Go up SpaceX's Starship-catching launch tower with Elon Musk (Everyday Astronaut)
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (1)
Transcript
0:00Tim DoddHi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut. Welcome to Starbase Texas. Today I'm going to be taking you up SpaceX's launch tower, otherwise known as Stage Zero. With Elon Musk, we'll get the ultimate view of Starbase and learn more about just how exactly SpaceX plans to catch the world's largest flying object with giant robotic chopsticks.
0:19Tim DoddThis is part two of our spring 2022 Starbase tour with Elon. In the first part we got up close and personal with the High Bay and Starship prototypes. And in the next part we'll get really in with Raptor 2 and Merlin Rocket engines.
0:34Tim DoddSo stay tuned and if you happen to find this video valuable, consider dropping a super thanks as a tip below here on YouTube or become a channel member or Patreon supporter for early access and to show your support.
0:46Tim DoddThat being said, let's get up in there,
1:04Tim DoddTalk about, you know, how you just want to build an exciting future. A world where people get excited about stuff, wake up and want to do cool things and yeah, I got to tell you, standing right here, man, that's, that's pretty hard to not get excited about this.
1:21Elon MuskYeah, I mean this is pretty crazy. I mean this is a custom built tower with arms that'll, that are designed to catch the largest and heaviest flying object ever made and pluck it out of the air.
1:36Elon MuskI mean, that's the theory anyway. So
1:42Tim Doddyeah, I think it's funny, people actually forget now that they're actually meant to lift and stack the rocket. The cranes have such bad wind capability, but one time the booster legs were gonna weigh a lot.
1:51Tim DoddElon just said, you know, delete the legs, delete. We're like, well just use the arms. And then said it again. Wow, he's serious. Okay, we better get on this.
2:02Tim DoddAnd now it seems normal, or we think at least seems plausible. It seems plausible, yeah.
2:07Elon MuskY. I mean it's still super crazy, but the more you talk about it, I mean, I think, you know, at SpaceX we specialize in turning, converting things from impossible to late.
2:24Elon MuskSo. But it's pretty nutty because you're going to have this gigantic, you know, booster coming back and I mean that's 9 meters in diameter, not counting the Chinese, or roughly 30ft in diameter.
2:43Elon MuskAnd it'll weigh about 250 tons. But on the heavy side, we'll make that lighter over time.
2:54Tim DoddWeighs about 250 now. Is that what you said?
2:56Elon MuskIt's, this is way heavier that I think we can get the. Well, there's there's the weight at, there's weight at different points. So it's like, say like weight when the landing tanks are full versus weight when the landing tanks are empty.
3:13Elon MuskThere's also. How much ullage mass do you have?
3:17Tim DoddDry weight's kind of floating, you know, there's. Dry weight is kind of a relative when it's actually in the air.
3:22Elon MuskYeah, I mean, there's several tons of air mass in the vehicle. Just, just if just. You just say like, what's the mass of, of one atmosphere in that volume?
3:31Elon MuskIt's several tons. So anyway, but I'm. I think we'll be able to get the mass well under 200 over time, but still pretty heavy. So you got like, you know, call it a couple hundred tons plummeting at, you know, let's see.
3:58Elon MuskI think, I think our, the velocity at which we, we start up the engines is more than half the speed of sound. So this thing is still coming in really fast.
4:07Elon MuskYeah, pretty much down in a downward direction. So then they light the eng. Like I said, I think around Mach 0.5, give or take. But it's only, you know, several hundred meters in the air.
4:24Elon MuskSo it's going to slow itself down very fast then and correct any error. So like wherever the, whatever the XY error is, when the engines land, it's going to take out the XY error and then drop the velocity to basically zero.
4:43Elon MuskCome in between the arms. The arms will be wide and as it's coming in, the arms will close, go flush against the side of the vehicle, and the vehicle will be descending through the arms.
