Falcon Heavy Post-Launch Press Conference
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (4)
Transcript
0:37John Taylor (SpaceX)Everyone in the room. We're going to be starting momentarily. I'd ask that if you have a mobile phone you put it on silent or vibrate. We're going to get Elon seated and once he's seated the show begins with a short video.
0:53John Taylor (SpaceX)Okay. And then I'm going to introduce him. He's going to make some open remarks and then we'll take questions in the room and then I'm going to bounce to questions on I'm going to try to do groups of three, three people in the room, three people on the phone and we've got 30 minutes but if the questions are good which I'm sure they will be it may be I'm going to but thank you all for your patience today and throughout this campaign.
1:24ReporterThank you.
2:01Elon MuskIt's.
2:33Elon MuskIt's that.
3:32Elon MuskIt's.
4:28John Taylor (SpaceX)Good evening and welcome to the post launch news conference for the SpaceX Falcon Heavy test flight. I'm John Taylor, director of communications for space. Joining us to provide a status on mission Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO and lead designer.
4:42Elon MuskElon hi R. So yeah really excited about today. Incredibly part of the SpaceX team done an incredible job of creating what they believe the most advanced rock in the world and biggest rock in the world.
4:58Elon MuskI'm still going to talk everything that happened because it seems surreal to me. You had this image of just giant explosions on time with you know that wheel bouncing down the road has a logo landing somewhere.
5:22Elon MuskBut fortunately that's not what happened. The commission really as well as one of the that you guys okay. Still the line that was epic. That's probably the most exciting thing I've ever seen literally ever.
5:48Elon MuskAnd then we prepared for obviously deadline uncrown people were showing that and we're going to get these limits at rapid it didn't have enough propellant to relink the engine Sorry Enough for simple T to try out the aluminum trample boron that's used to light the engines.
6:12Elon MuskSo it the center one lit I believe and the outer two did not and that was not enough to slow the pace down apparently it hit the water of 300 miles an hour and took out two of the engines on the ground.
6:30Elon MuskSo after we got the footage like myself that's some pretty fun footage. So if the cameras didn't get blown up as well then we'll put that out for you know we're but that that's going to be we weren't going to reuse the set that center for anyway or the two side views the Side viewses will figure out some place to put them.
6:54Elon MuskBut since they're not block client version client who are planning on reusing of course the upper stage seems to have worked perfectly so far. The tubes were executed correctly and they will see if the upper stage avionics survive quite an arduous trip through the Van Allen belts.
7:23Elon MuskNormally the stage will pass very quickly through the Van Allen belts here it's essentially well in there for several hours and then it's going to do a
7:33Reporterrestart,
7:36Elon Muskcomplete its propellant and go to trans velocid ejection. And the propellant levels all look good. Propellant. At the second run of the upper stage we were only 0.3-sigma away from prediction which is basically very minor.
7:57Elon MuskSo it has plenty of propellant to complete the transpos rejection. Assuming that the fuel doesn't freeze and the oxygen doesn't propell and the electronics don't get bright. We'll find out in a few hours if that boat is successful.
8:17Elon MuskI don't think there's anything else I know that's worth mentioning. I went out to the landing zone, took a look at the side boosters. They look in really good condition so they're both reflyable although as I said they're combination of version three and version four.
8:37Elon MuskSo we're only going to be re flying really version 5 at this point that launches shortly and that'll be our mainstay. We'll stick to version five for the Falcon architecture.
8:48Elon MuskWe don't expect to have a version 6. All right, any questions that I haven't answered? I'll do my best to answer them but not sure if I have the information yet but I'll try.
8:58John Taylor (SpaceX)So we're going to start in the room and the first question goes to
9:01ReporterDavid Curley from ABC News Elon Spectacular. What did you learn? What did Falcon Heavy teach you?
9:11Elon MuskTeachers I guess told me like crazy things can come true because I he'd say like I didn't really think this would work. When I see the rocket lift off I see like a thousand things that could not work and it's amazing when they do.
