Elon Musk Startship presentation 2019 youtube transcript. This is the text from youtube auto-caption and it needs to be fixed in many places but thats a good place to start from

StarshipPresentation

it's quite windy here its side down well 
though I good it's it's this is oh 
actually wasn't expected to be this 
windy hopefully you can actually hear 
what I'm saying okay great great 
so this is this is I think the most 
inspiring thing that I have ever seen 
and I just like to thank the SpaceX team 
and the the suppliers and the the people 
of Brook chic and Brownsville thank you 
for your support and just like wow what 
an incredible job by such a great team 
to build this incredible vehicle so it's 
like first of all want to stop that I'm 
just so so so so proud to work with such 
a great team and it's really ripping 
here by the way if you're watching this 
online it is like it was really windy so 
the the point of this this presentation 
and this is this event it is really 
there are two elements to it one is to 
inspire the public and get people 
excited about our future in space and 
and get people fired up about the future 
the you know what what there are so many 
things to worry about so many things to 
be concerned about there's there are 
many troubles in the world of course and 
we 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 and be fired 
up about the future and think yeah the 
future is gonna be great 
you know and and this space exploration 
is one of those things and becoming a 
spacefaring civilization being out there 
among the stars this is one of the 
things that I know makes it makes me 
glad to be alive I think it makes many 
people glad to be alive it's one of the 
best things and this really weird face with a 
choice which future do you want do you 
want the future where we become a 
spacefaring civilization and are in many 
worlds and now out there among the stars 
or one where we are forever confined to 
earth and I say it is the first and I 
hope you agree with me yeah so so what 
what the critical breakthrough that's 
needed for us to become a spacefaring 
civilization is to make space travel 
like air travel so with with air travel 
you could be when you fly a plane you 
fly that plane many times I mean the 
risk of stating the obvious it really 
almost any motor transport whether it's 
a plane a car a horse the bicycle is 
reusable you use that motor transport 
many times and if you had to get a new 
plane every time you flew somewhere and 
even get have two planes for a return 
journey very few people could afford to 
fly or if you could use a car only once 
very few people could afford to drive a 
car so the critical breakthrough that's 
necessary is a rapidly reusable orbital 
rocket this is what this is basically 
the holy grail of space and the 
fundamental thing that's required and it 
is a very hard thing to do it's only 
barely possible with with the physics of 
of Earth I mean if gravity first gravity 
was a little heavier it would be it 
would be impossible and if the Earth's 
gravity was a little lighter it would be 
quite easy so we're really right on the 
cusp of what is physically possible so 
you know in order to create a rapidly 
reusable rocket and fully reusable over 
a rocket you have to have engines that 
are have incredibly high specific 
impulse that have that essentially are 
extremely efficient you have a structure 
that is also incredibly mass efficient 
and and then that all needs to come back 
to the launchpad and be able to be 
refilled with propellants and flown 
again very quickly just like an aircraft 
so it's just it's just because of the 
physics of of earth being having being 
quite a deep gravity well and having 
quite a thick atmosphere this is this is 
a a vert as this is a tough but not 
impossible thing but it is the most 
fundamental thing so with SpaceX we we 
started out 17 years ago and the first 
rocket we designed was the the Falcon 
one which was that guy right there 
dragged off 
state separation your separation 
confirmed so so Falcon one we thought I 
mean we started off we were very naive 
and in fact the reason I should say the 
reason it's September 28th was of terror 
this is the 11th anniversary of the 
first time SpaceX reached orbit so 11 
years ago today SpaceX made overt for the first time and 
it it was actually out it was our fourth 
launch and if we if that launch had not 
succeeded a SpaceX that would have been 
the end of SpaceX that was all I'd run 
out of money they would know there are 
no more investors and and that would 
have been it so if that fourth launch 
had not succeeded that would have been curtains but 
fortunately fate smiled on us that day 
and we made it to of it I've great 
respect for anyone who makes it to orbit 
that's a hard thing and then we were 
very naive obviously very much money 
about naive on on many levels back back 
then because we did actually try to 
recover the first stage so the first 
stage had a parachute on it and and we 
okay we'll just pop the parachute when 
it comes back into the atmosphere and 
then it'll land somewhere in the ocean 
we'll go fish it out of the ocean with a 
boat this is not this does not work so 
and I actually remember getting mad at 
the parachute supplier like yeah your 
parachute didn't work like now wasn't 
their fault when the rocket comes in 
from from space it's coming in the first 
stage is coming in like you know Mach 10 
to 12 and it hits the atmosphere like 
it's a concrete wall and boom so you 
actually have to orient the rocket 
carefully you have to have aerodynamic 
surfaces you have to do 
an entry burn to slow it down you got 
then you've got a guided through the 
atmosphere and then your propulsive 
landing this took us many many attempts 
and we actually did like a video of a 
blooper reel of all the times we failed 
which was a line I think it might have 
taken us like 14 attempts or something 
before we finally successfully landed 
the rocket so so we're gone to the next 
slide you can take a look at this is 
grasshopper this is the that's actually 
Falcon 9 it's hard to tell the scale but 
that's that's a falcon 9 size booster 
with one engine and and big legs with 
giant shock absorbers we don't know what 
the heck we're doing now amazingly 
grasshopper 
haha the cows are confused 
yeah so the that was a so that they have 
Falcon one what you saw there was a 
Falcon 9 size vehicle and and then 
what's really kind of hard to grasp at a 
visceral level is that this giant ship 
will do the same thing that grasshopper 
did so this is this thing is going to 
take off fly to 65,000 feet about 20 
kilometers and come back and land in 
about one to two months so that giant 
thing it's really going to be pretty 
epic to see that thing take off and come 
back and then hopefully yeah 
yeah as well so now I there's this is a 
quite radical I'll talk about it later 
their presentation is this is a quite 
