Full Analysis of Starship IFT-10 with @scottmanley and @MarcusHouse

Well, you've probably heard Starship had its 10th test flight and things went pretty well this time around and so I figured it was time to get the guys back together. So, once again, I have summoned Marcus House and Scott Manley to discuss what happened with flight 10. Uh, we talk about sort of what led up to the launch, the interesting things that you should be watching during the flight, and then a lot of the repercussions, and of course, the great elephant in the room, what's going to happen with the Aremis mission. Well, I'm not going to give any more introduction. Let's get on with the conversation. Here is Scott Manley and Marcus House. Scott. Marcus, it's been so long. >> It has. >> Hello. How are you doing? >> Good. Good. And Scott, you look well rested and uh retired. >> Retired? That's not true. I'm fun employed. Definitely still employed. >> Yeah. >> Working very, very hard to try to make this content creation thing work. Do you guys have any tips? Uh yeah, just got to stick at it, mate. You've been doing this a lot longer than I have, actually. So, yeah. >> When we first met, I was shocked. Like, we sat down and we were talking and you were like, "Yeah, and I've got this job." I'm like, "Wait a minute. What?" Because you were have such a successful YouTube channel. You do all this work. I couldn't believe that your day job was to be a programmer at Apple. It's >> I have a had a family to take care of and now they're off to college. I am still paying for them, but you know it. I can see the end in sight. >> Yeah. Yeah. I know. So that's the part I'm like it's it's just to have fun. Like you will not work less, but it is a you get to have more fun because you get to decide what it is that you're working on. Then the time just disappears. >> Get to own my failures. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, we need to focus on the task at hand, which is that we are going to talk about the most recent flight 10. I was, you know, I I didn't reach out to summon the group together just because there was, you know, exploding starships. Not a lot was accomplished. I wasn't that excited about it. But >> you were depressed. Another failure. >> Exploding Starship. >> Why can't they get through this second stage orbit insertion thingy? >> Yeah, Starships explode. It's what they do. >> Yes, meant to fly. They're also meant to explode. So, uh, Marcus, what was the plan this time around? >> Yeah. Well, as we've just said, you know, the last three Starship flights have been pretty demoralizing because, you know, they haven't been able to progress past past where flight six had sort of gotten. So, it's been a hard year and uh, you know, we just needed to um, see what was going to happen with this block two upgrade design that they sort of um, you know, made. Well, they made many changes to the internals and all this sort of thing. And presumably this has caused a lot of grief. We don't know everything that's sort of been improved over this time, but this flight luckily uh much better. >> And and Scott, I think people should understand about like this isn't the ship that was supposed to have flown. >> Yes, there was some unscheduled changes due to an unscheduled rapid disassembly on the launch on the test pad over at Masses. That was during they were supposed to be performing a static fire on their static fire test stand and um a COPV where a com composite overwrapped pressure vessel basically exploded and took out the entire booster, the entire rocket, the entire Starship and the test stand which led them to an interesting uh turn of events where they had to retool the orbital launch mount so they could actually perform the engine test for this Starship using the launch mount without having to build an entirely used test stand and they didn't want to do that. >> We're going to have a longer conversation at the end of this chat where we talk about the implications of making your launch mount your test stand and your landing pad uh and what is what does that mean and what are the risks involved when you have to move quickly and potentially break things. So we will we'll get into that but let's talk about the launch itself. Uh so so Marcus liftoff uh on the third day I guess you know we had the we had a bad hose on the first day on Sunday we had uh weather on Monday but on Tuesday uh no delays the thing took off. How'd it look? >> Yeah look the launch was beautiful. Um it really was another spectacular one and uh all 33 engines were were you know motoring along beautifully right up past Max Q and then we had just one engine out. Um, and it's interesting because that engine seems to be one that um that that flames out in previous flights as well. I think it was flight 8 and flight 4. I think the exact same engine location. So, there must be something around that spot that that needs improvement there somewhere. But other than that, the ascent was really beautiful. Hot staging, really beautiful yet again. Um, you know, they did cut away from the Max Q shot, which is kind of like, oh man, that's it's always a cool thing to see the the the shock wave come down and they kind of cut away just it's like, come on. It's the one shot I wanted to see. But yeah, >> maybe Kim caught it or something. >> Yeah, John caught it and it was a stop lime image. One of the most beautiful engines images of a rocket launch yet. >> Yeah. >> And we cut away from >> beautiful. >> Right. Right. Um, and then and then Scott, the I want to talk about sort of the plan for Super Heavy because we've been spoiled watching these super heavies come back and land, get caught gracefully by Mechazilla, embraced and put gently down. But in this case, this one was headed for the ocean again. What was the what was the plan and why' they do that? >> Right. So, they