Literally the stupidest SpaceX Idea I've Ever Heard
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The internet is full of people who post really stupid stuff about NASA, about SpaceX, about Elon Musk, and I want to draw your attention to one of them today.

Now, if you're this person, I apologize, but what you said was absolutely absurd, and I want to draw some attention to it, because if there's anybody out there that thinks the same way, if you think the same way that this user thinks, and this is a Reddit post, so you know it's going to be really good.

If you think like them, you're completely wrong. And it's a weird, really weird thing to think. So let's look at what was the beginning of this. NASA and SpaceX have a partnership and they've had a partnership for a long time, but now they have a different partnership. SpaceX is going to deorbit the International Space Station.

Now, a few accounts, including Eric Berger, have mentioned something about DragonXL. And if you're not familiar with DragonXL, it's kind of like a

uh, uh, dragon capsule, but it's a big tube basically. And what they may be doing with this is using it as sort of a, a tugboat to push the space station into, uh, the deorbit maneuvers. And then it will burn up in the atmosphere over the ocean, uh, someplace where there's no people, where there's no cars, where there's no cities over the ocean somewhere, uh,

avoid risk of the populated areas. Now selecting a USD orbit vehicle for the international space station will help NASA and its international partners ensure a safe and responsible transition in low earth orbit at the end of the station's operations. And it's a sad day. It's a 2030. It's going to happen. It's a sad day because it's been going on for a long time. And we love to see people working and living in space. Now the space station is,

will be run by private entities. Different space stations will be in orbit and you can pick and choose whatever space station you want to go to with whatever vehicle you want to go to.

That with you could pick a SpaceX Dragon. You could pick whatever Blue Origin is going to send up there if they ever get anything to orbit a ULA rocket. However you want to get up there, you can get up there. You go with Russia, wherever. Who cares? But there's going to be numerous space stations, private space stations in the future. Now, SpaceX will be deorbiting this. Will they be using a starship? The answer is absolutely not. There's no reason to use a starship.

Though the space station is about the size of a American football field, there's no need to use a starship. Plus, the starship isn't built yet.

So they can't really depend on it to do these maneuvers. They've had Dragon XL in the works for ever, you know, years. So it's going to be used for this, basically. That's what it's used for. This is used for transport, for cargo, things like that. That was on the drawing board before. It's been on the board since. And they're going to continue using this vehicle.

Now, if you want to hear something really stupid, stay tuned because this is a really silly thing that somebody posted on Reddit. Could SpaceX deorbit the ISS by filling Starship with scrap metal, launching it into a head-on orbit, and then simply ramming the space station? So think about that for a little bit. Could it be a ramp machine, a Starship...

Something that's like 150 feet tall or more, depending on what version you use of a starship. And they just want to ram it into the international space station. Now, this is a really dumb idea. One, it's a really dumb idea because you destroy the starship. It's made out of metal. Of course, it's made out of steel, which is really durable, but you're going to destroy the starship in this process by ramming it.

into a space station, which is also, it's made out of composites. It's made out of metal. There's all sorts of electronics in there. Things will catch on, you know, uh,

Catch on fire interiorly. Interiorly? Is that a word? Inside the space station. There'll be sparking, all sorts of things. There's no oxygen on the outside, but things can happen on the inside. Ram it. It breaks apart. And that's what they want. They just kind of want to ram into it, launch it into head-on orbit, and then simply ramming the ISS. No, that's not how things are done in space. That's not how things are done. You're going to gently tug this thing or gently nudge it

into the orbit that it needs to go. Because when you ram a space station, millions of particles of metal and debris would fly wherever they fly, whether that's towards other satellites, where if that's, if there's a rocket launch going on with people on board, you're going to possibly hurt those people. Of course, it'll be zoned off so nobody can fly in that area.

In that time, including spacecraft and aircraft, boats, things like that. There's going to be an exclusion zone for miles. I don't know how many miles. They haven't really set any standards yet. But the thing's as big as a football field. It's 100 yards long. So it's a big piece of machinery. And if you ram it, there's going to be pieces everywhere. Shrapnel. They could rip through the side of a spacecraft and destroy everything on board.

We've all seen those stupid movies about...

