Starship Update

[Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Applause] hey [Applause] all right welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome to starbase [Music] so it's been uh almost two years since our last update and a lot has happened since then but i'm getting like a strange audio feedback i don't know if do i sound okay to you guys okay great so it's been two years since we had our first mark one rocket and a lot has happened since then we're going to go through the progress but i'm just incredibly proud of the spacex team and all the support that we received from cameron county from brownsville from south padre and i know some of you in the audience so thank you very much for your support so [Applause] so before we jump into the details of what uh what's happened over the past two years i think it's worth just uh talking a bit about this like um like why why are we doing this you know this i mean pretty epic but but what's the what's the sort of the sort of deep meaning behind this like why will the giant reusable rocket uh why make life multi-planetary and i think this is just an incredibly important thing for the future of life itself um so and there's this this there's both a i quote that the sort of the the the defensive reason or the life insurance reason that that's one part of it which is that there's always some chance that something could go wrong on earth uh the dinosaurs are not around anymore um so uh you know we could there could be some calamity that we where we do ourselves in or there's just a there's a natural disaster now i'm i'm naturally an optimist so i i think the the probability of that is low but it is not zero and um and eventually the sun will expand um it might take a few hundred million years so don't hold your breath but eventually uh the sun will expand and destroy all life so for those who really care about not just the humans but all the life on earth it is very important essential that over the long term that we become a multi-planet species and ultimately even go beyond the solar system and bring life with us and you know we are life stewards life's guardians that you know the the creatures that we love cannot they can't build spaceships but we can and we can bring them with us and i think that's pretty important you know for those that that care about the environment and and care about all the creatures on earth um so that's like the the i would say like the defensive or the life insurance reason for life collectively but there's also um an inspiring reason which is that life can't just be about solving problems they have to be things that inspire you that that move your heart that make you glad to be when you wake up in the morning you're excited about the future and going out there and beca being a multi-planet species and being a space bearing civilization and making science fiction not fiction forever i think that's one of those things you know i think we that's just that's what fires me up the most is like let's go out there and find out what this universe is all about you know are there other species out there maybe you know hopefully that it's i mean we i i we want to go find out what the heck's going on what is going on i mean where you know um how do we get here what's meaning of life 42 but what if what's the question um and um you know if we go out there and we explore the the galaxy ultimately then we can find out some of these questions and it would just be very exciting to do that and something we can all look forward to um and and even you know whether somebody chooses to go or not um i think you know vicariously we can all go there just like with apollo where um you know only a handful of people went to the moon but in a sense we all went there humanity went there and um so even if somebody doesn't choose to go themselves i think vicariously through through others they they will go they will understand they will experience the universe and i think that's incredibly fundamental to an exciting future and that's that's why we're doing this so [Applause] and um yeah now one of the rebuttals we'll sometimes hear is like sure but what about all the problems on earth and i completely agree that the vast majority of resources should be dedicated to solving problems on earth absolutely um i'd say like more than 99 of our resources should be uh oriented towards solving problems on earth it's imp but it's so it's important to note that like nasa's annual budget it is only 0.3 percent 0.36 of the federal budget and in fact of the national gdp it's less than a tenth of a percentage point so it's like we're you know we're only spending 0.1 of our resources on space i think i think we that's okay you know like we will be flying you know um so just uh you know just make sure people don't think like well we is he suggesting that we just spend everything on space no i'm suggesting like maybe half a percent or something like that uh we would probably be okay um so and and i think you know given the this establishing security for life itself and and having an exciting future and inspiring that you know kids about about the future i think it's it's it's worth it basically [Applause] so well how do we do this how do we make life multi-planetary how do what what's the first step and um the essential technology the the holy grail breakthrough that's needed is a rapid and completely reusable rocket system so this has never been accomplished before um and a lot of people for longest time thought this was not possible now with falcon 9 we've been able to show that uh you can have re um you can have reuse of a boost stage and reuse of the ferry so with falcon 9 we've demonstrated a lot of reuse of the the boost stage and of the fairing um we've have over a hundred uh reflights of the fairing over it's i mean of the booster and i'm not sure of the fairing number but it's a lot um and uh and that's a that's a big step in the right direction with starship we're aiming for full and rapid reusability so you know we obviously need to accomplish that that's not uh done yet but um but the success is one of the possible outcomes uh which i always think is when embarking on an endeavor success should be at least one of the possible