9:34Elon MuskAnd I was really seeing the two boosters land synchronized really just like the simulation. I mean it makes me think like really that could be quite a scalable approach.
9:46Elon MuskYou know you could imagine large numbers of those just coming in, landing, taking off, landing, doing many flights per day. So I think gives me a lot of faith for our next architecture.
10:02Elon MuskThe sort of the interplanetary spaceship. We have different names for it but BFR is kind of a code name, and it gives me confidence that BFR is really quite workable.
10:19Elon MuskI was actually looking at the side boosters and, like, they're pretty big, you know, 16 stories tall, 60 foot leg span, but really we need to be way bigger than that.
10:32Elon MuskSo I think it's given me a lot of confidence that we can make the BFR design work.
10:45Elon MuskYeah, it's. I have tremendous confidence, obviously, in the SpaceX team. So I think we can really do this a lot and keep advancing the technology to achieve full and rapid reusability, which would have a profound effect on the future.
11:11Elon MuskAnd one of the interesting things about, say, Falcon Heavy versus Falcon 9 is that Falcon Heavy has the same level of expandability as Falcon 9. So if you look at, say, the price of Falcon 9 is $60 million, Falcon Heavy is 90, even though it's got three times as much capability.
11:28Elon MuskBecause in both cases, the only thing that's expended is the upper stage. We're going to start recovering the fairings, the big nose cone. We're going to recover that, recover the boosters.
11:37Elon MuskAnd so there's really the cost difference, really, between a Falcon nine and Falcon Heavy is minor.
11:46John Taylor (SpaceX)The next question from Marcia Dunn at Associated Press.
11:50ReporterMARCIA dunn, AP what were your. What was going through your mind? How, how amazed were you to see your roadster up there with Starman just cruising along with the blue planet?
12:02ReporterAnd how long will we be getting live views, do you think, from the car?
12:07Elon MuskWell, I think it looks so ridiculous and impossible, and you can tell it's real because it looks so fake. Honestly, we'd have way better CGI if it was fake.
12:22Elon MuskAnd, you know, the colors all look kind of weird in space. There's no atmospheric occlusion, you know, like, everything looks too crisp and. But we know we didn't really test any of those materials for, you know, is it small space hardened or whatever, you know, so it just has the same seats that like a normal car has.
12:44Elon MuskIt's just literally a normal car in space, which I kind of like the absurdity of that. And if you look closely, there's on the dashboard, there's a tiny roadster with a tiny spaceman.
13:00Elon MuskSo Hot Wheels made a Hot Wheels roadster, and a friend of mine suggested, hey, why don't you put that Hot Wheels roadster with a tiny spaceman on the car too?
13:11Elon MuskLike, that'd be cool. Sure. So we did that. I mean, it's kind of silly and fun, but I think that's, you know, silly fun. Things are important and normally for a new rocket, you know, they'd launch like a block of concrete or something like that.
13:31Elon MuskI mean, that's so boring. And I think that's just the imagery of it is something that's going to get people excited around the world.
13:46Elon MuskAnd it's still tripping me out. I mean, I'm tripping balls here.
13:54John Taylor (SpaceX)Next question. In the room, how about Brendan Byrne from wmfe, the NPR facility in Orlando?
13:59ReporterYeah, Congratulations, Elon. Great launch today. Where do you see the Falcon Heavy fitting into this launch industry? Is this something that is going to be for more national security?
14:09ReporterYou see this for interplanetary missions. What's the future of Falcon Heavy?
14:12Elon MuskYeah, the great thing is Falcon Heavy opens up a new class of payload so it can launch more than twice as much payload as any other rocket in the world.
14:21Elon MuskSo it's kind of up to customers what they might want to launch. But it can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond, you know, no stop needed. They don't even need like a gravity assist or anything.
14:34Elon MuskAnd launch giant satellites. It can do anything you want. You go back, you could send people back to the moon with a bunch of, you know, if you did a bunch of launches of Falcon Heavy and did an orbital refilling, the two or three Falcon heavies, you know, what do you call the payload of a Saturn V?
