Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company and Neuralink. I'm your host, Will Walden. Well. These lights are bright. See Elon, you know, a lot of times you say things me or you and they edit them. So I noticed this panel description was A conversation with Elon Musk.
The real title of this panel was How to Save the Human Race and other like topics, A Conversation with Elon Musk. And so before we begin, Elon, I thought we might want to go back in time 11 years when you were sitting on this stage. That's hot water. And this is regularly you can take your choice. Alright, sounds good. OK. So eleven years ago, Alon was talking about the things that will have the biggest impact on the future of humanity that he was thinking about in college.
And so let's run that video of 11 almost 11 years ago to today. I guess, you know, when I was in college that I thought about things that were supposed to affect the future of humanity and, and there were three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and those were the Internet, sustainable energy, of which solar power is the production side and electric cars the consumption side. And then humanity becoming a
multi founded species. And so we cut that short, but there was two others you talked about. One was modifying the human genome. Yeah, I'm just, I'm not saying we should. I'm just saying that that's the thing would really affect the. Future and next AI. So a lot of people didn't thinking about these same five things when they were in school, particularly humanity on multi planets at that time.
Well, sci-fi was certainly thinking about it, but you know, I think at some point we want to make science fiction, not fiction forever. And yeah, so like, let's make life multi planetary and be a space parking civilization, be out there among the stars. You know, I think there are things that like you have to be excited about the future life. Life cannot just be about solving one problem after
another. They have to be things that that, that really sort of move your heart and that make you excited to wake up in the morning. And I think being becoming a spacefaring civilization is one of those things. If you ask kids anywhere around the world, like what is, what are some of the most inspiring things? You know, you can ask like 5 year old, 6 year old anywhere in the world and they're going to say, you know, space exploration is one of those things.
And, and we want to make sure that we, we're, you know, that Apollo is not the high watermark. In fact, you mentioned at one point that you wrote a letter offering to run the Apollo program. I believe you would have done a fantastic job. But the but the point is that the, the Apollo program was something that was inspiring to everyone around the world. And we, we don't want the Apollo program to be the high watermark
of, of human exploration. And yeah, we want, I think you want to have some some sense that the future is going to be better than the past, that we're going to be out there going to other star systems. And you know what? What you see in a science, science fiction, non dystopian sci-fi story, of which there aren't many, but like Star Trek I suppose. Well, Speaking of Star Trek, a lot, you know when I think about you. Let's look at sparks from Star Trek here.
Space, the Finding Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Her ongoing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before. So when I think about you, I think about Spock and Captain Kirk, and you're going to take us to places we've never gone before. Yeah, that's the idea. You know, if we if we send probes out there, we might, I mean we might find the remains of long dead alien
civilizations. If physics is correct, the the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. Earth is about four and a half billion years old. So but at 13.8 billion years, a civilization that even lasted a million years is 3 digits past the decimal point. And if you consider human civilization, I, I, I dated from like the first writing. So that first writing was the ancient Sumerians, archaic Greek Preak uniform around 5500 years ago. So that is one millionth of
Earth's lifespan. That's how long writing has existed. So if we were to last as a civilization for a million years, that would be incredible. And we would actually probably be in every part of the Galaxy. So that this is, this causes me to to think that, well, where are the aliens? It's the Fermi question. You know, the, the great physicist, Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi, he, he's like, where are they now? A lot of people think there are aliens among us.
Well, there was that. There was that movie Men in Black. Yes, yes, yes. Told us they're among us. And Elvis really went back to his own planet. Yeah. Well, I mean, really, a lot of people think there are aliens, but I get asked that a lot. And for for some reason, a lot of the same people who think there are aliens among us didn't think we don't think we went to the moon, which I'm like, think about that for a second. Yeah. So, but I, I, I think I would, I mean, if I've not seen any
evidence of aliens. And SpaceX with the Starling constellation has roughly 6000 satellites. And and not once have we had to maneuver around a UFO. OK. So we were like, hey, what's that? Is that an alien has occurred Never. So. So I'm like, OK, I don't see any evidence of aliens. And I look at it and if somebody has evidence of aliens in a, in a, you know, that's not just a fuzzy BLOB, then I'd love to see it, love to hear about it. And but I don't think there is.