outcomes um and this for this design i that that is the case um so the and we're aiming for uh rapid reusability uh which is why the the booster is is gonna take off and then fly back to the launch tower and aspirationally get land on the arms which does sound insane [Music] or as uh riley would say audacious um and um but i i you know if if um if it does come in too fast um and um and shear off the arms then i guess it will be a farewell to arms sorry because the dad jokes uh you know i have to warn you they're only going to get worse so um yeah so uh here i'd really just like to congratulate the the spacex team um and and also uh thank nasa the faa the space force um and everyone and all of our customers that have helped us get to this point uh it's insanely hard to uh get a rocket to orbit um insanely difficult to have huge respect for anyone who's gotten a rock to orbit since it's it's so hard and we've had 144 successful launches 106 landings um yeah i mean actually these days i have to look on the internet say how many things have we had i'll have to ask the internet um so uh 83 flight flight proven uh launches um and um although i have to say i still have like like launch ptsd every time the rocket takes off i'm like ah you know i i just see all the ways that it could fail like um but um you know and then this this year we're actually uh aiming to have um around 50 launches so it's about a launch per week on average and yeah so it's a hell of a year we got ahead of us um and in terms of mass to orbit if you look at like tonnage to orbit this this bar chart that we'll show here really illustrates how profound a rapidly reusable rocket uh especially a big one uh is uh what effect that has on total uh tonnage to orbit um so the total mass to orbit to date of earth is a is around 15 000 tons maybe 15 16 000 tons um and um the mass per starship um after a year just one year of launching as if it launches three times a day would be equal to all the mass of to orbit of earth to date that's that's just one starship uh launching three times a day for for a year now if you have you know uh 10 starships ish then and we'll have more than that our goal is to be making at least a a one stack per month and then ultimately um potentially a ship every three days uh there'll be more ships than there are boosters because the the booster actually even though it's gigantic will come back in about six minutes excitement guaranteed so it only takes about two minutes on ascent and then about four minutes to return so you'll know soon the the ship uh has to complete at least one orbit around earth and sometimes uh maybe three orbits or or more uh and each orbit is 90 minutes so the ship uh is probably you know reusable about every uh six six to eight hours that's uh that's why we say sort of three times a day for the ship in theory the the booster is capable of being uh reused every hour um so that the the propellant pumps are designed to fill the rocket in uh about half an hour so the this really is designed for a rapid reusability um so with if you can do roughly a million tons to earth orbit that that's comfortably over a hundred thousand tons to the surface of mars maybe 150 000 tons depending on how good the landing system is so now you can only go to mars every two years so uh and and i think maybe roughly you need about a million tons on mars to have a self-sustaining city but the critical threshold i think for mars is to have a city that is self-sustaining it's going to be incredibly difficult to make a self-sustaining city because if it's missing any ingredient any agreement at all however minor that ingredient is then if the ships from earth stop coming for any reason the city will die out so the the the critical threshold to pass uh one of the most important great filters for any species is to have have the the other planet no longer dependence on on the original planet so i don't know exactly what that tonnage is but i suspect it is at least um if one tries to get the right order of magnitude about a million tons um hopefully it's not more than that starship is capable of doing that it's capable of of getting getting a million tons the surface of mars and creating a self-sustaining city and i think we should try to do that as soon as we can the window of opportunity may be open for a long time and i hope it is but it may also be open for a short time and this is the first this is the first point in the four and a half billion year history of earth that it has been possible i mean let that sink in or if there's a sink let it in um still knocking out the door i mean it's a sentient sink let's face it let me just come in so four and a half billion years it's been a while this is the first time it's been possible we need to seize the opportunity and do it as quickly as possible i'm going to be frank civilization is feeling a little fragile these days and like i said i'm an optimist but i think we got to protect the downside here and and try to build that city on mars as soon as possible and secure the future of life um and it's going to be an incredibly exciting adventure um now the the the uh the sales pitch for for for going to mars is that um it's gonna be uh cramped dangerous difficult uh very hard work uh you might die um and um that's the sales pitch i hope you like it so far from being some sort of escape hatch it will be extremely difficult and dangerous and and tough um mars mars is a fixer-upper of a planet and um so it's going to take some work to make it make it easy to live there but one day we could make mars a planet like earth i think we should so just some facts about starship and these these numbers will evolve over time so the height of the ship is about 50 meters 164 feet the 9 meter 30 foot diameter well you can just see it basically it's got about 1200 tons of propellant on the ship and thrust is about 1500 tons now these numbers will it will probably add more propellant over time increase thrust um diameter will will stay the same it's a huge huge pain to change diameter so that that'll tend to stay the same but it'll probably get a little bit longer and uh we're expecting a payload capacity of uh 100 to 150 tons depending on on which orbit um so to to a