14:56Elon MuskBut I wouldn't recommend doing that because I think the new architecture, BFR architecture is the way to go. But I think it's going to open up a sense of possibility.
15:06Elon MuskI think it's going to encourage other companies and countries to say, hey, if SpaceX, which is a commercial company, can do this and nobody paid for Falcon Heavy, just paid for it with internal funds, then they could do it too.
15:24Elon MuskSo I think it's going to encourage other countries and companies to raise their sights and say, hey, we can do bigger and better, which is great. We want a new space race.
15:35Elon MuskRaces are exciting.
15:38John Taylor (SpaceX)How about one more in the room? How about Darryl Neal from the Fox affiliate here in Orlando? Mr. Mus, kind of talk us through your thought process. As you were watching the launch, you said you were incredibly concerned about it, just wanted to clear the pad because it kind of.
15:55John Taylor (SpaceX)I set expectations low. So talk me through. As you were watching it, Yeah, I
15:59Elon Muskthink this was true of anyone who's involved in closing the design of something, you know, all the ways that can fail and that's like the sort of mental checklist that's scrolling through your mind is all the things that can Break.
16:17Elon MuskI mean, there's thousands of things that can go wrong and everything has to go right. Once the rocket lifts off, there's no opportunity to do a recall or upload a software fix or anything like that.
16:27Elon MuskIt's like you see the passing degrees, 100%, at least for the ascent phase.
16:38Elon MuskAnd I've seen rockets blow up so many different ways, so, you know, it's a big relief when it actually works.
16:48John Taylor (SpaceX)One more question on the rim.
16:49Elon MuskI bet the first, you know, when they first, whoever it is like, whoever's like, you know, when they're like first launched, like a 747 or DC3 or something like that, I bet the chief engineer was like, I can't believe that thing's flying.
17:03John Taylor (SpaceX)One more in the room and then we'll go to the phone. How about Irene Klotz from Aviation Week? Irene, we need to have you on mic first for the folks on the phone to hear.
17:19ReporterThanks.
17:20Elon MuskI can hold it.
17:21ReporterOkay, thanks. Irene Klotz with Aviation Week. Congratulations. The. Can you talk to us a little bit about what needs to happen to certify Falcon Heavy for the national security missions, how far along you are in that process and how many flights you might need to do.
17:40ReporterAnd also if you're able to say anything about how much your SpaceX's investment to get to the rocket to this point, thanks.
17:49Elon MuskI think we only need, I think it depends on which national security mission that we need to, you know, how many flights depends on which mission. But we have a number of commercial customers for Falcon Heavy, so I think, I really don't think it's going to be in any way an impediment to acceptance of national security missions.
18:18Elon MuskWe'll be doing several Falcon Heavy missions flights per year. So let's say if there's a big national security satellite that's due for launch in three or four years, we probably have like a dozen or more launches done by then.
18:33Elon MuskSo it won't really, I don't think there'll be a launch number that's, that's an inhibitor on national security stuff. And. Yeah, so. And then we've got the STP mission that's coming up, which is another test mission that'll go on where everything's on block 5, version 5 of the Rocket, and then we'll be launching version 5, 4 block 5, single stick in a couple, couple months.
19:03Elon MuskSo I think it's hopefully smooth sailing for qualification for national security missions. Our investment to date, probably a lot more than I'd like to admit,
19:19Reporteryou
19:19Elon Muskknow, we try to cancel the Falcon Heavy program three times at SpaceX because it's like, man, this is way harder than we thought. His initial idea was just like, oh, you know, you stick on two first stages of side boosters.
19:38Elon MuskHow hard can it be? It's like, way hard. We have to redesign the center core completely. We have to redesign the grid fins because it's a long story, but if you've got a nose cone on the end of, at the end of the booster instead of a cylinder, you lose control authority.
