SpaceX Starship Postponed
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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. I'm your host, Will Walden. So it's taken me a little while to record this episode, and there are a few reasons for that. One of them is I don't really like to do this.

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I think Starship is in a pretty tough spot. I don't know if you've seen this in the news. If you're an Elon Musk fan, you've probably seen this or heard about this, but the last ship that was going to be for flight 10 of Starship exploded while it was testing and Elon and company over SpaceX kind of have an idea what it was.

But that's a moot point because most of the next ships are already being built. And also block three ships, which are more powerful are already in the production. And what happened when the ship exploded, took out some of the test facility too. So as of right now,

Starship is postponed until SpaceX figures out what they want to do next. What's their next move? Will they test the same block two type ship because they already have some almost ready or will they just move on to block three because block two really isn't working out well for them. And the FAA after three failed attempts to, um,

land the rocket the the starship part of the rocket stage two in the indian ocean every single one of those the last three blew up and then one blew up on the pad so four blew up in a row the faa has to take a very close look at starship right now is it worth it to continue going down the same road for spacex and starship and elon go down the block two road

And use the same ship and maybe it'll work, but also the chance that it doesn't work. So that's five failures in a row. Not only did they fail with the Starship and it blew up, they call it a red, a rapid unscheduled disassembly. But also with the last flight, there's a thing, there's a bay door that was going to open for the Starlink satellites. There were dummy satellites that were going to be ejected from the Starship and

And, um, they were going to burn up in orbit and they were gonna do some testing on them to make sure that everything works right before they actually send real star links into orbit. The bay door didn't open and you got to think to yourself, if they don't know how to get a bay door to work properly in space and they keep blowing up ships, why would they continue down the same road with the same ships doing the same thing?

It makes you crazy, right? If you continue to do the same thing, get the same results, you're never going to move forward. So it looks like block three is pretty close to, I would say 30% ready as far as the ships go. The boosters are,

Not in that league yet. There will be a booster, um, within the next few months, but this is postponed Starship's advancement for months. Now this also postpones the NASA HLS missions. If Elon Musk and SpaceX don't prove that Starship can a well just survive and be orbit the earth. And then it also needs to refuel in orbit.

And then it needs to make a turn towards the moon, fly to the moon, orbit the moon, stay in orbit, and then land on the surface of the moon without fail. And for me, I love SpaceX. I think it's the most wonderful thing that's happened to space flight since the beginning of space flight, since Sputnik and since, you know, intercontinental rockets, you know, since rocketry started.

I think it's an amazing company. I think the people there that work with SpaceX are amazing. And I think they're brilliant geniuses. But if they don't successfully continue to launch Starships without incident. Now, the booster that came back last time, there was an incident with the booster, too. But that was determined beforehand that was going to happen. They knew it was probably going to blow up on its way back to the Gulf of Mexico slash America, whatever you want to call it.

But if, and so the booster is okay, but the ship is the thing that they really have to worry about. I want to know if you're on a podcast platform that has comments, leave a comment, let me know what you think. But I'm just rifling off at the cuff right now. And if SpaceX can't make it to orbit, if they can't land a starship successfully and they've landed plenty of boosters,

But if they can't orbit the earth and then come back to star base in land, uh, ship and refuel it and reuse it. I think the starship program is gonna be dead in the water. This has happened before the N one rocket, uh, had a few, uh, not successful launches. Everything blew up. It was a massive explosion.

But they canceled that immediately because things happened and they were kind of on the same timeline as SpaceX. They wanted to make the world's most powerful rocket more powerful than the Apollo program, but they just canceled it because it was just too much money. It costs too much and it's too dangerous. So they just canceled it all.

And now considering Elon Musk has the most money, the money thing isn't a big deal. He does have investors, you know, there's private equity firms and private people with billions of dollars that have invested in SpaceX and Starlink is going to be making a profit for the next foreseeable future. So that's going to fund at the Starship program and continue to be a money sink if it doesn't work.

I have all the belief. I have all the goodwill for SpaceX engineers, all the coders, all the people that are building everybody in the office, everybody that works at SpaceX. I have nothing but love for them. But when is a good time to halt progress? I don't think they should. I think they should continue. And I think they should figure it out.

And it may seem like I'm a doomsayer at this point, but I'm not, I'm really not. I really want this thing to work. I really want SpaceX to move forward with Starship and land some people on the moon again. When I was a kid, there was a space shuttle. There's also the Apollo program. I caught sort of like the end ish of the Apollo program. The Apollo program ended before around when I was born. So that means that I was kind of an Apollo kid, but I was a little baby and

But I saw the reruns and I saw the documentaries on TV and I read about it in books. So I know it's possible to go to the moon. I know it's possible for people to do incredible things, but when you keep sinking money into it, you keep sinking resources into it and you don't get the result that you want. Is it time to move on to the next version of starship? My answer is it's hard. It's difficult because if they move on to the next version and it doesn't work,

What do they do then? They just have to fix block three, which is a more powerful version of the starship. And then they just work on block three forever until they fix it. Because what block one was the most successful so far. Block two, they've had all these issues with exploding rockets, exploding second stages. And block three hasn't launched yet, so they don't know. But should they cut their losses and just get rid of block two? Because the block three...

Uh, tower at star base is almost ready. It's it's winding. It's coming up on like probably a month or two before it's completely ready. And by that time, I think the hardware for block three will be mature enough that they could get it ready to launch when the tower is maturing and getting ready to launch. And, but you have to remember.

The first tower, which is still like that was a total test alpha like the 0.0000001 a alpha version of the tower. That one took forever to test. Now they're testing the strength of the chopsticks. They're testing

You know, lift capabilities, they're testing all the speed, they're testing the infrastructure and they're testing the ground systems for the second tower and star base. Should they get rid of the block to tower, which is the first tower and just use the new tower, rip down the old tower, build a new tower that's also in the cards.

