Tim DoddHi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Welcome to Starbase, Texas. Today, I'm gonna 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.
Tim 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 depth with Raptor 2 and Merlin rocket engines. So 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. That being said, let's get up in there.
Tim DoddI feel like you always talk about, you know, how you just wanna build an exciting future, a world where people get excited about stuff, wake up and wanna do cool things. And I gotta tell you standing right here, man. That's, that's pretty hard to not get excited about this.
Elon MuskYeah. I mean, this is pretty crazy. I mean, there's a custom built tower with arms that' are designed to catch the largest and heaviest flying object ever made and pluck it outta the air. <laugh> I mean, that's the theory anyway, so.
JoeYeah, I think it's funny people actually forget now that they're actually built to lift and stack the rocket, that cranes have such bad wind capability, but one time the booster legs were gonna weigh a lot, Elon just said, you know, delete the legs, delete. We're like, well, what is he? Like? You just, just use the arms and then say it again, and we were like, "Oh wow, he's serious?" Okay. We better get on this. And now it seems normal.
Tim DoddOr we think at least seems plausible. Yeah. I mean, it's still super crazy <laugh> but the more you talk about it...
Elon MuskAt SpaceX we specialize in converting things from impossible too late.
Tim Dodd<Laugh>. So, But it's pretty nutty because you're gonna have this gigantic, you know, booster coming back.
Elon MuskI mean that's nine meters in diameter, not counting the chines, or roughly 30 feet in diameter. It'll weigh about 250 tons just a bit on the heavy side we'll make that lighter over time.
Tim DoddWeighs about 250 now, is that what you said? <Laugh> This is way heavier than... I think we can get the...
Elon MuskWell there's there's the 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 is also what, how much ullage mass do you have..
Tim DoddDry, weight's kind of floating, you know, there's dry weight is yes. Kind of irrelative when it's actually in the air.
Elon MuskYeah. I mean there's several tons of air mass in the vehicle. If you just say like what's the mass of one atmosphere in that volume. It's several tons. Anyway, but I think we'll be able to get the mass well under 200 tons over time, but still pretty heavy. So you gotta like, you know, call it a couple hundred tons plummeting at you know,
Elon MuskLet's see... well, 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. Pretty much down in a downward direction. So then we light, the engines like I said, I think around Mach 0.5, give or take but it's only, you know, several hundred meters in the air, so it's gonna slow itself down very fast then, and correct any error.
Elon MuskSo like wherever the, whatever the X,Y error is when the engine's land it's gotta, take out the X,Y error and drop the last three of basically zero come in between the arms. The arms will be wide and as it's coming in, the arms will, will close go flush against the side of the vehicle and the vehicle will be descending through the arms. Those tiny little, you can barely see the little nubs, those kind of lifting lugs will touch the top of the arms and then it will hopefully not sheer off and crumple.
Elon MuskJoe, is there anything you wanna add that, I dunno if you caught that, but I was just describing the landing sequence.
JoeYep. That was accurate. <laugh>.
Tim DoddWe really hope it doesn't hit the tower.
Elon MuskYeah, exactly. And 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. Yes. Success is one of the possible outcomes. The probability is uncertain, but the, it is above zero.
JoeSo the part of the, you know, like the arms are off to the side. So in theory, the booster is gonna come back and then when the engines start up, it'll translate over, slow down and translate over and get in between the arms, arms need to close and when they close, they need to close in such a way that they don't crush the rocket as well.
Tim DoddOr score it all the way up the whole thing, just , <Tim noises>.
JoeYeah. There's a lot of ways for this to fail.
Tim DoddHow quickly... Is it gonna close 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 know...
Elon MuskIt's intended to close on the methane tanks of the smooth, upper section about the top third of the rocket, and then you can keep translating down. And, and catch on those nubs that stick out the rocket.
Elon MuskYeah. 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, cuz you gotta... The length of the thing is like basically around 70 meters. So you know, if you've got a descent rate of, I don't know, let's say two or three meters per second and you have, you know, 20 meters or something like that. It's okay. You're waiting for like 10 seconds. You know, <laugh> So it'll actually be like actually this is taking a while <laugh>.
Tim DoddAnd now you gotta clear those chines too, you know, you can't have it be so close down on the...
