SpaceX Starship Flight 10 Update
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so you can find the right job for you. Get started at linkedin.com slash jobs. Finding where you fit. LinkedIn knows how. 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 bay issues that caused explosions in Starship's last two flights.

So he talked about the ninth 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 and Mars missions?

The current Starship test flight is focused on collecting data, especially about the spacecraft's heat shield tiles. The team is experimenting with different tile coatings, fabrication methods, and attachment techniques to see what performs best during the intense heating of reentry. 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.

The unwanted mixture led to engine explosions. Musk also admitted that while an 80% solution feels good, the team won't reach full confidence without redesigning certain engine parts. 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 be sent directly onto the launch stand.

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 is immediate reflight readiness, where in principle, propellant loading could begin just minutes after the booster returns and lands at the chopsticks. 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 and upper stage structure. The new design exposes more of the engine hardware, creating a cleaner look with 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 shuttles, high costs per flight and a Saturn five 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 and

Um, 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. Uh, there's no ship that can take you there without extensive overhauls. Um, there's, this is a reliable transportation that goes to Mars. It's the foundation for creating new opportunities and,

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 infrastructure.

everything else a society will need. So 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 U S space program should aim beyond returning to the moon. He believes that Mars should be the goal given that the U S reached the moon more than half a century ago, over 50 years ago. And Elon,

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 U S 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, uh, they can mind the water ice on the moon and make propellant and then send those rockets off into space. Uh,

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 a 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 is flight 10 is coming up. Um, 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, um, within the next week booster is down at the launch pad. 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 okay. Um,

Now, 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 test flight plans and also the no-fly zones, no-boating zones, things like that, 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 Starlink 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 anything.

into Earth's orbit can launch to the moon and to 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 limit 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 were 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 nine'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 nine'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. At Sierra, discover great deals on top brand workout gear, like high quality walking shoes, which might lead to another discovery. 40,000 steps, baby.

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No reason to land it in the ocean or in the Gulf. 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. They've already landed a booster, but they also have to orbit the Earth.

They 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. Uh, 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. 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, et cetera. They 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. Um, 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 seven, eight, and nine. And hopefully flight 10 coming up will be a success.

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