quite a new approach to controlling 
controlling a rocket much work into a 
skydiver than a plane but I'll talk 
about that later so going from from 
Falcon Falcon 9 to talk and heavy which 
we launched actually the first vulture 
punkin heavy was only February of last 
year so it's only been about a year and 
a half since the first Bell can have you 
launched when we did two side-by-side 
booster landings and I was like this 
video that was done by my friend Jonah 
it's a god-awful smaller bear 
to the goal of the massiere but tamami 
is yelling no 
and the daddy is chosen to go but a 
friend is nowhere to be seen now she 
walks through the Sun country 
to the seat with the clearest view 
and she's look to the silver screen but 
the bill is a sad thing for but she's 
missed it 10 times oh my 
she could speak to me I suppose but they 
No 
mr. live on my 
I never thought that would happen 
actually that that it did yeah 
that's my like the the you know some 
people were like why why why do we have 
the roadster with the astronauts you 
know storm and and I was actually just 
came from discussion of my friend Jonas 
I where's the kitchen and I was like you 
know normally when they do a rocket 
launch they launch a rocket concrete but 
that sounds doesn't sound very inspiring 
so what do you think the most is if what 
you doing the most sort of fun thing is 
that we could launch and he was like 
what are you sir Tesla and that's a 
great idea yeah and they're not friends 
she said why don't you put a tiny Tesla 
on the dashboard so we put a tiny 
treasure on the dashboard with a tiny 
storm and in the tiny chairs well this 
is just to confuse the aliens in the 
future so yeah you know just weren't 
something I capture the imagination get 
people excited about space so let's see 
you starship so this is what you can 
really see it right there obviously 
there's a picture or a rendering it's 
about 150 about 550 meters so you know 
but sort of 165 feet or so and yeah so 
this trip I think actually I noticed we 
have an error in our ship dry mass here 
my apologies I wish it was 85 tonnes the 
ship prime has to be approximately 120 
tonnes but this the the initial Mach 1 
prototype is closer to 200 tons and the 
in series production I think it'll 
probably be about 120 tons if we get 
really lucky it might get down to 
110 99 would be super epic so but in 
terms of its usefulness it'll be able to 
do about 150 tons with full reusability 
to orbit and back so this is this is a 
very you know big number for full 
reusability the the the very initial 
versions we're confident we'll do over 
100 tons but I think we've basically a 
path to 150 tons and the the cost of a 
fully reusable system is basically the 
cost of the propellant which is mostly 
oxygen this is through three and a half 
tons of oxygen oxygen for every one ton 
of fuel so one of the advantages of the 
of this architecture over the Falcon 
architecture is that we actually use 
more oxygen per unit of fuel rather than 
less so Merlin or the the the Falcon 
architecture is about two and a half 
tons oxygen for every one ton of fuel 
this is three and a half tons of oxygen 
for every one ton of fuel so when this 
ascends it's really mostly liquid oxygen 
because when you get to vacuum there's 
no air basically so yeah the next line 
um earlier I was talking about how 
starship enters and how its controlled 
it's it's really it's quite different 
from anything else it's really falling 
and so we're doing a controlled fall so 
with a rocket you're actually trying to 
break as opposed to you're trying to 
create drag instead of lift it's really 
the opposite of an aircraft you want the 
most amount of drag that you can produce 
and you want some lift especially when 
you're in the upper atmosphere most 
leases that you don't you can control 
the maximum heating rate you want enough 
lift to keep yourself high in the the 
low density portion of the atmosphere so 
you can you can you can burn off 
velocity 
and and then you say you won't and and 
but but then you know basically it goes 
like if this is the this is the earth it 
goes it goes at about a 60 degree my 
hand is rugged it's going at about sixty 
degrees or so when twin in orbit you're 
actually going at around 25 times the 
speed of sound horizontal to the ground 
so this is a very important concept that 
is counterintuitive to our normal daily 
life being in orbit being in zero-g is 
not about altitude it's about velocity 
how fast are you going 
horizontally so when something's in 
orbit it's zooming around the earth so 
fast that the outward acceleration 
outward radial acceleration is equal to 
the inward acceleration of gravity and 
then you have zero gravity this is why 
you actually have zero gravity the space 
station people often think the space 
station is stationary but it's actually 
going around the world at 25 times the 
speed of sound or about 17,000 miles an 
hour 
they look it always looks stationary in 
the pictures and since there's no error 
you don't have to have a an aerodynamic 
structure so you can be a totally crazy 
structure that doesn't look like you 
should be able to go 25 times the speed 
of sound but it does and you can only 
feel acceleration you can't feel 
velocity so people sometimes like to 
wonder what does it feel like to go 25 
times speed of sound actually it feels 
like nothing only accelerating to there 
feels like something so so that so the 
starship is coming in this is the this 
platform is the earth it's coming in at 
hypersonic velocity like this sort of 
around a 60 degree angle so it comes 
like this and then starts falling and 
then just falls like a skydiver and it's 
just controlling itself and then it 
turns and Lance like that 
incredibly elaborate explanation and 
then you can get a sense for you this is 
much better 
there you go but it'll look totally nuts 
to see that thing laughs yeah crazy Wow 
cool so let's see - Matt the Raptor 
engine so there's the ship we'll have a 
total of six engines three of the 
c-level variety of Raptor and those are 
actually on the rocket right now so we 
have the three EC level in fact that's a 
picture of just inside that skirt that's 
what it looks like so we've got the 
three sea level Raptor engines and they 
take gimbal which is which means that 
the whole engine moves so the weight of 
rocket steers is by moving the entire 
engine so whereas an aircraft engine is 
static and you move by moving like the 
control surfaces like the airlock 
ailerons and rudder and elevator and 
flaps this in this the rocket ship when 
the engines are powered you move the 
entire engine to steer it but so the 
starship will have three c-level engines 
that move up to about 15 degrees angle 
and three vacuum engines that are 
optimized for efficiency that will be 
that will not move so there will be just 
fixed in place and that allows us to 
have the biggest Bell nozzle for the for 
the Raptor before the for the vacuum 
