Your ultimate authority for daily Elon Musk news. Exploring the world's biggest ideas with your host Will Walden. There's something new every day. Elon Musk believes that SpaceX has an 80% chance of having fixed the engine bait issues that caused explosions in Starship's last two flights. So he talked about the 9th Starship flight South Texas recently. As a question though, how close is Starship making a reliable and reusable vehicle that can actually support future Moon in
Mars missions? Now the current Starship test flight is focused on collecting data, especially at about the spacecraft's heat shield tiles, teams experimenting with different tile coatings, fabrication methods and attachment techniques to see what performs best during the intense heating of re entry. SpaceX also wants to ensure that they have addressed the failures in the upper stage engine Bay that previously led to explosions.
Now, this is going to be a step by step approach to making Starship ready for repeated use, and they're going to continue doing this until they get it right now. Elon Musk said the team discovered that they needed to tighten bolts connecting the thrust chamber to the injector head after each engine firing. During earlier tests, some bolts loosened slightly, creating tiny gaps that allowed fuel and oxygen to miss where they should not have.
Now, that unwanted mixture led to engine explosions. Now, Musk also admitted that while an 80% solution feels good, the team won't reach full confidence without redesigning certain engine parts. Now, SpaceX already demonstrated that it can reuse boosters efficiently. Starship's booster is designed to return to the launch site, get caught by a tower, and reset directly out of the launch
stand. Now, Elon Musk has pointed out that this method eliminates the need to transport the booster back from a drone ship, saving days and reducing the work needed between flights. Starship's design goal as immediate reflight readiness, we're In principle, propellant loading could begin just minutes after the booster returns and lands at the chopsticks. Now, SpaceX aims to fly upgraded Raptor 3 engines by the end of this year.
The new engine design eliminates the need for heat Shields around the thrust chamber and the turbo pump. This change will simplify the booster in upper stage structure. The new design exposes more of the engine hardware, creating a cleaner look of fewer parts that can burn off. And this pushes his team hard to remove any unnecessary secondary structures that could cause problems during flight. Now Starship remains Spacex's most important bet for the next decade.
It's a key to building a fully reusable orbital launch system, something no one has ever achieved. So things like the space shuttle, which despite its reusable parts, proved very expensive and difficult to refurbish. The shuttle's high cost per flight and a Saturn 5 as well, which could carry four times the payload. But it was expendable. Now, the success of Starship will unlock the ability to build a civilization, civilization on Mars.
It's kind of like the Union Pacific Railroad on California's growth. We need to get supplies to Mars, and SpaceX and Starship are the way to do it. How do you get people to Mars? Right now you don't really do it. There's no ship that can take you there without extensive overhauls.
There's this is a reliable transportation that goes to Mars. It's the foundation for creating new opportunities from essential industries here on Earth all the way to Mars and everyday businesses on Mars eventually, and that's going to take a long time, That's not going to be in our lifetime. There's not going to be a Starbucks on Mars, by the way. But Spacex's main job is to solve the transportation challenge so others can focus on
building everything else. A society will need to SpaceX, build the Rockets and the transportation to get the stuff there. And other companies will build the stuff and the businesses that will be on Mars. And so Elon Musk has also stated recently that the US space program should aim beyond returning to the moon.
He believes that Mars should be the goal, given that the US reached the moon more than half a century ago, over 50 years ago, and the current lunar plans are lacking ambition and future missions should aim for something more advanced than the Apollo program. He thinks that people shouldn't just go collect rocks on the moon anymore. If the US goes back to the moon, Elon Musk thinks building a permanent base would be a meaningful next step. They can also launch rockets from the moon.
They can. They can mind the water ice on the moon and make propellant and then send those rockets off into space. Elon Musk also said that he recently said that he's been spending too much time with politics over the last year. The media coverage of his political involvement, According to him, made it seem like he larger distraction than it actually was. But Elon Musk also said that he has now shifted his attention back towards his companies, with SpaceX once again at the top of
his priorities. He described reducing his time spent on government matters within the last few weeks. Now Spacex's flight 10 is coming up, hopefully within the next month. That's projected next month ish and if the FAA is good and SpaceX Starship is being tested at Massey's within the next week. Booster is down at the launchpad and if they can get the booster in the ship ready I don't see why they shouldn't be able to launch it in around a month. Everything seems OK.
You know, if the FAA signs off on the next launch, that's great and we'll start seeing signs of the launch as far as, you know, the the test flight plans and also the no fly zones, no boating zones, things like the keep out zones, basically we'll start seeing those things pop up pretty soon.
But they're going to basically do the same thing they did with Flight 9. There were some Starling satellites that they wanted to launch with Flight 9, some dummy test satellites that they didn't get to do because basically the easiest part of the flight, which is the Bay door didn't open. And you think to yourself, it's a door. You just built this gigantic rock that's around 400 feet tall that can launch into Earth's orbit, can launch to the moon, into Mars, but you just can't
get the door right now. They didn't get it right in Flight 9. Also, the booster exploded on the way back down to Earth, and there's reason for that. They wanted to push that booster, which is a reused booster, the first time it's ever been reused. They wanted to push it to its limits so they can test for data. They want to see how far they could push it and what kind of data they can collect with this thing. And also, the ship blew up.
That's what we're talking about earlier with the leaks and that caused the explosions. They have to figure that out. And if they can figure this out, like Elon Musk said, there's an 80% chance that they can successfully do Flight 9's mission and then move on to Flight 10 and 11. So right now it's going to be 10, but they want to redo Flight 9's mission. Basically, except for the expendable booster. They're going to send the booster back to Starbase so they can keep testing the landings of
these boosters. No reason to land in the ocean or in the Gulf. Nobody, nobody really wants to dig that thing out or pull that thing out again. They want to land that back at Starbase. So when this flight 10 happens, booster will land, Starship will make it to the Indian Ocean and do a soft landing in the Indian Ocean. And if they can figure those two things out, Flight 11, Flight 12, Flight 13, they're all going to see. I don't know if there's going to
be an exponential growth here. They do need to do some really interesting things for the next few flights, but I don't think there's going to be a big jump as far as technology goes. Elon Musk wants to land a ship back at Starbase by the end of the year, but we're going to see how that goes. The they've already landed a booster, but they also have to orbit the Earth. You have to get into Earth orbit, deorbit the ship. They have to also do in orbit
refueling. There's so many things that they need to do in order to get the NASA contract, or they have the NASA contract, but they need to get the Starship to the moon. So they need to refuel in the Earth's orbit. So there's incremental small steps along the way that they need to do. It's not like the way that somebody like Blue Origin does it, which builds the whole thing and then launches it. They do all the tests in, you
know, on computers. They test all the scenarios they do in wind tunnels that they do, you know, all those things. So they do all the tests before they fly. And basically SpaceX is testing as they fly. They're gathering data as they fly. They think it's the best way, Blue Origin Ula etcetera. I think it's a different way to do it. It's still a good way, though. You know ula sends things to Mars. That's cool. SpaceX hasn't sent a Starship to Mars yet, so there's a direct
comparison. And Starship is built for humans to go to Mars Ula does not have a plan for that. So what we're expecting for Flight 10 is going to be pretty impressive. But SpaceX continues to move forward, making Starship the first truly reusable orbital rocket, while also working to resolve the final technical challenges with engines and heat Shields from Flight 7-8 and Nine. And hopefully Flight 10 coming up will be a success. Hey, thank you so much for
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