20:01Elon MuskBecause if you've got a cylinder, you can kind of bounce the air off of the rocket and you get like 30% or more increased control authority if you've got a cylindrical section instead of an ogive section at the end of the booster.
20:16Elon MuskSo we had to redesign the grid fins, redesign the control system, massively redesign the thrust structure at the base to take way more load. That center booster has got to deal with over a million pounds of load coming in combined from the side boosters, so it ends up being heavier.
20:40Elon MuskSo the center core is basically a complete redesign. And even the side boosters, there's a pretty large number of parts that change, and then the launch site itself needs to change a lot.
20:53Elon MuskI'm guessing our total investment is over half a billion, probably more.
21:01John Taylor (SpaceX)I'd like to take some questions from the phone. I think the first one up is Dan Vergano from BuzzFeed News.
21:07ReporterIs that right? That's right. Dan Vergano, BuzzFeed News. Could you talk a little bit about the decision to have the two side cores come down at the same time?
21:16ReporterIs that just the way it falls out from the physics, or was that an actual decision you made?
21:23Elon MuskWe did offset them slightly, but really they pretty much just come down. There's no. We wanted them to offset slightly, just so that the radars didn't interfere. And we actually wanted no communication between the two stages.
21:40Elon MuskThey're both going to point in absolute space, and we're just worried that the radar reflection of one would be seen by the radar receiver of the other. But, no, that's just kind of how it happened.
21:52Elon MuskIt's actually meant to happen just like that.
21:58John Taylor (SpaceX)The next question on the phone comes from Keith Cowing in NASA Watch.
22:03ReporterFirst of all, congratulations. You've launched a rather unconventional payload into space, one that's generated a lot of buzz. And there's a lot of people, some of them citizen scientists, some of them, they're just newbies when it comes to tracking things in space, are going to try and Track the Tesla and understand what's happening to it.
22:19ReporterYou know, like that movie, dude, Where's My Car? And other than the live webcam Today, what is SpaceX going to do to interact with this community of Tesla trackers once the car leaves orbit?
22:30ReporterDo you have a plan or are you just going to kind of wait and see what bubbles up on the Internet and react to it?
22:35Elon MuskWe don't have a plan. No plan. The battery is going to last about 12 hours from launch, roughly, and after that it's just going to be out there in deep space for maybe millions or billions of years, who knows?
22:54Elon MuskAnd yeah, maybe discovered by some future alien race, thinking, what the heck? What were these guys doing? Did they worship this car? Why do they have a little car in the car?
23:08Elon MuskThat really confused them. So not sure what's going to happen, but I think, you know, it's kind of a fun thing and I sure hope that next burn works, by the way.
23:23Elon MuskYeah, we'll know in a few hours.
23:25John Taylor (SpaceX)Now we're going to go back to the room, if that's okay. So how about Chris Davenport from the Washington Post? If Chris, you could wait until we get you, Mike.
23:37ReporterThanks. So now that you're focusing more on the bfr, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the timeline. I know you said it's coming along faster and then what that means for your plans for Mars and the moon.
23:50Elon MuskWell, I don't want to get too off topic, but, you know, I think we might, if we get lucky, we'll be able to do short hopper flights with the, the spaceship part of bfr.
24:02Elon MuskMaybe next year.
24:08John Taylor (SpaceX)All right, one more in the room. Let's see who's. How about Bill Harwood from cbs? Thanks.
24:14Elon MuskBILL Harwood, CBS Elon, residual Sigma, which is like the key. It's a decently long burn, though, maybe a minute or so. And yeah, that'll be in a few hours, hopefully.
24:34Elon MuskI actually don't have the latest telemetry from, because I was just out of. Actually out of the landing zone and haven't been back to launch control since going to landing zone.
24:43Elon MuskSo I don't have the latest information on the status of the upper stage.
24:49John Taylor (SpaceX)Tom Costello from NBC News, please, please. Right here on the front row, blue jacket.
24:56ReporterWell, congratulations again. I wanted to follow up on Chris's question because Chris asked you, what's your timeline potentially to go to the moon or Mars? And you said, did you say as soon as next year?