starlink orbit uh roughly 100 tons um over time i think we can probably get the the orbit for um orbital refilling the payload to an orbit for orbital refilling to about 200 tons which is going to be very important for getting to mars so for getting to mars you you also need the orbital refilling just like you have um aerial refueling the rockets will need orbital refilling it's actually mostly oxygen the there's um three and a half tons of oxygen for every one ton of fuel so that's why it's refilling not refueling so uh heat shield so this is the world's largest heat shield um and uh this is uh we actually make this at uh at a little factory in in florida near cape canaveral uh we call it the bakery and uh we're actually using a lot of techniques that are used for roofing tiles so we need to have a heat shield that is capable of resisting extreme heat but also is not crazy expensive and our heat shield team has done done amazing work in creating the world's largest heat shield and one that is reusable but also robust and low cost so it's not it's not a crazy money heat shield and um yeah we need good heat shield technology for uh entering from orbit orbital refilling um we were going to do an animation of this but it looked a bit wrong um it is a fluid transfer um so yeah play a little barry white you know um okay um so that's one of the technologies that is necessary for um getting to mars so the ship would get to orbit with with payload and um and and then then in orbit we would refill the tanks so it would have enough repellent uh to to get to mars mars is far um so now now this is essentially uh docking in orbit and and i with um dragon docking with the space station this is a technology that we've um that spacex has become quite good at we've done um i think at this point a couple dozen uh dockings with the space station and it's it's actually way harder to dock with the space station than to dock with yourself um so this is uh you know it is a thing we need to just solve for starship but i'm confident that we can do this because we've done a lot of orbital docking already with the dragon but this is going to be an important thing to to demonstrate what won't be necessary in the near term for starlink launches but it will be necessary for for mars and the moon so let's see super the super heavy booster so it was 70 meters um but then there was an extra half barrel section that the team deleted and totally accidentally at 69 meters it's also booster 4 and ship 20. i mean this is a pure coincidence those numbers won't leave me alone just um i hope it's good luck um so yeah so the propellant capacity is like around 3 400 tons i think this like so these these it'll probably uh it will increase over time probably get to 36 maybe 3 800 tons um thrust is around 7 600 tons uh that'll probably increase too over time um just to put this into perspective though the saturn v was seven and a half million pounds of thrust and um starship is 17. so it's more than twice the thrust of a saturn v which was quite that was that's the largest rocket ever to get to orbit um it's worth noting super heavy is is the the largest flying object of any kind or will be um it's um yeah very very big you can see it right there um the the that booster has 29 engines the the next booster uh we actually increased the answering count to 33. we've kind of bounced around on engine count um but um because i think at one point we had like 37 engines and uh they went to 29 uh we've finally settled on on 33 engines which which is about actually the most number of engines you can actually fit under that that booster without like expanding the diameter um yeah and then this this tower uh this this tower from from design to construction was uh 13 months so it's quite in quite an epic structure it's really worth emphasizing that the the whole launch system which is basically stage zero is i'd say as complex and difficult as either the booster or the ship so i really want to emphasize that this is uh and it's it's a very difficult thing that requires a lot of hardcore engineering and it's really um like i said the the tower and the launch system which i call stage zero is just as important as stage one and stage two and this is really some some wild stuff here in fact i mean hard to believe it's real except you know it's right there so yeah and then raptor development uh raptor one was 185 tons of thrust uh rafter two is 230 tons of thrust and i think over time uh we can get that to probably 250 tons so that's uh and it's also significantly simplified so you can see the difference between uh v1 and v2 uh this the v2 is there's you know v1 looks like kind of like a christmas tree spaghetti pile um a lot a lot of fiddly bits um and v2 is greatly simplified while also increasing thrust at the same time so it's it actually um raptor 2 costs about half as much as rafter 1 despite having much more thrust and i think just generally being a much easier engine to build and a more robust engine so i'm very excited about raptor version 2 and it's it's only going to get better from here so yeah so raptor two is pretty sick um and uh we've actually the the peak thrust that we've operated wrapped to to add it that's point is uh 247 tons um and so i'm confident that uh with some improvements we can we can get to a 250 ton operating point and um and and continue to simplify and sort of robustify the engine so it's really it's a spectacular piece of engineering extremely difficult to make and succeed this is engine has been mind-bogglingly difficult but it is uh one of the essential keys to uh i mean it is essential obviously to to making a starship work um it'll be the first uh full flow stage combustion engine to to get to orbit um yeah kind of neat that need that isp and thrust the weight so um so why starbase um a lot of people like like say like why starbase why why here and um we kind of needed a confluence of factors the getting to orbit you want to launch eastward so that you have um help from earth's rotation so the closer you are to the equator the more of a sort of a boost from earth rotation that you get so you want to be as south as possible and launch eastward and then you know it's always possible that uh something