lifetime? Whipends
I If I live long enough, then yes,