So which is actually reason for concern because you could if, if any civilization in the Milky Way, in our Galaxy were to last for a million years, even with a speed of travel that's far below the speed of light, you know, like a few percent of speed of light, they could easily have explored and colonized the whole Galaxy. So, so they haven't.
So why not? I think the the the answer might be, or perhaps probably is that that civilization is precarious and rare, and that we you should really think of human civilization as being like a tiny candle in a vast darkness, and we should do everything possible to show that that
candle does not go out. Well, Ron, I thought one of the interesting things for the people on X viewing this session and the people in the audience here is that maybe I'd give you a few of your quotes and you can comment on them. OK, let's start with this one. Free speech, freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy. Without it, America ends.
Yes, it's it's obviously not possible to have democratic elections if people do not have access to the information that would allow them to make the right decision on a candidate or a party. So if, if speech is constrained in a fundamental way, you, you just can't expect people to make the right decision or an informed decision because they are prevented from being informed. I think it's, it's, it's a very foundation element. It's, you know, if they're like, why?
Why is free speech free of speech? The 1st Amendment is because people came from countries where if you spoke freely, you would be imprisoned or killed. That was why they were like, you know what, we should make sure that we got that one. Remember that time when they tried tried to kill us back in the other country just just for saying we didn't like a political candidate? Well, let's, let's, let's make sure that's OK in America.
So and so actually in a lot of parts of the world, you know, you can't really say most parts of the world, you can't really say what you want to say without some bad consequences. So as long as people forget, like why is the Constitution there? The Constitution there is to protect the the people from the government. So like if if they're it's to make it hard to change things. That's why the Constitution exists.
Yeah. I mean, if anyone here has been through the legal immigration process, I mean, I've been been through it. It's only gotten worse since 911 and with COVID it's, it's an it's, it's a sort of Kafka, Kafka esque very long bizarre process to immigrate legally to the US when I have friends of mine who you know, they, they can't get their their wife to have a green card. It's like insane. So on the other hand, it's you can hop across the border in the South probably.
It's just like very easy. I went to the border myself to see like what's going on? Is this real or like, is this propaganda or real? And so I just went there and I'm like, oh, it is real. OK, this is crazy. You know, we've got situations where people are pouring across the the border like it's World War Z and I'm like, it just doesn't seem healthy. So I'm like, are we checking anyone here or like what's going on? And you know, we don't. It does not say that.
I mean, I'm a big believer in immigration, but to have unvetted immigration at large scale is a recipe for disaster. So I'm in favor of greatly expediting legal immigration, but but having a secure southern border. So there's there's some vetting of who comes into the United States. I think this is just sensible. All right, let's let's now link Starlinked education. We're basically building the Internet in space.
Why it matters? Starlink is a massive enabler for people in remote locations to learn anything. Yes, you can learn almost anything for free on the Internet right now. For example, MIT has all of its lessons online. That's if you have Internet. If you don't, you're limited to books. It might be the number one technology that improves people's standard of living around the world. Starlink. Yeah, absolutely. So once you have access to the Internet, you have access to all
the world's information. But if you don't have access to the Internet or it's too expensive or low bandwidth, then you you cannot access the MIT lessons, you can't access all the information and you can't sell the goods and services that you produce. So Internet connectivity, I think is I think it might be certainly a candidate for one of the things that would do more to lift people out of poverty, out
of poverty than anything else. Because they can now sell their goods and services, they can learn anything and but without connectivity, they cannot. So I think, I think, I think Starling will actually like like move the GDP of countries, like it's going to be that kind of thing because what is what is GDP as a function of average productivity per person? And so if there's a technology that improves productivity per person, you would expect to see that actually reflected in the
gross domestic product? All right, civilization is fragile. I think it is. We should always regard civilization as fragile, Yeah. There is not an inevitable upward trajectory. A lot of civilizations have risen and fallen in recent
years. Yes, I I suspect most people in this room have actually read history, but if you haven't, I strongly recommend it. It sounds obvious, but you know, there's, there's been so many civilizations that have risen and fallen, many that we just don't have much of a record of, you know, like you mentioned, the ancient Sumerians, like their language was forgotten for a long time until it was finally decoded only in the last, I don't know, 2-3 hundred years,
but like it's not 1800 and something right In the 1800s, I think, but it's been very recent. Like so for several thousand years, nobody understood what those tablets meant. And because there were the ruins of a long dead civilization and there are many long dead civilizations, at some point our civilization will come to an end too. We just don't want it to be any time soon. So. Well, you've been quoted a number of times, Elon, on You'd like to die on Mars, but not on landing.