goes wrong uh and and so you want to have a a a good clear area you want several miles uh around the launch site to be uh unpopulated or at least clearable and that doesn't actually leave a lot of options um it's basically here and uh in cape canaveral okay kennedy is is where the other two possibilities and then because we have had a lot of launches going out of the cape um we didn't want to disrupt the cape uh activity the operational launches um with sort of the advanced r d of uh starship so it was important to decouple the operational launches from the um from the r d launches and and that's why that's why we're at this uh location um and once again i just like to thank uh you know cameron county and uh the brownsville south padre padre and uh the uh remaining residents of boca chica village where i live by the way it's my primary residence is that little village over there so and it's been great it's been great being here and uh yeah like super appreciate the support of the community um yeah anyway thank you so i think we've got a a video to show what we hope will happen uh with launch you play it now oh wait uh sorry we have some upcoming uh starship missions uh orbital flight is really just the beginning uh so we're gonna have um a number of starlink missions that will launch starlink satellite version 2. but even more exciting than that is the the nasa human space flight mission we're incredibly honored to that that nasa has selected uh starship to uh take astronauts back to the moon for the first time in in half a century which is kind of mind-blowing so i just like to say like we're spacex is just deeply honored and appreciative that that nasa would would uh choose us for for this incredibly important mission and um we'll get it done and then there's also the deer moon mission which is uh going to take artists around the moon and um that's uh usaku miyazawa and he he's uh i'm gonna select uh i think a dozen artists and um and and do a loop around the moon which will be very exciting and there's going to be some future announcements that i think people will be pretty fired up about so um anyway super exciting future ahead with this there'll probably be a few bumps in the road you know but uh we want to iron those out with uh satellite missions and test missions and and uh and get to a high flight rate and and then have something that's extremely reliable uh for for human spaceflight so um yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right [Applause] let's make this real any questions let's make this real [Applause] far away anyone i i can't see you so you probably just have to yell it out or something yes there's six raptors on starship uh currently three uh with the vacuum nozzle three sea level sorry um and uh i think uh pro if i would say like we'll probably end up adding another three uh vacuum engines they kind of you know fill in the gaps and stretch the ship i think is going to make a lot of sense you'll have to yell unfortunately we are building a a launch site uh a starship uh launched launch tower at 39a at cape kennedy and um we're also building a starship production facility at the cape so we'll have production facility and launch site here and a production facility on site at the cave as well it's important to have redundancy it's irene clouds with aviation week over here um i've got lights in my eyes so unfortunately i can't see um you should i believe you're you're expecting to hear in a couple weeks about the uh possible finding of no significant impact from the faa have you gotten any indications if that's going to come through and what is your time frame for the orbital flight test thanks well we don't have uh we don't have a ton of insight into the where things stand with the faa um we have gotten sort of a rough indication that there may be an approval uh in march but that's all we know so uh hi elon uh marcus hervey uh can you talk about uh the point-to-point capability where is there a possibility between here and cape canaveral oh well yeah i guess technically yes um so i mean depending on on how good things get with with starship um there are some scenarios where uh it it might actually be the lowest cost means of transporting cargo long distances um so the interesting thing is that the capital efficiency of of a rocket is is is much better than the capital efficiency of a plane for long distance flights so if you now this would really be more for uh you know if you're going like i don't know a quarter or third or halfway around the world where you know if if if you went from i don't know say here to singapore or something like that's a long flight so i mean i don't know how long that is i'm not sure you can even go there non-stop but it's probably like 20 hours plus and uh but in a in a rocket it would be less than an hour so like 45 minutes or thereabouts so that means you you'll be able to use the rocket 20 times more often than than an aircraft so it's 20 times the capital efficiency so provided the propellant cost is uh you know competitive with with aircraft um and bear in mind like i was saying like uh there's three and a half tons of of liquid oxygen for every one ton of fuel um so and liquid oxygen is basically just uh like the cost of electricity um and um yeah because it's in the air basically uh so i there there is a scenario where it's economically compelling to do long distance uh cargo and and people transport uh with starship um that'd be very cool and i think that that'd be great for getting a lot of a high flight rate and uh you know a business case for supporting a lot of starships operating basically nothing's faster than you know an icbm we got a question right here elon right in the middle right here right hands up hands up in the i mean it's i literally have lights in my eyes and i it's pitch dark in front of me it's fine hi eon uh michael sheets with cnbc you opened this presentation by addressing a little bit of the criticism that's been aimed at space travel being seen as maybe a pet project or not really valuable to folks who have problems here on earth i was wondering if you get a little more into the specifics on comparison not just the us government spending that's happening on space travel versus