Hey everybody, checking back to the Elon Musk Podcast, this is a show where we discuss the critical Crossroads, The Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink, and I'm your host, Will Walden. One more thing before we start Google Podcasts is being discontinued by Google. So if you want to continue getting episodes of the Elon Musk podcast, please check us out over at YouTube Music.
Search us out over there and that's where you'll be able to find our our podcast through Google products. Thank you so much for understanding. I had no control over this. Google pulled the Google Podcast app off of Android and I want to let you know where to continue finding the show. Over at YouTube Music Search for Elon Musk podcast. Let's talk about some SpaceX news here. The FAA and SpaceX are working very hard together to make sure that the next flight of Starship
happens without a hitch. Now Starship IFT 3, the integrated flight test that just happened a little while ago was pretty much a success, right? So now they're moving forward with the IFT 4 launch and hopefully everything goes well with that launch. Now the FAA has to work with SpaceX in order to give them a flight license. They have to make sure that everything's safe for SpaceX, the rocket, the workers and also people in the way of the Rockets flight. That's important.
They don't want to hurt anybody, any property or anything going forward with these flights. Now this is important because SpaceX launches the Starship over the Gulf of Mexico and apparently according to the IFT 3 flight path, it was going to land in the Indian Ocean. The Starship was, the booster is going to land in the Gulf of Mexico. OK, so the Starship might land in the Indian Ocean. Again, we're not 100% sure what's going on with this.
We are guessing. Everyone's guesstimating that it will happen similarly, but there is some FAA hinting at what may happen for this next one. So before anything happens, FAA and SpaceX will be working together to make sure to save the whole operation. They have to make sure that SpaceX uses the time between this flight, the last flight, IFT 3 and IFT 4, to save the area and make sure that they put anything in place that they found was wrong in the last
flight. So anything in the booster or anything in the ship, they have to fix it. They have to change it in order to make it a safer flight for the future. Now there's a possible flight in May, but it's not guaranteed. Right now the FAA needs to modify the launch license due to changes, potential changes in the flight profile. We don't know exactly where this is going to land, but it might land similarly close to where it was going to land in the Indian Ocean, depending on the mission.
Now the FAA will prioritize the public safety over anything else, and public safety is paramount, for one thing, mainly. But mostly there there's two things. One mainly is the booster in the Gulf of Mexico, because that's going to try to do a soft landing on a virtual tower. According to Elon on Flight 4. And I made a video about Flight 4 and Flight 5 of Starship.
So flight 4, they want to do a virtual tower in the Gulf of Mexico. This means that they're going to do the normal flight like normal, like IFT 3, fly the ship to the Indian Ocean, get the booster hot stage separation, all of that stuff. But after the hot stage separation, they're going to send the booster into the Gulf of Mexico, land it vertically in the Gulf, similar to what they would do with a launch tower. Land it. They're going to make a virtual tower.
Maybe they're going to use some sort of a RVR set up so they know exactly what's going to happen. I don't know what they're going to do at that point, but hopefully they have a really good understanding of the landing mechanics of the booster because they haven't even gotten it close to landing now. Ift 1 ift 2, ift 3 We haven't even seen the booster get close to landing in the Gulf of Mexico, so I have T4 if they can nail this.
Elon has said in his latest talk that he wants to land the booster at Starbase and I don't know if this is a great idea. I'm. I don't know. I'm so scared of this. I don't want them to move back six months because they landed a booster but it wasn't prepared to land yet. I'm just, I'm terrified that they could blow something up or something could happen. They haven't got to Rudd at Starbase and they could set themselves back six months. Now I know this is a thing that
they have thought about. They're rocket scientists after all. They're engineers. They're scientists. They do this for a living. They make a bunch of money doing this. And I'm not that guy. I am a coder. I know how difficult code is, but landing a rocket, not 100% an expert at that. And that's why I default to the engineers and the scientists at SpaceX. And I trust them that they'll do the right thing. But I'm also scared that they're going to set themselves back.
I just don't want them to do that. But the landing attempt in the Gulf of Mexico, let me know what you think about it in the comments below. I think it's scary. That's all I'm going to say. It's got to be a wild ride. It's got to be excitement guaranteed, as Elon says. But we do have some information from an FAA spokesperson, Jim Coleman said that I think we could possibly get there, which means a launch in May.
I'm not going to say we will get there absolutely, but I won't say it's out of the question either. On the possibility of a May launch, he said that the other day, three days ago. He also said they're going to do some different things with this particular missions, referring to changes in the flight profile. So IFT 3, they did normal flight profile booster back to the Gulf of Mexico and it did a red and today it exploded over the Gulf of Mexico, which is fine. They expected something like
that and they did. Hot stage firing was great. They did the Starlink door. They open up the Starlink door, which was fantastic. And they did some communications with the ground we've heard about. They did some live video feeds, which we didn't expect them to do, but it was fantastic as well. And then they tried to land the Starship in the Indian Ocean.
Now IFT 4, they're going to, as Elon said as well, they're going to try to get the Starship to the height, basically a melting point of the Starship as it reenters the atmosphere into the Indian Ocean. And then it's going to their. I think they're going to explode to Indian in the Indian Ocean. So we're expecting that. Now there's other things, the virtual tower landing, not exactly sure what that is, but Elon has said it, they might do a public safety review.
The FAA might do a public safety review with a full mishap investigation or from the full mishap investigation that SpaceX does just to speed up the process. And I think that's what's going to happen from here on out. Elon and SpaceX and company will do a full mishap investigation form the previous launch and then the FAA will look at it and do a public safety review depending on that mishap information and investigation information that they send over.
They're both willing and able to do this fast. FAA say they are willing to go fast by may they want to and the separation of the public safety review. Hence it a potential difference between public safety flaws and broader mishap investigation details. Now SpaceX is going to have to do some things though before they launch this rocket. Pre launch checks FAA likely conducts conducts a thorough review of the launch vehicle and launch procedures to ensure that they meet safety standards as
normal. They should do this. It can involve inspections, simulations, and analysis of new potential risks for IF T4 and IF T5 going forward, the flight path, if it's changed the trajectory, FAA might assess the flight path, a trajectory to ensure a minimal risk to populated areas and also debris. What could happen? Debris and blast radius. So if they run somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, what's that blast radius look like? What's the debris going to look like?
And where's the good debris going to end up since the ocean is so huge? The debris from it's a big rocket to us, but to the ocean it's nothing. Don't think Elon and company and the FEA are going to worry about A1 rocket booster or one rocket in the Gulf of Mexico or the Indian Ocean. Now another thing that the FEA works on is the launch abort system, the Rudd system, basically the FTS. Basically this thing blows up a rocket if something goes wrong. And Elon and company have shown
that it works. After the IFT, one mishap where it didn't work and the things spun out of control, now they know what they're doing. I FT2I FT three. Both worked great. The they're working forward. They're working with SpaceX on the CFAA and SpaceX are working on this critical safety flaws. Elon and company are working on those. The FAA might want to confirm there aren't any critical safety flaws for the next rocket flight
profile. Like I said before, overall public safety is a paramount for the FAA and SpaceX as well. If anything happens, public safety wise, Elon and company are going to be pushed back, possibly for months, maybe a year or two depending on the severity of the public safety incident. Now IFT 5, this is going to be a wild ride. If they do that booster landing in the Gulf of Mexico, what's going to happen? I want them to go as fast as possible.
And of course iterative design is the best way to do rocket design, apparently because we know that Elon and Sace X, they're killing it right now, They're doing great work. O There's no reason why they should not continue doing this in the future. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your
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