Tour of Starship just before it launches, with post-launch interview
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (2)
Transcript
0:00Tim DoddHi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut. Welcome back to Starbase. This is part two of our tour with Elon Musk. In part one, we took you around Star Factory.
0:07Tim DoddWe saw what's new. A lot's changed in two years, but in this one, we're going to take you out to the launch pad and we're actually going to see the entire full stack rocket with Elon before its fourth flight test.
0:18Tim DoddThen we're going to go talk to Elon after it flies, see what went right, what went wrong, and what to expect on future launches. So part two, let's get started.
0:45Tim DoddHave you ever got a chance to see it from like the beach side?
0:49Elon MuskSorry?
0:49Tim DoddHave you ever got a chance to see it from like the beach? From the dunes?
0:52Elon MuskYeah.
0:53Tim DoddPretty insane. I love the heat shield side is the coolest part by far.
1:00Elon MuskYeah, it's. I mean, it's a damn tall rocket. Yeah. So. And it's going to get taller.
1:12Tim DoddIt's just. Can we get even closer?
1:15Elon MuskYeah,
1:22Elon MuskI don't.
1:23Tim DoddEven when you're underneath it, you don't quite get the sense of scale.
1:27Elon MuskYeah.
1:28Tim DoddIt's just insane.
1:35Tim DoddJeez, look at that. And I gotta get a wraparound with you right there. That is so cool.
1:49Tim DoddI mean, the scale just doesn't make sense. There's nothing else out here to like compare it to. You know, if. Yeah, if this is a huge tower next to a ginormous rocket in the middle of nowhere with no buildings, no like no anything.
2:04Tim DoddSo it's. It's just so hard to. Hard to put to scale.
2:08Elon MuskWhatever.
2:09Tim DoddI mean, those grid fins are the size of a car.
2:11Elon MuskYeah.
2:12Tim DoddAnd they're so far up there, then nothing makes sense.
2:17Elon MuskYeah. It's a gigantic rocket. I mean it's 5,000 tons at ductor. It's the largest flying object ever made of any kind.
2:26Tim DoddAnd you're trying to catch it.
2:27Elon MuskYeah, catch it with Mechazilla arms. I was actually slightly inspired by Kong versus Godzilla.
2:34Tim DoddYeah.
2:35Elon MuskYou know Mechazilla?
2:36Tim DoddYeah, yeah, yeah. That's the reason for this.
2:41Elon MuskWell, the reason. Yeah, the reason for the. Like I said, there's many ways to solve this problem. Obviously you could do it with landing legs. The problem with landing legs is if you.
2:54Elon MuskWell, you've got the weight of the landing legs and you've got to protect them on entry. Especially for the ship. That's tricky.
2:58Tim DoddYeah.
3:02Elon MuskAnd then you've got to get a giant rocket from where it landed back onto the launch stand. Yeah. So I was trying to think of what Is the. In the limit, the most efficient, most rapidly reusable architecture would be that the thing that lifts the rocket onto the pad is what catches it.
3:21Elon MuskWhat catches it, yeah.
3:22Tim DoddSo how is there still plans like, how will the ship actually get caught? Just. Are there similar nubs on the ship as there are?
3:28Elon MuskThere aren't currently nubs, but there will be. Yeah.
3:30Tim DoddOkay. Like deployment.
3:31Elon MuskThey'll catch up under the armpits, you know.
3:33Tim DoddYeah. Like, do you just grab it by the flaps or is there the nubs then?
3:38Elon MuskThis is a matter of much debate, but again, there's, like, a lot of ways to solve this. It kind of depends on what range of kind of landing velocities they're going to deal with.
3:53Elon MuskBecause if it comes in at, like, twice, if it comes in with a lot of momentum, you have to have much stronger catchers than if it doesn't.
4:07Tim DoddRight.
4:08Elon MuskNow, the downside, if you try to reserve propellant such that it is a very precise landing, you're burning propellant to achieve that precision.