Yes, yes, I was, I was asked that in an interview if I wanted to die on Mars. But then I considered the corner case of dying on impact. And I'm like, except for that case, you know, you got to consider the various corner cases. So I mean, if I'm going to if you're going to die somewhere, might as well be Mars. I'd like to explore for a bit before, you know, dying. But yeah, I think I think we want to be a multi planet
civilization and like I think. I don't know if that's a response to my mission statements. Let's let's talk about that just for one second, then we're going to take some questions from the. I mean, I could accomplish this actually this year if I if I was willing to die on impact. The fundamental invention that is necessary for humanity to become a multi planet species is rapidly reusable, reliable rockets. Yeah, I was trying to sound like a pirate. RRRRRR.
But yeah, rapidly reusable, reliable rockets. So Space Pirates for the win. All right, here's some questions from the Audience Salon. Which one would you like to pick here? Well, I guess let me, let me, let me just touch upon why I think making life multiplanetary is important, because I think it's one of the things that gets us past one of the Fermi Great filters. So in in trying to sort of explain why do we not see aliens, there are various explanations for why we don't
see aliens. Like what stopped those civilizations from from expanding beyond their solar system and and and and, and what were the what were the sort of the, the sometimes called like Fermi filters? Well, if you don't become a multi planet civilization, then you're then you're simply waiting around until you you die from a self-inflicted wound or from some natural disaster like the dinosaurs. You get hit by a big meteorite or something like that. The eventually something like
that's going to happen. And if you wait a lot around long enough, the sun will expand to engulf Earth and will be incinerated. So that that for sure is going to happen. Now we've got a we've got some time before that happens. There are more near term risks, but we want to try to get past the Fermi filter of being a single planet civilization. Now this is going to this is also this is going to be somewhat cerebral to many people
listening. But I mean, if but like, I think this is pretty this is actually very important. We want to get past the Fermi filter of a single planet civilization. The point is not to to move from Earth to another planet and let Earth die. That's not what I'm saying at all. I want to be a multi planet civilization so that we have planetary redundancy such that no single event can end can be
the end of our civilization. Tesla CEO Elon Musk's $46 billion stock options package faces a critical vote at the company's annual shareholder meeting. Investors are deeply divided, with some arguing that the compensation is excessive and indicative of poor governance, while others, particularly small retail shareholders, have already expressed their support for Musk.
Now, at a recent meeting of Tesla investors, including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, arguments were made against ratifying Musk's 2018 pay package again. Lander, whose office manages $271 billion in assets across 5 New York City retirement funds, criticize the Tesla board for failing to provide independent governments for shareholders. Now, Lander noted that the NYC retirement funds hold 3.4 billion Tesla shares valued at approximately $672 million.
He declared that the funds would vote against Musk's pay and the re election of board members Kimball Musk, who's Elon Musk's brother, and James Murdoch, citing conflicts of interest. Now, this vote is not a referendum on Elon Musk as CEO. He is a visionary whose role in Tesla has been critical. But independent shareholder governance must ensure a reasonable pay package. This pay package is not reasonable, they said now. Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
The company's compensation package for Musk was nullified in January by a Delaware Chancery Court judge, who cited the lack of independence in the board's process and improper negotiation of the deal. Following the ruling, Musk announced plans to relocate Tesla's headquarters from Delaware to Texas, aiming for more favorable judicial
treatment. The Tesla board is now asking investors to reapprove Musk's pay and the move to Texas, and shareholder advisory firms Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services have recommended voting against the pay package. Lander argued that Tesla lacks a full time CEO focus solely on the EV maker's growth. He criticized Musk for being distracted by ventures like social media and other companies, including XXAI, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company.
Ivan Frisburg, chief sustainability officer of Amalgamated Bank, echoed these concerns, noting Musk's distractions and significant challenges for Tesla, including global competition, development delays and labor disputes. Frischberg mentioned that 2 corporate directors resigned, citing board reference to Elon Musk at Frisburg's bank, whose clients hold 600,000. Tesla shares plans to vote against the re election of Kimball, Musk and Murdoch due to
the lack of board independence. Lander warned that Musk's pay issues could have broader impacts on capital markets. Emphasizing the need for independent oversight, Lander said when billionaires are allowed to flout the rules, normal people suffer. The billionaire can't have his brother and friends decide on governance rules.
