Astronauts first walked on the moon in 1969.
You got the flag up now and you can see the stars and stripes. If you asked people back then
what they thought space missions would look like now, they might be surprised to hear that the last
time human beings went to the moon was in 1972. Even though there hasn't been much progress for
decades, 2020 will go down as the year everything started to change. One, zero, ignition, liftoff.
Godspeed Bob and Doug. When SpaceX sent NASA astronauts into orbit, it represented more than
just a mission to the International Space Station. It meant a private company had built the
infrastructure that could one day make space travel possible for everyone. Welcome back
to planet Earth, thanks for flying SpaceX. This day heralds a new age of space exploration.
We're gonna go to the moon, we're going to have a base on the moon. We're going to send
people to Mars, and make life multi-planetary. SpaceX has big ambitions and it
plans to achieve them with Starship. Tt's hard to grasp the size of Starship but the
Falcon 1 booster which was used for SpaceX's first successful launch in 2008 looks tiny beside it.
Starship is made up of two parts: the spacecraft is stacked on top of a huge rocket booster
called the Super Heavy. Together they tower 120 meters high which is a bit longer than a football
field and bigger than other super heavy rockets. By the way, that's what we would look like in
comparison. Not only will it be big, it can carry up to 100 people and a lot of cargo. Starship is
meant to hold a payload of up to 150 metric tons which is the weight of about 21 African elephants.
That requires a lot of power for liftoff. Monstrous engines filled with liquid oxygen and
liquid methane will boost the rocket into orbit. Six of these Raptor engines will be used in the
spacecraft but most of the power comes from the up to 37 Raptor engines in the booster. After
lifting Starship into orbit, the booster and the spacecraft will separate. The Super Heavy
returns to Earth while Starship goes along its journey and that journey can be anything from
making trips to the International Space Station, missions to the moon, and of course, landing
on Mars which is not easy. Starship will be entering its atmosphere at a speed of 17,000
miles per hour or 25 times the speed of sound. It will need to decelerate and perform a specific
maneuver in order to land. And it's not just speed that Starship has to worry about but heat. It'll
be coming into the red planet's atmosphere really hot so the heat shield will see some wear and
tear sort of like what you get from wearing out a brake pad of a car. One of the reasons SpaceX
switched the material from carbon fiber to steel was to better withstand higher temperatures. It's
also cheaper. But even before making the long trip to another planet, Starship needs to refuel in
Earth's orbit. One Starship will meet another one that could have launched from the moon,
for example, powered by its own Raptor engines and then once it reaches Mars it could
refuel again there for another trip. But none of SpaceX's ambitions would be possible
were not for the one standout feature of Starship: it is a fully reusable rocket. Never has that
existed before. The Falcon 9 was the stepping stone as SpaceX frequently re-flew parts of
that rocket but the company's plan from the beginning was to build an entirely reusable one.
You can imagine that if planes were not reusable, very few people would fly. The spacecraft will
land in a way that might attract some crowds. It will fall back to earth like a skydiver and
belly flop at a 60-degree angle before slowing to the ground, rotating vertically, and then
arriving at its landing pad. Because all parts of the rocket will be reused, the cost of each launch
will drop significantly. For example, a NASA space shuttle flight was around $450 million. SpaceX has
estimated a Starship launch could be as little as $2 million. At its factory in Boca Chica, in a
remote area at the southeastern tip of Texas, SpaceX plans to churn out one Starship every 72
hours with a goal of having a fleet of about 1,000 in service but the question is: how will Starship
make money right now? It can be used to carry Starlink satellites into orbit as part of SpaceX's
plan to provide internet coverage anywhere around the world which I talked about in another video.
And revenue from Starlink could eventually bring in 30 billion dollars a year. Another use is
providing Earth-to-Earth transport. For example, going from New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes
which will likely be expensive. And Japanese billionaire Yusaku Mazawa will also help
fund Starship's development as SpaceX's first private passenger to fly around the moon in
2023. But these are small goals compared to the ultimate purpose of Starship. Elon Musk's greatest
ambition is to build nations in space including a city on Mars to ensure humanity's survival in
case something happens on Earth. Starship took its first big step toward that goal with its tiny
hop in August. This is a Starship prototype which looks like a floating tin can. It lept 150 meters
in the air using a single Raptor engine - setting the stage for Starship's plan to land on the moon
by 2022 with cargo and then with crew soon after before ultimately sending people to Mars in 2024
although Musk is not known for making deadlines. But one thing is certain and that's this. There
are many troubles in the world, of course, and these are important and we need to solve
them. But we also need things that make us excited to be alive, that make us glad to wake up in the
morning. Space exploration is one of those things. So if you asked people in 1969 what
space travel might look like today, even though they might be surprised that
progress has been stagnant for decades, SpaceX appears to be changing the game. I hope
you enjoyed that story about Starship. Hey guys, I'm Cindy Pom, thanks so much for watching.
If you like what you saw, give it a like, and don't forget to subscribe to my new channel.
I'm always looking for good stories to tell so if you have an idea, feel free to leave it in
the comment section below. See you soon you.