Raptor engines and aspirationally the 
the target is a 380 second ISP for the 
vacuum engine this is a very sort of 
space geek terms this is like a really a 
great number and and even for the estilo 
engines to get over 350 second ISP is 
also really great so 
actually sorry I'm looking at the slide 
you're not so that's what I meant by it 
books like that on the inside and try to 
get back on assignment that's the that's 
the inside of the starship right now so 
that's what it looks like in the base 
all right and then heat shield so it 
we've gone through various iterations of 
heat shield there's a lot of ways to 
skin the cat here the ultimately recited 
to have heat shield hexagonal tiles 
ceramic tiles that are basically like a 
tiny glass vermicelli about a micro 
structure level it's a very very light 
but but but very crack resistant 
essentially a glass tiles and they are 
you we could because the starship is a 
steel construction like at first it 
feels like oats deal is that mean it's 
heavy no actually it's the lightest 
construction this is steel is the best 
thing is the I think the best thing 
about best design decision on this whole 
thing is a 301 stainless steel because 
at cryogenic temperatures a 301 
stainless actually has about the same 
effective strength as an advanced 
composite or aluminum lithium 
unlike most Steel's which get brittle at 
low temperature a 301 stainless gets 
much stronger and if it's in the in the 
in the in the extra hot condition 
meaning it's cold roll to extra heart 
condition it also gets way stronger so 
it gets its actually gets its it 
strength to weight ratio at cryogenic 
temperatures is equivalent or even have 
slightly better then then advanced 
composites or aluminum lithium this is 
this is not well appreciated because if 
you just look at the materials manual 
and say like what what is the strength 
of stainless steel its it looks much 
weaker than is you say what is the 
strength at cryogenic temperature Oh 
much much stronger 
you know at very low temperature almost 
twice as strong that's when it becomes 
better than then carbon fiber or school 
or alumina lithium and this is another 
benefit it also has a high melting 
temperature so for a reusable ship 
you're coming in like a meteor you want 
something that does not melt at a low 
temperature you want something else at a 
high temperature and this is where steel 
is extremely good as well so it's you 
know steel has a melting temperature 
around sort of 1500 degrees centigrade 
whereas aluminum you you know maybe 300 
or 400 degrees and same thing for carbon 
fiber and that's really pushing it 
you know you so this is how having that 
much high melting temperature means that 
you don't need any shielding on the the 
leeward side of there of the ship when 
it comes in for entry and and the 
fielding you need on the windward side 
the hot side is massively reduced 
because the the thickness of the tile is 
actually for a reusable system is 
dependent on what backshell temperature 
like how hot does the back of the tile 
that interfaces with the airframe gets 
and because the steel can take a much 
higher temperature your your heat shield 
even on the windward side as much it is 
much lighter but the net effect is that 
a 301 stainless steel rocket is actually 
the lightest possible reusable 
architecture then then it comes to come 
to cost the their carbon fiber we were 
using was a hundred and thirty dollars a 
time the steel is $2,500 a time it's 32 
- yeah 25 say the $130,000 a time versus 
$2,500 town every source person so if 
it's one hundred and thirty thousand 
dollars a ton for the carbon fiber and 
$2,500 a ton for the steel so this deal 
is about two percent of the costs of the 
carbon fiber 
so this is a good thing we changed from 
corn fiber steel by far and and very 
easy to weld stainless steel the 
evidence being that we welded it 
outdoors without a factory so great 
skills by the team but with with carbon 
fiber this is impossible 
with aluminum lithium also impossible 
but steel is very easy to weld and it is 
resilient to the elements and also 
actually as Torsten earlier say like on 
mars you can like cut that up you can 
weld it you can modify it no problem 
yeah that's a good point 
you're out there on the moon or mars you 
you want something that you can modify 
that you can cut up and use for other 
things that's like for sure great thing 
so anyway steel obviously I'm in love to 
steal you know it's time I had to say it 
you know so great so let's see going 
onto the booster 
so the the booster is designed to take 
up to 37 rafter engines I'm not sure if 
we go that high but you can really you 
know have a 31 I think like the minimum 
number you'd want is you know maybe 
around 24 
but the booster is designed to be able 
to take multiple engines out so you can 
actually add or subtract engines as 
you'd like you just need a lot of force 
pushing up over time I think the product 
you probably want around a 7500 ton 
force rocket which is about twice the 
thrust of a Saturn 5 a little more than 
twice as thrust and and on a roughly 
5000 ton lift lift off gross little mass 
so for roughly one-and-a-half 
thrust-to-weight for a reusable rocket 
you actually want a high 
thrust-to-weight rather than it with an 
expendable rocket where you want a low 
thrust to weight because any thrust away 
below 1 is not useful like if you if you 
if you have a less thrust than your 
weight you don't move so you actually 
want to high thrust-to-weight for a 
reusable rocket this is a very important 
design optimization change so that's why 
I think you know more engine is probably 
good and getting up to around 7,500 tons 
over time and why don't have two one one 
and a half thrust to weight ratio that 
one more so and we think we're probably 
going to adjust the griffin design to be 
kind of like a work like a diamond shape 
it looks cooler and it works better too 
and then the the rear fins are actually 
just legs so they're not they don't need 
needed for stabilization or guidance 
they're they're essentially there for 
four legs alright so some let's go into 
some of the development testing 
this is a raptor firing 
all right and then obviously we had a 
raptor a fire on the star hopper yeah 
it's kind of hard to see skin to 
appreciate scale but it's the same 
diameter as starship and obviously it's 
just right over there 
so it's kind of hard to tell if it's the 
size of a trash can or you know how big 
it is but it's it's a it's about the 
body diameter is about 39 meters or 30 
feet not including the leg span 
this gives you a sense of size so the 
little pixels there and that's a little 
little pixels or a human and then this 
the hopper next to it the Millennium 
Falcon for comparison then starship 
which is what you see before you and 
then that's what it's look will look 
like with the full stack which is almost 
two and a half times as tall as this 
