Lex Fridman Podcast: #356 – Tim Dodd: SpaceX, Starship, Rocket Engines, and Future of Space Travel

00:00:00 - 00:30:00

In this episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast, Tim Dodd, host of the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel, discusses the development and achievements of SpaceX. He talks about the history of SpaceX, including the Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy rockets, as well as the Dragon capsule. The podcast also explores the challenges and breakthroughs in rocket engineering, the process of landing rockets, and the future of space travel and colonization of Mars. Overall, it provides an insightful overview of SpaceX's journey and advancements in the field of space exploration.

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00:30:00 - 01:00:00

The podcast discusses the milestones achieved by SpaceX, including the first reuse of a booster and the first commercial launch of humans into space. It also highlights the iterative nature of SpaceX's development process and the potential for future achievements. The podcast discusses the possibility of sending an uncrewed robot to rendezvous with a spacecraft on an eccentric orbit. It also provides a brief history of the SpaceX rocket engines, including the evolution of the Merlin engine and the introduction of the Raptor engine. The podcast explores the culture clash between SpaceX and NASA in terms of their approach to designing and testing spacecraft, as well as the collaboration between the two organizations. It also discusses the challenge of questioning established practices in fields like aeronautics and robotics, and the importance of intuition and first principles thinking in driving innovation. The podcast highlights the engineering practices at SpaceX, including the utilization of past concepts and the pursuit of reusability in rocket design. It also raises questions about the potential for cost reduction and the possibility of colonizing Mars. The podcast emphasizes the importance of Elon Musk's involvement in SpaceX and Tesla, and the impact of his leadership on driving progress and innovation. It concludes by discussing the inspiration and unity brought by space travel technology and sustainable transportation, considering them more impactful than social media involvement.

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01:00:00 - 01:30:00

The podcast discusses the impact of social media on society and the potential benefits and challenges it brings. The host expresses concerns about the political divisions and turmoil on social media and its potential impact on projects like space exploration. They emphasize the importance of focusing on science, technology, and engineering for societal progress. The podcast also delves into the different types of rocket engines, propellants, and engine cycles, as well as the challenges of developing rocket engines and methods used to keep them cool.

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01:30:00 - 02:00:00

The podcast discusses the brilliance and expertise of engineers in the aerospace industry, highlighting their deep understanding of materials and engineering. It explores concepts such as film cooling in engine development and the use of staging in rockets to increase payload capacity. The podcast also touches on the challenges of single-stage-to-orbit rockets and the potential of aerospike engines. The drawbacks of rotary and aerospike engines are discussed, along with the host's favorite combustion engine car.

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02:00:00 - 02:30:00

In this episode, the podcast hosts discuss their changing taste in cars, using Tesla's Model 3 and Cybertruck as examples. They also talk about the importance of going against current trends in design and fashion. The conversation then shifts to SpaceX's Starship, describing its features and capabilities. The podcast delves into the recent milestones in the rocket's development, including a wet dress rehearsal and unique elements of the launch pad.

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02:30:00 - 03:00:00

The podcast discusses the experience of witnessing the launch and landing of a massive rocket, highlighting the excitement and awe-inspiring nature of the event. It mentions the upcoming milestones for SpaceX, including the testing of all 33 Raptor engines simultaneously. The podcast also discusses the expected milestones leading up to an orbital launch test by SpaceX, such as the static fire, full stack testing, and the d-stacking of the second stage from the first stage. The delays in SpaceX's launch schedule and the role of Gwen Shotwell, the president and COO of SpaceX, in managing the company's operations are also mentioned.

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03:00:00 - 03:30:00

The podcast discusses the importance and impact of space travel, drawing parallels to the early days of aviation. It highlights the reliance on space assets and the potential for the average person to fly in space in the future. The hosts also reflect on the magic of flying and the continuous pursuit of technological advancements. They mention the challenges and opportunities of capturing space travel through filming and live streaming.

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03:30:00 - 04:00:00

The podcast discusses the challenges of building a YouTube channel and the struggles of being a creator on social media. It also explores the importance of Patreon support in sustaining the production of in-depth content. The podcast delves into the history of rocket engines in the Soviet Union, highlighting the extensive iteration process and the durability of their engines. It also discusses the importance of turbo pumps in rocket engines and the cultural differences between the United States and the Soviet Union in their approach to space exploration. Lastly, the podcast touches on the risks and challenges of space travel and the potential for space exploration to unite nations and inspire people.

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04:00:00 - 04:30:00

The podcast discusses the collaboration between the United States and China in space exploration, highlighting the Apollo-Soyuz mission as an example of international cooperation during the Cold War. The potential for future collaboration and friendly competition between different companies and nations in space exploration is also mentioned. The guest emphasizes the importance of appreciating the scientific progress being made by China and avoiding political aspects. The conversation then shifts to the dangers of space wars and the Kessler syndrome, which could result in a debris cloud that hinders space exploration. The podcast also discusses the impact of the space program on satellites and the potential consequences of a catastrophic event in low Earth orbit. It mentions the importance of end-of-life plans for satellites and the efforts of companies like Stoke Aerospace to clean up space debris. The conversation touches on Starlink and its potential to provide internet access to a wide range of people. The increasing number of satellites from different companies and nations poses a challenge in terms of collision avoidance. The podcast concludes by discussing the challenges of satellite navigation and the potential for human exploration of Mars. The guest expresses optimism about the possibility of humans landing on Mars by 2040, but acknowledges the difficulties involved. The role of SpaceX and the potential for a new space race with China are also mentioned. The podcast also explores how the space program can help restore trust in institutions and highlights the challenge of capturing the awe and magic of space exploration.