Um, you know, people getting stuck on a space station or on a space shuttle or something like that. And, you know, some, some micro meteorite burst through the station. It destroys everything. Well, that's kind of what would happen here. Uh, millions of pieces of this would go everywhere and possibly destroy, um, you know, other satellites and it could possibly make sort of like a ring, uh, an orbital ring of debris, uh,

um, in the same orbit that the space station is a little bit different because it'll get nudged out of the way. But this is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Uh, why would you smash into the space station and risk everything? Um,

And the original post, let me go back to this, this, this post right here. Whoops. Let me go back to this because they deleted the post of the, the mods deleted it. And I have to find, there we go. This is the reasoning for this. This is how stupid this is. It would be super cheap and super quick though. They could even use one of the old starship prototypes that are too obsolete, even for testing purposes and that are earmarked for dismantling.

Fill one of them with a bunch of old car and truck bodies from the scrapyard and then send it. It can be done for not much more than the cost of the propellant. Oh, my God. Imagine what's possible when learning doesn't get in the way of life.

Oh my God.

Old car and truck bodies. Why would you send old car and truck bodies from a scrap yard space? I mean, this is a this is like next level troll if they're not serious, if they're just joking. But this is a great troll. Like, think about how great that would be. You just send some old car bodies in there, buddy.

Old truck bodies from the scrapyard. And they had to mention that it's from the scrapyard, too. Not just old truck car and truck. But they mentioned it was from the scrapyard. So it's brilliant. It's brilliant. And then, of course, Lucky Nils says, no, it wouldn't be super quick. And that's the reason why it would be a bad idea. ISS is far too fragile to significantly reduce its speed when being rammed.

And that's a little bit lower than touring wheel here. So touring wheel, I'm giving you a shout out because if you're trolling, this is a good troll. And if you're joking, they actually deleted the post. So I had to like go, the, the troll is basically this comment right here is what their original post was. But let me know in the comments, if you think this is really stupid. And then time traveling, Chris says, okay, OP, please stay away from the space industry.

But by all means, consider entering this supervillain industry. Yeah, there's all sorts of comments on here. This started out pretty good, but I wish the mods on SpaceX launch would have left this for a little bit because it would have been pretty good to see people freak out about it for a while because I think, like, one, it's funny. It's also really stupid to think, like, if that's what you really thought, you have to have some sort of...

Like some, some way to discern between something that's right. Something that's going to work and something that's going to be a horrible idea. You gotta have that. You gotta have that in your brain. Some people don't, this person might not have touring wheel. Shout out to you for making this post.

because it was really funny it's like one day ago and i saw it i was like oh my god and i posted that's ridiculously irresponsible of course of course trogdor's beefy arm on reddit if you will and there's a discord link in the description too so that's it for that but there's another thing that i want to talk about because not only is there a stupid post like this on reddit but there's a great post on reddit about the next steps for starship and this is kathy leaders

She did a little summit as she's the general manager of Starbase. And she did a summit near Starbase recently. And it says SpaceX is planning to establish a permanent orbital fuel depot to support missions to the moon and Mars. According to Kathy leaders, the general manager of Starbase. That makes more sense, doesn't it? One depot orbital fuel depot. Send the fuel up. Depot it up. It's just kind of like a gas station, right?

The gas station has tanks underneath it. If you don't know how a gas station works, there's tanks underneath the gas station that trucks pull in and then they use a hose and they, oops, I got to hit my space bar, use a hose and they put the gas in the tanker underneath the gas station and then you go fill your car at the gas tanks. Pretty cool. That's exactly what's going to happen with SpaceX. It's the smartest idea to have one place with one big tanker.

Now, how are they going to get this tanker into space? And is one SpaceX starship going to be big enough? No, it's not going to be big enough to refuel something that's going to be going to Mars. And Elon and Kathy and some NASA administrator people said that it's going to take about 10 of the starships to refuel one starship to get to the moon.

So imagine going to Mars or any place else out in the solar system. You're going to have to have depots along the way. I mean, unless you do gravity assists, which is totally possible too. You could fling yourself from planet to planet if you want to get further out or celestial body. You could fling yourself from the moon or from Earth's orbit and use the gravity assist to go out there. But fuel depot on the way to Mars

Mars would be pretty cool. And then you could just blast yourself as fast as possible. Of course, you have to slow down for a depot. That's another whole thing that that's why I'm not a rocket scientist, because I'm not an engineer for that reason, because I can't figure out those computations. I can't figure that out. The calculations to get to a certain spot, slow down.