Lander expressed frustration at not being able to get a response from the Tesla board, describing Musk's pay package as outrageously large and insufficiently governed. Now Marilyn Comptroller Brooke Lierman added her concerns about Tesla's workforce management and the board's inattention to human capital, presenting these as risks for shareholders to
consider them voting. She said to succeed, Tesla needs a management team that is on the ball, urging for an effective board that can stand up to the CEO when necessary. Contrastingly, major investor Ron Baron, founder of Baron Capital, supports Musk's pay package, emphasizes Musk critical role in Tesla's success over the years. Baron highlighted Musk's relentless Dr. and commitment, including sleeping on the factory floor during difficult
production periods. In 2018, Tesla's compensation package granted Musk the option to purchase 304,000,000 shares at $23.34 each, contingent on meeting challenging milestones. Nearly 75% of shareholders initially approved this package. Despite achieving all of the milestones, the Delaware court invalidated the package due to the flawed approval process. Tesla is now seeking a re ratification of the package and approval for moving its incorporation to Texas ahead of
the annual meeting on June 13th. Now the proposed compensation, potentially the largest for AUS executive, was worth $56 billion at its peak and is currently valued at $46 billion. And several funds represented by Lander will vote against it, along with the re election of Kimble, Musk and Murdoch, of course. And Musk has been lobbying shareholders through social media, factory tours and by attacking critics of his pay package.
Proxy firms like Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services have recommended voting against it, citing the excessive size and dilution of shareholder value. Now miss Musk's aggressive push for the compensation package. Tesla faces declining sales, increased competition and internal challenges, including layoffs and aging vehicle
models. Musk argues he needs a significant stake to drive Tesla's future in AI and robotics, and his demands for greater control, coupled with threats to spin out Tesla's AI work if his demands aren't met, have heightened the stakes. And despite shareholder concerns, Musk's influence remains strong, particularly among retail investors. The stock is heavily held by retail investors, comprising 44% of his total shares, the highest among the top ten S&P 500 companies.
This demographic has shown strong support for Musk, influenced by his public appeals and promises of continued value creation. Now, Tesla is rallying support through its website. Vote. Tesla.com urging shareholders to recognize the value that Musk has created and vote in favor of the compensation package. Early voting indicates significant support for Musk among retail shareholders. However, regardless of the June 13th vote outcome, the compensation issue is far from
over. Shareholders will vote, but any decision will likely serve as evidence in ongoing legal proceedings, which could extend for months now. Tesla reassured a Delaware judge that despite the proposed move to Texas, the company will continue to litigate the compensation case in Delaware. Meanwhile, shareholder lawsuits alleging insider trading and fiduciary breaches by Musk and
the board are emerging. And as Tesla's annual meeting approaches the debate over Musk's compensation package and corporate governance continues, shareholders face crucial decisions that will impact the company's direction and governance structure. And the upcoming? Vote will reveal the extent of shareholder support for Musk's leadership and compensation. While some advocate for tighter governance in a full time CEO, others believe Musk's unique drive and vision are irreplaceable now.
The contentious issue underscores the broader challenges facing Tesla right now, from internal management to external competition. And as the vote draws near, the company's future hinges on the balance between governance and Elon Musk's visionary leadership. Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup XAI. Is set to establish a supercomputer facility at the former Electrolux site in Memphis, TN. This new Gigafactory of compute will be among the largest AI
supercomputers globally. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast. This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads that shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. I'm your host Will Walden. Spacex's Starship rocket launched successfully from Starbase in Texas. This marks the 4th test flight aimed at missions to the moon and to Mars in the future. This rocket is 400 feet tall and it flew over the Gulf of Mexico. It achieved a controlled splashdown.