4:56Elon MuskAnd those tiny little, you can barely see them, the little knobs, those, those kind of lifting lugs will touch the top of the arms and then it will hopefully not shear off and crumple.
5:10Elon MuskJoe, is there anything you want to add to that? I don't know if you caught that, but I was just describing the landing sequence, you know, that was accurate.
5:20Tim DoddWe really hope it doesn't hit the tower.
5:22Elon MuskYeah, yeah, exactly. Especially not that launch ring, which is really difficult to make. That launch ring is very complicated. We have not found a reason yet why it will not work.
5:36Elon MuskYes, success is one of the possible outcomes. The probability is uncertain, but the. It is above zero. So the part of the, like the arms are off to the side.
5:48Elon MuskSo in theory the bush is going to come back and then the. When the engines start up, it'll translate over, slow down and translate over and get in between the arms.
6:00Elon MuskArms need to close and when they close, they need to Close in such a way that they don't crush the rocket as well
6:07Tim Doddor score it all the way up. The whole thing just.
6:10Elon MuskYeah, there's a lot of ways for this to fail.
6:13Tim DoddHow quickly like is it going to close? Like almost at the last second, like. Or will it be mostly closed? And there's a small tolerance there and it skirts the whole thing by, you
6:23Elon Muskknow, it's intended to close on the methane tank. So the smooth upper section about the top third of the rocket. And then you can keep translating down.
6:30Tim DoddOkay.
6:31Elon MuskAnd catch on those nubs that stick out of the rocket. Yeah. I mean if things are going right, it will actually look like the rocket is descending between the arms for quite a while, you know, because the, you gotta.
6:48Elon MuskThe length of the thing is like basically around 70 meters. So you know, if you're. If you've got a descent rate of, I don't know, let's say 2 or 3 meters per second and you have, you know, 20 meters or something like that.
7:03Elon MuskYeah, it's okay. You're waiting for like 10 seconds. Yeah. You know, so. So it'll actually be like. Actually this is taking a while.
7:13Tim DoddAnd now you got to clear those chines too. You know, you can't have it be so close down on the.
7:19Elon MuskThe Chinese will be blocked kind of away from the tower, so they won't be, they won't be increasing.
7:24Tim DoddOh, got it the opposite way from, from the clamps. Got it. So as the. Yeah, that makes sense. That's cool.
7:32Elon MuskBut you still need to get the. The rocket has to still fit in between these arms.
7:37Tim DoddRight.
7:37Elon MuskSo you know, it's still got to come in and, and the center up and the arms will slew in. Yeah. To meet it wherever it is. So if it's, if it's off to one side, it's going to hit one of the arms, which will be quite bad.
7:54Elon MuskYeah, yeah, yeah. Or cook the arm or you know, a bunch of bad things can happen.
8:05Tim DoddJust insane though. I mean it's, it's. It looks big from far away, but it looks even bigger when you're underneath it. You start to see almost the, the atmospheric distortion and the haze make it fade into the distance there.
8:21Elon MuskYeah. I'm told this is the, the tallest thing south of San Antonio.
8:26Tim DoddYeah. Because I think the other other tallest was on South Padre. They have that. The hotel was the other tallest thing in the whole area here. So.
8:33Elon MuskYeah.
8:34Tim DoddAnd that's quite a bit taller actually. Booster and rocket are almost identical. At least the 120 meter version was like exactly the size of the sapphire over there. So people need to know what that feels like.
8:47Tim DoddJust go up in the sapphire and know that's how big this rocket is, which is insane to think about. Obviously you're not too worried about the human landing system right now compared to just getting things into orbit.
9:00Tim DoddBut how is that, has any of that stuff solidified yet, like any of the human landing system?
9:09Elon MuskWell, I mean, there's a lot of sort of design done on the computer level and there's some hardware, but our focus is getting to orbit, you know, if we can.
9:19Tim DoddBecause human landing won't work without getting to orbit, obviously.
