BIG NEWS! Elon revealed Starship Upgrade & Plan Change after Flight 9 RUD..Here's What Happened

So, here we are. Here we are at uh at the newly incorporated Starbase, Texas. This is uh the first new city made in America in I think quite a few decades. uh that uh at least that's what I'm told and uh very cool name and it's named that because it is the it is where we're going to develop the technology necessary to take uh humanity uh and civilization and and life as we know it to another planet for the first time in the 4 and a half billion year history of Earth. So go with this little video here. This is how it started off with basically nothing. So start stra started off as basically a sandbar with nothing. Even those little things we built. Obviously, that's the original sort of Mad Max rocket. This is where you discover light. Light lighting is very important for that MadMax rocket. So yeah, not that long ago, there was basically nothing here. And in the space of about five or 6 years, uh thanks to the incredible work of the SpaceX team, uh we've built a small city and and we've built uh two a gigantic launch pads and a gigantic rocket factory for a gigantic rocket. Um, so and the cool thing is for anyone out there who's watching this, uh, you can actually come and visit, uh, because our entire production facility and launch site are on a public highway. Um, so anyone comes who comes to South Texas, um, can come and see the rocket pretty close up and see the factory. And um so anyone who's interested in seeing the largest flying object on Earth can come here anytime they want and just drive down the public highway and see it, which is pretty cool. So then we progress to where we are now, Starbase 2025. So, we're we're now at the point where we can produce a ship roughly every 2 or 3 weeks. Now, we we don't always produce a ship every 2 or 3 weeks because we are making design upgrades. Um, but ultimately, we're aiming for the ability to produce a,000 ships a year. So, three ships a day. So, that's where things are now. I'm standing in that building. That's our hovercraft. We're driving a booster down the road to the uh launch site. You can see the mega bays. And as I said, what's cool the cool thing for those out out there watching this video is that you can actually just literally come here, drive down the road and see it, which is the first time in history that that's been possible. So all this cool stuff you that that that road on the left there, that highway is public and you can just come here and see it, which I recommend doing. I think it's very inspiring to see. So that's our gigaby. So we're where we're expanding integration to produce a thousand starships per year. Well, yeah, that hasn't been built yet, but we're building it. Um, that is a truly enormous structure. This will be one that'll be one of the biggest structures, I think by some measures, the biggest structure in the world. And it's designed for a thousand starships a year. We're also building a gigabay in Florida bringing so we'll have uh two facilities, one in Texas and one in Florida. It's it's actually difficult to gauge the the size of these buildings because you need a kind of human for scale. When you see how tiny a human is next to that building, you realize just how enormous it is. So in order to achieve this goal, we have to be we have to make rapidly reusable rockets so that the uh the cost per flight the cost per ton to Mars is as low as possible. Uh that's essential. So for that rapidly reusable rockets I said we could it's actually four Rs. It's like a pirate R. It's like rapidly reusable reliable rockets is the key. R Now, we've uh congrats to the SpaceX team on making incredible progress on catching a giant rocket. So, it's really mind-blowing that the SpaceX team has been able to catch the largest flying object ever made multiple times. using a very novel method of catching it out of the air with giant chopsticks. I mean, have you ever seen that before? Yeah, congrats again. That was an incredible achievement. So the the the the reason we are uh catching it in this way which is uh never been done before is in order to achieve the rapidly reusable portion of the in order to make the rocket rapidly reusable. So if it is if if if the super heavy booster which is gigantic uh it's like 30 ft in diameter um if if if it were to land with landing legs on a landing pad we would then have to uh pick it up uh stow the legs uh and put it back in the launch pad. Um and that's uh it's quite difficult to transport such a large thing. Um but if we catch it with the same tower that it's used to put it in the uh launch uh mount to begin with that that is the best case outcome for rapid reuse. And then we the next thing we need to do is is catch the ship too. So, we haven't done this yet, but we will. So, that's what we hope to demonstrate later this year, maybe as soon as 2 or 3 months from now. And then the the ship would be placed on top of the booster and then again uh re re refilled with propellant and flown again. Um with the ship takes a bit longer because it's got to orbit Earth a few times until the ground track comes back over the launch pad. Uh but it the ship is also intended to be refflowing multiple times per day. This is the uh the new Raptor 3 which is an awesome engine. Big hand to the Raptor team for this. This is very exciting. So, Raptor 3 uh is designed to require no basic heat shield. Uh saving a lot of mass on the bottom and actually improving reliability so that uh if if there is for example um a small fuel leak uh from the rafter engine, uh it will simply leak uh into the existing flaming plasma and um not really matter. and and we we want to we want to use the same heat shield for Earth that we use for Mars because there are many other factors with the heat shield uh such as making sure the tiles don't crack or fall off or anything like that. Um so we want to have the same heat shield structure, same material on Earth as on Mars. So we can test it uh hundreds of times on Earth before going to Mars and be confident that when it goes to Mars it will work. So we developing some next generation starships which are have a number of improvements uh versus our current gen. So, uh, it's taller, for example, and has a a better inter kind of a the interstage between the ship and the booster. You can see that sort of um the the sort of struts there that makes it easier for the flame. Ah, like