vehicle this simulation will give you a 
sense of the scale of things 
slightly reminds me of the scene from 
spaceball 
bottle refilling is extremely important 
for getting some awesome getting food 
it's supposed to happen she gets it e27 
establish video on the moon Eliza misses 
final step 
to Mars 
so yeah so they're a rapidly reusable 
over the launcher a rocket is a rapidly 
reusable rocket is required for 
liberation before achieved if we're 
getting a breakthrough in cost of access 
to space that you don't throw the 
Rockets away every every flight but an 
another key step is refilling on-orbit 
so that the starship can get to orbit 
with let's say a hundred and fifty tons 
of payload for the Moon or Mars or 
beyond and then it can get tankard to 
fill up its propellant tanks and so they 
could it can depart from low-earth orbit 
with 1200 tons of propellant this is a 
very big thing so that you're your Delta 
velocity is enough to transport 150 350 
tons to the surface of the Moon or Mars 
with with full reusability and orbital 
refilling which is essentially the 
overall refilling is actually a 
simplified version of what SpaceX does 
in or in docking with the space station 
so it's actually harder to dock with the 
space station than it is to do orbital 
refilling but in practicing in talking 
with the space station the SpaceX has 
also learned how to rendezvous and dock 
in orbit in a complex environment so 
this is one of the other critical pieces 
of the puzzle needed needed to establish 
a base on the moon Mars city ultimately 
and yeah those are the critical 
ingredients so we think would be very 
exciting to have a base on the moon even 
if it's just a science base that you 
know we have to accrue at for example we 
have a base at and Antarctica many many 
countries have bases in Antartica for 
science research and this would be an 
incredible area of research so whether 
or not people want to live on the moon 
there's definitely a lot of science to 
be done and I think this is close as 
well so that's that would be quite 
exciting to do and then of course we can 
go other to other places in the solar 
system like Saturn and but the critical 
thing that we need to focus on I think 
is the fastest path to a self-sustaining 
City on Mars this is the this is the 
fundamental thing 
as far as we know as far as we know we 
are the only consciousness or the only 
life that's out there there might be 
other life but we've seen no signs of it 
if people often ask me if you what are 
you what do you know about the aliens on 
that you know I'm like man I tell you if 
I'm pretty sure I know you know if 
aliens I have not seen any sign of 
aliens and so is the military hiding 
aliens in area 51 or something you know 
that's a popular meme yeah well let me 
tell you the biggest the fastest way to 
increase defense funding would be to 
bring out like hey we found an alien 
you're like more money for defense 
definitely guaranteed they're out that 
would be like on display in two seconds 
so yeah so there the reality is as far 
as we know this is the only place at 
least in this part of the galaxy or in 
the Milky Way where there is 
consciousness and it's taken a long time 
for us to get to this point you know 
according to the the geological records 
that's been around for about 
four-and-a-half billion years well there 
was mostly molten magma for about half a 
billion years so but still several 
billion years with at least bacterial 
life and multicellular life for several 
hundred million years but here's the 
interesting part like the the Sun is 
gradually getting hotter and bigger and 
over time even in the absence of global 
warming man-made stuff the the Sun will 
expand and will it will overheat the 
earth my guess is probably this is on 
human timescales this is a long time but 
it's that there's only you know several 
hundred million years left that's all 
that's all we got okay several hundred 
million years 
but it sort of in if from an 
evolutionary standpoint basically if it 
took an extra 10% longer for conscious 
life to evolve on earth 
it wouldn't evolve at all because it 
would have been incinerated by the Sun 
so so what I'm saying is that it appears 
that consciousness is a very rare and 
precious thing and we should take 
whatever steps we can to preserve the 
light of consciousness and the window 
the window has been open only now after 
four and a half billion years is that 
window open as there's a long time to 
wait and it might not stay open for long 
I'm pretty optimistic by Nature but 
there's some chance there's some chance 
that window will not be open for long 
and I think we should become a multi 
planet civilization while that window is 
open and if we do I think the probable 
outcome for Earth is even better if 
because then you know Mars could help 
earth one day you know and so I think we 
should really do our very best to become 
a multi-planet species and to extend 
consciousness beyond Earth and we should 
do it now thank you 
ladies and gentlemen we'll be commencing 
a QA session in just five minutes so 
please hang hang out and hang tight 
once again ladies and gentlemen please 
sit tight we're going to be doing a Q&A 
session with Elon in just five minutes 
please stick around 
oh yeah any questions yeah hi hi Neal on 
Irene Klotz with aviation we can you 
hear any yep um thank you for the 
overview can you tell us a little bit 
more details about the flight test 
program for this and the mark - 
absolutely 
just turn the music off I can't quite 
hear because of this music playing oh no 
I'm sorry 
trouble you say it again yes thank you 
um can you talk a little bit more 
details about the flight test program 
for both this mark 1 and the mark 2 
vehicle in Florida and what the 
progression is to get to orbital flight 
and then a test flight or a commercial 
mission with the full vehicle sure so 
with any development into uncharted 
territory it is difficult to predict 
these things with precision but I do 
think things are going to move very fast 
so our plan is in basically one to two 
months to do the the 20 kilometer or 65 
foot flight with starship Mach 1 
our next flight after that might 
actually just be all the way to orbit 
with a booster and the ship most this is 
I'm giving you just literally stream of 
consciousness here most likely most 
likely we would not fly to over it with 
Mach 1 but we would fight over it with 
Mach 3 which we built after Mach one 
right here in fact we'll start building 
it in about a month so yeah and actually 
so sorry to say this mid question but I 
did want to make sure to thank you suck 
umezawa for his great support yeah he's 
awesome 
you start 2020 that's his handle that's 
great handle anyway he's a super cool 
dude and he's like you know we're 
putting a lot of serious resources to 
helping out starship so I want to thank 
him very much for that the okay so yeah 
just to frame things we are going to be 