25:08ReporterCan you quantify that? Then I had my real question.
25:11Elon MuskI'm just doing Chris's work. Yeah. Well, the by Hopper tests, I mean, kind of like we have the grasshopper program for Falcon 9 where we just add the rocket, take off and land in Texas at our Texas test site.
25:28Elon MuskSo that would be. We'll either do that at our South Texas launch site near Brownsville or do ship to ship. We're not sure yet whether ship to ship or Brownsville, but most likely it's going to happen at our Brownsville location because we got a lot of land with nobody around.
25:51Elon MuskSo if it blows up, it's cool. But by hover test, I mean it'll, you know, go up, you know, several miles and then come down. The ship will. The ship is capable of single stage to orbit if you fully load the tanks.
26:09Elon MuskSo we'll do flights of increasing complexity. We want to test the heat shield material, something like, you know, fly out, turn around, accelerate back real hard and come in hot to test the heat shield.
26:27Elon MuskBecause we want to have highly reusable heat shield that's capable of absorbing the heat from interplanetary entry velocities. So it's really tricky.
26:38ReporterPotential, the potential to go to Moon or Mars. What's your timeline there?
26:42Elon MuskSo there are a lot of uncertainties on this program, but it is going to be our focus after now we're almost done with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. We're going to level off, as I said, at block 5 or version 5, so there won't be any more major versions of Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy.
27:06Elon MuskDragon is also going to level off at Dragon version 2. There might be like point releases, you know, 5.1 or Dragon 2.1 or something like that. But most of our engineering resources will be dedicated to vfr and so I think that will make things go quite quickly.
27:27Elon MuskThe ship part is by far the hardest because that's going to come in from super orbital velocities like Mars transfer velocities, Moon transfer velocities. These are way harder than coming in from Earth orbit.
27:46Elon MuskThere are some of the heating things that scale to the eighth power, which I didn't realize there's anything that scales to eighth power. But turns out reentry, certain elements of reentry heating scale up at the 8th to the 8th.
28:05Elon MuskSo just yet, testing that ship out is the real tricky part. The booster, I think I don't want to get, you know, complacent, but I think we understand reusable boosters, reusable spaceships that can land propulsively, that's harder.
28:20Elon MuskSo we're starting with the hard part first. I don't know. I think it's conceivable that we do our first test flight in three or four years of a, you know, full up orbital test flight, including the booster.
28:33Elon MuskOh no, it go to low Earth orbit first, but it would be capable of going to the moon shortly thereafter. It's designed to do that.
28:44John Taylor (SpaceX)Elon, we want to be sensitive to your time. How many more questions you want to take or how much time?
28:47Elon MuskA couple of two more questions.
28:48John Taylor (SpaceX)Okay, sure. There is a gentleman who came from our Reddit community that I want to definitely call on and I don't know your Reddit handle and I don't want to say your name so you can introduce yourself with your name or your handle.
29:02ReporterHi Elon, my name is Martin Avignon and I'm with Reddit's rspacex community. I'd like to congratulate you as well as so many people have done just now. I'd like to know about Starman's spacesuit.
29:12ReporterIs it a production model, is it instrumented and, or pressurized? And what's holding his, what's holding him up?
29:19Elon MuskWell, there's a mannequin inside, so it's just basically stuffed. But yeah, that is the actual production design. So the real one looks like just like that. In fact, that's one of the qualification articles.
29:33Elon MuskThat's the real deal. Yeah, I figure if you're going to go to, I mean, it's dangerous. This is a dangerous trip. You want to look good.
29:47Elon MuskIt took us three years to design that spacesuit. It was real hard. It's easy to make a spacesuit that looks good but doesn't work or that works but doesn't look good.
29:56Elon MuskIt's really difficult to make a spacesuit that looks good and works and you have to make it a multi part process. And it was surprisingly difficult. Very difficult.
30:08John Taylor (SpaceX)How about Dave Muscher from Business Insider.