9:22Elon MuskYeah, we need starship to get to orbit because it's also got a, it's the only thing that can carry the Starlink 2 satellites. So we've already produced the first and we have on site the first Starlink 2 satellite and it's seven meters long.
9:38Elon MuskAnd Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit capability required for Starlink 2. So even if we shrunk the Starlink 2 satellite down, the total up mass of Falcon is not nearly enough to do Starlink 2.
9:54Tim DoddHow heavy does one version 2 weigh?
9:57Elon MuskWell, it's, it's about one and a quarter tons.
10:00Tim DoddThey're so volumetrically huge that.
10:02Elon MuskYeah, but if you just say like, like there's, there's a lot of people talk a lot about how many launches per year there are to orbit, but this is not really what matters.
10:14Elon MuskI think what really matters is what's the total year useful payload toward per year? Because otherwise you could say if this were ocean ships, you'd be like comparing a dinghy to a supertanker.
10:28Elon MuskAnd it's like they're not the same.
10:29Tim DoddYeah.
10:31Elon MuskSo for a satellite constellation, the thing that really matters is what is your total mass flux? Useful mass flux to orbit? Yeah, yeah, so. Or mess, you know, master orbit.
10:46Elon MuskYeah. So we need starship to work and to fly frequently or Starlink 2 will be stuck on the ground.
10:52Tim DoddSo that's your big motivator at this point is like get these things going. And so they'll, I assume because they're bigger, they'll. Will there have to be fewer of those to service the same amount of like area?
11:03Tim DoddLike is it going to be version two going to be in a higher orbit, servicing more people, like with per satellite? Or is it just bigger so it has higher capacity, more bandwidth, more like all of that, I guess, compared to version one,
11:17Elon Muskthe Starlink 2 satellites are almost an order of magnitude more capable
11:20Tim Doddthan Starlink 1 bandwidth wise or total throughput?
11:23Elon MuskI just think of it like, how many useful bits of data can each satellite do? Starlink 2, in terms of useful bits of data is almost an order of magnitude better than Starlink 1.
11:44Tim DoddAre those different user terminals too, compared
11:46Elon Muskto user terminals are on a separate upgrade path. Although user terminals will work with. User terminals work with Sonic 1 or Solid 2 satellites. But the Starlink 2s are just much more capable.
12:01Tim DoddYeah. Is it possible to go up in the tower? A decent run or. I don't know.
12:07Elon MuskCan we go up in the tower? Is the elevator elevator working?
12:10Tim DoddAs long as the generator is on, Yeah, I can fire it up.
12:12Elon MuskOkay.
12:13Tim DoddI mean, just might not be a bad place to watch a sunset at this point.
12:17Elon MuskYeah,
12:27Tim DoddIt.
13:16Elon MuskWhat are y' all going to top
13:18Tim Doddtop or do you men's department?
13:20Elon MuskI guess we could stop at the QD arm and then keep and, you know, pop and then continue up level 15 and then. Yeah.
13:49Tim DoddThis view is going to be insane. I can already get little. Yeah, little sneak peeks through the dang.
14:20Elon MuskWow. Wow. This is epic.
14:23Tim DoddThis is so epic.
14:24Elon MuskWe're not even at the top.
14:31Tim DoddThis is where the key arm is.
14:35Elon MuskHoly.
14:39Tim DoddLook how beefy all this stuff is, though.
14:42Elon MuskYeah. I mean, this is insane. Custom designed gigantic hardware. I mean, it's hard to believe this is real.
14:52Tim DoddIt genuinely is.
14:57Elon MuskOh, man.
15:05Elon MuskJeez.
15:10Elon MuskThat's nuts. Yes, that's quite the view.
15:14Tim DoddIt's beautiful.
15:16Elon MuskYeah, it's beautiful.
15:19Tim DoddEven right now.
15:23Elon MuskAnd we are in the sky.
15:31Elon MuskWe can't even see South Padre.
15:34Tim DoddOh, wow. Yeah, really hazy.