building ships and boosters at both Boca 
and the Cape as fast as we can and and 
and each successive yet absolutely I 
mean it's gonna be really nutty to see a 
bunch of these things I mean not just 
one but a whole stack of them and we're 
improving both the design and the 
manufacturing method exponentially so 
for example with the current way that we 
build this or the way that walk 1 and 
mach 2 cylindrical sections were built 
was in with basically plates so a series 
of plates to create each some of the 
section with Mach 3 and beyond we will 
literally take the coil of steel from 
the middle unspool it change the 
curvature to a nine meter diameter and 
do a single seam weld and it'll also be 
thinner which makes it lighter and 
cheaper 
so the rate at which we will be building 
ships is going to be quite quite crazy 
by space standards I think we'll 
probably have Mach 2 built within a 
couple of months or or less and Mach 3 
maybe three months that type of thing 
Mach 4 four months maybe five months and 
we would seek to go to orbit with 
probably mark four or Mach five so we 
would I mean this is gonna sound totally 
nuts but I think we want to try to reach 
over in less than six months 
I mean provide provided at the rates the 
rate of technical design improvement and 
manufacturing improvement continues to 
be exponential I think that is a you 
know accurate to within a few months hi 
Elon my name is Steve Clark I'm with the 
Brownsville Herald back in September 
2014 of the groundbreaking he said that 
the first crewed interplanetary mission 
could possibly leave yes can you hear me 
could possibly leave from Boca Chica do 
you think that's still the case yes is I 
think definitely possible that the first 
crewed mission on starship could leave 
from Boca the we actually are internally 
competing the Cape the Cape and and Boca 
so I think I think both will both places 
will to the best of my knowledge both 
places will launch crewed missions so I 
think it is extremely likely that we 
will launch crewed missions from Boca 
and there is a at least a 50% chance 
that it is the first mission yeah thank 
you very much 
Halon Tim Dodd the everyday astronaut 
how are you I was good good yeah they 
have great questions online thanks you 
have great answers so uh that belly flop 
to tail down maneuver I know that's 
something to see is that first one this 
one right here you know 20 kilometers is 
it going to come in that hot and do that 
that flip that fast 
yeah right here or is it gonna be out on 
the drone ship like that's gonna it's 
basically right where hopper took off 
yeah that's basically where it's gonna 
take off you know within yeah very close 
to where it's just right over there you 
know so yeah that maneuver that you see 
you so it will execute now with no when 
we get to I think maybe Mach 3 certainly 
Mach 4 I think probably that will be a 
good time to transition to hot hot gas 
thrusters and from cold gas thrusters so 
using essentially compressed nitrogen of 
gas as the coal gas thruster is a pretty 
low ISP you know sort of 67 if you're 
very lucky but very close to the 60 with 
with math ox thruster you can get 
without really even trying hard a 300 
ISP even if you just boom cool the walls 
without even regen cooling if you if you 
regen cool it 350 no problem 360 even so 
you're talking about something that's 
that then five or six times the mass 
efficiency of the nitrogen thrusters 
that are Mach 1 and if you have 
thrusters of that efficiency then we 
don't need to use use the Raptors to 
correct the horizontal velocity because 
right now it's actually winner doing the 
Raptors fire 
the Raptors kick it up kick it over but 
but they're they're actually accelerate 
the vehicle in the wrong direction then 
they have to cook over correct and they 
come back whereas if you have strong 
enough thrust row so you could just 
using the onboard maneuvering thrusters 
without lighting the main engines you 
just go kick it hard light the 
land that be you know that's better yeah 
and then are those pressure fed then 
those yeah yeah yeah those we just 
pressure fit a high-pressure gas a myth 
ox and so you have a high pressure you 
know ch4 what a high pressure o2 bottle 
and then the great thing is like those 
those they don't care what attitude 
you're at you be at any attitude any you 
know any G's any attitude it'll still 
fire yeah yeah yeah hi Yvonne I'm Tim 
Fernholz from quartz thanks so much for 
taking the time okay two questions if I 
may one just technical following up on 
the presentation do useful stuff in 
orbit you're gonna need the booster as 
well as the starship right yes you would 
get this Sasha okay it cannot get to 
Earth orbit without the booster but 
anywhere except Earth pretty much well 
not counting Venus but like the Mars or 
the moon the ship provided you have a 
propellant plant on Mars or moon the 
ship can easily get a single-stage from 
the surface of the Moon all the way to 
to surface of Earth without a booster so 
it shows you how to eat like Earth has a 
deep gravity well in a thick atmosphere 
so but but definitely cannot I mean well 
I mean if we if we really went crazy 
lights you could probably do 
single-stage-to-orbit non-reusable with 
the ship but that would be pointless 
Ilana I just wanted to ask NASA 
Administrator Jim bridenstine had a 
tweet last night about this presentation 
concerned obf sigh about enthusiasm for 
SpaceX as various programs I'm just 
curious if you have any comment of 
response to that yeah I mean we have for 
sure that from a SpaceX resource 
standpoint our resources are 
overwhelmingly on Falcon and dragon that 
is very clear but it was really quite a 
small percentage of SpaceX that did this 
starship you know less than 5% of the 
company basically 
the like the really hard part that 
requires a lot of resources is 
optimizing something past the initial 
prototype phase and bringing it into 
volume production so yeah to be clear 
like the best majority of our resources 
are on dragon or Falcon especially crew 
dragon thank you 
hey Ilana Chris Gephardt with NASA Space 
Flight how do you guys envision keeping 
the methane and oxygen inside the tanks 
from boiling off in any significant 
quantity during a multi-month 
interplanetary trip to Mars and on a 
more earth grounded question what's your 
contamination mitigation strategy since 
these things are being built outside and 
the elements is not not in a factory 
well these are pretty far in the 
distance questions these questions are 
relevant but in the end of future years 
the keeping the the landing propellants 
cold on the way to Mars is a lot easier 
than it may seem because you can 
essentially vacuum just like you'd keep 
cryogenic propellants stored on earth 
for long periods of time you vacuum 
jacketed we would essentially have 
header tanks that are bigger than these 
header tanks and and invent them to to 
vacuum so you just basically have a tank 
