Speaker 1: It's always important to explain the why of things, and
Speaker 1: the way of Starship is that we want to be
Speaker 1: a multiplanet species, to extend consciousness beyond Earth.
Speaker 2: I think for two main reasons.
Speaker 1: One is to ensure the long term survival and prosperity
Speaker 1: of life as we know it in consciousness, which if
Speaker 1: we are a multiplanet species and ultimately a multi stellar
Speaker 1: species out there among the stars, the probability of survival
Speaker 1: is much much longer. That's kind of the defensive aspect
Speaker 1: or life insurance for life collectively. But then there's also
Speaker 1: there also need to be things that are inspiring and
Speaker 1: exciting and that give you reason to live. Life cannot
Speaker 1: just be about solving one tragic problem after another. There
Speaker 1: must be also reasons to get up in the morning
Speaker 1: and be excited about the future. And a future where
Speaker 1: we are a space for civilization is infinitely more exciting
Speaker 1: than one where we are not.
Speaker 2: And we're doing it all pretty unique location.
Speaker 3: I mean, the pads behind us, we got rocket on
Speaker 3: the tower, we got another tower right that we're sitting
Speaker 3: inside star Factory, and I mean it wasn't like this
Speaker 3: for very long.
Speaker 2: This is all pretty brand now.
Speaker 4: I think we've moved Starship here in about the early
Speaker 4: part of twenty nineteen, so we've been coming that entire
Speaker 4: time and seeing the site of all from a double
Speaker 4: wide trailer and a tent where we built Starhopper to
Speaker 4: the first suborbital test flights, and now we have behind
Speaker 4: us two towers for the first time as we built
Speaker 4: towards the first operational flight from the second tower at
Speaker 4: the end of this year, and this beautiful building, million
Speaker 4: square feet where we're able to work towards a production
Speaker 4: line of starships.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the SpaceX team, it's one an incredible job of
Speaker 1: building out really the most advanced rocket manufacturing facility that
Speaker 1: has ever existed. This is far beyond any rocket fabrication
Speaker 1: facility that has ever been built.
Speaker 2: This is essentially.
Speaker 1: Alien level technology and it was well built here basically
Speaker 1: down by the Rio Grande River and close to the beach.
Speaker 1: It's an incredibly improbable location. And this used to be
Speaker 1: a sand bar. I think we're about you know, three
Speaker 1: feet or about a meter above sea level, so.
Speaker 2: It really was nothing.
Speaker 1: If you see the time lapse from a sand bar
Speaker 1: to two launch towers and a gigantic rocket factory with
Speaker 1: high bays and we're gonna be building something called the Gigabay,
Speaker 1: which is like one of the largest enclosed volumes on Earth.
Speaker 1: So it so it's sort of like a gigantic Bolg
Speaker 1: cube that we're gonna be building here for yeah, building
Speaker 1: and storing these gigantic rockets. It's really spectacular and anyone
Speaker 1: can come and visit. So the because we're on a
Speaker 1: public highway and we're literally by a public beach, you
Speaker 1: can actually come and see the rocket. You can quite
Speaker 1: close up. I mean you can drive past it, and
Speaker 1: you can also look at the factory, and anyone could
Speaker 1: do this from anywhere in the world.
Speaker 2: So if just you can come and visit and check
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty cool that it's just now, right now, just.
Speaker 2: Right, just know what we're launching, because there's some safety issues.
Speaker 2: But but but.
Speaker 1: The rockets often just just sitting on the pad without
Speaker 1: any palant in it.
Speaker 2: And then you can just you can just come here
Speaker 2: and visit. It's very easy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's a really special place. Yesterday the
Speaker 4: ship went down the road behind us and I saw
Speaker 4: families outside going for there, or was on Sunday going
Speaker 4: for their Sunday stroll. And they were greeted by Starship
Speaker 4: going down. And I think that from the very beginning.