30:14ReporterHi, Dave Melcher from Business Insider. Thank you so much for doing this.
30:18Elon MuskBy the way.
30:19ReporterI want to go back to BFR for a second since you were talking about that and also Starman, which is such an inspirational thing that's happening. Have you thought, given any thought to what you might do with BFR in that way?
30:31ReporterWhat is the payload and any thoughts to that?
30:34Elon MuskNo, no idea. Suggestions are welcome. I mean, it's a beast. So you know the VFR, 9 meter diameter, 30ft roughly diameter, which is. Yeah, you can put a lot in.
30:51Elon Musk30ft diameter, 110, 120 meters long. Yeah. Big. Although, you know, I bet it doesn't look that big after a while.
31:08Elon MuskAll right, maybe a couple more. Yeah, sure. One more.
31:10ReporterSure.
31:10John Taylor (SpaceX)How about Tim Fernholz from Quartz on the back of the white shirt?
31:23ReporterHi Elon, thanks again for doing this. Two questions for you. One, just about fairing recovery. Just curious how SpaceX is coming with that. And two, Jeff Bezos just responded to your tweet congratulating you on your launch today.
31:38ReporterYou just mentioned a minute ago that we need a new space race. I'm just curious if you see yourself in a race with Blue Origin,
31:46Elon Muskwhat was the first part of the question?
31:49ReporterChecking in on fairing recovery.
31:51Elon MuskYeah, so the fairing recovery has proven surprisingly difficult, I think. I'm pretty sure we'll serve fairing recovery in the next six months. But it turns out like you pop the parachute in the fairing, you've got this giant awkward thing, it tends to interfere with the airflow on the parachute and gets all twisty and obviously it was a low priority too.
32:26Elon MuskAlso we have fairing version 2, which is the really that's the important one that we want to recover. So even if we recovered fairing version one, that that wouldn't be, we wouldn't be re flying it in the future.
32:38Elon MuskSo fairing two and recovery, that's very important. And my guess is next six months we figure out fairing recovery and we've got a special boat to catch the fairing.
32:48Elon MuskIt's like a catcher's mitt. It's like a giant captures Mittenburg form. It's going to run around and catch the fairing. Actually it's kind of fun. I think we might be able to do the same thing with Dragon.
32:59Elon MuskSo unless if NASA wants us to, we could try to capture Dragon. Literally meant for the fairing, but it would work on Dragon too.
33:10John Taylor (SpaceX)In the room. How about James Dean from Florida today?
33:27ReporterThanks so much, Elon. James, Florida today, Speaking of those dragons, could you give us a status on commercial crew and you know when we might realistically see an astronaut?
33:35ReporterJust get into low Earth orbit, much less the moon or Mars.
33:39Elon MuskYeah, you know we're making great progress on crew Dragon or Dragon version two. That's. Yeah. Actually in terms of company priorities, the obviously mission assurance is always number one as a priority.
33:57Elon MuskBut then number the priority used to be Falcon 9 block 5 and then a month ago I said absolute priority is crew dragging. So we're pretty much done with Falcon 9 block 5 or version 5, pretty much almost done with Falcon Heavy few tweaks that would occur with Falcon Heavy Block 5, but they're minor and so it's all hands on deck for crew Dragon and our goal is to.
34:25Elon MuskWe're aspiring to fly crew to orbit at the end of this year. That's our goal. I think that's. I think the hardware will be ready.
34:37John Taylor (SpaceX)We have time for one more question in the room and I was just
34:39Elon Musklooking at Falcon 9. It's like, yeah, kind of small,
34:45John Taylor (SpaceX)so we're going to have to wrap it and I'd like for Chris Gephardt please to have the last question.
34:53ReporterQuestion, in terms of the next Falcon Heavy, which is that Arabsat or the one for the Air Force, do you have any idea of how pad A held up from today's launch and how quickly can it be changed?
35:06Elon MuskYeah, yeah.