inside a tank with multi-layer 
insulation and and this way you can keep 
things cryogenic for months no problem 
it requires very little energy to you 
don't even really need to worry about 
boil off you could you could apply some 
energy to cryo cool it but you don't 
really need too tight you to have a tiny 
amount of boil off you know in it in in 
vacuum things are things are kind of 
weird they're not like on earth because 
you have no convective cooling really in 
surgery so you you actually have the Sun 
side of your rocket is very hot and then 
the not Sun side of your rocket is at 3 
degrees Kelvin so it's super cold so 
you're just like keep your cold stuff on 
the cold side and the hot stuff on the 
hot side and it's pretty this is not a 
problem to manage 
you know the for the long-term stuff for 
sort of what's called contamination Mars 
you know they I think this this concern 
first of all we will do everything we 
can to mitigate it obviously and but at 
the end of the day if you're going to 
send people to Mars that's a pretty big 
contaminant I know but I really don't 
think that some earth-based bacterium is 
gonna be able to migrate much through 
Mars 
the thing that makes Mars very difficult 
is that it is both cold and has high 
ultraviolet so if it was either cold or 
ultraviolet you could evolve to deal 
with it but the the cold slows down 
metabolic processes and the and then 
ultraviolet ray to the stretch of the 
DNA so you colder shredded this is very 
difficult for things to exist on the 
surface of Mars and that's why we have 
not found any traces of life on the 
surface of Mars to date if there is any 
life it'll be very deep underground and 
I think very resilient yeah cool thank 
you 
it's also worth noting that over time 
there have been meteors that they've 
been chunks of Earth that have been 
chipped off by meteors and chunks of 
Mars have been chipped off from Mars and 
Earth and Mars have actually exchanged 
material many times over the last 
several hundred million years 
hey long it's Chris Davenport from the 
Washington Post but I'm curious about 
your vision for this area I mean when 
you drive by and you see this it's 
surreal 
it's real yeah and but I know your 
vision isn't maybe like a government 
launch site like a Cape Canaveral but 
what does this look like a private 
operational commercial space board 
yeah I mean it's it's you know I mean it 
will definitely get fancier than it 
currently is you know because the the 
the reason it's not fancier is it's just 
because it would have taken too long to 
build the buildings so since it was 
gonna take so long to build the 
buildings we just built it outside yeah 
this is like my new thing is a 
management by rhyming if the schedules 
long it's wrong and if it's tightest 
right yeah it works I mean sr-71 
you know fastest plane in history ever 
you know it's also coolest plane ever 
you know it had no anti-missile defenses 
except one accelerates yeah zero they 
try to shoot it down many times zero 
successes what you think this area will 
look like it's a ten years when you are 
flying cruise oh my think will be like a 
lot left more buildings and a lot more 
stuff like way way more stuff than is 
currently here as you can tell the wind 
is really quite vigorous the like one of 
the things that I think would be quite 
important to have locally is propellant 
production so trucking massive you know 
thousands of tons of liquid oxygen to 
the site it doesn't make a ton of sense 
we should really produce the ox that the 
liquid oxygen here and by the way that 
it's we have gaseous oxygen in the 
atmosphere so basically just need 
electricity and oh I've word to mention 
one of the things our time is the 
propellant production on Mars will be 
completely renewable because we will use 
solar panels pull the co2 out of the 
atmosphere Mars is a primarily co2 
atmosphere get the h2o the water from 
the ice Mars has a 
the amount of ice you combine h2o and 
co2 and you get ch4 and O 2 this is a 
very long understood process of running 
over ruthenium catalysts this is a 
Sabatier process to create a ch4 no.2 
out of co2 and h2o and that same system 
that we developed for Mars will 
long-term be used on earth so long-term 
this is like a long term we will produce 
the propellants for the rockets using 
solar power and pull the co2 from 
Earth's atmosphere use water combine 
that into it to create ch4 and o2 on 
earth and so the long-term outcome will 
be quite sustainable and renewable for 
Earth and Mars Geoff vows of space news 
you spent a lot of time this summer 
working with the FAA getting approval to 
do a single star hopper fly at 150 
metres now you're talking about flying a 
much bigger vehicle to much higher 
altitudes and ultimately flying to orbit 
where are you within the FAA in terms of 
getting approval for that and will those 
flight Opportunities be able to coexist 
with say the local residents around here 
yeah I mean I've seen the FAA 
administrator for space has been 
excellent to work with very 
forward-leaning really I would just like 
to say thanks to the FAA for their 
support 
actually I mean really this you know 
minimal delay is related to regulatory 
activity and they've been really very 
reasonable and so you know the sports 
very much appreciated so I think the FAA 
asks you know good questions and what 
you want to make sure things are safe as 
do we 
and so we're gonna make sure that this 
the risk to the public is extremely you 
know vanishingly small 
there was nothing basically so yeah it's 
the same sort of thing that we've had to 
deal with on Falcon 9 
dragon and has gone very well you know 
for the 17 years that SpaceX has been 
around so so you know I think I feel 
pretty optimistic about things I don't I 
don't see any fundamental obstacles we 
are working with the the residents of 
Boca Chica Village because we think over 
time it's going to be quite disruptive 
to their tune to living in Boca Chica 
Village because it 
needing to get cleared for safety a lot 
of times so I'd say probably not very 
you know there would be just not very 
comforting to the book chica village I 
mean I think the actual but dangerous to 
folks here villages is low but it's not 
it's not tiny 
so therefore when we want super tiny 
risk so yeah probably have a time rather 
to buy out the villages and we've made 
an offer to that effect 
yeah thank you via LAN it's a Tariq 
Malik from space calm and I was curious 
with the design update here if a hundred 
person crew signs for base flights is 
still kind of the target now and how 
will the life support could you talk 
about that is the wind is like howling 
in my ear unfortunately sure yes with 
the design update here I'm curious if 
the 100 person crew size target is still 
the main target for base crew flights 
and how the life support system for that 
is being developed for both the initial 
test flights and then maybe for mr. 
