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 is preparing for its fourth test flight of the Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in Texas. It's approximately 2 months after the third flight reached space but was lost upon re entry.
This upcoming test represents the fastest turn around for Spacex's mega rocket and Super Heavy booster from its launch site in Boca Chica along the Texas coast, the southernmost tip of Texas if you will. Now, since April of 2023, SpaceX has been attempting to achieve orbit with the Starship. The third attempt in March saw the Starship make it to space
but failed during re entry. Now, following each test flight, SpaceX undergoes a mishap investigation led by the Federal Aviation Administration or the FAA, and it implements necessary changes before the next launch. The FAA, alongside NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board, has been conducting a mishap investigation since the March test flight.
Now, should the FAA grant SpaceX a modified launch license, the company aims to attempt the 4th test flight of Starship and a Super Heavy booster as soon as June 5th. Now, SpaceX has released its findings from the third test flight and detailed the modifications made to the Starship to address previous issues.
Now the third flight was the most successful yet, with Starship reaching space and attempting a landing burn for the first time, although both the rocket and the booster were ultimately destroyed before achieving a controlled landing. Now during the third flight, Super Heavy booster began its boost back burn for landing, but encountered issues when 6 Raptor engines shut down prematurely. The booster was lost approximately 1500 feet above the Gulf of Mexico about 7
minutes after launch. And SpaceX identified the root cause of the boost back burn shut down as filter blockages in the liquid oxygen supply to the engines, which led to a loss of inlet pressure in the oxygen turbo pumps. And engineers have since added more hardware inside the oxygen tanks to improve filtration and prevent blockages.
Additionally, the third flight Starship rates the coast phase in space and successfully conducted a payload door test demonstrating propellant transfer by moving fuel from one thing to another. And this fuel transfer capability is crucial for future missions, including Nasas Artemis program for lunar missions. However, each entering the coast phase Starship lost its ability to control its position, which led to a unplanned re entry.
The lack of altitude control caused more heating than anticipated, resulting in the vehicles destruction about 40 miles above Earth nearly 50 minutes into the flight. Now SpaceX traced the issue with Starship to clogging in the valves responsible for vehicle roll control, and in response, the company has added additional roll control thrusters to provide redundancy and improve the liability during future
flights. Now the FA as review process was expedited this time because neither the Starship nor the Super Heavy booster were destroyed by the vehicle's automated flight safety system. They said during Flight 3, neither vehicles automated flight safety system was triggered and no vehicle debris impacted outside of predefined
hazard zones. Now, pending the FA as finding of no public safety impact, a license modification for the next flight can be issued without formal closure of the mishap investigation As SpaceX has conducted a launch dress rehearsal in May and is aiming for a launch as soon as June 5th providing regulatory approval is received and if the 4th test flight achieves its landing goals, the Starship will launch from Texas and splash down in the Indian Ocean.
The SpaceX has fueled its Starship mega rocket stepping up preparations for the upcoming test flight.
Now the latest pre launch operation known as a wet dress rehearsal or AWDR took place on May 28th at Spacex's Starbase site in Texas and the company loaded large quantities of liquid oxygen and liquid methane into Starships first and 2nd stages known as Super Heavy and Starship or just chip and Starship and Super Heavy loaded more than £10 million of propellant in a rehearsal ahead of flight 4 launch is targeted for as early as June 5th pending regulatory approval.
This is the second W jets rehearsal for the Starship vehicle, the first occurring on May 20th. Now these tests are part of the pre launch preparations for Starship's fourth flight which could launch on June 5th, pending approval of course. Now the first three Starship test flights took place in April 2023, November 2023 and March
14th of this year. Each flight was demonstrated improved performance and this first flight saw the vehicles two stages failed to separate ending 4 minutes after the flight and it was pretty spectacular. Go back and watch it on YouTube, it's pretty amazing and in contrast the third flight lasted about. 50. Minutes ending when the Starship broke apart during RE entry into Earth's atmosphere. That's a pretty big jump, but the primary goal for the 4th flight, according to SpaceX.
Is to. Get through Max re entry heating when fully stacked Starship stands nearly 400 feet tall. It's 122 meters, making it the largest and the most powerful rocket ever built. It's designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. And eventually, Starship will be transforming spaceflight, potentially enabling Mars settlements and other ambitious exploration feeds by making them economically feasible. NASA supports this vision, having selected Starship as the first crude lunar Lander for its
Artemis moon program. And Starship is scheduled to land NASA astronauts on the moon and around 2025 as part of the Artemis 3 mission. However, the vehicle must successfully complete several test flights before carrying astronauts. Hey, thank you so much for listening today, I really do. Appreciate your. Support, if you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
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