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04:30:00 - 05:00:00

The podcast discusses the potential of using nuclear fission and fusion for propulsion in space travel. It mentions the challenges and limitations of nuclear propulsion, such as the weight and thrust-to-weight ratio of the engines. The podcast suggests that while nuclear thermal propulsion could be beneficial for interplanetary travel, it may not be feasible for interstellar travel. The conversation also touches on the mysteries surrounding black holes and the potential for using them for propulsion. The hosts express skepticism about aliens visiting Earth but acknowledge the possibility of alien life throughout the universe.

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05:00:00 - 05:21:21

The podcast discusses the future of spaceflight and the competition among rocket companies. Rocket Lab, Astra, and Blue Origin are mentioned as potential competitors to SpaceX. Relativity, a company that uses 3D printing to build rockets, is also highlighted. The guest emphasizes the importance of innovation and iteration in the industry.

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The following is a conversation with Tim Dodd, host of the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel,

where he educates and inspires all of us with detailed but accessible explanations

of rocket engines and all things space travel.

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here's Tim Dodd.

Can you give a brief history of SpaceX rockets? So we got Falcon one, Falcon nine,

there's different versions of those Falcon heavy, Starship and also the the Dragon

castles and so on. Well, yeah, Falcon one is where it all started. The original intent and

the original idea of SpaceX was Elon wanted to try to get something to Mars. You know,

he saw that NASA didn't have a current Mars plan. And he wanted to go to Mars. So he decided how do

I best do this? He literally wanted to at first purchase a rocket from from Russia. Then on the

after a foiled attempt at doing that, he decided that he was going to try to develop his own rocket.

And the Falcon one is what came out of that process. And he developed a pretty incredible

team. Like, I don't know how exactly he stumbled upon the team that he stumbled upon that quickly.

But the people that he assembled were amazing. And they built the Falcon one,

which was a single Merlin engine, followed by an upper stage engine called the Kestrel engine,

pretty small compared to the things they're working on today. But that Merlin engine continued to

evolve into being the power plant for the Falcon nine, they went from a small lift launch vehicle

up into the medium class launch vehicle, so they could provide services for NASA.

That's one of the big things they first kind of hung their hat up was they got the opportunity

to fly cargo to the International Space Station under origin is called the COTS program, the

commercial orbital transportation services for NASA, which evolved into the commercial

resupply contracts. And that's when SpaceX developed both their Dragon capsule, which is a

uncrewed at first spacecraft that can dock to the ISS, and the Falcon nine rocket that can take

it to the International Space Station. And the Dragon rides on it's a thing up top that rides

on the big booster thing that that launches it into orbit. Exactly. Yep. The Falcon nine's the

the semi truck, the Dragon capsule is the payload, you know, it's the thing being dropped off basically

at its destination. In this case, the destination is the International Space Station. And yeah,

so they developed those relatively quickly, and became a commercial success before you know what

they're now the number one launch provider in the world launching more mass to pay to orbit than

anybody else launching more frequently than countries, like the entire country of China

who's going crazy right now with launches granted China beat them by two launches this

last in 2022. But prior prior year, SpaceX beat the entire country of China. I mean, it's it's

nuts. And just like you said, SpaceX still beats China even this year, in terms of the amount of

payload that was done. So yeah, the mass to orbit, right? That China had like 60 something, a couple

more launches, but the there was just like small cubes that type of launches. Exactly. Some of them

were literally like 100 kilograms or something, you know, like not not large payloads. And so SpaceX

customers are different, different, so whoever wants to send payloads up into space. Yes. But

right now, their biggest customer is actually themselves with Starlink. One of the biggest

reasons they've launched so much mass to orbit is because Starlink is designed around the payload

fairing and the payload capabilities of the Falcon 9 rocket. So, you know, because they're

vertically integrated, because they build their own satellites, because they're building their own

rocket, they can literally design a system that's, you know, another manufacturer might have made a

more square satellite that was heavier or something. But SpaceX looked at it from a blank slate and

said, here's our constraints, our payload mass constraints or volume constraints. And they made

a funky looking satellite at things like the size of a, you know, it's like a table folded up,

which isn't anything I've, you know, really ever seen before. So, but it's purpose built to fit

as efficiently as possible inside their fairing and inside the capabilities of that rocket. So

therefore, because they're launching those like an insane amount, you know, dozens, you know, 40,

50 times a year or whatever, they're, they're just putting up insane amounts of mass, like we've

never seen before. What about the different versions of Falcon 9 so we can linger on them?