other things but maybe in terms of spacex itself how you and private investment on a dollar value compares to the taxpayer-funded projects or contracts that spacex has won over the years well i i think you know the objectively the um the cost efficiency of spacex is um the the the best in history i think for for any rocket development uh and um and we are talking about a you know a rocket that's uh more than twice the mass and thrust of a saturn v and also designed to be fully reusable which is obviously also much better for from an environmental standpoint to have a fully reusable rocket for a development cost that is uh i don't know between five and ten percent of saturn v so [Music] that's pretty good um because we need to make it work so it's not work yet but it's uh it will work might be a few bumps along the road but it'll work i feel at this point highly confident that we'll get to orbit this year um that's you know we're making a lot of rockets making a lot of engines we're we're close to achieving um one ra rafter to uh everyday production rate so seven a week um which is is tough for a complex engine um and uh i think by the end of this year we'll be able to produce a ship in a booster per month so this is this is i don't know at least in order magnitude maybe maybe tours magnitude more efficient than anything in the past um yeah so hey elon this is uh we were left for super cluster um just wondering what does spacex's plan and timeline look like if the faa ultimately decides to do a deeper environmental review of starbase and then one other thing you might be able to give us an updated figure on what it costs to uh starship and what it would customer cost a customer to uh to buy a fight on one thanks yeah i mean i i am optimistic that we will get approval um for um like i think there objectively i think this is not uh something that will be um harmful to the environment we've obviously flown uh the ship several times um and done you know multiple landings and you know taking some landings and we've fired the engines a lot so i think um the the reality is that that it would not have a significant impact um uh now of course that that doesn't mean things don't get uh delayed from a regulatory standpoint um and we are in a litigious society and so there's there's always sort of lawsuits from someone which is lawsuit city so now we do have the alternative of the cape um and um we actually applied for environmental approval for launch from the cape uh a few years ago and received it so uh we actually are approved from an environmental standpoint to launch from 39a so i guess our worst case scenario is that we would uh i don't know if you'd be delayed for for six six or six to eight months uh to build up uh the cape launch tower and launch from there um from a cost standpoint um the costs will uh improve significantly over time so uh because it'll take us a moment to achieve a full reusability and full and rapid reusability um we'll probably lose a few vehicles along the way um you know with falcon 9 i think it took us 14 or 15 attempts to successfully land the first booster i don't think it'll take us that many with a starship because we have that experience but it's certainly not a sure thing that it'll work the first time from a cost standpoint i mean it's a 100 ton capability to orbit on a marginal cost to launch basis uh you know that doesn't count fixed costs which obviously have to be covered it it may be as little as a few million dollars per flight um maybe even as low as a million dollars per flight so this is crazy these are crazy low numbers uh by space standards crate crazy low um now we do have to cover fixed costs so um depending on what our launch rate is we have to divide the fixed cost by the number of launches so the more launches that that happen the lower the total cost of fully considered cost per flight would be but i'm highly confident it would be less than 10 million dollars uh all in over you know if you say like fast forward like two or three years from now i think it's highly likely to be everything included less less than 10 million dollars of flight for 100 ton to orbit capability and 100 tons to a useful orbit not to a low orbit to to a low over 150 tons so this is ridiculously good by compared to everything else and it should be because you know if you think of like if this was a if if aircraft were not reusable how much would an air ticket cost i mean you know it's like you know for i don't know what uh you know a 787 or triple seven goes for these days i don't know a few hundred million dollars the if you if you have to spend you know 200 million dollars every flight it would be very expensive to fly somewhere and you need two of them for you know another one for the return trip so uh it would obviously be absurd um so if you imagine if we were in a world where aircraft were expendable and then someone came along with a reusable aircraft it'd be an absolutely profound game changer that's what that's what needs to happen for life to become multi-planetary and that's that's what this this design i'm confident is is capable of that it's just a question of how long it will take to refine that and have it really dialed hi hi sorry this is andrea leinfelder of the houston chronicle um i wanted to know when and how do you plan to test starship refueling in space and also aside from nasa dera moon and starling can you elaborate on the potential customer base for starship thank you i apologize actually it was i zoned out for a second i was thinking about something could you say that question again sorry uh um when and we have some mic issues okay when and how do you plan to test starship refueling in space and aside from nasa dear moon and starling can you elaborate on potential customers for starship thank you i think um orbital refilling and i won't emphasize it is refilling not refueling because it's three and a half times as much oxygen than fuel so we're mostly are carrying oxygen up there uh i i optimistically towards the end of next year i think uh i'd be surprised if it's longer than two years for uh doing the refilling um and there there are a lot of additional customers that will want to use starship i don't want to steal their thunder