Elon MuskThe chines will be clocked kind of away from the tower. So they won't be increasing...
Tim DoddOh, got it. The opposite way from the clamps. Got it. So as the, yeah, that makes sense. That's cool.
Elon MuskBut you still need to get the rocket has to still fit in between these arms. So, you know, it's still gotta come in and <laugh>...
JoeIt has to center up and the arms will slew in...
Tim DoddYeah.
Joe...To meet it wherever it is. So if it's off to one side, it's gonna hit one of the arms, which will be quite bad.
Tim DoddYeah. <laugh>.
Elon Musk<Laugh> yeah. <Laugh>. Or cook the arm or, you know, a bunch of bad things can happen.
Tim DoddIt's just insane though. I mean, it looks big from far away, but it looks even bigger when you're underneath it and you start to see almost the atmospheric distortion and the hazE <laugh> make it fade into the distance there.
Elon MuskYeah. I'm told this is the tallest thing south of San Antonio.
Tim DoddYeah. Because I think the other tallest was on South Padre. They have the hotel was the other tallest thing in the whole area here, so.
Tim DoddAnd that's quite a bit taller.
Elon MuskActually 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. Just go up in the Sapphire and know that's how big this rocket is. <laugh>, which is insane to think about.
Tim DoddObviously you're not too worried about like the Human Landing System right now, compared to just getting things into orbit. But how is that has any of that stuff solidified yet? Like any of the Human Landing System?
Elon MuskUh, well, I mean, there's a lot of sort of design done on the computer level, but and there's some hardware, but, and our focus is getting to orbit, you know, if we can...
Tim DoddBecause human landing won't work without getting to orbit obviously.
Elon MuskYeah. We need Starship to get to orbit 'cause it's the only thing that can carry the Starlink 2.0 satellites. So, we've already produced the first, and we have on site, the first Starlink 2.0 satellite and it's seven meters long and Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit capability required for Starlink 2.0. So even if we shrunk the Starlink 2.0 satellite down, the total up mass of Falcon is not nearly enough to do Starlink 2.0.
Tim DoddHow heavy does one version 2.0 weigh?
Elon MuskWell it's, it's about one and a quarter tons. There's so volumetrically huge that. Um, but if you just say like there's...
Elon MuskA lot of people talk a lot about how many launches per year there are to orbit, but this is not really what matters. I think what really matters is what's the total useful payload to orbit per year. Cause otherwise you could say if this were ocean ships, you'd be like comparing a dinghy to a super tanker and it's like, they're not the same.
Elon MuskFor a satellite constellation, the thing that really matters is what is your total useful max mass flux to orbit. You know, so mass, you know, mass to orbit. So we need Starship to work and to fly frequently or Starlink 2.0 will be stuck on the ground.
Tim DoddWow. So that's your big motivator at this point is like get these things going. I assume because they're bigger will there have to be fewer of those to service the same amount of like area? Like is it gonna be, is version two gonna 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?
Elon MuskUm, the Starlink 2.0 satellites are almost an order of magnitude more capable than Starlink 1.0.
Tim DoddBandwidth wise or total like throughput.
Elon MuskI just think of it like how many useful bits of data can each satellite do Starlink 2.0 in terms of useful bits of data is almost an order of magnitude, better than a Starlink 1.0.
Tim DoddAre those different user terminals too, compared to...?
Elon MuskThe user terminals are on a separate upgrade path. Although user terminals will work with Starlink 1.0. or Starlink 2.0 satellites, but the Starlink 2.0s are just much more capable.
Tim DoddUm, is it possible to go up in the tower, and do some or...?
Elon MuskUm, I don't know. Can we go up in the tower? Is the elevator working?
JoeAs long as the generator gone? Yeah. I can fire it up.
Elon MuskOkay.
Tim DoddI mean just might not be a bad place to watch a sunset at this point.
Elon MuskYeah.
Tim DoddWhere are y'all going to?
Elon MuskMen's department!
Elon MuskI guess we could stop at the QD arm and then, you know, then continue up. That will be and then...
Tim DoddYeah.
Tim DoddThis views gonna be insane. I can already get little sneak peaks through the... Danggg.
Tim DoddWow, this is epic. This is so epic. We're not even at the top. <Laugh>.
