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. 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 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. Today's episode is all about Starship going to the moon.
And there are certain things that SpaceX has to do with Starship before they can send the Starship to the lunar surface for the Artemis missions. One of those things is a propellant transfer in Earth orbit. Another thing they have to do is IFT four, which is the next flight of Starship. This video is brought to you by current. It's a great bank. I use it myself. And I'll tell you more about that later on in the
video. And they're in the process right now of readying Starship for the flight, readying the booster for the flight, and the FAA SpaceX are both working together to check off items before they can actually send Starship to space again. Now, IFT three went really well according to SpaceX, and also according to NASA. A NASA spokesperson said that SpaceX expects to launch Starship super heavy test flight by the end of May.
That is incredible. If this is a turn out, it's about a 1 .5 month turnaround for a Starship launch. And if this keeps happening, we could possibly see a new Starship launch every single month. How wild would that be? I'm all for it. Now, we also have some more information about the lunar journey for Starship. This is the huge one. Low Earth orbit is big, but going to the moon is the
first step to going to Mars. Now, they have to do a propellant transfer during a flight in order to show NASA that they are capable of sending a Starship to the moon. Now, this is important here, because in the next year by 2025, they want to be able to do this. So it's 2024 now, almost midway. And if they can do this by 2025, ship to ship propellant transfer demo, they're going to launch two
Starships that will meet in low Earth orbit. And then the rendezvous and dock two Starships, two Starships will dock together, then they'll transfer propellant between those two Starships. That's what they need to do. But before they do that, that's going to be in 2025. But before they do, let's roll back to 2024. The tipping point propellant transfer demo happened during flight three. This
is confirmed by NASA. Propellant transfer demo flight system review in 2024, confirmed and completed by SpaceX. And it's confirmed by NASA. That is an overview of the mission architecture, high level Starship and hardware designs, key subsystems, preliminary integration of models and analysis. Now, the next thing they have to do is propellant transfer hardware development, build, test and
integration of docking mechanisms. This is for the two Starships that dock together and transfer propellant relative navigation sensors. So they have to be able to navigate near each other and to each other from a launch, quick disconnect, and also hot gas thrusters. So when they're up there, they have to be able to move around in space. That's what the hot gas thrusters
are for. So when they're close, they have to, you know, those little ones that go, those ones, that's what they're talking about. They have to be able to navigate while they're in space. They're virtually weightless. So they need something to push them around when they're in space. So the hot gas thrusters, they're testing those in 2024. Now,
that may be in a future launch. IFT four, which is coming up by the end of May, which we were talking about before, they're going to do a test of the landing of the booster in the Gulf of Mexico. And also they're going to test a Starship coming back into orbit at the highest temperature that it can go. So
those are the next steps for IFT four. Now, going back to the propellant demo, there will be two Starships involved, two different Starships, one's a Starship target. This is a new thing. And then there's a Starship chaser. And let's go over the target Starship first, it launches first, then it receives propellant during the transfer has active docking mechanisms, has passive, relative navigation features,
and also performs a de orbit burn. So when it's in orbit, it'll fly back down to Earth. This is important, because IFT four is testing those systems, the de orbit burn
is super important for this to work. Now there's a second Starship that's going up, the Starship chaser, which launches second, it chases the target, target goes first, the chaser flies after and catches it, the transfer is the propellant to the target has passive docking mechanisms, the other one had active and has active relative navigation sensors, and performs de orbit burn as
well. So both of these Starships will launch to orbit, and both will come back down to Earth that alone is a huge deal for Starships lunar ambitions. So the ship to ship propellant transfer, let's go over it real quick, they're going to launch two Starships, and then they can meet an orbit, they're going to rendezvous dock together.