Mia's hours flight 2 and upcoming years 
thank you 
yeah I think you it's really I think you 
could still do a hundred people like the 
the the pressurized volume on the 
starship is around a thousand cubic 
meters so if you had a hundred people 
you'd have ten cubic meters per person 
which is you know and especially in like 
a zero-g situation that's actually quite 
a lot of room unlike a 1g situation you 
you only get to use one surface really 
live on one surface in a 1g situation 
but in this you know zero 
situation you can live on six surfaces 
you know you can like all six sides of a 
cube so it things away roomier then they 
may seem and by the way a thousand cubic 
meters I think is close to what the 
Space Station pressurized volume is so 
it's you know starship is like basically 
like the launching space station 
pressurized volume on every flight this 
is quite a lot we can make it bigger if 
it as neat as you yeah high-heeled on 
Stephen Clark from a spaceflight now 
thanks for taking our questions we see 
the starship prototype here mark one you 
talked a little bit about how you're 
gonna build the super-heavy vehicle can 
you update us a little bit more detail 
about how that development is going 
where exactly it'll be built and when we 
might see it on the on a test stand or 
on a pad sure yeah a good question so 
the priority is to build at least two 
starships at each site at Boka at the 
ganda cape and then start building the 
booster so we'll complete you know Mach 
one through four before doing Mach one 
of the booster and then we'll do you 
know Mach one and walk two of the 
boosters at the cape and and voco look 
their main constraints on on launching 
the booster is is its engines because 
obviously booster has a lot of engines 
so spooling up the raptor production 
rate is extremely important to vital 
obviously essential to completing the 
booster doing the the tanks and the legs 
and say the grid fins 
bettors not a constraint like that we 
can get done fast but we need i think we 
would want to have at least probably 
twenty four engines but i think really 
at least thirty one engines 
to launch so you add that up you've got 
a lot of engines there you know we need 
to put four four four four starships 
need to well these these have just have 
three Brock wanted to just have three 
three Raptor engines Mach three and four 
will have six so yeah this looks like a 
lot of engines basically including 
development engines from now through 
through orbit we're probably done 
hundreds rapture engines and our 
production race right now is maybe one 
every sort of eight to ten days 
and but it should be one every couple of 
days in a few months and then out to our 
target is to get to a rapture engine 
every day by q1 next year or sooner and 
if I may when will we see people flying 
on this vehicle into space well I think 
we could potentially see people flying 
next year you know if we if we get to 
orbit in about six months then and we 
have a remember this is designed to be a 
reusable rocket so a reasonable booster 
reusable ship so we can do many flights 
to prove out the reliability very 
quickly so whereas with an expendable 
vehicle you have to build if you want to 
do ten flights let's say to prove out 
the viability of an expendable vehicle 
your need to build and destroy ten 
vehicles whereas we can do ten flights 
you know it within basically a ten days 
so when I say rapid reusability I mean 
you know what you you can fly it's like 
you can fly the boosts or 
20 times a day you fly the ship three or 
four times a day that's what I mean by 
reusability and the only reason to ship 
it takes more time than that is more 
time than the booster is that you need a 
couple of you need you know three or 
four orbits to synchronize for the ship 
so that it is over you know like don't 
getting those complicated thing of 
orbital dynamics and the rotation of the 
earth relative to satellite but as 
anyone who's like knows the space you 
know the track of a satellite unless 
it's an equatorial satellite is it's a 
sinusoidal track on the earth unless 
it's equatorial or sun-synchronous so so 
it you know launching sort of due east 
you have to kind of wait for the orbits 
just the the ground paths to sync up 
with the launch light and that's the 
only reason it really takes like you 
know maybe six hours or something like 
that to sync up and land back at Boca or 
the Cape you know one of the really 
interesting interesting things to 
contemplate is the total mass to orbit 
capability of a large reusable system 
where you have a significant fleet in 
operation the if you've got something 
like Sasha where you've got maybe 150 
tons capable to orbit and the ship can 
fly' is capable of say theoretically 
flying four times a day but you know 
they quote it like 75 percent uptime so 
theoretical three times a day three or 
sixty-five days a year so that's like 
about a thousand flights a year for the 
ship the booster can do a lot more than 
that this is obviously max theoretical 
and you but you know 150 tons that 
service 150 thousand tons to open per 
year per ship and if you've got say ten 
ships you would have a hundred and your 
one and a half million tons to orbit per 
year 20 ships you've got three million 
tons over two year I think the total 
rest of world capacity if you take all 
rockets on earth including Falcon the 
total capacity to orbit I think is 
around two to three hundred tons 
currently total Earth capacity to orbit 
is about two to three hundred tons if 
all rockets launched at max rate so 
we're talking about something that is 
with with the fleet of starships a 
thousand times more than all earth 
capacity combined all all other rockets 
combined would be 0.1% including ours 
but you kind of need that if you're 
gonna build a city on Mars so it's got 
to be done 
Elon highest bill Harwood with CBS News 
I just wanted to follow up on a an 
earlier question about life support 
systems because that's not trivial and 
obviously you're you're building a very 
sophisticated piece of hardware are you 