This marks the longest and most successful flight for Starship to date. Now, another thing that happened which was very cool is Spacex's Super Heavy booster did a soft landing successfully in the Gulf of Mexico, which is an important milestone for the company. Now, the Starship, known as the most powerful launch vehicle ever built, completed its fourth test flight with a successful landing, burn, and splashdown by
the booster. This flight received approval from the FAA and included upgrades and software changes to enhance performance. Now, despite some of these challenges in the Starship lineup, the flight was successful, showcasing the rocket's resilience and the potential for future space exploration to the Moon and
beyond. For the first time, both elements of the nearly 400 foot tall rocket launched successfully from Spacex's Starbase facility near Brownsville, TX and return to Earth for controlled splashdowns at sea. This demonstration paves the way for future Starship test flights. They'll bring the booster and eventually the upper stage back to land at Starbase for rapid reusability.
Now the two stage rocket took off from Starbase it's 7:50 AM CDT and headed E over the Gulf of Mexico with more than £15,000,000 of thrust, roughly twice the power of NASA's Saturn 5 rocket from the Apollo lunar program of the 1960s and 70s. And the success of the flight is crucial for SpaceX as it aims to develop a fully reusable transportation system for crew and cargo to Earth orbit. The Moon to Mars.
And into the outer solar system. Now, NASA also has a significant interest in Starship success because the agency selected it to serve as a human rated lunar Lander for the Artemis program, which aims to ferry astronauts to and from the surface of the moon. However, dozens more Starship flights will be necessary before it can carry astronauts, likely not before the latter part of this decade.
Now the 4th flight of Starship made major strides to bring us closer to a rapidly reusable future, said SpaceX on its website. Also said its accomplishments will provide data to drive improvements as we continue rapidly developing Starship into a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry crew and cargo to Earth orbit the
Moon, Mars, and beyond. Now this flight was the 4th launch of a full size Starship rocket and was the first to end with the booster in the ship reaching Earth's surface in one piece. While it wasn't perfect, the flight's success cannot be overstated. The payload for this test was the data says SpaceX in Starship
delivered. The launch involved two of the 33 methane fueled Raptor engines of the Super Heavy booster, failing one on ascent and 1:00 during the booster's final breaking burn just before splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. And despite these failures, the remaining engines guided the booster to a gentle splashdown after a vertical descent just off the coast of Starbase about
7 1/2 minutes after liftoff. Engineers identified a filter blockage in the lines feeding liquid oxygen propellant into the Raptor engines as the cause of the landing failure in March. However, this did not appear to be a significant issue. On Thursday, SpaceX also made another change to the booster descent by jettisoning the Rockets hot staging ring where the Starship's upper stage attaches to the Super Heavy
booster for launch. The Starship's upper stages 6 Raptor engines burned a few seconds longer than planned to compensate for the boosters performance shortfall. This adjustment put the ship on the proper suborbital trajectory, reaching a peak altitude of 132 miles before Earth's gravity pulled the 160 foot long vehicle back into the atmosphere around 47 minutes after launch.
During Spacex's third Starship test flight in March, the scorching heat of re entry destroyed the rocket as it descended into the upper asses here over the Indian Ocean. Clogged thrusters caused the ship to lose control of its orientation, leading to its destruction, but this time, Starship maintained control throughout the flight.
Dazzling live views from cameras aboard the rocket, relayed to the ground through Spacex's Starlink broadband network, showed purple and orange plasma pouring over the vehicle as it glided through the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. And although some ceramic thermal protection tiles peeled away, the damage control flap still functioned, allowing the vehicle to maintain control during re entry.
Starship made a controlled re entry, successfully making it through the phases of peak heating and Max aerodynamic pressure, and demonstrating the ability to control the vehicle using its flaps while descending through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. These were mission objectives as outlined by Elon Musk before the launch. Now, finally, three of the Raptor engines on Starship reignited, flipping the rocket from a belly down orientation to a vertical position. A few 100.
Feet above the Indian Ocean. Despite these challenges, the rocket managed a soft landing in the ocean, and despite loss of many tiles and a damage flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean. Congratulations to SpaceX on an epic achievement. Now SpaceX employees celebrated at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, CA.