35:07ReporterAnd so yes, and I guess my questions are how quickly can the pad be reconfigured between heavy and Falcon 9? Since you need that pad for both
35:18Elon Muskreal fast, it's no problem going back and forth. It's designed that way.
35:22ReporterAnd for the Block 5 version of the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy are the. Does the Falcon Heavy need a dedicated core built for it or the block it does.
35:31Elon MuskOk. The center core needs to be dedicated. Yeah. So that's. The center core is a special build. The side boosters, we can reuse existing Falcon 9s, but we need to just replace the interstage with a, with a nose cone.
35:42Elon MuskAnd it needs to use the upgraded titanium grid fins which are sweet. Those worked out real well. I'm really happy about those. In fact, I'm glad we got the side boosters back because they had the titanium grid fins and the center core didn't.
35:54Elon MuskSo if I was to pick anyone, I would have picked the side boosters. I'd pick the center core to explode. So that would be like the least. Yeah, those friggin grid fins are super expensive and awesome, but the production rate on them is slow.
36:09Elon MuskWe need them back. That was the most important thing to recover were those grid fins.
36:15ReporterAre your sensors inside the spacesuit testing its ability to function? Nope, it's just up there.
36:21Elon MuskYeah, no, it definitely works though. You can just jump in a vacuum chamber with it and it's fine.
36:26John Taylor (SpaceX)Elon, thank you.
36:27Elon MuskAll right, thank you.
36:28John Taylor (SpaceX)Thank you so very much for your time.
36:29Elon MuskI really appreciate it. Thanks everyone for. I've had a good time. Lots more excitement coming.
36:41Elon MuskAs well. Then we'll put that out for real. But that's the idea. We weren't going to reuse the set. That's Er anyway or the two side pieces. The sidebases will figure out something to put them but since they're not block 5 or version 5 we were planning on reusing any of the force.
37:08Elon MuskThe upper stations have worked perfectly so far. The two bones were executed correctly and they will see if the upper stage emul survived quite larger strip through the Van Allen belts.
37:26Elon MuskNormally a SAGE will pass very quickly through the Van Allen belts. Here it's essentially one force force their and then it's going to do a
37:36Reporterrestart,
37:39Elon Muskdeplete its propellant and go to transmonstant ejection. And the propellant levels all look good. Propellant is fastest. At the second run of the upper stage we were only 0.3-sigma away from prediction which is basically Fergwenar.
38:00Elon MuskSo it has plenty of propellant to take the transpos rejection. Assuming that fuel doesn't freeze and the oxygen doesn't boil and the electronics don't get bright. Those issues we'll find out in a few hours if that that was successful.
38:20Elon MuskI don't think there's anything else I know that's worth mentioning. I went out to the landing zone, took a look at the side boosters. They look in really good condition so they're both reflyable although as I said they're combination of version three and version four.
38:41Elon MuskSo we're only going to be replying really version five at this point that launches shortly and that will be our mainstay. We'll stick to version five for the Falcon architecture.
38:51Elon MuskWe don't expect to have a version 6. All right, any questions that I haven't answered? I'll do my best to answer them but not sure if I have the information yet but I'll try.
39:01John Taylor (SpaceX)So we're going to start in the room and the first question goes to David Curley from ABC News.
39:07ReporterElon Spectacular. What did you learn? What did Falcon Heavy teach you?
39:14Elon MuskTeachers I guess told me like crazy things can come true because I'd say like I didn't really think this would work. When I see the rocky lift off I see like a thousand things that could not work and it's amazing when they do.
39:37Elon MuskAnd I was really seeing the two boosters land synchronized really just like the simulation. I mean it makes me think like really that could be quite a scalable approach.
39:49Elon MuskYou know you could imagine large numbers of those just coming in, landing, taking off, landing, doing many flights per day. So I think it gives me a lot of faith for our next architecture.
40:05Elon MuskThe sort of the interplanetary spaceship can have different names for it, but BFR is kind of the code name. And it gives me confidence that VFR is really quite workable.