that's they're they're going to make their announcements and um so but i think this will get a lot of use a lot of attention um it it's uh like i said it you know once we make this work it's it's an utterly profound breakthrough in access to orbit and when you have an utterly profound breakthrough is the use cases will be uh hard to imagine i mean you know when when when aircraft first came along they were aircraft were viewed as toys like they were like a novelty um not a means of transport they were like oh look we can fly like a bird briefly for briefly and dangerously for a few minutes um you know nobody at the time at least i think very few people at the time thought that there would be a global aircraft industry with airports throughout the world carrying people to every part of of of earth in ridiculously short periods of time um you know when when the wright brothers first took off i mean most people were just riding horses so you're like you know like riding a horse see this crazy device looks like witchcraft and they would not have imagined that there would be aircraft flying you know tens of thousands of aircraft flying to every corner of the world um so i i think we made this this really could be an extremely profound situation um the and we really can't even imagine all the use cases at this point hi elon this is steve clark with the brownsville herald thank you for the presentation welcome so if the faa does come back and say we need an uh eis does starbase bounce back from that at some point i uh yeah i mean it would it would obviously set us back uh for quite some time because uh an eis takes a lot longer than uh an ea um so we would we would have to shift our priorities to uh cape kennedy okay and long term what do you envision for starbase like a spaceport with flights coming and going and starship manufacturing or what is the future role of starbase uh the future oil surveys i think um it's it's well suited to be kind of like our um advanced r d location so it's like where we would try out uh new designs and uh new versions of the rocket um and and then i think probably cape kennedy would be our sort of main operational uh launch site um and then i don't know over time i think there's gonna be we'll have uh floating spaceports like ocean space ports uh we we got these uh two converted oil rigs that are that are uh gonna be turned into orbital uh launch sites um and they can be moved around the world so i you know that i think there could be quite a few of those um you know i think about like if i think about like uh what would really work for long distance travel because the rocket is quite loud um you want to be you know i don't know 20 miles away from a major city or 30 miles away from major city just so you don't you know um you're not not disturbing people too much um so i think uh probably most of the launch sites long term will be uh kind of ocean or sea uh spaceports so like baby maybe located like 20 miles 30 miles offshore um and this would allow a starship to connect uh any cities that are on the ocean or on the sea um and and and have a high flight rate but without uh disturbing people too much you know i think people are willing to you know have have something that's loud occasionally but if you want to have it uh frequently then it it it probably needs to be off offshore hello i'm cam gerlock with the spacex reddit community um so you've talked a lot about how raptor 2 is crucially important for for starship development and for the future of starship um so i'm curious what what general improvements have you made with raptor 2 to ensure it's not only more efficient more powerful but but also also much easier easier to produce and less expensive as well and faster and how do you how do you plan to continue to iterate further on the design in the future so um raptor two is uh an almost complete redesign relative to raptor one so basically everything from the top machinery to the the chamber nozzle uh the electronics um basically everything has been been redesigned you can see that the difference be over there the raptor one versus raptor rafter two um the you know a lot of the changes were deleting things we deleted a lot consolidated a lot the rotating machinery especially the inducers of the turbo pumps are a lot more robust we converted a bunch of flanges to welds uh and we're actually over time we'll convert even more flanges to welds i hate flanges uh you know especially if you've got a high pressure uh and uh and a cryogenic uh fluid or super hot gas flanges and seals are a nightmare um and so you know we've got parts of that engine that are you know sort of seven eight hundred bar uh you know eleven twelve thousand psi which is nutty um and um and so just uh going to welder joints in instead of flanges was pretty helpful um the pre-burner controllers have been consolidated into a sort of unified box as opposed to being kind of like all over the engine um so and we're getting close to the point where um i think uh raptor will not need shrouds so shroud's a huge pain in the ass like basically putting a whole shield around the engine especially for the gambling engines uh where it's got to kind of like have like a sort of uh you know eyeball seal like it's like rotating in a circle with a hot gas seal um so uh with a bit more deletion and integration i think we the the engine uh will be sort of flame proof more or less and uh and then we can get rid of the shrouds which would be a big mass savings yeah so a lot more could go on um we're also operating at a higher chamber pressure i think i think we could probably operate uh i think over time we can operate it at 330 bar sustained in the main chamber um and um without having the uh the pre-runner pressures be too high uh by essentially [Music] not by losing less pressure there's like a whole pressure ladder going from the the turbo pumps and pre-boaters to the main chamber and by getting rid of a bunch of the choke points uh we we can have less pressure loss uh and so the pumps can uh effectively produce uh you know more pressure in the main chamber uh due to less uh if you feel less less loss in the secondary systems um do you have any i have specific questions or uh sorry uh chris guppert