It was a little bit of use your imagination as you were going down with what we could actually see, but we were able to hear the ship do its landing burn, said a spokesperson for SpaceX during the flight. And Starship made it through re entry and did its first ever landing burn from South Texas to the other side of the Earth. Starship is in the water. SpaceX engineers were particularly interested in observing Starship's heat shield performance during Thursday's
flight. The thermal barrier consists of around 18,000 hexagonal ceramic tiles, similar to those used on NASA space shuttle temperatures during re entry can reach 2600 Fahrenheit. Now that's hot enough to melt aluminum, a metal commonly used in launch vehicles. Engineers selected a stainless steel alloy for Starship's
primary construction. This material, though heavier than aluminum or carbon fiber, is strong at cryogenic temperatures, an important characteristic because Starship consumes methane and liquid oxygen to chill to several 100° below 0. Stainless steel also has a higher melting temperature than other materials commonly used in rockets. For a reusable ship, you're coming in like a meteor. You want something that does not melt at a low temperature. You want something that melts at
a high temperature. And this is where steel is extremely good as well. Now looking ahead, the 5th test flight of Starship could occur within a couple of months. The FAA ordered mishap investigations following the 1st 3 Starship launches, but this likely won't be necessary this time. SpaceX has already test fired the ship for the next flight, and the booster could be hot
fired soon. The successful soft splashdown of a Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico has made Musk confident enough to aim for an onshore landing next time, he said. I think we should try to catch the booster with the Mechazilla arms next flight. We'll see how that works out. Are the priorities for the next phase of Starship testing include demonstrating the ability to restart a Raptor engine in space?
This capability is crucial for putting Starship into a stable low Earth orbit and guiding it back for entry. Now, once in orbit, Starship could deploy Starlink Internet satellites and perform refueling tests necessary for SpaceX to fulfill NASA's lunar Lander contract. Now, SpaceX may also make changes to the Starship heat shield to address the loss of tiles encountered on Flight 4.
Engineers will investigate the reasons behind the two Raptor engine failures during the launch and landing of the booster, aiming to refine the design and improve future flights reliability. Find a filter blockage in the lines feeding liquid oxygen propellant into the Raptor engines as the cause of the landing failure in March. However, this did not appear to be a significant issue.
On Thursday, SpaceX also made another change to the booster descent by jettisoning the rocket's hot staging ring, where the Starship's upper stage attaches to the Super Heavy booster for launch. The Starship's upper stages 6 Raptor engines burned a few seconds longer than planned to compensate for the booster's performance shortfall.
This adjustment put the ship on the proper suborbital trajectory, reaching a peak altitude 132 miles before Earth's gravity pulled the 160 foot long vehicle back into the atmosphere around 47 minutes after launch. During Spacex's third Starship test flight in March, the scorching heat of re entry destroyed the rocket as it descended into the upper and sphere over the Indian Ocean.
Clogged thrusters caused the ship to lose control of its orientation, leading to its destruction, but this time Starship maintained control throughout the flight. Dazzling live views from cameras aboard the rocket, relayed to the ground through Spacex's Starlink broadband network, showed purple and orange plasma pouring over the vehicle as it glided through the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.
And although some ceramic thermal protection tiles peeled away, the damage control flap still functioned, allowing the vehicle to maintain control during re entry. Starship made a controlled reentry, successfully making it through the phases of peak heating and Max aerodynamic pressure, and demonstrating the ability to control the vehicle using its flaps while descending through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds. These were mission objectives as outlined by Elon Musk before the launch.
But finally, three of the Raptor engines on Starship reignited, flipping the rocket from a belly down orientation to a vertical position a few 100 feet above the Indian Ocean. Despite these challenges, the rocket managed a soft landing in the ocean, and despite loss of many tiles and a damage flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean. Congratulations to SpaceX on an epic achievement.
Now SpaceX employees celebrated at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, CA. It was a little bit of use your imagination as you were going down with what we could actually see, but we were able to hear the ship do its landing burn, said a spokesperson for SpaceX during the flight. And Starship made it through re entry and did its first ever landing burn from South Texas to the other side of the Earth.
Starship is in the water. SpaceX engineers were particularly interested in observing Starship's heat shield performance during Thursday's flight. The thermal barrier consists of around 18,000 hexagonal ceramic tiles, similar to those used on NASA's space shuttle. Temperatures during re entry can reach 2600 Fahrenheit. Now that's hot enough to melt aluminum, a metal commonly used in launch vehicles. Engineers selected a stainless steel alloy for Starship's primary construction.
This material, though heavier than aluminum or carbon fiber, is strong at cryogenic temperatures, an important characteristic because Starship consumes methane and liquid oxygen to chill to several 100° below 0. Stainless steel also has a higher melting temperature than other materials commonly used in rockets. For a reusable ship, you're coming in like a meteor. You want something that does not melt at a low temperature. You want something that melts at a high temperature.