40:21Elon MuskI was actually looking at the side boosters and, like, they're pretty big, you know, 16 stories tall, 60 foot leg span, but really we need to be way bigger than that.
40:35Elon MuskSo I think it's given me a lot of confidence that we can make the BFR design work.
40:47Elon MuskYeah, it's. I have tremendous confidence, obviously, in the SpaceX team. So I think we can really do this a lot and keep advancing the technology to achieve full and rapid reusability, which would have a profound effect on the future.
41:14Elon MuskAnd one of the interesting things about, say, Falcon Heavy versus Falcon 9 is that Falcon Heavy has the same level of expandability as Falcon 9. So if you look to say that the price of Falcon 9 is $60 million, Falcon Heavy is 90, even though it's got three times as much capability.
41:31Elon MuskBecause in both cases, the only thing that's expended is the upper stage. We're going to start recovering the fairings, the big nose cone. We're going to recover that, recover the boosters.
41:40Elon MuskAnd so there's really, the cost difference really, between a Falcon 9 and a Falcon Heavy is minor.
41:49John Taylor (SpaceX)The next question from Marcia Dunn at Associated Press.
41:53ReporterMarsha Nap, what were your, what was going through your mind? How, how amazed were you to see your roadster up there with Starman just cruising along with the blue planet?
42:05ReporterAnd how long will we be getting live views, do you think, from the car?
42:10Elon MuskWell, I think it looks so ridiculous and impossible and you can tell it's real because it looks so fake. Honestly, we have way better CGI if it looks fake.
42:25Elon MuskAnd, you know, the colors all look kind of weird in space. There's no atmospheric occlusion, you know, like, everything was too crisp and. But we know we didn't really test any of those materials for, you know, is its space hardened or whatever, you know, so it just has the same seats that like a normal car has.
42:47Elon MuskIt's just literally a normal car in space, which I kind of like the absurdity of that. And if you look closely, there's on the dashboard, there's a tiny roadster with a tiny spaceman.
43:03Elon MuskSo Hot Wheels made a Hot Wheels roadster and a friend of mine suggested, hey, why don't you put that Hot Wheels roadster with a tiny space fan on it, you know, in the car too?
43:14Elon MuskLike, that'd be cool. Sure. So we did that. I mean, it's kind of silly and fun. But I think that's, you know, silly. Fun things are important. And normally for new rockets, you know, they'd launch like a block of concrete or something like that.
43:34Elon MuskI mean, that's so boring. And I think that's just the imagery of it is something that's going to get people excited around the world.
43:49Elon MuskAnd it's still tripping me out. I mean, I'm tripping balls here,
43:57Elon MuskNick.
43:57John Taylor (SpaceX)Next question in the room, how about Brendan Byrne from wmfe, the NPR facility in Orlando?
44:02ReporterYeah, Congratulations, Elon. Great launch today. Where do you see the Falcon Heavy fitting into this launch industry? Is this something that is going to be for more national security?
44:11ReporterYou see this for interplanetary missions. What's the future of Falcon Heavy?
44:15Elon MuskYeah, the great thing is Falcon Heavy opens up a new class of payload so it can launch more than twice as much payload as any other rocket in the world.
44:24Elon MuskSo it's kind of up to customers what they might want to launch. But it can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond, you know, no stop needed. They don't even need like a gravity assist or anything and launch giant satellites.
44:42Elon MuskBut I wouldn't recommend and say, hey, we can do bigger and better, which is great. We want a new space race. Raises are exciting.
44:54John Taylor (SpaceX)How about one more in the room? How about Darryl Neal from the Fox affiliate here in Orlando? Mr. Moss, kind of talk us through your thought process. As you were watching the launch, you
45:06Reportersaid you were incredibly concerned about it.
45:08John Taylor (SpaceX)Just, you know, just wanted to clear
45:10Reporterthe pad because it kind of.
45:11John Taylor (SpaceX)I set expectations low. So talk me through as you were watching it.
45:15Elon MuskYeah, I think this is true of anyone who's involved