Exclusive: Elon Musk discusses Starship's next launch

It's like people before me thought they didn't realize reuse was a thing, but Von Brown was really big on reuse, he really wanted to push reuse design, but so far, for some reason, no organization of rockets has been able to execute it. reuse at SpaceX Hey guys, look at the sign behind me. I'm here in front of Stargate, which is, of course, the headquarters of Starbase and I just talked to Elon Musk about this incredible day here in South Texas, the fourth flight of Starship is truly historic day we have our microphones we have the old phone iPhone and we're trying to choose which questions we have some questions oh, nice to meet you formally hello hello okay, how are you feeling after flight 4 today?

Great, I think the S performed very well and the SpaceX team did an amazing job. Talk about the views from Starlink. I want to thank Starlink, it powered my live stream and obviously the three million plus people who watched on X, yes we actually had it. I think 16 or so video streams from the loss link, some of which were external, most of which were internal, just looking at the internal systems for debugging issues, and yes, we had almost loss coverage. continue for the

next

flight we made. some adjustments to the stagnation, so we will have complete continuity all the way.

I'm sure everyone at home would love it. Would you say the fourth time is the charm, perhaps for SpaceX as we look at the history of the Falcon 1? The fourth release is without a doubt. cool, I mean the third

launch

was solid too, I mean we made it to orbit, by normal standards that would be a success on the third

launch

, for this launch we hit two key reusability milestones, which was having the booster return to a precise location and execute a landing maneuver and land softly in the water, which it did and get the ship all the way through the super high reentry heat where it enters like a meteorite and then maintain control subsonically. and it landed in a pretty precise location, well, technically it was 6 kilometers away geographically, but it was able to, the ship was able to maintain control and then restart the three raer engines to land, so those were super successful days, um.

Yeah, uh, as you watched people say in X, the little flap that might be what was going through your mind. I was surprised that the flap lasted this long, so it's, you know, because it's once the hot and cold tiles wear off, uh, I really only have bare steel, which is primarily the uh sx300 alloy steel type and, in It was actually quite surprising how well the steel held up, despite the extreme heating, yeah, so I thought the sagging would fail, uh, because it's not supposed to be that way. able to survive, but he did. I think many of us were surprised.

Does that validate your choice to use stainless steel? Yes, absolutely, if we used carbon fiber or aluminum. Both would have failed due to high heating. I saw you post on that flight five, maybe you'll try to grasp what you think the probability is of that happening. I need to regroup with a team and confirm that there are no other known issues, but I believe that since the booster returned, arrived at a precise location, it reached essentially zero speed. She landed in the ocean. I think we should probably try to catch it with the tower arms on the

next

flight.

Absolutely, I was lucky enough to take a tour of Starbase and it's amazing that you guys can manage construction and production at the same time, tell me about the team here at SpaceX, yeah well we always have, we've been continually building the factory and the launch site. while Bel was developing the rocket, that's been the case, you know, since we came here, I mean, for 3 years, this was my main primary residence. I lived here, building the starbase, the factory and the launch. uh site of basically nothing just being a sandbar um and uh and we're just trying to figure out how to deal with stainless steel instead of aluminum and lithium and carbon and how to deal with methane as ash fuel instead of kerosene or refined fuel for planes, so, yes, it has always been a case of build the factory, build the launch site and continue developing the rocket, and if people have never been to Star base, this is much more than a factory that you are dealing with to maybe build a city, can you tell me more about your vision? not a city would be a strong word, but maybe a small town does benefit from having a young workforce by not having preconceived notions uh well we we I have people ranging from 70 to 18 so it's really a wide range.

I don't know, I don't know about the age. I mean, it's really a question of mindset. Anyone excited about the future and looking forward to it? push advanced technology as quickly as possible, that could be true at any age, what kind of missions do you think SpaceX could accept that will act as developmental steps towards Mars? Well, we are looking at the development of steps to Mars here, which is the fundamental advance that is needed for life to become multiplanetary. It is a completely and rapidly reusable rocket, which means that the boo stage and the upper stage or ship must return to the launch site and be able to fly immediately.