Speaker 4: The thing about Starship different than Falcon and other rockets
Speaker 4: that I'm aware of is we designed it to be
Speaker 4: mass produced and mass produced at scale. And it's not
Speaker 4: about building one starship and getting to orbit once. It's
Speaker 4: about doing it in a sustained and rapid way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean for ultimately thousands of shifts to be built
Speaker 1: per year, which is what's needed in order to construct
Speaker 1: a city on Mars that is self sustaining. And the
Speaker 1: major fork in the road of destiny will be when
Speaker 1: the Mars city is capable of surviving even if the
Speaker 1: re supply ships from Earth stopped coming for any reason,
Speaker 1: and that reason could be something cataclysmic, or it could
Speaker 1: be that that civilization simply subsided. There's always this debate
Speaker 1: throughout history of will civilization and with a bang or whimper,
Speaker 1: but either way, if the critical thing is to get
Speaker 1: to the point where Mars is self sustaining and can
Speaker 1: survive even if the resupply ships stuff coming for any reason,
Speaker 1: which means that you need to build an entire base
Speaker 1: of industry on Mars in order for Mars to survive.
Speaker 1: For example, it's not simply enough to build a chip,
Speaker 1: you know, like a computer, like a computer chip factory,
Speaker 1: but you need the ability to build computer chip factories.
Speaker 1: So this, this is going to really take a lot
Speaker 1: of tonnage. My guess is at least a million tons
Speaker 1: to the surface of Mars, and maybe it takes less
Speaker 1: than that, but it's gonna be it's gonna be a lot.
Speaker 1: But this is this is a very exciting future. It's
Speaker 1: one which will ensure the long term survival and prosperity
Speaker 1: of life and consciousness. And it's the critical stepping stone
Speaker 1: to get from this solar system to other star systems
Speaker 1: and perhaps go out there and explore and paths will
Speaker 1: encounter alien civilizations that.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe they're alive now, but or maybe.
Speaker 1: They enjoyed a period of prosperity for millions of years.
Speaker 1: And it also died out millions of years ago. So
Speaker 1: it's humbling to think of the age of the universe,
Speaker 1: according to the standard model of physics, being approximately thirteen
Speaker 1: point eight billion years old, So an incremental million years
Speaker 1: would ownly would be three digits past decimal point. And
Speaker 1: if you look at say our civilization and measure civilization
Speaker 1: by the first evidence of writing, which is about fifty
Speaker 1: five hundred years ago. Civilization as measured from the first
Speaker 1: writing is only one millionth of boths.
Speaker 2: Existence or blip, yeah, flashing the pan.
Speaker 3: So far, well, we're getting some cool shots rocking down
Speaker 3: on the pattern right now. We tell people like, come
Speaker 3: down see it. It's hard to get like a sense of
Speaker 3: scale of just how massive this thing is. And we
Speaker 3: were able to catch somebody working on it a little
Speaker 3: while ago, and like part of the reason you said
Speaker 3: we're sending millions of tons, that's kind of why this now.
Speaker 4: I think in this understand you can actually see the
Speaker 4: person working at the bottom of the ship, and as
Speaker 4: we zoom out you see the full ship that sort
Speaker 4: of two tone silver and black, and then the booster
Speaker 4: below it, right, and it really sets the scale which
Speaker 4: doesn't come across I think other than in person. And
Speaker 4: when I do tours, I like to say, starship is real,
Speaker 4: Starship is big, and starship is really big, and I
Speaker 4: think you can see there and with the factory shots
Speaker 4: you saw earlier, again it's we've got flight ten on
Speaker 4: the pad, but we got many more behind it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's I posted a video yesterday of just
Speaker 1: a brief scan of part of the Starship factory and
Speaker 1: you can get a sense of the scale of the factory.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I guess we could talk a bit about.
Speaker 1: Why Starship is the way it is, and like, for example, walk,
Speaker 1: why is half of the ship black and half of
Speaker 1: it is silver colored? And that's because the bottom half
Speaker 1: of the ship, of the bottom as scene from obital entry,
Speaker 1: has a heat shield on it. So the black there
Speaker 1: is the is the heat shield. And then the core
Speaker 1: structure of the rocket is a special alloy of stainless steel,
Speaker 1: and that's where you see the sort of shiny silver
Speaker 1: parts are stainless steel. The reason for steel over aluminum
Speaker 1: is that the heat of of atmospheric entry and the
Speaker 1: heat of the rocket engines is enough to melt easily
Speaker 1: melt aluminum. But steel is much more resilient against both
Speaker 1: scent heating but especially the re entry heating.