with nasa space spaceflight um can you talk a little bit about the abort modes that are available for ship if there were ever to be a problem during the climb to orbit what what would be available to the crew in that regard and also on that same level the life support systems for ship where do those stand and what are the challenges that you're finding with just the sheer volume in starship for that thank you so starship will not have an independent abort system but i think something that would make sense is to have the thruster weight of the ship uh be enough that uh it could do um a a it could take off from uh the booster even if the booster has a failure at the pad level so you can get the the thrust weight of the ship uh at sea level above one then even if there is something goes wrong with the booster the ship can essentially fly away from the booster and so that's uh something that i think would be important for for carrying people uh and also for high value cargo to have the ship uh have a thrust to eight greater than one even at uh sea level um and then the there's a like i said that would be like the nine engine version and and then even if you lost one engine um i think you should still be able to do an abort so i think for crude missions we would essentially um maybe de-tank the ship to some degree so that you'd have uh kind of a launch of board capability with the ship even if you lost an engine that would be my recommendation from a life support standpoint uh uh we would um have a uh a sort of uh sort of a renewable like for long you know we we could scale up uh the life support system in dragon that would certainly be an option um and and that would work for uh missions that are say um a week or two weeks that that would be fine for missions to to mars uh you you'd want a life support system that is renewable um so or it's essentially recycling recycling everything um in a closed-loop system with um close to zero uh lust mass so that would be um a more advanced system because you'd have to convert the co2 back into o2 and kind of recycle you know poop and urine and stuff yeah so that's a harder problem but it's not it's not an immediate problem we can certainly uh scale up dragon for any kind of uh missions that are you know a few weeks long hi elon eric berger with ars technica thanks for taking some questions um i'm wondering if you do get that approval from the faa in march i know that there's really no way of knowing but could you talk a little bit about the hardware readiness sort of where you are technically you know the launch towers is pretty incredible um but but sort of the rocket the ground system software like if if you were to get some kind of approval from the faa in march you know would you be looking at you know how quickly could the hardware be ready to go yeah i mean i think we're uh close to having the hardware ready to go um so right now i think we're tracking to have the um regulatory approval and hardware readiness around the same time um yeah so yeah around to say you know hopefully you know basically a couple months for both um yeah hi seth krakowski with spacexport.com you mentioned launching from the c could you give us a update on the current status of using phobos and demos for starship operations yeah so focus and demos thus far have been um a relatively low priority we needed to make the launch site here work this has been quite a difficult endeavor um so we de-prioritized the uh focus and demos um and just last month we we we started to um we're going to take uh one of them and and and build at least a catch tower on it so uh and and ultimately we will ultimately meaning like i don't know later this year um uh build a a full launch capability um on um on one of the platforms so i think hopefully by the end of this year we we will have uh a launch capability at cape kennedy at 39a and on one of the the ocean platforms as well hi ellen this is adam cardona with cbs4 and nbc23 here in the real grand valley this is more of a community-based question this past week several bisd students community leaders and community members got together to ask you a question and to show their gratitude not sure if you got that message yet but they were saying thank you elon and they wanted to know if you would be able to attend their childhood days festivities here in brownsville so on behalf of them will you be attending child days uh it sounds like fun so like when is it i believe it starts on the 19th through the 25th so you have several days to attend sombrero festival child days parades enjoy some great food i will see you there i will be there all right that's gonna be hard to follow up hey elon tim dodd the everyday astronaut here uh okay so a little bit more raptor two talk again um where are you at as far as production how many do you have uh you know you see you know are they how are they handling you know testing uh are they more cantankerous less cantankerous you know just give us a little more run down like we're actually at is that a bottleneck for the next booster as well like we assume the next booster is going to require you know raptor two so kind of where you at with uh with the production and the and the testing so far well i i mean right now of of any technical problem [Music] uh i'm spending the most time personally on on rafter two um like really they're like the two things that occupy the most number of mental cycles are after two and tesla full self driving so the the only remaining issue that we're aware of is melting the chamber um so that thing really wants to melt you know it's got like on the order of a gigawatt of of heat so it's pretty hot like a gigawatts like what a nuclear power plant produces so it really is desperately trying to melt at any point in time um so uh we've got uh you know we're flowing an immense amount of of cryogenic fuel to cool the the chamber in the channels uh we have uh head-end uh film cooling we've got uh throat film cooling and we're just trying to get the uh exact sort of balance between head and from cooling and throat foam cooling to not melt the chamber i think we're pretty close like we have we have a couple engines in the stand that that have uh i think uh seven or eight hundred seconds