4:18Tim DoddSo that's also.
4:19Elon MuskWhich one is better?
4:20Tim DoddRight, that's also mass.
4:21Elon MuskYes. So do you want static mass or dynamic mass in the form of propellant? You know, there's some combination of the two is needed in order to have the ship get caught by the arms and not have the forward flaps sheared off when it comes down.
4:42Elon MuskRight.
4:45Tim DoddAre the flaps. There's talks and the flaps. Kind of having a little bit of a redesign, too. Like, maybe moving a little bit.
4:50Elon MuskYeah, yeah. There's actually. If you understand what the ship's trying to achieve, it's actually bugged me for a long time. The. At least for the low Earth orbit missions, it's coming back with an empty cargo bay.
5:05Elon MuskSo the ship naturally wants to come in engines first, because that's the heavy part. The center of mass is low. Now, the rear flaps counteract the center of mass with the center of pressure.
5:17Elon MuskSo you're really balancing pressure and mass. It's basically the seesaw.
5:22Tim DoddYeah, yeah.
5:23Elon MuskSo now forward flaps that are not fully stowed are actually hurting you, because forward flaps, if you've got a maximally stowed position of the forward flaps, that means you still have some frontal area that is pushing the rocket backwards and making it want to go engines first.
5:44Tim DoddRight, Right.
5:45Elon MuskSo whereas frontal mass in the rear is helpful, basically, frontal area in the rear is helpful. Frontal area in the front is counterproductive. So you really ideally want the flaps to be in the stowed position, invisible to the flow.
6:03Elon MuskSo they're not trying to tip the rocket backwards.
6:05Tim DoddBut don't you. I guess it's not like you're trying to maximize braking necessarily. You're trying to achieve a certain glide ratio on things.
6:14Elon MuskYou've got to control it through hypersonic, supersonic, transonic and subsonic. And at least until you get to subsonic, the rocket really is. The challenge is not having the engines go.
6:36Elon MuskNot having the engines go. Basically, you're trying to maintain an angle of attack that's cooled around 65, 70 degrees. So if this is. So if this is the Earth, it's doing roughly this angle.
6:49Tim DoddYeah. And so the rear flaps, the aft flaps, are out as much as possible to try to keep the engines from scooting forward.
6:56Elon MuskYeah. So you have the rear flaps. If the rear flaps deploy, that's how, you know that increases the drag, pushes the ship this way. When the rear flaps deploy, when the front clefts deploy, it actually pushes the ship back.
7:12Tim DoddYeah.
7:12Elon MuskSo what the front flaps really are, they're really trim flaps.
7:15Tim DoddRight, right.
7:17Elon MuskThey're not trying to change the pitch
7:20Tim Doddangle, they're trying to maintain it almost.
7:23Elon MuskWell, you need to control the ship in yaw and roll in addition to pitch.
7:29Tim DoddYeah.
7:30Elon MuskSo. But the work of essentially controlling pitch is really the rear flaps, and they're trying to move the center of pressure such that the engines don't go into the flow.
7:52Elon MuskSo ship's going like this. Rear flaps deploy. It makes it want to tip forward, which is good. It counteracts the mass at the rear. The flaps at the front are really there for trimming your roll and yaw primarily.
8:12Tim DoddAnd they all interact with each other, too. Yeah, exactly.
8:14Elon MuskThat's why it's like, ish. Technically. The front flaps also do some pitch action.
8:19Tim DoddRight.
8:22Elon MuskBut for setting your fundamental pitch angle, it's the rear flaps. And you want your front flaps to be, when they're back, to be invisible to the flow so that your rear flaps don't have to do extra work.
8:37Tim DoddRight, right. That makes sense.
8:39Elon MuskYeah.