Speaker 2: And you don't have to paint.
Speaker 1: It, which is actually very difficult at to paint a
Speaker 1: large object that is going through crygenic cycles and have
Speaker 1: the paint stay on.
Speaker 3: It's quite challenging, and so we've talked about it.
Speaker 2: It's massive.
Speaker 3: It obviously takes a whole lot of energy to make
Speaker 3: that thing move. And that's where Raptor really starts to
Speaker 3: come in. Most advanced engine on the planet. Yes, now
Speaker 3: that's the last saber and a half.
Speaker 1: You would get vaporized in an instant if you were
Speaker 1: standing in front of Rafter So yeah, bunto Crispin in
Speaker 1: a like less than a second.
Speaker 2: So yeah.
Speaker 1: In order for in order to create a fully reusable
Speaker 1: orbital rocket, you have to advance the state of the
Speaker 1: art in every part of the rocket. That means the
Speaker 1: engines have to be better than any engine ever. The
Speaker 1: structure has got to be better than any structure ever.
Speaker 2: You've got to you've got to have a.
Speaker 1: Means of bringing the rocket back to the launch pad.
Speaker 1: You've got to have a fully reusable orbital heat shield,
Speaker 1: and that no one has ever made.
Speaker 2: A fully reusable orbital heat shield.
Speaker 1: The Space Shuttle, for example, required nine months of refurbishment
Speaker 1: between flights. So the Space Shuttle heathield come back essentially
Speaker 1: partially broken and would require many months of refurbishment in
Speaker 1: order to fly again. What we're trying to achieve here
Speaker 1: with Starship is to have a heat shield that can
Speaker 1: be flown immediately, so the ship, both both the ship
Speaker 1: and the booster would be caught by the tower arms,
Speaker 1: and the the booster will be placed immediately back on
Speaker 1: the launch stand and the ship the ship's got it
Speaker 1: orbit Earth at least once, and that then could be
Speaker 1: back potentially in one orbit, but in most cases several orbits,
Speaker 1: so the ship would come back several hours later, but
Speaker 1: then be caught by the arms and placed on top
Speaker 1: of the booster. You could also have multiple ships ready
Speaker 1: so that a single booster could service five or more ships,
Speaker 1: so that you could be flying the booster every in theory,
Speaker 1: every hour. This is a kind of a profoundly fast speed,
Speaker 1: obviously for the largest playing object by far ever made.
Speaker 1: But it's the reason why we catch the tower. We
Speaker 1: catch the booster with the tower arms, and the ship
Speaker 1: also will be caught with the tower arms, because that's
Speaker 1: the fastest way to get the booster and the ship
Speaker 1: back to flight. If we had instead put landing legs,
Speaker 1: which we have done before for the ship tests, we
Speaker 1: actually had landing legs that flipped down and the ship
Speaker 1: ship we've we've successfully demonstrated landing with legs. But if
Speaker 1: you do that if we were to do that with
Speaker 1: the booster and the ship here, we'd have to uh
Speaker 1: land somewhere else with the legs, then lift the rocket,
Speaker 1: stow the legs, transport the rocket back to the pad
Speaker 1: with which is very unwieldy when you've got a gigantic thing.
Speaker 1: Then it would be picked up by these tower arms
Speaker 1: and placed in the launch mount. That would that would
Speaker 1: delay the reusability dramatically and would add a lot of
Speaker 1: masks with the landing legs. So that's why we catch
Speaker 1: the rocket with the tower arms, because it's the same
Speaker 1: tower arms that put the rocket in the launch mount
Speaker 1: are used to catch the rocket, and that means that
Speaker 1: we can put the booster back in the launch amount
Speaker 1: in less than an hour after liftoff. In fact, the
Speaker 1: boist is going to come back very fast, like five
Speaker 1: or six minutes later. This boost is coming back one
Speaker 1: way or another or not coming back. So then you
Speaker 1: really have propellent full time, which can be brought down
Speaker 1: to about thirty forty minutes, and that means it is
Speaker 1: theoretically possible to fly at the booster again in less
Speaker 1: than an hour.