And this is where steel is extremely good as well. Now, looking ahead, the 5th test flight of Starship could occur within a couple of months. The FAA ordered mishap investigations following the 1st 3 Starship launches, but this likely won't be necessary this time. SpaceX has already test fired the ship for the next flight, and the booster could be hot fired soon.
The successful soft splashdown of a Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico has made Musk confident enough to aim for an onshore landing next time, he said. I think we should try to catch the booster with the Mechazilla arms next flight. Well, we'll see how that works out. Are the priorities for the next phase of Starship testing include demonstrating the ability to restart a Raptor engine in space?
This capability is crucial for putting Starship into a stable low Earth orbit and guiding it back for entry. Now, once in orbit, Starship could deploy Starlink Internet satellites and perform refueling tests necessary for SpaceX to fulfill NASA's lunar Lander contract. Now, SpaceX may also make changes to the Starship heat shield to address the loss of tiles encountered on Flight 4.
Engineers will investigate the reasons behind the two Raptor engine failures during the launch and landing of the booster. Aiming to refine the design and improve future flights for liability. And on this episode we're going to be talking about IFT 4 some because that just happened, which is really great. It turned out pretty great for a SpaceX. Also, we're going to be talking about what's next for Starship,
IFT 5, IFT 6 possibly. And then we're going to get into some of the next thing, which is a huge deal. SpaceX and Starship on the surface of Mars retrieving some samples. What's that all about? OK so let's go to IFT 4 happened yesterday. Absolutely. As perfect as you can get for this flight with SpaceX was aiming to do for this is to soft land the booster in the Gulf of Mexico, which they performed Florida State, absolutely perfect. There's one Raptor out, but that's OK.
As they flew out, it was fine. Everything was fine. All the systems worked great. Booster landed in the Gulf of Mexico. They tip it over. It's in the Gulf of Mexico now somewhere and it's about 7 minutes into the flight. That all happened. Boost back burned. Everything was great, and then stage separation, everything, everything was perfect. Everything looked great, and then the ship kept going.
The ship separated, kept going all the way to the Indian Ocean, did the belly flop maneuver, which who knew that was going to happen and who knew if that was going to be successful? SpaceX had a pretty good hunch that it was going to be successful and they did all the engineering possible to make it successful. And what we saw was the Starship going through the atmosphere, going as hot as possible and then soft landing after it did the kick maneuver.
So it could go. Straight, vertical and soft landed in the Indian Ocean. Perfect. We didn't have any video of it landing, but they did hear the Raptors roar as it touched down. Soft landing in the Indian Ocean. Now this is for IFT. 4. So IFT 4 is a massive success for Starship. Not only did they successfully do this mission, but now they set themselves up for the next few missions and what they can
accomplish now. Before IFT 4 started, before they even launched the thing, Elon was on social media. He was talking about what's next. What's up for IFT five? Well, he wants to continue down this path. Same thing.
He wants to nail the landing. He wants to make sure the Starship lands in the Indian Ocean, but he wants to make sure that the booster lands at Starbase, on the chopsticks at Boca Chica, Texas, next to the Gulf of Mexico, on land at their facility where they launch these things, not in the Gulf of Mexico where it's safe, where they won't destroy anything if they mess up or nowhere close to land. They, you know, like IFT 4 was nowhere close to land.
So the IFT 4 incident report will be much less than IFT 3 because nothing really happened that was out of the ordinary. This is exactly what they wanted. So landing the booster in the Gulf of Mexico and landing the ship in the Indian Ocean. Exactly what they wanted. So IFT 5 Elon wants to bring the booster back to the star base facility after only doing one test of the landing of the booster. Is this kind of an insane idea? And he was on Ellie in space too.
She interviewed him. Go check out that interview, it's great. But watch this whole thing first. I need. I need. The the watch time so. She interviewed him, he was adamant about landing it. He's super excited about landing it for IFT 5. Are they going to do that? I'm not 100% sure if they will. It seems like Elon wants to and if they get enough data from the booster landing. This shows that they were absolutely pinpoint precision in the Gulf of Mexico.