Do some sort of flip maneuver, slow down and then refuel. That's incredibly hard math to do. So SpaceX will figure that out. But this is what Elon said about. And there's there's another thing, too, that I got to show you. Elon said about this that they want to get this view of Starship the next time that it lands on the chopsticks, whether it's going to be the next flight or the flight after that or the flight after that.

We're not 100% sure. So it's going to be an interesting time. And I think the thing that we have to think about is that SpaceX will do this eventually, right? They're going to do this eventually. They're going to catch it. But during this talk with Kathy, she kind of alluded that they might not catch this at the next time.

And that could be due to FAA regulations. It could be due to the flight just not being ready for that. Could be the booster not being ready for that. Elon, of course, is the biggest hype man. So there's a possibility that he was like, yeah, I want to do it. And then it caught on. He's like, oh, yeah, we should do it. Can we do it? Engineers? Hey, can we do it? Did we do this right? You know, and then the engineers were like, yeah, I think we could do it.

Um, but there's a lot of other, uh, moving parts to this that SpaceX isn't in control of the FAA has to sign off on it and they haven't proven SpaceX hasn't proven yet that they can fly over land safely in land, a booster, uh, back on land. So that's a little bit of red tape, but there are a few things that if we go back to here, uh, this planning here.

There's a few other things, other info in info from this closed community talk. Thanks to may help. Oh, now user on Reddit three months to completion of star factory, which is great. Then there'll be able to crank out starships in a fast fashion, faster fashion, working with the Texas department of transportation on expanding highway four to a four lane road. Eventually right now it's a two lane road and it's really dangerous to be honest with you. I've driven at hundreds of times when I was living at star base and

And there's just big trucks everywhere, back and forth all the time. There's a ton of traffic going down there. So Four Lane Road would be really nice. Starbase commercial retail space on hold. Basically, they had some retail space there that they were going to use for restaurants and places to buy things, things like that. Everything's on hold because they're like, well, we have to make some rockets. So let's do that.

Uh, she talked about residency over 50% local to Brownsville with about 400 staff living on site. Brownsville is about 25 to 30 minutes away, depending on where you are. And it could be, if you're on the other side, 45 minutes to an hour, um, away from star base. So it would be nice if they were closer by a permanent orbital fuel Depot for moon and Mars missions. We already talked about that. SpaceX monitoring sound levels for port Isabel SPI and Brownsville during testing.

Texas park and wildlife environmental mitigation teams in place before and after launches and monthly emergency management meetings with Cameron County, which is where Starbase is located and local hospitals for catastrophe scenarios. So when she says maybe not this flight, the monthly emergency management meeting with Cameron County and local hospitals for catastrophe scenarios, those go hand in hand.

What if something bad happens? Well, emergency meetings with Cameron County and local hospitals have to come into play. Those Cameron County hospitals might be the best way to mitigate these circumstances if a booster goes wild and flies into Starbase. And I mean, there's bunkers where people do their work, but it's not all safe. You know, they're not like bunker bunkers, right? And it's kind of close, like a mile away from a launch site.

So, I mean, they did take all the precautions that they needed to, but who knows what can happen, right? So if you're waiting for an IFT5 catch, you might be out of luck. And unfortunately, I would love to have seen that, but I'm not trying to be negative. I just know that it's a really hard task. It's a really hard engineering problem to figure out.

And if they could figure it out with these current tests that they're doing, that'd be great. But I don't think they're going to do a fry of T5. Also, let me know in the comments down below what you think about this stuff, because permanent orbital fuel depot for moon and Mars, that'll be like just one depot. I think that solves so many problems instead of launching numerous depots and having numerous depots in orbit, just one, one depot that you fly starships and fuel ships to. Yeah.

So, yeah, let me know down in the comments. And also, if you're new here, thank you for watching. Please hit the like and the subscribe button and leave a comment down below. And if you don't have anything interesting to say or if you just want to, you know, contribute to the algorithm, leave a rocket emoji in the comments. Really helps out the channel and it's free. The other stuff's free, too. And if you hit like and subscribe, YouTube sees that and starts feeding your algorithm with other spaceflight benefits.

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