What are some interesting memories to you of the different developments in Falcon 9?

The very first Falcon 9s had a square array of engines. I had like a three by three by three

grid of their Merlin 1 engines, the 1Ds. And I think it only lasted, I don't remember if it was

two or four flights before they went into this octawode configuration where there's eight,

like a ring of eight engines with a center engine in the middle, still in the same diameter that

the rocket was, the fuselage was more or less the same 3.7 meter wide diameter, but the actual

thrust structure changed. And one of the big efficiency gains was you no longer have, you

know, a corner engine and then like a edge engine and then another corner engine. You can just make

eight of the same, you know, kind of part of the octawab. It's called, you know, the same shape.

And then your interchangeability and your manufacturability becomes a lot simpler.

So that was kind of one of the bigger upgrades at first. And they kept stretching it. Every time

they like touched this thing, it got longer and like, or taller and taller technically.

And then the next big feature that you saw in 2014 would have been they added landing legs

to a Falcon 9 rocket, which is, I was at, that was the first launch I ever went to, was actually to

see, it was CRS3, so commercial resupply mission three, it was probably their, God, I don't remember

what that was like, their 14th or 15th launch or something like pretty early on. And people were

literally laughing at the idea of them putting landing legs on it. They just thought it was stupid.

They're like, why are they wasting? Why is this billionaire Elon Musk guy wasting his time trying

to land a rocket? It's not going to work. So you said the Mars planet was there in the beginning.

What about the reusability of rockets? Was that there in the beginning?

I think reusability definitely, you know, it's a necessary part of making any kind of interplanetary

mission, you know, in order to actually do that just financially, you have to start reusing these

things. In terms of the development of the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, how early on did the

goal of reusing the rocket, having the rocket actually land, how early did that goal creep in?

I can't speak for Elon and SpaceX, but it was pretty, you know, immediately they wanted to

try to recover. And as a matter of fact, I think the very first two Falcon 9 rockets and

Falcon 1, I think they even wanted to try to recover using parachutes to recover the first stage.

And now fast forward, you know, almost 20 years later, and Rocket Lab is actually doing a concept

like that, where they're pulling a parachute after the first stage is re-entering and they

actually are trying to recover it with a helicopter. He's going to try to snatch it out of the air.

They've actually done it. They've actually done it successfully once.

How does the helicopter grab the rocket?

With this giant like drag line and a hook, and then literally just like,

grabs snags onto the parachute. And it's pretty amazing. But this is a small rocket.

The rocket's only about a metric ton. The booster is empty.

So the rocket releases parachutes, like really high up. I'd love to see this.

Yeah. It's an interesting idea. There's so many interesting ideas and possibilities,

like SpaceX basically just innovated a lot of different weird ideas, just in the pursuit of

making things more efficient, reusable, all of that. So basically thinking from first principles,

how to solve this problem. And so what you find is like, you'll get all these kind of crazy kind

of solutions. And with SpaceX, they weren't even getting to the point of the booster surviving

re-entry long enough to be able to pull the parachutes. Yeah. You know, their mass fractions,

you know, and in that varies, every single rocket's different. You know, all the, you know,

for instance, Rocket Lab uses carbon composite fuselage and tanks, or, you know, same thing.

And that's very, very lightweight, has really good mass fractions. And therefore, their drag

coefficients and things like that, they were able to survive re-entry of the first stage,

which is something that SpaceX wasn't able to do at the time. What the kind of the big,

I think breakthrough for SpaceX with reusing the booster is they realized we have to basically slow

down before we hit the atmosphere. So they actually do what they used to call a re-entry burn,

which I still think is the correct term, because it is re-entering the atmosphere. But now they

call it the entry burn. And they light up three of the nine Merlin engines, not only to slow it

down, but actually, even while those engines are firing, it creates like a literal like force field

as it's falling through the atmosphere. Interesting. And, but it also decreases the

velocity by almost half, or around half. And then that therefore decreases the amount of,

you know, the biggest thing with the atmosphere is that as it gets compressed against the front of

any, anything flying through the atmosphere, the compressed atoms just get hot. And they can get so

hot, they turn into a plasma, and they get so hot, they can just absolutely destroy anything.

So they slow down enough that the air molecules don't end up, you know, destroying the vehicle

on re-entry. And then they, then they realized, I think at some point, there's probably a similar

crossover where they're like, well, if we're lighting the engines already that slow down

in the atmosphere, we can just use that same engine to land. And so like, well, what if we

just stuck landing legs on it and just landed the thing vertically? And next thing you know,

is December 21st, 2015, they did exactly that for the first time they've landed.

So you were there before that then, right? Yeah, yeah. In 2014.

Yep, early 2014. So that, and for me, like that was so fun watching, you know, that was like the

peak of me just becoming obsessed with, with this idea. I'm watching with, like in back in the day,

it was like months between launches, you know, so a launch was like a big idea. I'd wake up at 3 a.m.

to watch this landing attempt or whatever, you know, and every, you know, there's CRS4 almost,

almost landed CRS5, almost landed CRS6, CRS7 blew up. I was watching that on, I think it was like a

Saturday morning, or maybe a Sunday morning. And I remember watching that and watch it blow up.