had already demonstrated rec use, the capture cap and the recovery and the reuse, right? Uh they were now at the point where they wanted to see what the dynamic limits were on the booster because uh in the previous flight they attempted to fly the booster back to the ocean with a very very aggressive angle of attack 17°. That's relative to the air flow. That means they can come down at a much steeper angle. The steeper your angle of attack, the more drag you get, the more cross range you can get. And so therefore that helps you in terms of your safety zones. You can have the booster coming down further from your tower if it has the ability to glide in uh right. But the 17° was too much. It caused too much lateral loads which caused the down comer, the big pipe along the center of the tank to just basically sag and break under the lateral load. So that caused the booster loss on the previous flight. So this time they they found where it broke. They dialed it back. They were still going to be more aggressive than they'd been on previous flights, but they were still going to be pushing the limit. So, that was what their big plan was. And they were also bringing it down to a hover, not on the ocean as we've seen in previous hover landings. They actually stopped like a couple hundred meters up, which is kind of similar to a tower catch. But honestly, I think the thing they were more interested in was making sure it hit the ocean going fast enough that it wouldn't float around for a while. >> Right. Right. Yes. >> But but it was always the plan. The plan was they weren't going to try to catch this one. Like part of it is that this is the end of the life for this >> generation. V2 boosters >> of the of the Raptors and the boosters. >> Yeah. They didn't want to capture another booster because they would never reuse it, right? >> So, there was no point in this in actually catching this for them or I mean there would be a point, I'm sure, but there was team catch and there would be team destroy and team destroy won the day. >> Right. Right. Let's push this thing to the limit. And and that was actually a theme for this entire mission, which was that they pushed a lot of things to the limit and it seemed to turn out all right. But again, that's a spoiler alert. All right, Marcus, back to the story. Uh, Starship has detached from the booster and it is on its way. And this is the point where I'm ready to turn off my computer and shut it down because the thing explodes and it didn't. What's going on? >> What kind of topsyturvy world are we living in? >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the last three flights, you know, the Starships had all sorts of problems. The last one in flight 9 did manage to make it to engine cut off and everything seemed okay for just a little bit and then of course we had attitude issues and issues with um you know pressure buildup in the nose area and and it all went haywire at that point and ended up you know ultimately out of control as it was re-entering. They couldn't do any of the payload bay tests. Um they couldn't do any of the uh you know tests with all the heat shielding. They've got all these experimental heat shields uh tiles on board, just the heat shield individual ones that they're running experiments with. They haven't really been able to test any of this stuff since they put them on. I there was a couple of test locations in flight six, but um nothing like what they're trying to test out now, which is regen cooling and all sorts of things like that. So anyway, this one got all the way to uh engine cut off beautifully. Everything looked really wonderfully um you know, stable. everything was in control. Um and uh yeah, at that point they finally after all this time uh got to open up the payload bay door. So, you know, the the the company that uh can launch the largest rocket ever made, you almost double the Saturn 5's launch thrust and all this sort of thing couldn't open the door and and there was and so that was a kind of a a meme going around for a long time. And uh so yeah, for the first time in this flight, we got to see them successfully open that door and deploy these test dummy Starlink satellites, which are just simulator units. you know, they just presumably got similar masses and and things like that just to make sure that it all works okay before they try to go to orbit and uh and and do this for real. So, you know, um this mechanism in in the payload bay was just astounding. Yeah, it was interesting to see. I mean, you could you got a view. You could see these Starlinks coming down. You could see the chain that was pushing them out uh turning and pushing them out and then moving the next one down. and and that system seems to work as as expected. >> Yeah. Yeah. Fairly complex sort of setup, you know, they and I didn't really expect it myself. They sort of push one out and then reverse and then push the next one out. So, they've sort of got two in each row and they sort of do this conveyor belt type thing where they push out one, pull the pull the other one back and and then have another crack at throwing it out. There there was one that sort of just glanced the top of the um payload bay door and sort of tumbled out sort of almost uncontrolled and that was kind of interesting to see. So there's a little bit of adjustment to tweak there. >> Yeah. And then it continued on on its uh ballistic trajectory and then we saw that familiar air glow as things were starting to heat up and then something happened, Scott. We saw some material floating around, some kind of explosion in the engines. What? >> We actually have we have some stuff before that. Well, first of all, I'm going to point out that while the Star Dumblink deployment was somewhat successful, it was still a failure and a tragedy because nobody put cameras on those. And I