Speaker 4: I think when when I think about it, it's the
Speaker 4: jet drives up to the jetway, the people get off,
Speaker 4: the new people get on, and it leaves. You don't
Speaker 4: want to land the jet on a different airfield and
Speaker 4: then tow it over to the jetway, so it's just
Speaker 4: operationally simpler and faster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've had a lot of success with the Booster,
Speaker 3: three for three on the catch attempts when we bring
Speaker 3: it back. We've reflown one so awesome, and then that
Speaker 3: again Starship Superpowers.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is reusable.
Speaker 3: So ship re usability is like what we're working on
Speaker 3: right now. We've been able to get some really spectacular
Speaker 3: re entries on a couple of flights, hoping to get
Speaker 3: this one re entry on the V two ship. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that that fully reasonable heat shield, that thing that has
Speaker 3: just never been done before. That's that's one of the
Speaker 3: things we're really looking for that data on.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are thousands of engineering challenges that remain
Speaker 1: for both the ship and the Booster, but the single, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe the single biggest one is the reasonable optal heat shield.
Speaker 1: Were all confident in making a fully reasonable opal heat shield,
Speaker 1: but it will require many flights, many iterations to figure
Speaker 1: out where the weak points are in the heat shield
Speaker 1: where we need to change the design, either strengthening the
Speaker 1: tile or change or changing the the thing, how big
Speaker 1: the gap is between tiles, changing what's underneath the tile. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a you know, one hundred different
Speaker 1: variables that we could tweak with the with the ship,
Speaker 1: the ship tiles, the heat of heat shield tiles. But
Speaker 1: the only way to know is exactly what we should
Speaker 1: be adjusting is to fly repeatedly and be able to
Speaker 1: examine the ship upon landing. And we have successfully brought
Speaker 1: the ship back through the atmosphere and achieved a soft
Speaker 1: landing multiple times, so we know that this is possible.
Speaker 1: But we have in the process shed many heat shield tiles.
Speaker 1: So we need to be able to do this without
Speaker 1: shedding heat shield tiles and.
Speaker 2: Do so repeatedly.
Speaker 4: And I think what you're seeing now is the starship.
Speaker 4: This is cg of it coming in and landing on
Speaker 4: the tower, much like the Booster, but there's some additional
Speaker 4: challenges there where we need to make sure we don't
Speaker 4: scrape the tiles off as we slide along the which we.
Speaker 2: Can't shuck the heat shield, don't crush the ship. Ability
Speaker 2: we shocked if we.
Speaker 1: Shock the shuck the tiles, then that's obviously going to
Speaker 1: fail to re useability test.
Speaker 4: So ships can use the tower to land and catch
Speaker 4: like the booster here on Earth where towers are available,
Speaker 4: and for our initial landings on Mars and other plant
Speaker 4: and it's only landing legs that deploy, much like what
Speaker 4: you're seeing here with Ship fifteen. When we did our
Speaker 4: suborbital test to prove out the precision descent landing, which
Speaker 4: was a successful test. We actually landed to one was
Speaker 4: it We were able to actually recover it, and it's
Speaker 4: you can see it here in the rocket garden if
Speaker 4: you visit Starbase.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the rocket garden that that Bill mentioned, we
Speaker 1: have actually a whole bunch of boosters and ships and
Speaker 1: we'll be adding to them of a time, so you
Speaker 1: can see an evolution of Starship just by driving down
Speaker 1: the highway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So reusability is key.
Speaker 3: There's some other technologies we're still looking to prove out.
Speaker 3: Really big one is going to be the on orbit refilling.
Speaker 3: Looking to do that next year, and that's really what's
Speaker 3: going to kind of unlock you know, Starship going everywhere else,
Speaker 3: going everywhere everywhere beyond Earth and that's something that's again
Speaker 3: never been done before, kind of like that reusable orbital
Speaker 3: heat shield. But it's going to be something that that's
Speaker 3: kind of some of the other secret sauces Starship. Where
Speaker 3: were going to be able to send hundreds of tons
Speaker 3: per ship to Mars.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I like to think of it as if we get
Speaker 4: to orbit with a full cargo bay, but we're empty
Speaker 4: on fuel and oxygen, so basically we're running on fumes.
