We're just about one month away from the next Starship launch from Starbase Texas in Boca Chica. The tip of Texas, the South most place on the Texas map that is on the Gulf of Mexico right on the Rio Grande River.
Basics will be launching possibly and catching the first ever booster at Starbase. Now, Kathy, leaders just recently a few days ago had a talk in the area about Starbase and about the future of the Starship and if they're going to catch IFT 5 at Starbase. And the answer to that is from Kathy maybe it looked like IFT 4 was really great pinpoint accuracy on the landing, according to SpaceX engineers, according to Elon Musk noting them.
So it looks like SpaceX is in a really good position to move forward with the catch of the booster. Now they're in a good position to catch it, but are they really? I just want to send you guys some information so you can think about it, because you and me both, we aren't engineers at SpaceX, but we have to think about this rationally and logically before we get our
hopes up here. And I don't want to squash anybody's hopes because I really freaking hope that they catch this booster at Starbase within the next month. It would be insane, mind blowing if this actually happened in the next month. Now what do they have to do? They're doing currently do doing testing with a prototype article on the on the arms. They're opening and closing the arms around this article to make sure that the lift can work properly, make sure that the arms close properly.
The perfect timing for this is absolutely crucial because if they don't get the timing down, if the arms close early and too much, the booster won't land properly and it might land off center, it might land a little bit crooked and then you get a blown up booster on the pad and you know, it's almost out of
fuel at that point. So the damage would be minimal if something does happen, if something does blow up, but there still could be some shrapnel and whatever that could cut some pipes, cut some electric stuff. They do have cladding on it, but I mean pieces of shrapnel going so fast. We don't know what the speed's gonna be, but it's gonna go so fast that it could shred
anything in its way. So this, this cladding around the the base of the launch tower, of course very protective, but you never know what could happen to the surrounding area. There's little buildings and stuff around there that the people work out of. So something could get damaged in there too, could cause a fire, etcetera, which could cause environmental damage.
We have to talk about that because the environment at Starbase is crucial, and the environmental impact study that was that happened before that allowed SpaceX to launch from Starbase still is intact. So if they ruin that environmental impact statement in any way, they have to go back to the drawing board. The FAA might get involved, and then we might have to wait a year for them to fix this. I don't know how long it would take.
It depends on the damage done. So if they do any damage and they catch a bunch of stuff on fire, SpaceX is in a lot of trouble because it's going to slow down things at Starbase tremendously for the next foreseeable future. We don't know how long it would slow them down for. So that's one thing that we have to be really worried about. What would happen if there was a fire at Starbase?
And of course, Kathy Leaders, who's the manager at Starbase, in her talk the other day talked about the catastrophic Starbase. The the people that come in there with something catastrophic hits, right? The the first responders, what do they do? They come, they care. They take care of fires, they care, take care of people, take care of places, people, things. So those people would be called in immediately, put out the fire. Hopefully it's not too big so it doesn't get out of control.
But it's a wetland. And of course there's a lot of endangered species down there and species that are just, you know, on the almost on the endangered species list. So there's birds, piping plovers, there's turtles, etcetera. And if something happens to that, they could be set back months. Now, on a bright side, it looks like the tests are going really
well. And if the tests are going well and it looks like the chopsticks could perfectly just just hug that booster perfectly as it lands, that would be so cool. I'd be so excited. It's going to be exciting no matter what, no matter what happens. So the the negative Nancy in me is like, oh man, I really hope they wait for a couple more launches so they can land this thing. But I really wanted to land this thing as soon as possible so I can see this thing land.
Because if this booster lands, if it does land, this is going to change everything. Everything about spaceflight, the way that spaceflight is conducted. Falcon 9 is obsolete almost at that point. Of course there will still be missions until space XS Starship is fully realized, fully tested numerous times, gets to orbit a bunch of times, does some Starlink deployments, which they're not going to do right away by the way. But we were all hoping because they did the payload door.
Remember that when they did the payload door tests were like IFT 4, three launches, Starlinks. Everybody was like, dude, we're doing it. They're going for it. They're going for Starlinks, they're going to orbit, and they're going to launch some Starlinks into orbit. But that didn't happen. So IFT 5, Elon said no, no, no, no, no Starlinks. But maybe in the near future, maybe IFT 9, maybe 10, maybe 10's, the magic number. That seems like a good run number for Starlink launches.
But if they land this booster at Starbase, everything changes because if they can land this booster and if they probably won't fly it again because it it did its thing, it did its mission, they'll probably do another booster and they'll try to land every booster after that. We'll see what happens, right? They're building tower two. Should they wait until more of tower two is built?
I mean, because if something does happen to the tower one and they can't fix it for six months, they're way behind schedule at that point. Build up tower two. I know it's going to take six months for tower two to be built, six months to a year for tower two to be built. But just wait for a little bit at least because we want to see this thing land and we don't want to. We don't want to wait and nobody else wants. NASA doesn't want to wait. NASA won't.
I mean, NASA has a contract with SpaceX. And of course, if SpaceX does something stupid, NASA will get in there and be like, Hey, we paid you good money for for the Starship trip to the moon. So stop it, SpaceX, you got to you got to stop being irresponsible. We understand your test schedule. We understand that you like to push things. We like to push boundaries. But you don't have to do that
right away. I think NASA could step in and be like, hey, talk some sense into Elon, even though he knows what he's doing and the SpaceX and years know exactly what they're doing. There could be a time where Elon and company just get a gentle pushback just a little bit, just a little nudge, a little nudge from NASA and NASA says, hey, SpaceX, just hold off just a minute.
Just hold off for like two flights at least make sure you get everything tested a bunch of times and maybe do like AI don't know a hover test. I don't know. I don't know what they could do, but I think SpaceX is in a really good spot right now. And I think, I don't think they're going to be landing this at the at the arms anytime soon, chopsticks anytime soon. I think within the next three flights, probably couple flights from now, we'll have a landing.
But I also believe that Kathy knows a lot more than you know, anybody else in this. And she said this a couple days ago. So couple days ago. Kathy's like, I don't know. I, I, I really don't know. She doesn't. They don't have enough data. They haven't done the testing yet and but if everything goes well, we could possibly see it within, you know, the by the end of July, we could see a booster landing at Brownsville, Starbase, Texas, Boca Chica. It'd be wild.
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