of operation and several uh start cycles so it's looking looking positive but that's the that's the that's the remaining uh issue is melting the chamber but in the in the meantime we're scaling up old production to get to uh one a day or better so apart from melted chambers we're doing well we've got a lot of pumps a lot of electronics a lot of pre-runner controllers so just uh not melting the chamber which is very difficult um is the kind of the last remaining challenge um but i think we're very close to solving that um and then the the production system has a lot of momentum like i said um you know we're really um you know like like next week we'll probably make at least five or six rafter twos for example yeah um and i think we'll be at a seven a week or or better by next month these those are crazy these are crazy numbers for rocket engines by the way yeah hi elon uh robert perlman with space.com and collect space um you mentioned the nasa contract for the human landing system at one point do you envision splinter splintering off development of starship for hls or how are you going to balance the timelines of rapid reusability versus nasa's own schedule when they're ready to go to the moon i don't think there's really a conflict there we're going to be making a lot of ships a lot of boosters uh obviously a lot of engines um yeah it's kind of interesting like the the uh with the booster with 33 engines and the ship with nine engines is 42 here we go again um and that also totally total coincidence um so you know adding uh legs to land on the moon i i we do not think is like a that's that can be done pretty quickly um so i yeah i don't really see any conflict between the achieving rapid reusability and and getting to the moon um yeah the a high production rate solves many ills so we're aiming for a high production rate hi lauren gresh with the verge i'm wondering if you can clarify the number of launches that you plan to conduct in order to do these refillings i know a lot of numbers have been thrown around so i'm wondering if you have landed on a final number and how quickly do you plan to launch those missions back to back to refuel the vehicle to get to the moon thanks yeah so the the missions would happen pretty fast for refilling the the vehicle uh to minimize boil off of the cryogenic propellant um so now for the for the vehicle going to the moon we have some installation uh to minimize boil off but we'd probably be launching i don't know probably every few hours aspirationally so yeah hi elon kevin heymeyer from space eccentric on youtube and rumble my thank you my viewers are really hungry to know anything about the interior design for crude starship you have hls you have deer moon and last we heard maybe a year or two ago you were looking to hire tesla employees to design the interior for starship how's that going um well we we have we aren't fake focusing a lot on the interior quite yet i mean that will be important down the road but our focus right now is just getting to orbit and proving out a return of the booster and return of the ship um yeah it's it's fundamentally very difficult to build a fully reusable rocket uh given the strength of earth's gravity and the density of our atmosphere like there's no you can't have a a lot of mass margin so our focus is is solving that rapid reusability um like i said we'll have a high production rate so we're not dependent on rapid we're not dependent on full reusability but but really that's the breakthrough that's that's fundamentally important to change the course of human civilization to become a multi-planet species elon this will be the last question for you my name is bob duncan i'm a local resident here in the area and first off thank you for a very cool evening so this has been a lot of fun for us as the local resident it's been exciting to watch the amazing progress that spacex has made here in boca chica and i was just curious we're standing on the southern tip of the state of texas we're a few hundred yards from your residence could you just speak to what if anything has been appealing or advantageous about operating in the state of texas versus other parts of the country thank you well i think we've you know the um um well i mean we've had a lot of support from like the community and um you know uh you know something that just happens over time with uh societies is that kind of rules and regulations build up um and they they build up you know more in some places than others uh and they didn't you know i think texas has the the right amount of rules and regulations [Applause] [Applause] so um well thank you all for coming uh i hope you've enjoyed the evening and um i think we might be able to get you closer to the rocket if you'd like um and uh so we'll we'll get you as close as possible while still being safe um and uh yeah feel free to you know take pictures have a good time and uh uh yeah uh let's uh go like hell to have an exciting future thank you [Music] [Music] foreign

Channel: SpaceX

Views: 2,556,900

Keywords: Starship, Super Heavy

Id: 3N7L8Xhkzqo

Length: 80min 45sec (4845 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/izybit]

RIP Europeans lol

[u/SuperFishy]

A full stack produced per month. Interesting

[u/flying_path]

Elon said: “We might do orbital refilling at the end of next year if all goes well.”

[u/evangelion-unit-two]

tl;dw - possible FAA approval for orbital flight in March

[u/aquarain]

Melting Raptor 2 chambers. 1 GW in the chamber. That's intense.

[u/Lorenzo_91]

Elon was born 69 days after 4/20. Today’s presentation is 69 days before 4/20. Coincidences I think not..

[u/nickbuss]

10am start here in Perth. And I've legit got the day off work! For once I don't get screwed with SpaceX livestreams.

[u/Crowbrah_]

I like the idea of the ship having a twr high enough to be able to escape from the booster off the pad in the case of an abort for crewed missions. That's definitely better than having no real launch escape system at all and simply relying on the vehicle's reliability in order to ensure crew safety.

[u/Marcbmann]

Went from oil platforms not being a thought in anyone's mind, to at least one platform configured for launch and landing by the end of the year.