8:40Tim DoddBut you also need some margin, though, too. So having those be able to dip out and do a few things to
8:45Elon Muskmaintain, you've got to control your roll. So you really kind of need like, three control surfaces. We have four, so slightly more than you need. And in the high heating regime, which is where this really matters, the air is very stable.
9:07Elon MuskYou don't have wind. Really. The air is homogenous.
9:11Tim DoddRight, right.
9:12Elon MuskSo if the ship is operating properly, it'll look like it's barely doing anything. It's just the flaps are barely moving and it's just maintaining this angle.
9:21Tim DoddYeah. Because it's not having to react to all these turbulences and all this stuff.
9:24Elon MuskThere's no disturbances. Huh.
9:26Tim DoddI never thought about that until it gets into the lower atmosphere, obviously.
9:30Elon MuskYeah.
9:30Tim DoddAnd then the whole thing. Is there almost like a, you know, when you're going from hypersonic and supersonic and is there like. Obviously the control schemes almost change a little bit to a certain degree.
9:40Tim DoddIt changes a lot.
9:40Elon MuskYeah, yeah, it changes a lot. Subsonic, big time.
9:44Tim DoddSo that's probably pretty crazy to have to model that and, like, get some sense of where that's going now. But at the end of the day, you're still gonna have to see how it happens when it actually gets to that regime.
9:54Elon MuskYeah. Once you get to subsonic, the ship is falling. Like a skydiver.
9:57Tim DoddYes. Like we've seen.
9:59Elon MuskYeah. So the flaps are kind of like arms and legs of a skydiver. So it's counterintuitive. It's not at all how an airplane works. Right. Airplanes don't fall.
10:08Tim DoddYeah. It's like 90 degrees to what an airplane would do, basically.
10:11Elon MuskYeah. Yes. 90 degrees to what an airplane would do. It's really analogous to a giant skydiver.
10:17Tim DoddYeah, I mean. Exactly. Because that's exactly how skydiving maintains their orientation.
10:22Elon MuskYeah.
10:23Tim DoddThat is just the craziest thing when I gotta ask. So, you know, you have the ability now, as SpaceX being, you know, where you're at, to be able to do iterative design like this.
10:36Tim DoddIf you could have done that on Falcon 9, had a total blank slate and literally just minimum viable product, we're gonna throw that thing out. Would you have done that on Falcon 9?
10:46Tim DoddBecause Falcon 9, people forget, like, you know, they look at this and they go, oh, they don't even know what they're doing. Well, you guys know how to build a rocket and launch it for the first time?
10:53Tim DoddFalcon nine, Falcon Heavy. I mean, you've already done that in hindsight.
10:57Elon MuskWho's saying we don't know what we're doing and what have they done?
10:59Tim DoddExactly.
11:00Elon MuskThat's easy to be an armchair rockets engineer.
11:03Tim DoddExactly. But they don't understand the, you know, the test prototyping, the testing phase. So. So if you could have done something like this with Falcon 9 in the early days, would you have done that?
11:14Tim DoddIf you could have.
11:15Elon MuskOr we wouldn't be able to make starship without the benefit of Falcon 9. So it's sort of like saying if you had a time machine or something, you get time machine logic Loops.
11:32Elon MuskThere's nothing in common with. We learned a lot from Falcon 9, but there's nothing in common that. There's no design element that starship has in common with Falcon 9.
11:41Elon MuskNothing. I mean, I take it back. You've got good fins in both cases.
11:49Tim DoddThen maybe some common ish avionics or something.
11:51Elon MuskNo, all new avionics.
11:52Tim DoddReally?
11:53Elon MuskYeah.
11:54Tim DoddJeez, that's insane to think about.
11:58Elon MuskAll the avionics, all the software, all new.
12:03Tim DoddAnd Tower 2 is starting to head this way from Florida, it's looking like. And that's going to go over that way, is that right?
12:10Elon MuskYeah. And Tower 2 will have a number of upgrades. It'll be taller to allow for the next generation of starship. So we're going to add a few sections to that and then the redesigned arms will be shorter.