think what a missed opportunity, right? >> The Chinese would have put selfie sticks, right? When you think about all the Chinese missions, they put they send out cameras on little floaty spacecraft to to show you what the thing looks like. This is the perfect chance to show images. You're so right. How did they not do this? >> It's not like it was a, you know, bizarre idea because everybody's been asking for it. >> Yes. >> I know. >> Yeah, >> it was nighttime. But anyway, no, before that they had one other really critical test they had to do. They had to fire up the engines and demonstrate that they could fire the engine on orbit because all these flights have been suborbital. They've all been targeted so they will land in the middle of the ocean regardless of whether the second stage fires an engine or not after the engine shutdown. And they need to demonstrate that they can reliably relight that engine in space to perform a controlled deorbit. The last thing SpaceX Well, I'm not I think the worst thing that SpaceX could do would be to launch a Starship into orbit and then have it stuck there because the engines have failed and it's now spiraling downwards. And we've got 200 tons of stainless steel that could land anywhere. So, they had to demonstrate engine firing and they need to know that. So, they we've had one or two we've had two tests of this that have been somewhat successful. So that's what we want is we want them to show that they can de-orbit. So we had this beautiful little test engine fire. It was very photogenic. And it was great that we could see this with the fantastic skirt camera. I love the way the uh the center engines you could see them gimble apart before lighting up that engine. Of course, it felt so right that they would. It was a very cool shot to see that happening. Um, but yeah, they fired those engines up and so now they're one step closer to going to orbit on a future flight. They maybe do it on the next flight. I I don't know. It depends on how confident they are. Uh, again, the stakes are high. Yeah, cuz I mean >> Yeah. And we're going to get We're going to talk about that elephant in the room that is still remains in the room. Uh, when we get to the end of this conversation, >> the elephant in the room rather than the elephant falling from space, right? >> Yes. >> And not burning up on the way down. Yes. >> But yes, >> re-entry was the next step. >> Yes, re-entry. And I and I think you know you did great analysis of of what happened in that in that engine compartment. What sort of tell me the events that happen. >> So I mean yeah we had this early glow that starts because the you know the heating actually starts well above like 100 km. It's just there's a very tenuous atmosphere. So the air smashing into it does produce light even although they're like in what would be considered vacuum for our fleshy you know human bodies. But then as they start to come down it starts to heat up and there was a moment where inside the engine compartment there's some glow outside and it's just this massive white light and then a bunch of debris suddenly fills the compartment and you can see that it's still effectively zero gravity because >> it's all floating around, >> right? It's just floating around like a zerog. But it is technically experiencing re-entry forces. You could see actually pieces floating out and then starting to generate these trails. >> Yeah. And then kind of zipping away behind the spacecraft as they >> But initially they would fall down and they would make that trail for a good amount of time as they slowly moved out a shot. But yeah, there there was a blast and it looks to it looks now that this was coincident with the root of the the fin or the tail flapper on I guess you could call it, right? Uh and our the general feeling in the community that this blast was something related to the oxygen vent system because we've seen previously there are two vent pipes that come down through that region and exhaust out the back. We've seen this in previous lights. I don't know if they're still there, but that seems to be the opinion that I'm getting. So, something over pressured in there exploded and damaged that region. And it probably did the same on the other side because during re-entry, the two places where we see extensive damage on the flaps are in those regions on both sides. So that probably was the reason they began damaging the the flaps >> on the descent. >> There was definitely both sides that was um affected somewhat. I mean, one side had definitely had the much bigger pop. Um and yeah, like you say, there's lines that run down >> about the only thing we can sort of think of is, you know, there's engine chill systems that are that are down in that region as well. So, you know, could be anything like that, but we're sort of waiting for SpaceX to confirm. Um yeah, >> it was an event that happened very very quickly. It wasn't like builtup gases that suddenly combusted. You can actually step through the footage and there's one frame where it's like normal and then white on the bottom. And that you can tell is because this is a CMOS sensor that reads out one line at a time. So the bottom half is a different time from the top half. And just by looking at the rise time, you can see that the rise time was less than a millisecond, which means this was a an event that happened very quickly. It wasn't like a combustion event where it started burning. Uh it was it wasn't like a deflogration. It was something that happened very very rapidly. So that's you know that's an observation. >> U so Marcus take us through the rest of the descent. >> Yeah. Um well I mean after that event the big thing that we wanted to know was you know are these aft flaps going to um hold up? Because obviously it was there was damage on both of them. Obviously more on one side and uh