And then they're going to transfer propellant between the two, and then return to Earth and land on the Mechazilla at Starbase, Texas. That's in 2025. Now, after that, the Artemis missions will start the lunar architecture system for Starship. Starship and SpaceX have a 10 year lunar architecture capability study, the Luna 10, that's just been released, lunar surface innovation consortium LSIC was the first to
break this. Now we're going to go into this a little bit, because there's a lot to cover here. I want to give you guys $50. Now, okay, hold on, hold on, I want to give you 50 bucks. But you have to do something. And this you have to sign up for a current account. It's current my bank. Okay, I've been with current for years, they've treated me very well. And it's all done through the current app. You
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let's get back to spaceflight news. SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches the world's most advanced rockets to enable Luna 10 and other commercial partners, transportation, Starship, it's affordable, it's huge, you can take anything you want to on a Starship basically, it'll be leveraged to enable Luna 10 and other commercial
partners. So Luna 10 is SpaceX's 10 year ambitious plan to go to the moon and start the process of building on the moon to a surface platform. We've never heard of this before. This is brand new to everybody. Post landing Starships are large surface platforms. They can provide services and host third party equipment. So it can become something else once it lands. It's
not a Starship anymore, it becomes a platform. And the SpaceX brains exact expertise and experience operating a fleet of 6000 laser link star link satellites to lunar operations. So we know now it's been confirmed by SpaceX that they're going to be use some sort of Starship and Starlink capabilities together on the lunar
surface. And they go on to say that Starship is the most powerful launch vehicle right now, which is the truth, but they have a framework in mind for this transit and mobility is the Starship communications is the Starlink and third party hosting and services. So when the Starships landed on the moon, it can provide power and communications to third parties and possibly storage as well. So
they they want to be able to do this affordably. So affordable mass transfer between Earth and moon is foundational to enabling sustainable lunar presence. Now Starship will recoup R &D investments via a variety of other use cases, including terrestrial satellite launches. Satellite launches from the moon. Is that true? Could they do that? Okay, three Starship landings
begin a robust lunar base. So it only takes three to start a lunar colony utility Starship says Starship one hub for power communications, data and commodity storage. So this will power everything that comes after it. This is the hub, this is the utility. This is the thing that everybody needs in order to survive
and thrive on the lunar surface. The rolling stock Starship. These are new Starships rovers construction equipment, ISRU plants, and other spite site specific payloads. So rovers could be possibly see some sort of hybrid Starship and Tesla vehicle. Maybe
that would be great. Construction equipment, things to make landing pads, possibly things to make roads, and also to level the the lunar regulates so they can build a colony up there. Then habitation Starship is number three speaking of colonies serves as a crew habitat for the site. So they're going to land that and then the crew will be able to use all of these
tools to build on the moon. Now we're going to go to depth about the utility Starship, then we're going to go into a little bit more information, we're going to get some more information about the actual mission here. Starship lands, deploys cargo and services. Pretty straightforward, provides backhaul between moon and earth, which is great local connectivity through hosted payloads Starship provides about 55 meters of height.
So they're going to use this as communication as well. So provides on the order of tens of kilowatts to hosted payloads and surface users can provide 100 plus
kilowatts if configured. So that's the power the Starship has probably some sort of solar panels in this, I mean, there's there's going to be solar on the Starship itself, but they're probably going to build solar panels panels on the ground on the lunar surface for the astronauts to use for future missions.
Post landing utility of lunar cargo, delivery Starships Starship can deliver 100 plus tons of lunar cargo and remain as a surface asset itself. Edit this out. It could do numerous things, propellant and fluid storage, empty prop tanks provide fluid storage space, which could be other propellant could be maybe water in the future if they empty it out. And this can this might not be drinking water, this could
be for septic systems or things like that. Oxygen tanks hold about 1000 tons of liquid oxygen, could use tanks to store other liquid or gases. They could use it for methane boil off available for lunar surface users. So they're talking about people going to the moon with Starship, it's going to be they have a whole plan for this. We know that they were planning on it, but we
didn't know what the plan was until right now. Now, landing latest Starship surface platform provide power, habitation, communications connectivity, fluid and commodity storage components and materials, it'll be a way for humans to go to the moon, use rovers, use equipment, build on the moon's surface, and then set up a colony there so they can learn how to live in space. And then eventually, eventually,
SpaceX could send people to Mars. This is how they test the Mars habitation, they do it on the moon first. If this works within 10 years from now, we could possibly see a lunar surface base and also the beginnings of a Mars base. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I
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