12:27Elon MuskSo if you look at those arms up there, those arms have very high moment of inertia. So that, you know, they're very long.
12:36Tim DoddRight.
12:37Elon MuskSo you want. You actually when you have long arms, it's hard to move them fast.
12:42Tim DoddRight.
12:43Elon MuskAnd because you have to move them and break.
12:46Tim DoddYeah.
12:46Elon MuskAnd so it's just a lot of momentum.
12:48Tim DoddYeah. A lot of damping.
12:49Elon MuskYeah. So the new arms will be able to move much faster and they'll be a fair bit shorter than those arms basically.
12:57Tim DoddRight at the catch point. Right. Like there's pretty close, not too much beyond that.
13:00Elon MuskYeah. So they'll be, you know, a fair bit shorter. Maybe you get like a couple meters beyond the catch point.
13:06Tim DoddWell, is there any kind of redesign of the OLM and the booster bidet and all the, all the flame trench and stuff like that?
13:15Elon MuskYeah, it's a total redesign, which I don't know if we should do a total redesign, but the guys really want to do it. So it's like. Okay, like it'll have like more of
13:25Tim Dodda flame trench this time. Yeah, this, this has turned out better than I expected though, I have to say.
13:29Elon MuskYeah.
13:29Tim DoddOn Flight 2, when it took off and it's like, hey, look, it actually, it actually worked.
13:34Elon MuskYeah, it didn't blow up.
13:37Tim DoddSo. But the like the ring and stuff. Is anything changing? Is it, is it almost like a
13:41Elon Muskwhole everything new or is it pretty much.
13:44Tim DoddWow.
13:45Elon MuskYeah. That's just crazy. The hull down arms also change the launch arms because the current ones have some potential to bind and grab the rocket, which would be real bad.
14:00Elon MuskSo we have a new design for the launch arms that take the load of the rocket and then retract so that they're not going to Bind and potentially cause a whole thing to explode.
14:13Tim DoddYeah, that'd be bad. Especially at this stage. It's getting a lot more. A lot more legitimate and you know.
14:19Elon MuskYeah, we try to protect against the explosions. I've got basically bunker like concrete walls. Yeah. A lot of steel protecting the launch tower. So it's designed to like that wall is designed to protect the propellant tanks against a full explosion of the rocket.
14:39Tim DoddYeah. So Tower 2, that's on its way. Like they're literally loading up barges and you have sections out at the, at the factory and everything. So Tower 2 is like already.
14:50Tim DoddI mean it's just crazy to think how quickly it's all. And that'll be. You're going to be building that here all year probably and wouldn't be surprised if that thing ends up being used already by next year.
15:03Tim DoddCan't even keep up with it.
15:04Elon MuskThis.
15:05Tim DoddThat is ridiculous. Wow. Tomorrow, after this thing launches, would you want to do a quick little like rundown on how you feel about it?
15:15Elon MuskDepends on how it went.
15:17Tim DoddLet's say it makes it through re entry. Both of them.
15:20Elon MuskSure.
15:21Tim DoddOkay. Well we better shake on that then, huh? That'll be awesome. I mean tomorrow's going to be phenomenal, I feel. How are you feeling about it now that we've.
15:32Tim DoddNow that you've had time to see it all and looking at the data,
15:35Elon MuskI think the odds are on our side. But there's still some chance that the rocket blows up on liftoff. It's not zero, right. I mean this is the best launch site and the best rocket we've ever made on Starship.
15:48Elon MuskSo it has the highest odds of success.
15:51Tim DoddAnd you can even tell the amount of attention to detail and things on the ship and the tiles and everything.
15:57Elon MuskIt's much more finesse.
15:58Tim DoddYes. Yeah, it's not.
16:00Elon MuskThis doesn't have like gronky bits.