15:41Elon MuskWell, should we go up? Yeah,
15:45Tim Doddit's even better when there's a vehicle on the Hawk Mountain. Oh, I know, I know. I can't imagine up close and personal. Seriously. Oh, yeah, I missed it. I missed the one.
15:58Tim DoddI came out here, I think the day after you guys stacked. Well, I guess I came up for the last event, but I think he stacked on like, the fort or I don't know, something.
16:07Tim DoddI don't remember what day it was, but I was here like the next day. That's right.
16:13Elon MuskYeah.
16:28Tim DoddOh, cool. Emergency escape ladder thing all the way down.
16:45Tim DoddI maybe want to do that once. It'd probably take like an hour, I feel like, to get down inside. Holy crap. We're really getting up here, though.
17:01Tim DoddThe craziest thing to me is that none of this was here a year ago. Yeah, you know, that's just hard to fathom. It's like, especially if you were out here three years ago and saw quite literally Nothing but a field and a little RGB2 pan, you know.
17:24Tim DoddWow, look at that.
17:30Elon MuskI mean, it's far down there.
17:45Tim DoddIf this isn't surreal, I don't know what is.
17:46Elon MuskYeah, totally. It's insane. I mean, the ship looks small from here.
17:51Tim DoddThe ship looks tiny from here.
17:55Elon MuskYou can. Even people are like tiny. It's like, whoa.
17:59Tim DoddHow tall is this again? At this point? 143 meters at the top. Okay,
18:06Elon Musk138.
18:07Tim DoddBusy.
18:14Tim DoddOh, my God. And look at how. How hazy even the production site is right now.
18:19Elon MuskYeah,
18:27Elon MuskThis is. This is not a good place if you have a fear of heights, that's for sure.
18:33Tim DoddThat or you'll get over them real quick.
18:35Elon MuskYeah,
19:12Elon MuskWe should get like a hang glider and jump off or something. Sweet.
19:19Tim DoddYou could sell rides as a zip line over to the. The high bay.
19:23Elon MuskYou could probably zipline pretty far. Yeah.
19:28Tim DoddI can't believe how small the boosters look from here even.
19:30Elon MuskYeah,
19:34Tim Doddthat just looks like. It looks so fake right now. This is insane. And just we. How does that feel?
19:44Elon MuskWhoa, vertigo.
19:48Tim DoddOh, my God.
19:52Elon MuskYou see the ocean out there?
19:54Tim DoddWe really lucked out on the. On the night.
19:57Elon MuskThe Gulf, I guess.
20:04Elon MuskInsane. It is insane. It's gorgeous.
20:10Tim DoddI feel like this is the time to be philosophical almost. It's just so inspiring out here, you know, it's. Do you. I mean, in your heart of hearts, like in the very depths of your soul, do you really believe this is like the start of making humans multi planetary?
20:26Elon MuskI believe we have a. I think for the first time it is possible as a possible outcome to make life multi planetary. The key to making life multi planetary is a full, fully reusable rocket.
20:43Elon MuskThat's the key. So full and rapid reusability, like an aircraft. So it's just very hard to achieve full reusability. Given the strength of Earth's gravity field and the density of the atmosphere.
21:01Elon MuskFull reusability would be. It's like. Well, like relatively easy on Mars, which has around 37, 38% of Earth's gravity and about 1% atmospheric density. But it's just barely possible to achieve reusability on Earth.
21:20Elon MuskIt's not as though all the rocket engineers in the past. It's not as though reusability never occurred to them. They're well aware of aircraft and other things. It's just that it's an incredibly difficult technical problem and they just thought it was impossible or the probability of success was so low that it was not worth doing.
21:50Tim DoddI feel like. Yeah, I feel like you almost had a bit Of a Noah's ark esque, you know, if you're to get biblical aspect of the. At the last talk was saying how you know, if you care about life then and the, the true continuation of life on Earth and continuation of life as a consciousness, then you have to have a sustained planet, you know, another sustained planet off of Earth.