you know as we sort of got further down into the re-entry where the heat really starts to build up and the and the G-forces start to pick up. You could really see it starting to glow and melt away some of those areas. Um there was sort of flappy pieces of stainless steel sheeting which is 4 mm sort of thick stuff. So it's not uh typ but you know in the in these pressures it's just waving around like a piece of you know tissue paper. It's almost bizarre to see it. Um, and you know, so the the apprehension is like, oh man, is this g thing going to hold together? However, what we really wanted to know was the forward fins because the forward fins had been moved in this block two design. They had been moved more forward and sort of leewood, which is uh more towards the back of the vehicle, not towards the heat shield side. So, what that means is that the plasma can flow sort of around the hinge instead of directly over the top of it like it had been in previous flights where they were uh just melting through that hinge area. Anyway, that was beautiful. That was the one thing that I really wanted to see from re-entry, seeing that those forward fins perform really nicely. And as far as I can see, there was no damage that we could see from the camera views cuz there was cameras on all four fins. We were seeing views from all that. And apart from the two aft areas which had obvious obviously been affected by this event earlier on, no, no problem. And you know, as we got further down into that, you know, down towards max peak heating and stuff, it was clear that the the aft flaps were going to hold up quite fine. The the big question at that point was would they still have the control authority? Was there anything else damaged in there that would stop it from performing a on target landing in the ocean? Uh so yeah, it really amazing watching those scenes and probably some of the more I don't know some of the scenes from that especially since there's little pieces of um uh these experimental tiles spitting all sorts of stuff out and probably ablating away very photogenic because it's there's all these sparks and stuff coming from all sorts of places and I'd love to know each intricate detail apart from the obvious flap damage. Uh what was going on there? Really cool. >> Yeah, I mean you could see that there was a lot of testing that was going on. there was heat tiles attached to the the side of the fin and so they clearly were testing out different materials. Uh you could see a lot and when we get to the end you could see some other stuff that they were clearly testing and they even said that they were intentionally having no tiles in sections and all kinds of other tests that they were doing. You feel very confident. I was watching that those the bottom flaps and I was like, "Oh, this is a race against time. Those things are are getting pretty toasty. >> Yeah. Um it was really just the area that was affected was was really all that we saw being um you sort of melted away. I was actually pretty impressed that it didn't creep further up away from the damaged area. Um so yeah, what did you think of that, Scott? >> Yeah, I mean look look the the fins are designed with multiple attach points and we definitely saw a forward fin in a previous flight that barely was hanging by a thread. So, but we knew that they could survive damage from the front and back and still the control system that actuates these is a dynamic system. It's learning as it's feeling the control authority from when these fins are being degraded. It's compensating. And in the middle of this, they're actually testing the limits of the control system. They actually, you see that they actually did some very large moves to adjust the attitude in the spacecraft. You know, they they pitched the whole thing forwards. They brought it up. They I mean, they performed cross- range maneuvers. And while they're doing this, of course, they are steering towards their spot in the ocean that they're targeting. Um, but yeah, I mean, I as soon as one of those was gone, they would be dead. The other big question, of course, that everybody had was we'd seen a very energetic event near the engines. The engines are pretty important for landing. Were they and we actually saw bits that had hit the im the engines had impinged on the engines. They could glide all the way to a perfect touchdown spot and then the engines might not light. So we were worried that that might happen. And so we were like we were following this right until the very end. >> And what and what did we see? >> A flawless touchdown. It was absolutely the engines lit up on Q. It transitioned out of the belly flop. We didn't get any camera views from inside the bay. I think the camera might have been destroyed by that point. And then we did get a camera view live from a buoy in the middle of the ocean via Starlink with its 360 camera sending us imagery of this booster or this Starlink, sorry, Starship coming down. And it's funny how the first time it came down, I was like, "Wow, amazing. It's coming down." And then it's like, "Wait, that's the wrong color. What's up? What's up with that? Is that >> What is wrong with you? Why are you >> orange?" Oh jeez. >> Is that a space shuttle? >> What? Yeah. Yeah. Orange rocket bad is what I keep hearing the Starship people say. Well, now you've got an orange rocket. What are you going to do? >> Now what are you going to do? Yeah. >> What are you gonna do? You're now team orange rocket. >> Now, can we just have a quick Commonwealth check here for the pronunciation of buoy? >> I would I would say boy, by the way. I would say boy, but I'm trying to say American. >> Yeah, I would say boy. >> But you would say boy as well. >> It just confuses people when you say a boy floating in the middle of the ocean. >> It's we would say buoy in in in Canada. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. But I mean, it does come from the word the French, you know, the word for buoyancy, right? It's not bu >> I know. I know. >> Yeah. >> I just, you know, every now and then I just want to sort of follow. >> But it does help with understanding what it is. >> Heritage. Yeah. >> Sometimes the the evolved word actually makes more sense, >> right? Uh but yeah, that was incredible. And in fact, we got another video that was released today. Well, actually, I think we should we should talk about how for the last, you know, before that was released, there was a lot of speculation as to why what the the state of the booster was. Like literally, even I saw Eric Burgerer tweeting this image and saying, "The best heat shield is no heat shield." clearly implying that the heat shield had been completely removed, which was kind of >> well, there were other less SpaceX fanboy type people who were implying that the entire heat shield had been ripped off, >> right? >> Which is a weird claim, right? Because I mean, you you're looking at the entry right down to the point where they cut away from the onboard cameras and all the shielding across the side is clearly still intact. So, I I don't Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, you could imagine that the center is getting damaged worse than the edges or whatnot cuz that's where the missing tiles were. But, you know, I I was definitely on team this is some sort of orange deposit that has formed and I have some really good theories now in the last 24 hours. I've talked to some real experts on the subject, but >> yeah, we've done a little reporting on this as well because it seems to emanate from one tile. Yeah, Jack has a really good photo of that one tile and it does actually look kind of orange. >> Right. Right. And so you could like whether this was intentional or and that it was it was combusting and they were using that as a way to like lock in the heat flow on the on the heat tiles to get a better sense of what it looked like. It would be interesting to hear the official SpaceX response. And then the other thing that we saw was the top of it was white. >> Right. >> Yeah. That's really still confusing to me. I I don't know if there's another experimental tile that is trying something different up around the nose, but I mean at one point the nose would definitely have been getting a a good chunk of the heat with the angle. >> They were using a lower angle of attack all the way down. So they would have been putting more heat flux on that nose than they had previously. And because it's a two directional curve, it's actually got a a sharper rate of curve on it. Therefore, it should be seeing heat more heat flux naturally. Uh so you know it could be that they literally have managed to burn through the vitrius uh you know glass layer on top and expose the stuff underneath. That would be unusual but not impossible. >> Yeah. Because I mean I've I've actually got a couple of sample ones and and really that black coating is just a real thin sort of layer on top of it. It's mostly white tile. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So if that ablated away that would make sense if that was >> although it does look a little bit like there's a deposit there. Like if you look at some of those new photos uh just from earlier today, it looks like it's almost a deposit. So it's like I I really want to know what that is. >> Yeah. So the new photos came out and not only are they utterly spectacular and mind-blowing and like jaw-dropping, they also pretty much show that the tiles are still there. You can still see the tile patterns. They are just now orange. >> Right. Right. And so I I think we can just mark that this is an homage to the space shuttle. When you think about it, the original space shuttle tank was white and then later on they change it to orange. >> It's art. >> It's art. That's what it is. I mean that the Starship landing, the way it belly flops down and transition to a landing. That is poetry in motion as far as I'm concerned. Right. >> I think it's a terrifying nightmare. But I will never get inside. No way. Not a chance. >> I know you got a pilot's license. pilot that Scott. >> Oh dear. Oh dear. Dear, I have been flying some very high performance jets recently, but uh I'm not sure I'm ready to fly a Starship just yet. >> Tim wanted to get on that on that boat, but you know, >> I think I would need a lot more flight experience on that. But yeah, one one good theory that has come my way uh as to the orange coloring is if the the tile that it was sourced from or the whatever is the transpiration cooled tile. The idea is that you the original idea of a starship is you would use transpiration cooling, right? They would blow methane through it and it would perform a protective layer. Well, people that know a lot about atmospheric chemistry and shock heating and things like that have pointed out that if you have a largely nitrogen atmosphere and you're blowing methane into it, it actually form it's an analog of the chemical activity on Titan with its orange thins particulate smog in the the upper atmosphere. So, we could be seeing something like that. Uh, and I'm I'm really interested in that because I was actually at NASA as a few weeks ago and they were doing like a Titan re-entry experiment. So, I that's that's where I'm at leaning right now. >> Yeah. And I've got a recent interview on the channel talking with somebody about transpiration cooling for uh hyper velocity vehicles and we talked quite a bit about whether it would work on Starship and what are the best kinds of gases to use. So, it is really interesting to sort of think about that. I I I doubt that's what they were doing, but it would be amazing if it was. Um, so then Marcus it I guess lands in the ocean, explodes as they do, I guess. Finally, I got my explosion, I guess. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So, that's, you know, that's another >> to be clear. Scheduled disassembly. >> That's right. That's right. It's sort of a criticism I see. It's like, oh, it just blew up again. It's like, you're not looking at this. I mean, it's it's a 50 m tall roughly, you know, with 4 mm thick steel. It's not made to fall over and stay in, you know, I mean, they can they can put all these reinforcements on it so that it has a chance of surviving better, but I mean, you're trying to cut down mass of the vehicle to to get payload to orbit. So, you don't really want to design in things that that aren't needed. And, you know, to say, "Oh, it exploded." Yeah, of course it exploded. It fell over. It's like it's one of those things. That's right. That's right. So, I don't see a problem there. As soon as you break the thing in half, the methane, the oxygen mixes straight together. You've got flames everywhere. Of course, it exploded. So, um yeah, but the the other thing uh that is worth looking closer into, um I think one of the engines looked to be underperforming out of the three. I'm not 100% confident in that from the footage that we saw just earlier today. There there was just one with a lower a lower thrust on there than I would have expected. It seemed to have a bit of a lean. So whether they had some issues due to that little explosion that may have ruptured some chill lines, I'm not sure, but uh yeah, so we'll be looking for information on that. >> Now we'll move into the kind of future and speculation phase of this conversation. And the first thing, Scott, is let's talk about the launch platforms because, as we said, the previous ship that was supposed to be on this flight detonated and took the test tower with it, and so they had to do their hot fire test on the launch tower. Where where are we? They're they're building another one, but where are we in this sort of larger picture? >> Well, we have one more V2 ship if I'm counting correctly. Right. So, if they're going to fly that one next, they can again do the test on that system. Meanwhile, the V3 test stand uh has started work earlier than they planned, I expect. So, >> but you have this this issue, which is like the thing we're all waiting for is to see Starship go orbital and then fires engines return and try to make that Mechazilla capture. But if your test stand is your launch stand is your capture stand, that's putting a lot of eggs in one basket. So, it makes sense to kind of wait and break this process up. >> I mean, if you think about it though, they're they're only going to have to do one capture with a V2 Starship if they choose to do it on next flight. So, it doesn't matter if it destroys its test stand, >> right? It's not needed anymore. And and then you might argue that well if this V3 Starship that's a new Starship so we should probably go back to demonstrating that it can relight its engines in orbit before we launch one to orbit. >> Yeah, there's a couple of sides to this argument really. You've got um so so the Massiey's test stand was all set up for and it was just a stand really um so not as not as dramatic to try to repair and replace that than anything at the launch site. Um the the thing with the Massie site is it was all set up for block two these version two starships to be and boosters to be tested and there was only the one there was only the two to be tested at the time. So um given that you've only got these two block twos left to fly one of those that has just gone um the launch tower was set up for the block twos. The next launch tower that they're trying to finalize now is set up for the block 3es. So the old launch tower uh well the old launch pad pad 1's orbital launch mount that really only needed uh to survive intact for two more launches. they kind of took the risk, you know, so let's instead of having to repair Masses for a for a ship that we've only got two more of, let's adapt this and that way they didn't have to worry too much about um any of the fallout from Masses and in fact they could move on to upgrading Masses to the block 3 stuff which they would have had to do anyway. So if anything, Masses is probably further ahead with the block two upgrades than it would have been. So there's two ways to look at it. And then the next issue I want to bring up is the fact that they did launch those eight dummy Starlinks and demonstrating that they could probably launch with more of them and if they go into an orbital trajectory, they should be able to actually launch a full cadre of Starlinks. So, are we at the point where they could be revenue neutral where the value they get from launching a bunch of of V2 star Starlinks pays for the cost of the test whether or not they get the Starship back? >> I mean, so they they at this point they have the biggest heavy lift rocket that is currently operational if they wanted to expend Starship, right? Uh if they wanted to just put a giant fairing on it, they could be launching huge payloads and everything. But yeah, with Star with Starlink, I'm not going to say re revenue neutral, but they could certainly actually make revenue. They could actually try launching these, you know, what is it? V2, are they V3 now? Whatever. The big ass Starlink is the tech. Yeah, the big ones. >> The ones that give us broadband in our pocket everywhere in the world or whatever. >> Yeah, you'll still need a reasonably big pocket for that antenna. You know, maybe you'll wear it on your head. My wife was watching the she was like, "Is this just a big Starlink ad?" They question pretty hard. >> I mean, Starlink is a major revenue center for SpaceX. They now have three 7 million subscribers they announced. So, that is uh what $7 billion a year. I don't know >> like actually that um next year well they were saying there's an article that was saying that by next year they're hoping to have a higher amount of revenue coming in from Starlink than NASA's entire budget based on the the current budget proposal. It's like wow that's crazy. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I'm going to be putting Starlink in my plane so I can live stream while flying. That would be cool. >> That's cool. Uh yeah, I'm not sure how legal that would be, >> but um yeah, I mean >> the captain may tell you to turn off your electronic devices. >> Yeah, but I am the captain. I'm the pilot. >> Feel free to ignore the captain. >> Um so now I want to address the elephant in the room and that is Artemis, the long shadow of the Artemis program. Humans on the moon 2027. That's like, you know, 18 months from now it begins. And we don't have a lot of time before we actually are supposed to see humans setting foot on the moon. And I think the the thing that like that delay the the explosions of the starships like what that cost them was time that they they pretty much lost almost a year in going through this process and yet the the time is ticking. Um so Marcus, where are we do you think now? What's left in our to-do list for Starship to be the human landing system for the moon for the upcoming Artemis? >> Yeah, I mean the thing I like to hop on about a little is legs. There's just one part of the puzzle. It's like come on, we need a leg design somewhere to to have Starship actually be able to land on the moon for a start. But the biggest part of the puzzle really is the propellant refilling systems. And you need to have a vehicle up in orbit that's serving as some sort of depot. uh and uh you know you need to be refilling that. So apart from getting to orbit and doing a Starlink deploy test which I'm actually hoping will be the next mission if they think that if they're confident enough in the Raptor relight all that sort of stuff then then finally we're at a stage where okay we're getting payload to orbit we can deploy stuff. Great. At that point what you could almost do is if you can send up one empty Starship that's just serving as a depo. Uh you could essentially just top off with each Starlink launch that you test out. you could just top off and do some of these propellant refilling tests to see if you can slowly trickle fill this depot in or you know fast forward um a year hopefully you've got so many Starink missions going up and and so many little propellant refilling tests that all of a sudden it it starts to really steamroll and that's the hope of course but yeah there's a long way to go >> madness I mean you're looking at 15 to 20 full Starship launches to just refill the tanker to be able to make its way to uh to the moon if you're going to then turn that into more >> uh all of the intricacies of that process. I mean, we just don't know if you can transfer propellants >> in we don't know what the pilot we don't know if you can have the cryogenic propellants last for long periods of time in the conditions of space. There's just there's so many unknowns and so much is riding like we need to see the tank in space. We need to see it get refilled. We need to see the human landing system go to the moon. We need to see a test landing. >> There's so many uh steps to take off and it it seems implausible unless everything goes 100% correctly at this point on with no issues and it's just step after step and they nail every everything. It seems hard to it seems hard to really uh see that happening. Um but good news is getting its budget slashed. So >> that's right. you know, there's less of an urgency from NASA's perspective as well. >> But but don't worry because we've just heirically just in case you guys are missing that, >> not pleased. >> Don't worry, we have Blue Origin, right? Blue Origin. They are known for developing their projects really, really quickly. >> Wait a minute. Weren't they supposed to launch a rocket to Mars at some point? >> They're launching their rocket to Mars at the end of next month with the Escapade. So yeah, it's currently scheduled for 29th of September. >> Yeah, the one supposed to launch in March. >> Very much looking forward to their lander. I mean, they're trying to do a moon lander mission and they say by the end of this year and >> I would love to see that. Uh that would be really >> Yeah, I would I would like to see honestly like I would like to see Artemis at least modified in such a manner that whichever company delivers a working lander, they get to carry the first one. Right, Rob? It's going to be Firefly. Firefly Aerospace. >> Yeah, but you can't put humans on Firefly unless they're very smart. >> They'll pull it off. They'll pull it off. They They're the ones who landed Blue Ghost. Everything worked great. They're the ones I trust. Put a little capsule on top where an astronaut can just hang out inside, fly them to the moon, and and return them back from Earth. >> Why do you need a capsule? You could have an astronaut just an EVA suit for the whole flight, >> right? just like just >> like we've seen this in the 1960s, the the whatever the lunar escape system where they could just sit on a basically a rocket powered lawn chair. >> Yes. Uh they didn't even need IMUs. They figured out how to fly it. They they didn't even need controls. They actually figured out you could fly it just by leaning left and right to steer. >> Yeah. And they had an inflatable tent that you could just sit on the surface of the moon and and wait for rescue. So yeah, NASA has already thought of all of these these ideas. Um well uh I think we've reached the end of our we're getting silly now. So uh Scott Marcus uh always a pleasure. What Scott what are some interesting projects you're working on now that you're retired? You must be working on all kinds of stuff. >> I mean okay so like obviously