Elon MuskBetter enough. It's worth. This is where the QD arm is.
Tim DoddOh, hey.
Elon MuskThe top has a better view.
Tim DoddLook at how beefy all this stuff is though.
Elon MuskYeah. I mean, this is insane, custom designed gigantic hardware. I mean it's hard to believe this is real.
Tim DoddIt genuinely is. Oh man. Geez. <Laugh> That's... It's quite the view.
Elon MuskIt's beautiful.
Tim DoddYeah. It's beautiful. We're even above the booster even right now. And we are in the sky. We can't even see South Padre.
Elon MuskOh, wow. Yeah. Really hazy.
Tim DoddWell, should we go up?
Elon MuskYeah. <laugh>. Even better when there's a vehicle on the OLM.
Tim DoddOh, I know. I know. I can't imagine.
Elon MuskUp close and personal. You gotta come back.
Tim DoddOh yeah. I missed the one... I came out here I think the day after you guys stacked. Well, I guess I came out for last event, but I think they stacked on like the 4th or not, don't know something. I don't what day it was. I was like next day. That's right.
Tim DoddEmergency escape ladder thing?
Elon MuskYou can hand crank all the way down if you really lost power. I maybe want to do that once. It'd probably take like an hour. I feel like you...
Tim DoddHoly crap. We're really getting up here though. The craziest thing to me is that none of this was here a year ago. You know, that's just hard to fathom is like, especially if you were out here three years ago and saw quite literally nothing but a field and a little R2D2 man. Wow, look at that. I mean it's far down there.
Tim DoddIf this isn't surreal. I don't know what is.
Elon MuskYeah, totally. It's insane. I mean, the Ship looks small from here.
Tim DoddThe ship looks tiny from here. Even people are like tiny. It's like, "Whoa". How tall is this again at this point?
Elon Musk143 Meters at the top. Or about 138 maybe?
Tim DoddOh my God. And look at how how hazy even the production site is right now.
Elon MuskYeah.
Tim DoddThis is not a good place if you have a fear of heights, that's for sure.
Elon Musk<Laugh> You better go get over 'em real quick.
Tim DoddYeah. We should get like a hang glider and jump off or something.
Elon Musk<laugh> That'd be sweet. <Laugh>.
Tim DoddYou could sell rides as a zip line over to the High Bay. You could probably zip line pretty far. I can't believe how small the boosters look from here even. That just looks... It looks so fake right now. This is insane. And just, we <laugh> how's that feel?
Elon MuskWhoa. Vertigo.
Tim DoddOh my God.
Elon MuskYou see the ocean out there.
Tim DoddWe really lucked out on the on the night.
Elon MuskThe Gulf, I guess <laugh> Insane.
Tim DoddIt is insane. <laugh>. It is gorgeous. I think 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 human Multi-planetary?
Elon MuskI believe we have... I think for the first time it is possible. There's a possible outcome to make life multi-planetary. The key to making life multi planetary is a fully reusable rocket. That's the key. So full and rapid reusability, like an aircraft.
Elon MuskSo it's just very hard to achieve full reusability given the strength of Earth's gravity field and the density of the atmosphere. Full reusability would be, well, like relatively easy on Mars which has around 37-38% of Earth's gravity and about 1% atmospheric density. It's just barely possible to achieve reusability on Earth.
Elon MuskLike it's not as though, you know, all the, the rocket engineers in the past.. It's not as though reusability never occurred to them. They, I mean, 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.
Tim DoddI feel like you almost had a bit of a Noah's Ark-esque you know, if you're gonna get Biblical, aspect at the last talk was saying how, you know, if you care about life and 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.
Elon MuskExactly. I mean, I think you know, if you think really long term, then you realize that eventually there will be some natural disaster even if it is not made by humans that destroys all life on Earth. So eventually the sun will expand and evaporate the oceans and and will be like Venus you know, just so hot that no life can really exist or maybe some chemotrophic bacteria, but eventually even they will, they will die.
Elon MuskSo the only way to prolong life, as we know it is for us to become multi-planetary and ultimately multi-stellar. And if we do not do that all life on Earth will die. So those who care about life on Earth should really care a lot about life becoming multi-planetary and ultimately multi-stellar.