And I was like, Oh my God, now what, you know, and it blew up on ascent. It was their first failure.

So it was their 18th flight, I believe, CRS7, the upper stage had a, one of the bottles,

there's bottles inside the tanks that are filled with helium and one of those bottles broke off

on ascent and actually just completely overpressured the upper stage and the upper stage blew up and

the whole rocket went kaboom in an uncontrolled manner. And so, so then they came back with

vengeance. When they came back, the first mission back is the first time that they landed a rocket,

which was awesome. So the return to flight after the anomaly was, was, yeah, was landing a rocket.

And stuck the landing. Yep. Well, actually the first time, so the first time you were there,

what was that like? What do you remember from that, from that day? Just, I was surprised at how much

bigger the rocket was than I imagined. I was, I originally, when I was going down to Kennedy

Space Center, I was disappointed that I wasn't seeing like a, you know, I didn't know a ton

about rockets. I knew enough to like know what a space shuttle was, what like the Saturn five was,

you know, but that was probably about the end of my knowledge. I just remember being disappointed

that I wasn't seeing a big quote unquote NASA rocket flying. You know, I was thinking in my

head like, oh, I'm going to see this launch is probably going to be like, you know, three stories

tall or something, you know, just some little skinny little stick and some little firecracker

and yay, you know, and I think I'd almost been pitched that too. I think the, the people that

I was working for at the time, I think they kind of were downplaying it as like, well, it's not a

big rocket. So it's not going to be that exciting, you know, but we get out there to the pad and

I'm like, this thing's huge. This is not a small rocket. Like this is, it's, you know, it's 70 meters

tall, 220 feet tall. It's huge. And I think people forget like the scale of that, you know, it might

look skinny and tall and all this stuff, but it's still a very, very large piece of machinery.

It's physically about as, as large as you can ship the boosters about as big as you can ship

across the country period without like completely shutting down highways, you know, it is made

within those exact specifications of, of like having, you know, lane privileges and bridges

and everything. It's, you know, 12 feet wide, 3.7 meters wide, and it's 45 meters long. So it's

like exactly what you can fit with a pretty standard, you know, like before you start getting

into crazy amounts of problems shipping the rocket. And it's huge. It's huge. And people just don't

understand that. And so when I saw it with my own eyes, I remember just being like,

this is so much cooler than I thought.

It was hard to believe that that thing is going to have to lift off the ground and launch up

into the air. Maybe that's the most humbling aspect of it. That's something that size.

Humans have come up with a way to take something that size and launching,

launch it up into the air.

Yeah. There's certainly a very humbling aspect when you watch it actually leave.

Was, was there a sound to it? Was there like a feeling? What were the different experiences

that you first remember?

Well, ironically, I didn't end up getting to see that one fly.

Oh, I went home. My camera saw it. I left my camera out there, like a remote triggered camera.

And my first images as a launch photographer at the time was, was CRS three, but I went home

and scrubbed too many times. So this is back in the day, they were scrubbing like

often and they'd be like a three day, five day, seven day, you just never knew.

So I go home and I watched the live stream of it. So I didn't even get to experience

my first launch and anyone that's ever tried to, you know, go to a launch is

couldn't probably empathize because yeah, scrubs are very common in the spaceflight world.

So that one I didn't get to see. But since then, obviously, I've been able to attend very many

launches. How much do you understand the control involved in the landing? How difficult is that

problem? I couldn't tell you a single thing about like the code and like the avionics behind it,

but I can tell you all the hardware that makes it happen. If that helps.

Well, that, I mean, to me, it seems like whenever I talk to people, they say it's not

that big of a deal in terms of the level of intelligence in the control. But to me,

it's just like when you observe it, it seems incredible because of all the variables involved,

all the uncertainties involved, all the, because there's aerodynamics, I mean,

like there's different temperatures, there's so much going on with the fuel, the burning,

the combustion, just everything that's going on to be able to perform control at such high stakes

effectively. Like, you know, that code is probably not written in JavaScript, I guess is what I'm

saying. Actually, no, I don't, if I remember, again, this is well outside of my domain, but

they're coding in a common language. It's probably going to be C. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is. And

that was one of the things that was weird is that Elon, when he, you know, started SpaceX, was like,

we're just going to code in the most common language so that we don't have to like have people

learn this archaic, you know, weird thing. And we can just literally pull people off the streets

and be like, here, write it, you know, and that's probably C++. I mean, it'd be epic if it was like

Python or something, but I don't, I think like reliable systems have to be written in C, C++,

probably, which is a common language, which is something I imagine like NASA engineers would

probably have to use some kind of proprietary language in the, in the olden days for, for security,

for privacy, all that kind of stuff. And the old, old, old days, like they were inventing code

in language from scratch. For sure. It was still, it's just still incredible that it's able to do

that. Like just the feat of engineering involved is just, it's truly, it's like one of the marvels

to observe about these rockets coming back to Earth, that they're able to land. Like the drama of it

is just incredible to see. Yeah. Well, the, one of the fun things to remember too, with,

specifically with the Falcon 9 and the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy Boosters, I mean, it's the same

thing, basically. They shut down all but one of the nine engines. And even with that one engine

at its minimum throttle setting, it's still too much thrust to hover. So as this rocket's coming

down, if they start a little bit too early, if they light that engine too early, it will actually

stop above the ground and will not be able to lower itself. It will literally stop like, say,

say, say, stop 200 feet above the ground. Their only option is to kill the engine and then it's

just going to fall those 200 feet. So they, it's what we call like a suicide burner, a hover slam,

kind of interchangeable terms, because your thrust to weight ratio is never below one.