16:02Tim DoddExactly. Oh man, it's gonna be exciting. Can't wait for it. It's gonna be. I hope people pay attention to this because it's history in the making, you know.
16:11Elon MuskYeah.
16:12Tim DoddWe're watching.
16:14Elon MuskThe cylinders are now pretty straight. You know, the group early versions had were like kind of a Michelin man situation.
16:23Tim DoddEspecially like Mark 1 like you were talking about earlier. Like Mark 1 was.
16:27Elon MuskLet's just say lighting was important.
16:30Tim DoddYeah, that is awesome.
16:32Elon MuskLighting was important.
16:33Tim DoddOh man.
16:34Elon MuskYou need like romantic lighting for Mach 1.
16:38Tim DoddWell, I really, really appreciate you taking time, you know, T minus. Oh God, we're within like 12 hours now. So T minus 12 hours and hopefully we'll see this thing lift off tomorrow again.
16:50Elon MuskYeah, it's wild. All right.
16:51Tim DoddIt's wild. Thank you so much Elon.
16:52Elon MuskThank you.
17:18Tim DoddThe next morning, that starship stack with booster 11 and ship 29 did indeed launch for Starship's fourth full stack flight. Our everyday astronauts slash cosmic perspective crews managed to get some amazing slo mo shots, but only for the first few seconds due to cloud cover.
17:32Tim DoddWe can't wait for the next launch so we hopefully get some incredible slow mo shots of the booster returning and hopefully a catch attempt as well. That will be crazy.
17:42Tim DoddAnd of course we'll be covering it live in 4k when it happens. But the good news is this test was the biggest success of the program yet, with both the booster and the starship upper stage re entering and softly splashing down.
17:55Tim DoddWhich was great news for us because Elon kept his promise and followed up after this historic test. So just a few hours after the launch I met back up with Elon to discuss what went right, what went wrong, and what to expect expect in the next launch.
18:09Tim DoddBut before we hear from him, I wanted to point out Touring Starbase has highlighted the challenges of accessing direct, reliable information about spaceflight and the aerospace industry without being overly sensationalized, and today's sponsor embodies these principles perfectly.
18:23Tim DoddGround News is an app and website that gathers news articles from more than 50,000 sources globally and puts them in one place so you can compare how different outlets cover the same story.
18:32Tim DoddFun fact, it was founded by former NASA engineer Harleen Kaur, who worked on the James Webb Space Telescope and New Horizons. Let's take a look at how that starship launch was covered in the media.
18:42Tim DoddThere were over 160 articles and we can see visually where the biases lean on the bias distribution chart with 26% leaning left, 62% in the center, and 12% on the right.
18:53Tim DoddThere's also the factuality chart and the ownership chart which shows about 50% of these articles were written by media conglomerates. These are all things that can influence bias and framing.
19:03Tim DoddThen we can scroll down and see every article about Flight 4 and compare the headlines. I think it's fun to see what words are used in each headline, which ones mention exploding or test or Elon Musk?
19:14Tim DoddI personally enjoy scrolling through my Blind Spot feed, which helps me stay informed and balanced on topics and gives me perspectives that I might have previously missed. Ground News has been important to me and helps me enhance my knowledge and critical thinking about space, science and world issues.
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19:45Tim DoddThere's also a link in the description too. Okay, now let's hear from Elon about how he thinks the launch went. That was.
19:51Elon MuskCome on.
19:52Tim DoddI mean, that was amazing.
19:58Elon MuskYeah.
19:58Tim DoddYou saw it. You saw the whole thing.
20:02Elon MuskI did predict that would happen. Although begs the question, why don't we do more about it? We did do a lot.
20:09Tim DoddOh my gosh. That was insane.
20:13Elon MuskYeah. Yeah.
20:14Tim DoddDo you feel. Do you feel pretty satisfied with the results of.
20:17Elon MuskYeah, it's awesome. This is a really, I'd say best outcome day.