that right there. Um, when doing hot staging, which is when we light the ship's engines while the booster's engines are still firing, the the flame from the um from the ship engines can more easily exit through the uh the open struts of the of the new interstage. And in this case, we'll bring the the struts interstage back with us instead of throwing it away. So, a little more height here, uh, 72 m from around 69. Uh, repellent capacity, I think we'll probably push that up a little, maybe 3,700 tons. Um long term my guess is we're we're maybe around 4,000 tons and about just sort of just over 8, you know, sort of uh 8,000 probably like 8,000 300. This will keep getting up. My guess is ultimately we're 4,000 tons here, close to 10,000 tons of thrust, but this is kind of the next uh the next level or the next version of the super heavy. Uh, so the booster will look a little naked on the bottom because the the Raptor 3 engines don't require a heat shield. So it look like it looks like there's kind of parts missing, but that's just because the the Raptor heat shield uh does not the the Raptor 3 does not need a heat shield. So it's just it's just standing there there in a bathed in flaming plasma. But it's a lot lighter. Yep. Integrated hot stage. I think it looks amazing. And then the shift's a little little more little longer, a little more capable. Um moving to 1550 tons of propellant capacity. Um, and my guess is this probably ends up 20% more than this long term. Um, and uh, yeah, you can see it the the heat shield is sleeker. So much smoother boundaries as as the the boundary of the the heat shield going to the leeward side uh, is is very smooth. Um, no more jagged tiles. I think it looks very sleek. U so and this version we still have six engines but a future version will have nine. Uh but with the Raptor 3 again we have improved um uh uh reduced mass higher um specific impulse. Um it's this is the the Starship version 3 is really the it the version that is I think achieves all of the the key elements. I mean generally with any new technology it takes three major uh three major iterations of any major techn of any new technology to have it really really work well. And this with Raptor 3 with and Starship and booster version 3 uh we it should be able to achieve all of the things that I just mentioned which is a rapidly reusable reliable rocket uh with orbital refilling. It was inevitable um as as the prophecy foretold uh by the great prophet Douglas Adams in his uh you know book of the Hitchhog's Guide to the Galaxy. Uh the answer to the meaning of life is 42. Um and so inevitably the starship stack will have 42 engines. A TV show about moon base alpha. Um you can't couldn't think about the physics of that too much because apparently like the moon base was like drifting away from earth. Um but uh anyway we should have a moon base alpha which is the next step after the Apollo program would be to have a base on the moon. Um, so you could like you could have a like a gigantic um, you know, science station uh, doing research about the nature of the universe on the moon would be very cool. So in terms of like when can you go to Mars? So you can go to Mars every two years or every 26 months. Um, so the next Mars opportunity is at the end of next year in about 18 months. So November, December is the next Mars opportunity. So, we'll try to make that opportunity if we get lucky. I think we'll probably have a 50/50 chance right now because we've got to uh we've got to figure out orbital refilling uh in order to um have enough capability to go to Mars. But if we achieve orbital refilling in time, then we will launch the first uh uncrrewed uh Starship to Mars at the end of next year. So this is a tentative game plan here where we're hoping to that we're hoping to achieve um where we increase the the cadence of flights to Mars dramatically with every launch window. So every every roughly two years um we are dramatically increasing the number of of ships that go to Mars. um and ultimately try to get to a thousand or 2,000 ships u you know per Mars uh rendevous. We got the first starships on Mars, gather critical data. So the first the first flights there we we'll send with the Optimus robot um so we can go out there and explore and kind of prepare the way for humans and um that'll be a very cool image if we're able to achieve it um by launching end of next year. It would actually technically arrive in 2027. Uh but that would be uh an epic fixure to see Optimus walking around on the surface of Mars. And then with the launching two years later, uh we would be sending humans assuming the first missions are successful and they land successfully, we'd send humans on on the next mission. Uh, and we really started building the infrastructure for Mars. So anyway, might maybe just to be safe and we might just do two two landing episodes with the Optimus and do the third one with humans. We'll see. So that that classic picture of the workers on the Empire State. This is just a sort of rough idea of what things will be like with the first city on Mars. My guess is we'll probably put the launch pads a little further away. Um or the landing pads just in case. But uh I mean for Mars we're going to need uh a lot of solar power. Um we'll be you know since you you can't really walk around on the surface of Mars at least as yet until Mars is terraformed to be like Earth. It have a lot of spaceports. I mean, because of the fact that you can't fly there continuously and you have to transfer in these windows, you'd have a gathering of a thousand ships or 2,000 ships or more than that. So, we look have this kind of like Battlestar Galactica feel where all these ships are in orbit waiting to depart and uh and then they they all depart. Um, look, I think an amazing image of all these ships departing at once. And then you're going to need obviously uh a lot of launch pads, a lot of landing pads on Mars. Um or you'll need to move the the ships off the landing pad pretty fast. First city on another planet and um a new world. Um, and it's also an opportunity to, I think, for the Martians to to rethink how they want civilization to be. So, you can maybe rethink like what kind of form of government do you want, what new rules do you want to have? Um, there's a lot of freedom and opportunity in Mars to do a recompile on civilization, which will be up to the Martians. So, all right, let's get it done. Thank you everyone.