I don't see why they wouldn't try it, other than there's not a really more than one test case. When I redo engineering, when I redo science, anything. When you're testing coding anything, test it against a few different things. Test it a few times, test it three or four times, make sure everything works properly. Because the next one, there might be something that's busted on, it might be something that's not exactly perfect and it might not land precisely, but even in
that case you could. Detonate it over the Gulf of Mexico if you see something. 'S wrong, but what happens if something's wrong in the last few seconds or the last, I don't know, 20 seconds when it's over Starbase ready to land? Well, that's a whole different thing. And yes, the booster is about. 250 feet tall, it's made out of stainless steel and it's absolutely massive.
So if it does come into Starbase scream in a hot and they can't destroy it on its way back, well, there's going to be some problems. And that's something that I don't know if the SpaceX engineers will push back against with Elon, because sometimes Elon pushes back against them. There was early times in Space XS history that the engineers want to do something with carbon fiber or some sort of synthetic.
And Elon pushback said, hey, let's do this in stainless steel because stainless steel is easy to get. It's easy to manufacture. And also we can ramp this up really fast because we have to iterate these designs. We have to do hundreds of these rockets in order to make life on Mars a thing. So do you think the engineers are going to set like push back on Elon? I don't know. That's going to be, that's going to be a tough one for the engineers because Elon's the
head of engineering over there. He's the head of everything. So if they push back against him, I don't know. I, I think that they should wait a few times. I've talked about this before, but I do think they should wait a few times before they actually land the rocket back at Starbase just to make sure that everything is absolutely accurate with the landing. Let me know in the comments down below if you think it'll land on the fifth attempt.
IFT 5. Now there's something else that Elon and company over at SpaceX are going to be part of in the near future. Well, I would shouldn't say near future, but in the future with NASA, this is a huge deal. So right now we have a Rover on Mars which is collecting samples of soil and possible life, you know, old life on Mars. And they need some way to go pick up those canisters.
And Eli and the company of SpaceX have just won a contract with NASA to go try, and I shouldn't say go try and pick it up yet, but they're going to demonstrate how they could pick up these little canisters like this, big like. I don't know how to. Say it on the screen, but about that big of Martian soil, Martian Martian regolith that could contain ancient life. So if they get this contract, it's like a $1.8 million contract around there, almost $2,000,000. I think it's 1.5 actually.
Then if they do this properly, SpaceX would be launching a Starship to Mars. But the Starship alone can't get the the samples of the regolith of the soil from Mars. They have to have some sort of Rover. So SpaceX may fit what I think they're going to do. I think they're going to get a cyber truck and put it on Mars and equip it with something, I don't know, or maybe a small Rover, I'm not sure. But they can fit a massive amount of things into a Starship.
So whatever they have to do, whatever they have to do, whoever they have to team with to get another Rover down there to go pick up all these samples. I think SpaceX will one, they're already partnered with NASA to land on the moon, right? They're already partnered with NASA to fly astronauts. They're already partnered with NASA for all the Falcon Nine
things. So Starship, once it's proven on the moon, could easily, I shouldn't say easily because engineering's super hard, but they could make it. And Elon has said this, that it's easier to land on Mars than it is on the moon because there's actually some gravity there. And it it'll be a fun, fun thing to watch if they can actually get the Starship to Mars, land it, and then a Rover pops out of the Hatch. Or what if they send people to Mars?
What if that's their proposal? What if what their proposal isn't, hey, we're going to send a Rover like everybody else. We have 4 astronauts that are willing to do this and we can train them. We can give them space suits. We can do everything. And they can walk on Mars, go grab these samples, bring them back, and maybe there's a Rover that would look like a cyber truck that they drive around to get these samples. That would be, they'll be so cool. But that's all speculation right
now. They haven't won the contract yet and they have a little while to do this, so we're going to keep our ears and eyes open to see what happens with this. But this, that's a huge, huge deal. Now, IFT 6, what's going to be happening with that? We're not 100% sure because if they try to do the landing at Starbase, then IFT 6 is going to be similar to what they do with
IT5. Unless IFT 5 completely fails, then they'll go back to the drawing board and go back to the go back to the Gulf of Mexico. But IFT 6, IFT 7, not 100% sure what they're going to be doing, but if they do land a booster on IFT five, I think IFT 6, they're going to try to go to orbit and I think they're going to launch a few Starlink satellites just as a test. Even one would be a a great test. So let me know what you think in
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