thinking about closed-loop regenerative 
systems are you thinking about 
developing these in-house or you looking 
at designs that already exist on Space 
Station for example and what are you 
shooting for initially I know you're not 
going to be launching a hundred people 
on your first flight but what sort of a 
crew complement can we expect on those 
initial test flights and what how 
sophisticated does that life-support 
system need to be Thanks 
yeah I think for sure you'd want to have 
a regenerative life support system so 
that just means you're recycling 
everything you know that's for sure 
important if you're on a several months 
journey to Mars and then you you know on 
the surface for 18 months 
regenerative is a kind of a necessity so 
III don't think it's actually super hard 
to do that relative to the spacecraft 
itself the life-support system is pretty 
straightforward 
yeah you're going to take - you know - 
yeah it's pretty straightforward you 
take out the water vapor and the co2 you 
can read that back - OH - it's not not 
super hard the the early flights of 
starship would not have any people on 
board it would just be in automatic mode 
it would only be later flights that 
would have people on board so I think 
like the foot even the first place 
tomorrow's we were to attend at least a 
couple of ships have them just land 
automatically before sending people yeah 
take about two more questions 
hyeyeon Erik burger with ARS technica I 
would just argue the x-15 was the 
coolest plane of all time and my 
question I guess is you know we're not 
really used to seeing Hardware build in 
less than a year can you talk about the 
timeline for this vehicle like when you 
started fabricating it and how you went 
so quickly on it thank you 
yeah actually I'm not sure I think I cap 
until October last year we were pursuing 
a completely different design so it was 
really I switched the design to steel I 
think yeah proxy up maybe October last 
year and there's like okay so what's the 
fastest we can build a steel you know 
ship in Texas 
and there we got I think your bulletin 
built it in about four months or 
something maybe five months and then 
this the ship I think we I'm not sure 
exactly when we started loading it 
perfect yeah but maybe about four months 
ago that we started building the ship 
maybe five so it's been four or five 
months since we started building this 
ship from nothing I think yeah something 
like that and how did you go so fast 
well I guess I have this mantra you 
called if the schedules long it's wrong 
if it's tight it's right yeah and just 
basically just go recursive improvement 
on schedule and say with feedback loop 
did this make it go faster okay if it 
didn't we need to fix it if the design 
if the design is takes a long time to 
build it to the wrong design this is the 
fundamental thing over and over it's 
like the tendency is to complicate 
things and I have another thing which is 
like the best part is no part the best 
process is no process it weighs nothing 
costs nothing can't go wrong so as 
obvious as that sounds the best the best 
part is no part like the my the the 
thing I'm most impressed with in when I 
have the design meetings at SpaceX is 
what did you undesigned undesigning is 
the best thing just delete it that's the 
best thing yeah 
hey Ilan Robin here from supercluster 
calm my question is about potential fun 
synergy between spacex and your other 
projects one is there a concept for a 
tesla Mars rover - are you gonna be 
launching yeah is there a concept 
already uh well actually yeah the 
Tesla's will work on Mars you know the 
if you can either there's a little you 
can just drive them pretty much because 
electric cars don't need oxygen they 
don't need air so you can just drive 
them around no problem 
are you gonna bring a boring machine to 
the Moon or Mars I think that would be a 
good good idea me too 
yeah because you could just like make 
like as much room as you want 
underground and and you protect it from 
radiation and everything and I could 
probably use the materials for building 
and you need to find ice and dirt anyway 
so why not yeah totally 
Thanks Elon in it oh I don't believe you 
about the aliens 
I hope I hope I'm wrong I mean I hope 
they're like well if they are how you 
here I'm hope they're nice you know they 
haven't killed us yet so it must be not 
that bad all right any other questions 
hi Ellen Martin Avenue from the SpaceX 
subreddit we crowd sourced a few 
questions it sounds like I only have 
time for one but oh well I was wondering 
could you elaborate on the number of 
engines that will be used for the booze 
back and entry burns on starship and 
what the dry landing weight of the 
super-heavy will be oh yeah so starship 
wouldn't really if we're poor 
there's the 20-kilometer thing which you 
know it's mostly just gonna have three 
engines you know but you only really 
needs like these two of them to work at 
any given point in time but but the ship 
when it's an orbital operation will will 
only need a tiny bit of impulse to 
deorbit like you only is to read like a 
very tight like less than 5% of the mass 
of the vehicles needed to do but so you 
just like really puff one of the engines 
and the main thing is like trying to get 
the control like how do you shut off the 
thrust precisely it really precisely so 
that you don't over or undershoot 
your target and and then so yeah for the 
booster the booster has seven engines 
that gimbal and then the rest whether 
it's a total of 31 or 37 are fixed the 
the fixed engines would not be used for 
boost back so the only the center 7 
would be used for for boost back and 
then I really want to try to avoid an 
entry burn if at all possible that would 
because I acted that that would now you 
have to have a high the system has to be 
capable of a very high Q entry in order 
to avoid an entry burn but I think we 
might be able to make the booster buff 
enough that it you know it doesn't need 
an entry burn hopefully so then it just 
needs a landing burner yeah 
all right great thanks everyone thanks 
for coming after you tried it