So they have to actually literally be riding the throttle. So what you do is you kind of start,

ideally, you know, you kind of start like in the middle of your window of throttle range. So let's

pretend your engine can throttle down to 40% of its maximum rated thrust. You might start at like

70% of thrust in the middle of that like window of where it could be. So that, so if all of a sudden

it's kind of coming in too hot, you have room to throttle up. If you're coming into, you're actually,

you know, a little too early, you throttle it down. You have a little bit of wiggle room.

And it's just amazing how smoothly and how perfectly they're able to still control that thing.

Even though they're down to one engine out of the nine, and they're still riding like the

finest margin of what's possible. And they're continually playing with that to try to get it,

because every, every bit of fuel they're using and propellant they're using to land

is propellant they weren't using to put something into space. So they want that to be as efficient,

as possible. So they're really like watching them hone that in and, and just continue to evolve

and edit that and just get it to be the workhorse. And we're coming up on 100 consecutive landings,

perfect landings 100. I think they've done like 150 something landings altogether 160 altogether.

But we're talking like in a row without blowing up, which at the, you know,

five years ago was completely experimental and insane. And now we're coming up to the point where

100 in a row, it's like, this is becoming more reliable in the landing, which is not the primary

mission. This is purely for SpaceX's like gain is to recover the booster. It has nothing to do

with the effect of getting the payload on orbit, you know, most of the time. And the landing is

really only for their benefit and their gain. Long term gain, like it's a long term investment

in being able to recover the boosters. Can you believe all this was done basically 10 years?

So we've seen this development over a period of 10 years. So like where we started commercial

spaceflight at scale to today, where it's almost, almost starting to be mundane.

Yeah.

What the hell can I be able to do?

Yeah. I can't really believe it. I mean, obviously, even just in the, I think I'm a

fairly fair weather fan really didn't start paying attention to like 2014.

Yeah.

And just seeing what it was like back then to what it's like to like, I don't watch every

launch at all anymore. Like I'll catch the big ones. I'll stream some of the really big ones.

But like back in the day, I, like I said, would wake up in the middle of the night to catch these

streams or, you know, catch these launches and watch them because they were such a big deal.

And there's maybe only five of them a year, you know, and so it was a really big deal.

Nowadays, it's like, oh yeah, and there's literally like two a week on average now.

It's insane from SpaceX alone, let alone, you know, United Launch Alliance, Rocket Lab,

any of the Chinese missions, you know, I mean, all there's countless. It's insane. It's hard to

really, really, really hard to keep up with.

I wonder at which point in the future, the number of launches to orbit will exceed the

number of launches of airplanes, like on the surface of Earth.

Yeah. I have to admit, I kind of have a hard time extrapolating out that far.

You know, there's a lot of people that are like big futurists and really do think about

like interplanetary stuff and think about colonizing Mars and stuff. I have a hard time

predicting like when Starship is going to fly, the orbital launch, you know, and that's like

imminent-ish, like month or two scale timeframe. And yet I'm still like, I can't tell you when

that's going to, I can't tell you anything about like when we're going to land on Mars or what

that's, what that economy and what that, you know, the scale of launch operations is going to look

like in order to do that because it's just so hard to, I wouldn't have predicted where we're

at today five years ago, you know, it's, it's insane. It's so hard to predict and

yeah, but it's funny because there's so many like new companies starting up trying to predict that

and it's a really exciting, you know, startup culture right now.

I think when you make certain engineering decisions and hiring decisions and like what

you focus on in terms of both business and engineering, it's good to think on the scale

of 10, 20, 50, 100 years. This is one of the things that Elon is exceptionally good at,

which is asking the question, okay, this might seem impossible right now, but what's the obvious

way to do this if we look out 20 years and then you start to make decisions. You start to make

decisions about robotics, about brain and computer interfaces, about space travel there. They make

a lot of sense when you look at the scale of 10, 20, 1500 years and don't make any sense if you

look at the scale of just months. So, but of course the actual work of day to day is focused on

the next few months because there's deadlines, there's missions they have to accomplish. Anyway,

we're turning back to the brief history of space rockets. The Falcon Heavy. So, what else is there?