I'm I'm working on all my aviation stuff but that's a whole separate thing you guys aren't interested in. Right now I'm actually there's a whole series of videos from NASA as which I recorded while I was there uh in July and very specifically I'm looking at this the Titan atmosphere shock tube simulation because I think that's kind of relevant to why we might get orange uh chemicals on the the surface of Starship. So that is something I'm working on literally as we speak. Well, not literally but before this and after this. >> Yeah. Yeah. Right now you're kicking back in your backyard, drinking a beer, talking about >> Yeah. Drinking beer. >> Yeah. Marcus, what are you working on? >> Um, yeah. Know, I mean, now that we've had sort of had this flight and it's been, you know, successful again, we're really sort of dialing in to see what's going to happen with all the block uh three upgrades and stuff as they happen. And, you know, as as to your point earlier, how are they going to catch Starship and the booster and all this sort of stuff? And you know, we expect a lot of upgrades going on even on the initial tower so they can essentially use both for that purpose. Um, and you know, of course, over in Florida, you've got multiple towers that are being there's one tower already there. They're already working on building a new one. So, you know, we've got uh we've got Sean, our photographer, and stuff down at Star Base, and we're trying to dial in to make sure that we're capturing everything that we need to talk about each week because we really focus on the Starship nitty-gritty stuff each weekend. So, yeah, that's that's us ticking along. Yep. And for people who are interested, I've got an interview that I did about a week ago with a legendary architect with the European Space Agency, Marcus Langraph, about Skyhooks and he is working on a practical design for skyhooks and we talk about that and space elevators and you know he is a one of the >> most senior people at the European Space Agency and yet is still super excited about nonrocket forms of of getting to space and and getting into higher orbit. So, it's a really interesting conversation with with somebody who knows what they're talking about. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. So, check out that that interview. All right. Well, guys, always a pleasure. Uh if people want this to happen again, Starship has to continue to be successful, I guess. >> Yes. Keep flying Starship, right? Don't stop, SpaceX. I'm telling you now, don't stop. >> They'll Yeah, they'll stop. Like, in case you This is your incentive to do this, right? To get it done. >> Yeah. And big props to them all because, you know, it was absolutely astounding watching all these steps that have been made. So, you know, congrats SpaceX. Let's keep it moving. >> To everyone except whoever installed the COPV on Starship 136. >> Oh, no. Oh, he just called them out. All right. Thanks, guys. And we'll see you next time. >> I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Marcus and Scott. And as always, if you aren't subscribed to their channels, they are terrific. And so you should go right now and subscribe to both of their channels. I'll put links down in the show notes so you can do that. Like of course you have already, but in case you haven't, you definitely should. I'll give you some final thoughts, but first I'd like to thank our patrons. Thanks to Abe Kingson, Andrew M. Gross, Bailey Griffin, Brian Bod, Carwin, Chuck Hopkins, Commander Block, Sign Nelson, Dave Hilton, David Matz, Evan Pro, Greg Phy, Hudson Moore, James Clark, Jeremy Matter, Jim Burke, Jordan Young, Josh Schultz, Marcelitz, Michael Pcell, Monzo, Nick Borquez, Nick Solari, Paul Robot, Rank Kaidu, Richard Williams, Sean Sergeant, Steven Fowler, Munley, Vlad Chiplin, and Wolf Gang Claus who support us at the master of the universe level and all our patrons. All your support means the universe to us. So, this is going to be one of those roar shack tests where people watch this video and then they get out of it what they have their already preconceived notions about. And so, people are going to say that we're Starship boosters, that we're SpaceX fanboys. Uh, and then other people are going to say that we're not giving them enough props and that we're too skeptical. You know, this is what people always say. And so, for me, as a person who tries to be as objective as possible, uh, I get complaints from both sides of the spectrum. And in fact, Marcus and Scott do too. So, I think that tells us that gives us our way to sort of guide like if we're not making everybody angry to some degree, then we're not doing our job right. And so, I think this was a launch that that we really have to give props to the engineers at SpaceX who pulled this off, that they were able to work through a lot of the issues that we saw with the exploding Starships and they made this work. But there's a long road ahead. We have, you know, as I mentioned in the video, there's a lot of things that need to be done before this becomes the spacecraft that's going to take humans to the surface of the moon. And way longer before this becomes the spacecraft that takes humans to the surface of Mars and brings them home safely to create what I think is probably not a great idea, building a city on Mars. I don't think there's any point to that. So, uh, it was amazing to see the progress. I'm looking forward to the growth of reusable rocketry. I am skeptical about both the uh the long-term implications of this as well as even just the underlying justifications for why this spacecraft exists and yet is hard to deny it's so cool to watch these rockets progress. Uh so I here's to everyone at SpaceX and I really hope that the next mission goes successfully as well. I look forward to your comments down below. We'll see you next time.