Again, without any renovation this has never been achieved, the closest anyone has ever come is the Falcon 9, where the booster comes back and is quickly available to fly in less than a week, and the fairing or cone of the nose is also renewed for flight the only thing that is lost is the upper stage um so in terms of well F Falcon is the first rocket to demonstrate commercially feasible uh reuse in fact re or another way of saying that it is the reuse that really matters and was useful at this time um falcine Still, we lose the upper stage, so Falcine is about 80% reusable, but it is also not quickly reusable in terms of allowing immediate re-flight, so with Starship everything will be reusable and It's designed for immediate re-flight, that's a very profound thing that's the fundamental thing that's necessary to make life multiplanetary uh there is, I put everything else in the category of uh of being really a different order of magnitude or difficulty uh, Uh, you know, I like it, I don't think so.

It will be very difficult to survive on Mars, frankly, I think it will be from the point of view of the technological challenge, which is to say that it is small compared to full and rapid reuse. We live on a planet with a deep gravity well and a thick atmosphere. This makes it complete. reuse is extremely difficult. If the gravity was even 10% lower it would be easy and if it was 10% higher it would be impossible. So, you know, it's not like previous rocket designers have done it. I didn't realize reuse was a thing, but Von Brown was really big on reuse, he really wanted to push reuse design, um, and he was a brilliant guy, um, um, and he had lots of kinds of design ideas. for that, like others, uh, but.

So far, for some reason, no rocket organization has been able to execute reuse until SpaceX and Starship are the first rocket design where complete and rapid reuse is in fact possible, because what this does is reduce the cost of space transportation by at least 100 times, maybe a thousand times, so it is a gigantic difference, as it would be for any motorized transport if it were cars, horses, bicycles, airplanes. Imagine if you needed to get a new plane with every flight. Air flight would be impossible for almost One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that not enough people really know what is going on with Starship and why it is important to generate public interest.

It is not like this. I mean, I think we want the public to be on our side and support us, but we're not trying to maximize public awareness. I think you know a lot of the public is aware of it and I think when we start taking astronauts to the Moon and especially to Mars, everyone on Earth will know about it. At what point do you think it would be safe for people to bring or have children to Mars? Well, I think you can have kids on Mars as soon as you can. At first I wouldn't take children because it is dangerous.

The first flights may not be successful. It's a dangerous environment, but I think within I don't know less than 10 years of the initial landings, I would expect it to be safe to bring children. Do you think you'll go to Mars in your life depends on whether I live long enough, so yeah, I just want to say that I'm incredibly grateful that Elon Musk took the time to talk to me on the same day of if4. It was already an incredibly successful day with the launch. what we witnessed and then being able to talk to Elon was really just the icing on the cake.

I've been working for a long time to get an interview like this, so if you want to support my work, it really helps since this is my full-time job and income can be very inconsistent. I thought I'd break this up into a lot of different clips and you might see some short ones, but I just wanted to give you Elon's full Starship recap of the day. After the launch of Starship, I hope you appreciate it and I can't express how grateful I am that Elon took the time to talk to me and of course I'm incredibly proud of the SpaceX team.

Humanity has a bright future thanks to the Starship program and what Spasic is making the world's first fully reusable rocket. We're on the right track and it's amazing to see it unfold in person. I've been lucky enough to cover all four launches now from the roof of Margaritaville and to talk to Elon on one of the launch days, I don't even know if I'm dreaming so I might make an additional video about this experience but I hope you've enjoyed this video, share it if you enjoyed it, thank you very much for watching. I am very excited to speak with Elon.

I've been following the Starship program since 2021, actually on the ground here, so it's actually very surreal and doing it on such a successful flying day for if4 is the best. It's time to do it and I'm so excited to share this moment in history.