So, we talked about Falcon 9 and the rapid development there. What other flavors of Falcon

is there and how does that take us to Starship? Yeah, realistically, the Falcon 9 evolved more

or less kind of like just got more powerful and a little bit longer and more capable,

but nowadays they fly what's called the Block 5 even though it's like the

eighth or ninth iteration of the Falcon 9, but they call it Block 5. It's the one that has

the black landing legs, the black interstage. They have a fleet of roughly 10 or so that are

doing the majority of the legwork these days and they're flying up to 15 times I think right now

as the current booster leader. They're also recovering the fairings so the nose cone of the

rockets are frequently if not every time being recovered. Same with the booster for the most

part and the only thing being expended is the upper stage and that's kind of where the Falcon

9 is ending. It really doesn't make sense to develop that infrastructure any longer so they

went with the next step which is go even bigger physically so they have more margin for upper

stage reusability and that's what we see with Starship and Super Heavy. So, the Super Heavy

booster, the whole system is confusing. The whole system is kind of considered Starship,

but technically the Starship is just the upper stage which is also like the spaceship which is

also the upper stage and then the booster itself is considered the Super Heavy booster

and that's what they've been working on. Publicly it came out in 2016 at the time it was the ITS,

the Interplanetary Transportation System. Later, and I think by the end of that year,

2017 it kind of became known as the BFR, the big Falcon rocket and then I think it was about

end of 2018 they started calling it Starship, but that is where we're at today and that's what

they're working full steam ahead on. And what about Dragon? Did we mention Dragon,

Crew Dragon, Cargo Dragon? Yeah, so they went from the Cargo version of Dragon that flew about 20

times successfully to the International Space Station except for that one CRS-7 where the

rocket blew up and the capsule obviously didn't make it to the ISS. Then they went into Dragon

2 which has two variants, it has a Crew variant so we just call it Crew Dragon and then there's the

Cargo version of Dragon 2 and that's just an updated sleeker sexier version of Dragon and it's

ironically it's heavier altogether so it you'll never see those those cool return to launch site

landing the boosters coming back to land for CRS missions anymore like we used to but they landed

on the drone ship anyway and yeah that's been flying successfully that's kind of the so there's

yeah Starlink, Dragon, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Starship system is kind of the whole the whole

SpaceX world really. In terms of the the the spaceships involved what what to you are some of

the major milestones in that history? We kind of mentioned a few yeah in the landing is there

something kind of stands out? Yeah I would say definitely the big one's obviously like any of

the first like the first flight of Falcon 1 first flight of Falcon 9 first time they went to the

International Space Station the first time they landed a booster the first time they reuse a booster

which is I think about six months after no oh it was a year after it was SES 10 2017 it was the

first time they they reused one of those boosters you know and that was a big milestone like can we

even yeah we recovered one we we caught one you know it's like we got one now what that was the

first time they reflew one yeah then Flying Humans was a huge one DM2, Bob and Doug for NASA.

Bob and Doug yeah. That was incredible you know that was that was a huge huge step I think for

SpaceX was flying people. So it's the first major commercial launching of humans out into space?

Yeah and not just into space because you know there's been people that have done you know space

flights with you know like suborbital hops but going into orbit and especially docking and

rendezvousing with the International Space Station is a it's a big deal it's a whole it

until you really understand the physics involved and the scale involved of like just

crossing the karmine line going straight up versus going into orbit like they're just completely

different things almost. What about Starship are we are we in a place where we can talk about

milestones with Starship has there been or has it just been an epic journey of failure and successes

of testing and and so on was there like even they yeah what what would you classify at this point

as a as a milestone that Starship would be afar whatever the name was able to achieve.

Well so far the milestones we've seen I'd say the first one would be the hop of they call it Star

Hopper and it's basically a very rudimentary rocket but it was the first time they they utilized

their new Raptor engine to produce thrust to fly something. It first flew like literally like

three meters off the ground or something like tethered to the ground then it flew like 15 and

then finally it flew 150 meters and that was in 2019 and that was the first big milestone of

Starship and then after that we saw SN5 SN6 kind of do the similar like 150 meter hops with a little

bit more elegant systems you know proving out more of their their tank building proving out more

their you know a lot of just subsystems and then the big ones physically were in end of 2020 and

early 2021 when they flew the SN8, 9, 10, 11 and 15. What does the N stand for in SN? I think just

serial number or start the number yeah so SN these are just names numbers numerical representations

of the different testing efforts they skip some numbers right yeah if they if they scratch a test.