22:13Elon MuskExactly. I mean I think, you know, if you think really long term then, then you realize that eventually there will be some natural disaster if even if it is not made by humans that destroys all life on Earth.
22:31Elon MuskSo eventually the sun will expand and evaporate the oceans and we'll be like Venus, just so hot that no life can really exist. Or maybe some chemotrophic bacteria, but eventually even they will die.
22:48Elon MuskSo the only way to prolong life as we know it is for us to become multiplanetary and ultimately multi stellar. And if we do not do that, all life on Earth will die.
23:05Elon MuskSo those who care about life on Earth should really care a lot about life becoming multi planetary and ultimately multi stellar.
23:13Tim DoddWell, I think there's a lot of people get attached to this idea that for some reason, you know, SpaceX or other aerospace companies are trying to escape Earth and escape Earth's problems.
23:23Tim DoddAnd I think you put it into a really good perspective that you know, currently, specifically like NASA's budgets, you know, 0.3% of the, you know, the federal budget and then let alone, you know, the entire cost of how much we're investing so far in, you know, making, you know, getting humans off of Earth and protecting our planet, even with asteroid defense and stuff is still relatively small.
23:46Tim DoddI think people don't understand that.
23:48Elon MuskOh yes, Earth does not currently have any ability to stop asteroids. Now with starship, we then have some ability to stop an asteroid. Actually technically a comet would be the real danger because there are billions, if not more than billions, maybe trillions of objects that are in the outer solar system.
24:15Elon MuskSome of them that are very long period comets. An example that most people are probably aware of is Halley's Comet. So forget the exact period is today, but it's slightly under once per century that Halley's Comet comes by.
24:30Elon MuskSo there are probably many objects, many comets that have very long periods that we simply don't know exist. And for example, the comet Shoemaker Levy, when that hit Jupiter, it made a hole in Jupiter the size of Earth.
24:52Elon MuskSo if that did hit Earth, it's game over, everything's dead. So anyways, there's always some risk of such a thing occurring and.
25:11Elon MuskThe probable lifespan of life is just much greater if we're a multi planet and ultimately multi stellar civilization.
25:20Tim DoddWell, I think people also don't tend to realize that it's not a zero sum game, that if we're working on rockets and space flight and aerospace technology and all of these things, life support for these things.
25:31Tim DoddIt's not just that you, you know, this company spent $100 million on a rocket and that $100 million went into space. It's that that hundred million dollars went into the economy, you know, invested in our own technology, our terrestrial technology.
25:44Tim DoddYou know, look at all the spinoffs of NASA and what, you know, what NASA had done in the 60s and 70s to create the society that we live in today.
25:51Tim DoddYou know, I mean, I think people are short sighted sometimes on, you know, on, on the implications that you don't immediately see those things that you don't immediately grasp because they're just kind of unknowns at this point.
26:03Elon MuskYou know, I mean in general the economy or it's very much a positive sum game, a kind of a growing the pie situation. When people examine their understanding or beliefs of the economy, if they have an implicit assumption that the economy is zero sum, then the only way for one person to get ahead is by taking things from another.
26:40Elon MuskBut obviously the economy today is much, much greater than it was in the past. And we have, the economic output per person is massively great, greater than the past.
26:58Elon MuskSo obviously what has happened is that the pie has grown and it has grown much faster than the population has grown. So essentially if one creates wealth or creates great products and services, that is something that, that should be applauded.
27:21Elon MuskThat is, we've effectively increased the standard of living of the country and perhaps of the world. And sometimes people will conflate or essentially think of consumption and, and wealth is the same thing, but they're obviously not the same thing.
27:49Elon MuskSo anyway, this is sort of a long argument of sort of capital allocation is a job, consumption is fun, but capital allocation is a job. So anyway, I don't think a ton of people want say Warren Buffett's job, which is to read through very tedious annual reports of companies, including the minutiae of the accounting, and decide whether to invest in Coke or Pepsi.
