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notes. This morning SpaceX launched their massive Starship rocket and they completed 1/2 world journey after launching from South Texas Starbase Boca Chica. Now this is a low Earth orbit launch. It's a crucial capability for future launches for Starship, and the launch occurred from Starbase at about 8:25 AM Central time. This is the third iteration of the full stack Starship rocket flight. It's 397 feet tall and its width is bigger than a 747 jumbo jet
is huge. It's about 30 feet around and it had its take off time adjusted to ensure the surrounding waters were clear of any vessels. So people in boats were hanging out in the no fly zone and SpaceX had to take extra little, a little bit extra time to move those boats.
Get those boats out of there. They were supposed to launch in about 7:30 AM Central time, so 8:30 AM my time and Eastern Time. And they had to push it back about an hour to get those boats out of there, which is very crucial, very beneficial to those boats because it's very dangerous to be under the giant shrapnel tube that is Starship. That is if it didn't work out right. But this launch went pretty well actually.
So this flight built on previous test, there's marked improvements, and now they're moving closer to operational satellite launches for the Starlink. They're going to accelerate Starlink satellite deployments, and this will contribute to the company's expansive network of satellites orbiting the Earth right now and also accelerate
their bottom line. They make money from Starlink and if they can deploy hundreds of Starlinks more per month, they will have more coverage and people will be able to get the the coverage more and they'll have better coverage for the people on the Earth and therefore make more money. So Elon Musk celebrated this launch. He's prideful about what happened with the team.
He said Starship reached orbital velocity, which is a huge deal for a Starship because the next, probably the next phase is to get it to orbit. IFT 4 to get it to orbit, make sure that everything works right. They open up the Hatch door today, they did a propellant transfer demonstration. They closed the Hatch door. It was a pretty big milestone, a bunch of little milestones that were pretty big. And there's several firsts that happened during this flight, and one of those was the payload
door. That happened. The payload door opens and closes sort of like a Pez dispenser. That's what they call it. And that was that happened for about 20 minutes straight, and there was also an internal transfer liquid oxygen propellant. They're stepping stones towards in orbit fuel refueling, which is a necessity for more extended space missions, including the Artemis missions for NASA lunar landings and also Mars missions. Now, not all objectives were
met, though. The Super Heavy booster failed to execute a controlled splashdown leading to an uncontrolled descent into the Gulf of Mexico, which is you know, they plan for these things and they'll learn from it. Additionally, a planned Raptor engine restart in space did not occur with SpaceX yet to provide any explanation about why that happened or why they didn't happen.
So Starship also allows for substantial payload capabilities, promising to deliver up to 150 metric tons to lower Earth orbit and an expendable configuration. This capacity nearly double S to about 300 metric tons, which is an absolutely massive amount of things to send to the Earth orbit. It's it's incredible how much 300 tons, 300 metric tons of things are. Now Musk is talking about Starship.
Recently he envisaged it as a cornerstone in his plan for interplanetary human settlement, particularly Mars, and in the shorter term, Starship will play a crucial role in satellite deployment in an integral role in NASA's Artemis program for lunar exploration. Starting with Artemis 3 in about 2028 probably, the flight demonstrated the reliability of the Super heavy booster's 33 Raptor engines, all of which
performed great. The thrust powered the rocket on its initial climb and subsequent trajectory over the Gulf of Mexico, now approximately 2 minutes and 42 seconds post launch, the booster began shutting down its engines, initiating a hot staging process. Now this technique, which was inspired by Russian rocketry, allows for a seamless transition between stages, avoiding any
interrupted thrust. So basically the booster is still going up and out and as that's happening the stages start separating, but when they separate the ship actually ignites its engines and it pushes the booster back a little bit while also pushing the second stage, the Starship vehicle itself up towards orbit faster. Now the upper stage is 6 Raptor engines then propelled the vehicle to a near orbital velocity reaching a peak altitude of 144 miles and like Elon said, they did get to
orbital velocity. Eventually the design trajectory ensured that the spacecraft would re enter the atmosphere before completing a full orbit, preventing it from becoming space debris. We don't want that. We don't want it to burn up. We want to test all the systems on the way back in. Now comparing the 1st 3 orbital test flights of Starship though, a clear trajectory of improvement is evident. The initial flight faced engine failures and caused huge damage to the launchpad.
The second flight saw no engine failures, though a propellant tank led to the Rockets destruction. Now also the reliability of the Raptor engines has been confirmed over the last two flights, addressing earlier concerns regarding their performance. This is a huge achievement for Space XS rocket technology. It shows that they can continue to build these and they're on the right track to build hundreds of these.
According to Elon Musk now on boards, cameras during this flight were unprecedented, including the hot staging process and the rocket. Its whole journey across the gloom, their valuable insights into the rocket's performance and the behavior in various phases of the flight for SpaceX, but also we got to see them as well. So that was a really, really great treat for all of us rocket
fans out there. And this flight was a success, but it concluded over the Indian Ocean where Starship Re entered the Earth's atmosphere and was ultimately destroyed. But we also got great video of that. So if you haven't seen that yet, please check it out on Spacex's X account. But despite all the failures, it was deemed the most successful today, fulfilling several crucial objectives. And NASA's anticipation for this mission stems from $4 billion investment in Starship for lunar
missions. The test represents a significant step forwards for humans to return to the moon, especially with that propellant transfer. That's something they'll have to do for the Artemis missions to get people back to the moon. Now SpaceX has several more starships in production. They're continuing to aim for test flights throughout the year. Elon said he wants to have nine test flights. Realistically, if they can get to 9 test flights, that would be
ridiculous. Everybody that I've talked to so far in the Space Flight category has said six at best. More than likely they'll have four more this year, but six at the best. But if they can get nine, they still have to get approval for the 9 as well, which they probably will get approval now with each subsequent flight, though, they're going to be refining Starships design and
capabilities every single time. The iterative process is crucial for developing the future success of Starship, and every single ship will be better, faster, more powerful, more reliable, and be able to get things to low Earth orbit in a more timely manner. And each test is a learning opportunity. Hardware is evolving, Software is evolving, The ground systems are all evolving every single
launch. And SpaceX advances its mission of space exploration, and they're inching closer to its goals of interplanetary travel and also habitation. Every single launch of Starship. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I really do appreciate your
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