Yeah and lots of times it'd be like literally they're building you know because at Starbase

and it what SpaceX is working on like the one foot is always in front of someone else's foot

and like the arm is not knowing what the leg is doing sometimes yeah they they will have

someone working on you know they'll just be like hurry up and build 40 of these tank sections

and you build the bulkhead and you build the downcomer and you build the header tank blah blah

and all of a sudden like oh we actually evolved that we don't use that header tank now so it's

going to go onto this one so they'll have like parts of certain rockets built and just like ask

literally scrap it like not scrap it like in the you know joke term but like literally just go scrap

it and they so they have a they just evolve and iterate so quickly there were some epic explosions

I think Starship something about it probably just the amount of fuel just leads to some epic

epic failures would you say Starship is the source of the most epic failures in terms of

size of explosion so you can literally measure in like a yield of explosive power you know like

like you could TNT like you can take a look at how much propellant is left over at the at the time

of the explosion and you know Starship what's flown so far even though it's physically one of the

largest flying objects ever just with the upper stage alone they've not filled it more than like

10 or 20 percent full of propellant yeah and so it actually hasn't been that the the failures have

been really epic looking big visual fireballs but in terms of spaceflight they're still

pretty small explosions believe it or not they could still go bigger oh yeah a lot a lot of course

the test payload of a tesla roaster was launched I forget what year that was yeah that's 2018

though that was quite epic would you put that on a milestone oh yeah yeah falcon heavy demo was like

definitely a big big big milestone yeah is that funny to you that there's a roaster

floating out there yeah do we know the location of that roaster at this point oh yeah where is

roaster.com yeah oh yeah where's is it orbiting something yeah it's orbiting the sun so it's

it's orbiting the sun and its orbit is basically between the earth's orbit and beyond mars so I

think of like 2.5 au if I remember right so it's it's beyond mars's orbit and it's highest point

and it's back at earth kind of at its lowest point I wonder if there's a mission where you're going to

somehow connect with it once again and like place extra things into it I wonder how challenging that

is technically oh yeah it could it could absolutely be done um you know the the hard thing at this

point because it's on an eccentric orbit would be rendezvousing with it because you're kind of

had to be in alignment with its orbit to really line up well with it yeah um but yeah I mean someday

I don't see any reason why we couldn't at least send for sure an uncrewed you know if Elon wanted

to just fly a a robot out there to check up on it and photograph it or something like we could

that could be well within the realm of things get an optimist robot up there so that was the story

brilliantly told by you of the rockets for SpaceX what about through the lens of engines

can you give a brief history of the SpaceX rocket engines that were

used that we have in covers he mentioned all started with the merlin engine and a kestrel engine

what um yeah through that lens yeah what's there the engines are relatively small number which is

which is easy for us there's yeah the merlin and merlin's evolved throughout time to be

from like the merlin to the merlin one seed and merlin one d to the merlin one d full thrust and

all these other kind of tweaks of the same architecture kestrel ended with falcon one

they also have the merlin vacuum engine which is the upper stage engine for falcon nine

same relative uh system but just optimized for vacuum so it has a much larger bell nozzle

there's the draco thrusters which you know you kind of can consider engines well they are rocket

engines but they're just small they're not like the orbital engines there's these super draco

engines which are the abort thrusters on on crew dragon capsule and then nowadays they have the

raptor engine and the raptor vacuum variant but they've already had two versions of raptor

we've already seen kind of the raptor development engine we kind of seem like a raptor 1.5 whereas

kind of taking hints of the future raptor but now we're well within the well within what you'd

consider a raptor 2 variant that's really it yeah for the uh the raptor maybe i'll ask you that

separately but i like in general and people who doesn't know whoever the astronaut is but if you

don't somehow know go go go check his your youtube channel out you're an incredible educator

about the the super technical and uh the more sort of even the the philosophical the actual

like the the actual space travel so you go down to the raw details of it and there's just great

videos on the raptor engine um i think you have one on marlin uh and and also the actual tours

with elon where he discusses some of those things one of the tours he says uh he's full of good

lines that guy he says something about uh the number of fiddly bits and he's uh the the number

of fiddly bits was decreased between raptor 2 and raptor 1 yeah and i think that's actually a really

beautiful representation of the engineering efforts there which is constantly trying to simplify

increase the efficiency of the engines but also simplify the design so you can manufacture it

and in general simplification leads to better performance and testing you know and everything

so the number of fiddly bits um sure there's a wikipedia page on that now as an index is

a actually a really good one well and when you think about it i i don't know of any other company

prior that had kind of tried to measure their performance of their engine not and like thrust

to weight ratio or like how efficient it is like in specific impulse but literally in like

dollar to thrust ratio like how much does this engine cost yeah how much thrust can it produce

and like using that as a trade study instead of just like pure metrics of you know because at the

end of the day like okay if it's if it's cheaper and does you know x amount of work even if it's

less efficient it can actually be better long term and so i i guess another way it's not even just

thrust i don't know if that metric is used but basically the cost of getting one kilogram

of thing up into space yeah that's basically what they're trying to minimize especially yeah

at the at the end of the day that is definitely the ultimate metric is how much does one kilogram

cost to orbit eventually you know and but there's it's so funny because spaceflight is just the

ultimate you know it's the ultimate compromise every little thing any variable can just change

everything else so you can tweak so many different things to get to different numbers and conclusions

you know but even things like on your first stage when you're when you're the rocket's pointing

straight up and the engines are pointing straight down you're dealing more with

the thrust-to-weight ratio of the rocket so how much thrust is it producing versus how much

is gravity pulling down on it is actually a more important metric than how raw efficient the engine

is so it's funny then in space it's kind of the opposite thrust-to-weight ratio doesn't really

matter uh what really matters is the actual the specific impulse is called or like the the nozzle