20:21Tim DoddReally. It is. I mean, did as you were watching the grid fins start to burn through or I mean not the grid fins with the flaps. I mean, you had to have thought one of those was just going to rip off, right?
20:30Elon MuskYeah. I mean the heating, you can see the heating from the internal cameras. Yeah. And you don't need infrared cameras. You can actually just see it glow.
20:41Tim DoddRight.
20:41Elon MuskSo the thing about steel is like it's going to glow for a long time before it fails. I think that, you know, one of the biggest lessons to say is the incredible resilience of a high temp stainless steel alloy.
20:52Tim DoddRight.
20:53Elon MuskBecause it hung in there. Yeah. And so, you know, you always want to be careful about jumping to conclusions.
21:05Tim DoddRight.
21:05Elon MuskYou know what, like the. We need to jump to conclusions, Matt, from, you know, upper space.
21:10Tim DoddRight, right.
21:11Elon MuskYeah, exactly. Jump to conclusions. So we have to be a little hesitant about reaching conclusions before we fully analyze the data. Because sometimes you, your first guess is they're wrong.
21:22Elon MuskRight. But we obviously need to make the, the hinge. We need to make the, the flap hinge area far more robust. So we'll go. We'll really go crazy hardcore on that and that hopefully I don't eat my words, but that will not be the reason.
21:49Elon MuskLike if the next flight doesn't make it back fully intact, that will not be the reason. Hinge flight will not be the reason. We're going to just spend a bunch of mass.
21:58Tim DoddRight. Just make it super robust, overdo it for now.
22:01Elon MuskYeah. I mean there's just things you can do to increase the tile precision, decrease the gap, improve the gap filler, thicken the tiles. If any gap is not perfect, then you had to crack the tile, pull it off, do another one.
22:21Elon MuskIt's kind of a pain in the ass. So it's not like we thought. If we thought there was something obvious that could be done about the five hinge area, we would have done it.
22:36Elon MuskBut like I said, we'll just go to town, you know, probably, you know, thicker tiles,
22:46Elon MuskThinner gaps, better gap filler, maybe even tightening the tolerances. There's a whole bunch of things that we can and will do for the next flight. I mentioned yesterday that we have an improvement, improved design of starship coming down the pike.
23:02Elon MuskNot immediately, but it's, it's, it's. It's something that I've, I've actually been kind of harping on the, the, you know, just saying, like, guys, we need to do this for, for, for a while, which is to move the forward flaps leeward so that they're.
23:16Elon MuskThey're not at the kind of 180 degrees. They. They're moved kind of kind of leeward.
23:22Tim DoddYeah.
23:22Elon MuskSo it'll look a little bit asymmetric with the rear flaps. The rear flaps are where they should be at 180 degrees.
23:29Tim DoddSo, I mean, those aren't improvements you'll see already on, like, ship 30 because. Ship 30.
23:33Elon MuskNo, it's a total redesign of the whole front section because you've got to redesign the mount points. It's not like the team disagreed with me about this. They did agree, but they were like, is that really the priority?
23:48Elon MuskBecause you've got to redesign all of the support structure, you know, the actuator mounts. It's a huge redesign of the front end.
23:56Tim DoddRight.
23:57Elon MuskThere will be a number of other sort of improvements we do to the header tanks and the whole front section. And it's kind of like front section. Front section, version 2, which will be much better.
24:09Tim DoddYeah.
24:10Elon MuskSo more reliable, more payload, you know, and also easier to manufacture, which is a big deal.
24:21Tim DoddDo you know, did the aft flaps and the fore, like, did all of them kind of have similar burn through? Do you know, or.
24:28Elon MuskNo, the right forward flap was the one that had the, you know, because there's tolerance variations. There's a little bit of just stochastic, you know, luck.
24:42Tim DoddRight?