Tim 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. And 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, of 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. I think people don't understand that the...
Elon MuskOh yeah. So the Earth does not currently have any ability to stop asteroids now with Starship that 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 some of them with that are very long period comments.
Elon MuskAn example that most people are probably aware of is Halley's Comet. So I forget the exact period is today but it's slightly under once per century that Halley's comment comes by. So there are probably many objects, many comments 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. So if that did hit Earth, that's "Game Over" everything's dead.
Elon MuskSo anyways, there's always some risk of such a thing occurring and the probable lifespan of life is just much greater if we're a multi-planet and ultimately multi-stellar civilization.
Tim 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, it's not just that you, you know, as company spend a hundred million dollars on a rocket and that a hundred million dollars went into space, it's that a hundred million went into the economy, you know, invested in our own technology, our terrestrial technology, you know.
Tim DoddLook 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. You know, I mean, I think people are shortsighted sometimes on, you know, on the implications that you don't immediately see those things that you don't immediately grasp, because we they're just kind of unknowns at this point, you know?
Elon MuskI mean, in general, the you know, the economy is 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.
Elon 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 greater than the past. And so obviously what has happened is that the pie has grown and has grown much faster than the population has grown.
Elon MuskYou know, essentially if one creates wealth or creates great products and services that, that is something that should be applauded. That is, we've effectively increased the standard of living of, you know, of the country and perhaps of the world.
Elon MuskThe, you know, and sometimes people will conflate or you know, essentially they think of consumption and wealth as the same thing, but they're obviously not the same thing. You know, this is sort of a long argument of sort of capital allocation is a job consumption is fun, but capital allocation is a job.
Elon MuskSo anyway, I don't think a ton of people want say Warren Buffet's job, which is to read through very tedious annual reports of companies, including the minutia of the accounting and decide whether to invest in Coke or Pepsi. I don't want that job. <laugh>.
Tim DoddI think aerospace in general kind of still follows the same, like, you know, if back in the day at one point, no one had electricity, running water, air conditioning, all of modern life's conveniences. And 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. And, you know, you gotta start somewhere, same with air travel, you know?
Elon MuskYeah. Exactly air travel used to be accessible to almost no-one, to very few people. It was insanely expensive and dangerous. And now it is commonplace to fly somewhere. 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. It's amazing.
Tim DoddYeah, it really is. Yeah.
Elon MuskOh man. I don't wanna end the conversation on Walmart plasmas, but at the same time <laugh>.
Tim DoddYeah. Wow. It's a hell of a lot of progress. I 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. And all you had was little hoppy. He had just made it out here and was starting to do some of the initial static firing. That was <laugh> that was three years ago.
Elon MuskThat's amazing that the, the hopper is still there.
Tim DoddYeah. Looking over us, all the grandfather, we all need.
Elon MuskYeah.
Tim 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 was literally just a dirt mound and three tanks. And now, you know, it's <laugh> and there was a tent out there and that was about it.
Elon MuskYeah. The propellant storage for the whole vehicle was actually, that was a really, that was a quite difficult, just put a lot of effort into the propellant storage.
Tim DoddHow? So if you have to scrub, if you're trying to do like the first static fires and stuff, how long does it take to recycle because you're probably... What's that look like? Because you have to drain the propellants back into the tanks 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. What's a scrub and recycle look like with this system right now?
Elon MuskWell, first is gonna take us 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 for it's like a normal thing.
Tim DoddYeah. But I mean, obviously the first, the first booster static fires will be probably...
Elon MuskYeah, no, I mean, it is gonna be very bumpy at first. I mean, for Falcon 9 in the beginning we'd have like a dozen recycles, like we'd scrub the launch like a dozen times. I mean, 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, and 'cause we would just have one launch abort after another. And I brought the kids with me and I went to, went to DisneyWorld a lot and Harry Potter land.
Tim DoddThanks again to Elon for all of your generous time and thanks to Ryan Chylinski 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. If you want to help support us, head on over to patreon.com/everydayastronaut and while you're online, be sure and check out our awesome merch store for shirts like this, the RD-171 shirt and lots of other cool nerdy rocket stuff at everydayastronaut.com/shop. Thanks everybody. That's gonna do it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, bringing space down to Earth for everyday people.