SpaceX has, um, it's in, it's in their documentation for Starbase that they can continue to produce new towers if needed. So it's a possibility that the second tower at Starbase pad B actually becomes the main pad from now on. And then from there, they ripped down the old tower. They build it up to a block three tower. Then they're back in business. Now, if the

new tower doesn't function properly with the new rocket, they're in a world of hurt because what are they going to do then? They have nowhere to go. They have nowhere to go because it's block three. This is the final version starship.

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Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

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There's no, nobody's ever said anything a block about a block for Elon's like kind of joked about like a really huge rocket, like a double or triple size starship, but that's not actually a thing. So the, I think the, the outcome for a starship would be to move on from block two, maybe give it one last world. I don't know. I think block three is the way to go though. I think they have to rip down that old tower.

move on with the new tower and just move forward at Cape Canaveral with a V2 tower and, you know, just keep building new towers for block three, because I think that's the way to go. I think they have to ditch all block one and block two, get rid of them. They're too dangerous and it takes too much time. What they could do is finish block three stuff, the tower in the rocket in a few months, you know, maybe even six months, um,

Test it. You know, they have to finish the test facility again. I have to fix it. There's no test facility down at Starbase anymore at the launch pad anymore. Really? I guess they could test it on the tower, but that's why they have the Massey's test facility so they could test all the rockets there and then move them down to the launch site. So I'm not 100% sure what they're going to be doing, but I think block three is the way to go.

It just makes more sense, you know, logistically thinking. I think it makes more sense just to move forward, get rid of block two, go to block three. I know I keep saying the same thing, but it just makes more sense that way.

They'd save a lot of time and money too. I mean, if block two keeps blowing up, they're putting them, they're, they're risking FAA halting all launches of starship. If it keeps blowing up because then it gets dangerous. And they're like, what are you doing, dude? You know, what are you doing with your starships? It's you're not doing, you're not accomplishing anything. And it's dangerous for all the people around you and the boats and whatever.

And there's debris in the ocean. They don't want all that stuff. They don't want that drama. So the FAA would probably, you know, slow them down or halt them until they get it fixed. And if they don't get it fixed, uh, they could just put a hold on the whole, um, Starship launch from Starbase until further notice until SpaceX can really, um, prove that it's fixed, that everything's fixed completely, or they move on to block three. So they might as well just move on to block three.

And then if something happens with that, then that's whatever, you know, then they fix that. And then they finally have a rocket that they can launch into orbit. They can refuel, they can go to the moon, they can go to Mars. But if Elon Musk wants to make it to Mars in 2026, when the next window opens, they got to really move fast because it's June, like the end of June, it's the beginning of July soon.

And next year they have one year and a few months before they can make it to Mars. Now, mind you, they don't have to, they're not going to try to land the starship. If they go to Mars, they're going into orbit with the starship. So the booster will launch the second stage, which is the starship will go into earth's orbit. And then it'll mate with a tanker, which will refuel it and then refuel it a few times. And then, um,

They're going to go to Mars after that. They point towards Mars and they go towards Mars. If they can't get the starship to orbit right now, there's no way they can make it to Mars. It just, it just stops dead in the air. You know, if they blow up again. So if block three can make it to orbit, I think they're set. I think they're good, but I don't think block two is worth it anymore. I really don't. It's not worth the hassle and not worth the money. They keep, you know, the,

Sunk cost fallacy where if you just keep putting money into something, it's gonna work. Just keep doing the same thing over and over and over. It's gonna work. Even if you know what the fix is, then why would you keep doing it though? Because there's only a few more launches of block two before block three comes out. Anyway, I think there's three maybe of block two and like, why would they like, they're not gonna get so much data from those launches.

If they keep blowing up, they're not going to get enough data to even be worth launching these things. Sure. They get data on the way up, but there's no data in like a pseudo orbit or even getting into earth's orbit. They haven't gotten into orbit yet. They've had orbital velocity, but they've never hit actual orbit yet. So move on to block three, hope it works. Make sure you take all the time in the world to do every check. Um, every, um,

you know, make sure everything's tight. That's the problem. Nothing's tight. Everything is blowing up. So make sure everything works. And then from there, um, just keep going with block three. I don't know. What do you think? If you have comments on your podcast platform, let me know in the comments. I really want to know what you think. I want this community to tell me what you think. Also, I have to ask you one more time, please favor for me after 500 plus episodes. It's the first time I've ever asked for anything.

Really? Um, if you get Venmo at will dash Walden with any sort of donation, that would be great. I can continue doing the show that way. And if you don't, I can't tell you if I'll be able to do the show. So if you've been listening to the show for a long time, if you get, if you've gotten anything out of it, a tip, you know, a tip would be really nice just so I can keep the show going. We're in dire straits here, guys, we might not be able to keep doing the show. So if you're a fan of the show, uh,

Um, you know, do whatever you can and I would really greatly appreciate it. So I, the technical aspects of Starship didn't really want to get into them today because the, the idea of digging into the technical stuff, one, it's a lot to think about. Two, it didn't need to be said. This is a question of.

Should we move forward with this version or move into a new version? That's it. Like it's nothing. It's not rock. I mean, it's rock science, but it's also not that hard. Not that difficult. Something doesn't work. You ditch it. You pivot, right? Move fast and break stuff. It's the Silicon Valley way. Something doesn't work. Ditch it, man. Go to block three. Elon, you should know this. Anyway, let me know what you think of the comments. Appreciate everybody. And take care of yourselves, please. Thanks for listening.

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