24:42Elon MuskYeah. You know. You know, it's like there's a bit of Russian roulette going on here, you know, which was the unlucky tile. But it looks like there was probably, I'm just guessing here, this is speculative that we had probably the gaps on the tiles were a little wider on the right side than the left side because it was really the right front flap that by far had the biggest issues.
25:10Elon MuskAnd we can see this in terms of when the vehicle is trying to control itself, how much deployment does each. Does the. Each flap have?
25:17Tim DoddRight.
25:18Elon MuskSo the other three flaps had more or less normal deployment, but the broken flap had to really go all out and stick its skeleton hand really far out to have an effect.
25:29Tim DoddIt reminded me of Short circuit. Like Johnny 5 and part 2. I don't remember if you remember that movie short circuit, Johnny 5 is alive.
25:37Elon MuskThat's a long time ago.
25:38Tim Dodd80s movie.
25:39Elon MuskYeah, yeah.
25:39Tim DoddAnd he gets, like, all beaten up and he's like just this, like, skeleton of his, you know, and he's like, still fighting along and just reminded me that, like, seeing this, like, claw of a flap, I couldn't believe how little it was needing to move, though.
25:50Tim DoddAnd was still.
25:51Elon MuskIt was moving a lot at the end.
25:53Tim DoddWas it?
25:53Elon MuskOh, yeah, yeah. It was going to like, full deployment, especially subsonic, so. But it performed admirably for its sort of insane, you know, level of destruction.
26:07Tim DoddI can't believe it still could move when all of it looked like it, you know, like you'd think the actual.
26:11Elon MuskI mean, me neither. I'm like, holy shit, is that thing still moving? But the actuator was still working.
26:20Elon MuskThe actuator linkages did not burn away. The hinges were still working. It's like, damn.
26:26Tim DoddOkay, that's insane.
26:27Elon MuskInsane. So I couldn't believe that. Yeah, totally. So now it was able to maintain aerostability subsonically, but it was it. But because of the. Of the ragged flap, it was not able to steer itself to the exact right position.
26:47Elon MuskSo it was about 6 km off positionally. Okay. But it did manage to maintain stability all the way to the ground.
26:53Tim DoddDoes this make you like. I mean, we talked a lot about ship, but booster obviously did phenomenally well too. Was that on target that it actually.
27:01Elon MuskYeah, the booster was almost perfect. I mean, so obviously there was one engine that. Than light or that we. It didn't explode, but that we thought was. We should not turn on.
27:15Elon MuskBasically. I blink. It aborted during the start sequence. Out of concern. But 32 engines is fine. It's resilient to multiple engines being lost and still completing its mission. Yeah, like each engine lost is only 3% of thrust.
27:29Tim DoddExactly. It's pretty minuscule compared to another vehicle that could be 50% or 100% even. And then on landing burn, it seemed to lose another engine as it was lighting up for landing burn.
27:40Tim DoddBut it still looked like it did a pretty precise touchdown. It looks like.
27:44Elon MuskYeah. Yeah, it landed in the water.
27:46Tim DoddYeah.
27:46Elon MuskIntact on the water. It was literally bobbing in the water and then obviously it tips over and when it tips over, it smacks down pretty hard because it's like falling from 70 meters, like corners over 200ft.
28:01Tim DoddYeah. So does that. I know you mentioned on X that you were planning to actually try the boot. You feel like you might want to try doing the booster catch next.
28:08Tim DoddIs that.
28:09Elon MuskYeah, we'll talk it over with the team, see if there's any lingering concerns. But at the point at which we can do an accurate boost back and we can execute the landing burn, which we've shown, then I think we should try to have the tower catch it.
28:25Elon MuskWow.
28:25Tim DoddAnd you don't feel like you need to have Tower 2 ready before you do that?
28:31Elon MuskNo, not necessarily, because we do have replacement parts for the. For the. For the arms and. And they're actually a better set of arms we could put on there.
28:44Tim DoddRight.