28:20Elon MuskLike I don't want that job.
28:24Tim DoddSo I think aerospace in general kind of still follows the same like you know, back in the day, at one point no one had electricity, running water, air conditioning, all of modern's life conveniences.
28:36Tim DoddAnd of course at first it started off as something that only a few People could get. And now it's, you know, a pretty common standard of living across the world.
28:43Tim DoddAnd yes, you know, you got to start somewhere. Same with air travel, you know.
28:46Elon MuskYeah, exactly. Air travel used to be accessible to almost. No, to very few people. It was insanely expensive and dangerous. And now it is commonplace to. To fly somewhere.
28:59Elon MuskAnd TVs used to be rare and expensive. And then, you know, big flat screen plasmas used to be extremely expensive. And now you can buy, you know, go to Walmart and buy an amazing flat screen plasma for 500 bucks.
29:15Elon MuskIt's amazing.
29:17Tim DoddYeah, it really is.
29:18Elon MuskYeah.
29:22Tim DoddOh man. I don't want to end the conversation on Walmart plasmas at the same time.
29:28Elon MuskYeah. Wow. It's a hell of a lot of progress.
29:35Tim DoddI mean, again, not to bring up the past, but three years ago, I think the first time I ever came out here was March 2019. So almost exactly three years ago.
29:44Tim DoddAnd all you had was a little hoppy. He had just made it out here and was starting to do some of the initial static firing.
29:52Elon MuskThat was amazing that the hopper is still.
29:55Tim DoddIt's there looking over us all. The grandfather we all need.
30:01Elon MuskYeah.
30:03Tim DoddBut even, I mean, even the tank farm was like three tanks of those smaller. You know, for the first test it was so tiny and there's literally just a dirt mound and three tanks.
30:13Tim DoddAnd now, you know, it's. And there was a tent out there and that was about it.
30:18Elon MuskYeah, the propellant storage for the, the vehicle is actually. That was a really, that was a quite difficult. Put a lot of effort into the propellant storage.
30:33Tim DoddHow. Okay, so if, if you have to scrub, if you're trying to do like your. The first static fires and stuff, how long does it take to recycle? Because you're probably.
30:43Tim DoddHow's it, what's that look like? Because you have to drain the propellants back into the tank and say you have to come out here and wrench on something and you know, you have 33 engines that all have to work harmoniously.
30:54Tim DoddWhat's a scrub and recycle look like with this system right now?
30:58Elon MuskAt first it's going to take us a long time to scrub and recycle, but over time it should be very fast and we really shouldn't be scrubbing. It should just take off.
31:07Elon MuskIt's like a normal thing.
31:08Tim DoddYeah, but I mean, obviously the first booster static fires will be probably.
31:13Elon MuskYeah, yeah. No, I mean, it's gonna be very bumpy at first. I mean, for Falcon 9 in the beginning we have we'd have like a dozen recycles. Like, we'd scrub the launch like a dozen times.
31:25Elon MuskYeah, I mean, there's a while. For a while there I was living out at the Cape, basically just working on getting the damn rocket to take to, you know, getting all nine engines to start and take off and.
31:37Elon MuskAnd because we just have one launcher board after another. So I brought the kids with me and went to Disney World a lot and Harry Potter Land.
31:53Tim DoddSo I think we can probably get out of here.
31:56Elon MuskHopefully that movie is good.
32:10Tim DoddThanks again to Elon for all of your generous time. And thanks to Ryan Chalinski with Cosmic Perspective for helping to capture and share this conversation. And I owe a huge thank you to my Patreon supporters for helping make this and everything we do at Everyday Astronaut possible.
32:22Tim DoddIf you want to help support us, head over to patreon.com everydayastronaut and while you're online, be sure and check out our awesome merch store for shirts like this, the RD171 shirt, and lots of other cool, nerdy rocket [email protected] thanks everybody.
32:37Tim DoddThat's going to do it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut, bringing space down to earth for Everyday.