Speaker 4: Then we send other ships to dock transfer propellant, and
Speaker 4: now we made our two stage rocket look like many
Speaker 4: many multi stage rocket, and we get all that performance
Speaker 4: and we can take that full cargo bay now wherever
Speaker 4: we want to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a crucial technology that we hope to demonstrate extra
Speaker 1: is this orbital refilling.
Speaker 2: Much like aerial refueling.
Speaker 1: It's essential for being able to send significant payload to Mars.
Speaker 1: So you essentially send you send a ship to orbit
Speaker 1: with a few hundred tons of payload. It's sort of
Speaker 1: a fulled payload bay, but the once it gets to orbit,
Speaker 1: the tanks we mostly empty, and then you send up
Speaker 1: additional tanker ships to refill the mass ships tanks so
Speaker 1: that when it can thrust from Earth orbit to Mars
Speaker 1: and have enough propellant left for landing, So this is
Speaker 1: orbital refilling. Is also not something that's ever been demonstrated before,
Speaker 1: so that would be a brand new technology. We have
Speaker 1: we abously have at SpaceX figured out how to dock
Speaker 1: repeatedly with the space station. So in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: this is like docking, and in some ways it's easier
Speaker 1: in that we're the ship where SpaceX is docking with
Speaker 1: its with its own craft. But no one has ever
Speaker 1: demonstrated propellant transfer in orbit to the best amount knowledge,
Speaker 1: and and so this would be propellent transfer at a
Speaker 1: very large scale, and but with full reusability and propellant transfer.
Speaker 1: We those are the key technologies needed for building a
Speaker 1: city on Mars. And I'm confident that the SpaceX team,
Speaker 1: which is incredibly talented, will achieve this these goals, and
Speaker 1: we will be landing ships on Mars in the future
Speaker 1: and building life on Mars, building greenhouses and life on Mars,
Speaker 1: and ensuring the long terms fival of life as we
Speaker 1: know it. It's important note here that obviously you know
Speaker 1: we are effectively stewards of life here on Earth, that
Speaker 1: the other creatures cannot build space spacecraft and get to
Speaker 1: get to other planets. So if there were to be
Speaker 1: a cataclysmic event like a giant media or that destroyed
Speaker 1: the dinosaurs, or ultimately the Sun will expand to envelop
Speaker 1: Earth and destroy all life. We know this is this
Speaker 1: is an undisputed fact, then if we don't take life
Speaker 1: to another planet, well, life will be destroyed. So it's
Speaker 1: incumbent upon us to ensure that we do bring life
Speaker 1: to other planets and ensure long term survival of life as.
Speaker 2: We know it on planet Earth.
Speaker 3: And I mean, aside from that, there's so much that
Speaker 3: Starship on locks. By being able to do these things
Speaker 3: like we'll be able to go to Mars, but there
Speaker 3: are other just transformational things by being able to take
Speaker 3: that many people, that much stuff to space for that
Speaker 3: much less money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think it's like understanding our planet better,
Speaker 4: being able to move people around the planet, make the
Speaker 4: make it feel smaller and more accessible. You could go
Speaker 4: anywhere on the Earth, you know, in less than forty
Speaker 4: minutes basically in terms of flight time. So I really
Speaker 4: do see Starship as being this thing that can connect us,
Speaker 4: just like Starlink connects our information this can connect us
Speaker 4: more physically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's there's really nothing faster than our rocket. Really,
Speaker 1: in overal rocket is the fastest thing that we know of.
Speaker 1: That that of the fastest means of transport. So like
Speaker 1: you could go from LA to Sydney in less than
Speaker 1: half an hour, you could go LA to Tokyo less
Speaker 1: than half Now you go from New York to Singapore
Speaker 1: in half an hour. Everything's probably half an hour basically.
Speaker 1: Some things might be ten minutes.
Speaker 3: Yes, sure, I mean yeah, sign me up for that,
Speaker 3: please a right quest?
Speaker 2: Atlantic in ten minutes? No wrong? Please, yes, sign up.
Speaker 2: You're going twenty.
Speaker 1: Five times a speed of sounds, so that's thirty times
Speaker 1: faster than of commercial aircraft.
Speaker 2: And it's a whole hell of a lot better view. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a hell of a view. Yeah,