28:45Elon MuskThose are kind of old design. Yeah, I mentioned that They're. Those arms are actually too long, so that almost inertia are too high. So it's just. You want actually shorter arms that can move faster.
28:56Tim DoddYeah.
28:58Elon MuskSo my inclination. But I mean, the way these things work at SpaceX is not. It's rare for me to sort of drop an Imperial decree once in a while.
29:08Elon MuskI will, but it's pretty rare. Usually it's like, we'll talk it over to the team, see what the general consensus is and move in that direction.
29:16Tim DoddYeah, that's going to be wild. So hopefully next though, are we going to kind of see more or less a repeat, you think again, and of this mission profile, maybe bring the booster back.
29:27Tim DoddWould you maybe do a Raptor relight this time to kind of prove out orbital capabilities in coast phase?
29:33Elon MuskYeah, that's a good question. We haven't decided. Are we going to do. Clearly a Raptor relight does work because we had the three.
29:42Tim DoddThree relight.
29:43Elon MuskYeah, the three steering engines, which would be the ones that would relight relit even after all that drama coming through. Crazy heating. And of the two tiles that we put in the rear, where we took the tiles off, we'd actually put some backup ablative there.
30:01Elon MuskOne was two layers of ablative. One was one layer of ablative. The two layer of ablative did not burn through. The one layer of ablative did. But I'm not sure if it actually burnt through the steel too, but it did erode the single layer of ablative.
30:12Elon MuskBut it just says that if you have two layers of our ablative, it does not actually burn through. So that can be if we're missing
30:17Tim Doddtime, back up what you're kind of talking about. So worst case scenario, next time, which will probably, knowing you guys be in a couple months already.
30:27Elon MuskYeah. Depending on how many. On what changes we make. I think from a SpaceX standpoint, I think we're ready within 30 days.
30:38Tim DoddYeah.
30:40Elon MuskIf we need to make a bunch of changes, I'd say from a SpaceX standpoint, not counting out regulatory, we're ready probably in less than 30 days. If there are bigger changes, I'd say not less.
30:52Elon MuskWe're ready no later than 60 days, but probably closer to 30.
30:57Tim DoddAnd that's where people are going to be shocked that you're seeing these vehicles just continue to increase cadence. I mean, this is the third flight in a row where you lifted off the most complicated vehicle ever made right at the top of the window.
31:11Tim DoddNot scrubbing for days and days trying to figure out how to launch, just the countdown was so smooth. Hit T0.
31:17Elon MuskWe did have a ground valve, propellant tank valve on the ground that needed to be tweaked, but that's what pushed it a little bit. But the vehicle itself had no issues.
31:30Tim DoddThat's still incredible. I mean, on like the fourth flight ever of the largest, most powerful rocket ever built. I mean, that's insane. And it's just going to keep going.
31:37Tim DoddSo, yeah, we're really excited. I know you guys have a lot to keep going here, so I really appreciate that you did follow up with us. This is awesome.
31:45Elon MuskAbsolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
31:47Tim DoddThat's huge.
31:48Elon MuskOccupy Mars, man.
31:49Tim DoddYeah, you're making progress.
31:51Elon MuskYeah.
31:51Tim DoddCongratulations again. Thank you so much for your time and can't wait for the next one.
31:55Elon MuskAll right, cool.
31:55Tim DoddAwesome. Thanks, Elon. Thanks again so much, Elon and everyone here at SpaceX who made this tour possible. Huge thank you. This is just incredible. We're so excited for what's going on.
32:04Tim DoddGoing on. We're going to be out here for the next flight. You better believe it. So stay tuned. There's a lot more excitement to come and I also owe a huge thank you to our Patreon supporters.
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32:30Tim DoddWe've got our heat shield tile collection, Falcon 9 model rockets, lots of other incredible stuff [email protected] shop. Thanks, everybody. That's going to do it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut, bringing space down to earth for everyday people.