escape velocity of the or the ejection velocity of the how fast is the gas moving it's like the

more important number on orbit but it's it's just so crazy because there's all these like i would

just love to see the trade studies you know when you're like trying to figure out like

is this more important than this or this or this and it's like you change this one little thing

all of a sudden you know like all the everything changes it's just even the profile like the

launch profile the trajectory of it the i mean everything everything i wonder what that trade

out discussions are like because you can't really perfectly plan everything so and you always have

to have some spare leave way you know especially as you're testing new vehicles like starship yeah

margins are important yeah having a margin given all the uncertainty that's there that's really

interesting like how they do those kinds of trade-offs because they're also rapidly designing

and redesigning and re-engineering and uh the ultimately you want to give yourself the freedom

to constantly innovate but then through the process of testing you solidify the thing that

can be relied upon especially if it's a crewed mission yeah at that how to do that in a rapid

cycle i i remember at some point that nasa as they're leading up to flying humans for the

first time for nasa um you know there's some talk that like we're going to do a design freeze

because space x does evolve and iterate so quickly you know they were saying that it was

leading because especially at the time it was a mission called amos six and they lost a rocket

they've only lost two rockets like ever really as far as um you know trying to get something to

space for the falcon nine sorry um and the second one amos six i mean that was back in 2016 so it's

it's been a long time and uh but at the time you know they're looking at flying humans in the near

future and it's like if you guys keep tweaking this thing every time you take it out to the pad

there's going to be a problem you know and so there is some pressure from nasa to kind of slow

down on that iterative process and uh but that is also why they were able to evolve the falcon

nine to be what it is today is because they did just evolve it so quickly literally like one

after another was never really the same and we're definitely seeing that with starship now like it's

evolve so quickly that you just can't even keep up with it you know so there's a fascinating

culture clash there have you just in observing and interacting with nasa folks seen them sort of

grow and change and evolve themselves sort of inspired by this new developments in commercial

spaceflight oh yeah yeah there's a lot of especially like around dm2 there's a lot of talks and the

press conferences and stuff where you'd hear people say you know this was a big this is well

outside of our comfort zone to work with spacex in this manner because we're we take this approach

to things we're x y and z in this in this way the way we normally certify things and we're not used

to spacex like well let's just try it you know like and and do something you know to a point and so

they they said it ended up being fantastic they loved working that way because it was just less

paperwork almost and more just do and um and but at the same time spacex i think even expressed i

don't remember if it was haunz kunigsman or someone in a press conference said well we really

liked having someone just double check us so that we're not doing something super stupid

right before we test something you know um so there was a cool collaboration because it is uh two

very different philosophies of of development and managing you know space programs i wanted to talk

to you a lot about engines uh and maybe about starship and maybe about your own becoming an

actual astronaut but like let's just go there uh before all that and and talk about the actual

culture of spacex and uh your conversations with uh elon you've toured spacex facilities with him

you've interviewed him you've interacted with him uh what have you learned about rockets about

propulsion about engineering about design about life from those interactions um he's pretty transparent

open human being as an engineer as a as a leader as a person i would definitely say the biggest

takeaway i've had from my times with elon at spacex is really like the the idea of questioning

your constraints he says that a lot but he also does it a lot like he though you know there'll

be times where like you'll see him change on a dime because he's like rethinking of something

in a newer different way and for me you know i i think we all put constraints on ourselves we

think about our own limits you know on on things that we can or cannot do and i think it's made

me kind of question like well why am i why did i say no i can't do that or you know uh you know

just off the top of my head a good example uh i so in iowa i live in iowa or half the time or

whatever it uh there's a a bike ride across the state of iowa called rag brigh and every year

you just you know like thousands of people get together and they they ride across to iowa and

it was last summer i met up with some friends and like hey do you want to go on rag brigh this

year i'm like it's like a week away they're like yeah you want to go i'm like yeah and so i did

go without and it was one of those moments where i was proud of myself because it's like i it's easy

to just be like no you know i'm not ready or this is my constraints is like i'm not in shape

but like just question that you know and and so i think when it comes down to questioning your own

constraints it's yes even to that level of like why do you question yourself on what you can and

cannot do so that's for your personal life is really powerful but a little bit more intuitive

i think what's really hard is to question constraints in a place like aeronautics or

or robotics or autonomous vehicles or vehicles because there's people there's experts everywhere

that have done it for decades and everyone admires those experts and respects those experts

and you for you to step into a room knowing not much more than just uh what's in a wikipedia

article yeah and to just use your intuition and first principles thinking to disagree with the

experts that takes uh that takes some uh guts i think well you can't have everyone doing that

either you know like there has to be some humility of knowing that something is a hardened

concept and a hardened you know like especially i i'm not an engineer i don't i don't do this

stuff you know but i can imagine you sitting there having spent six years on a type of valve

that perfectly manages crowd genetic propellants or whatever and someone walks in and says

why don't you just put a heater element in there you know or something that's you know

something like because you know we've done that 40 times or whatever you know like

i'm sure there are things like that that are very frustrating but but so i don't know what

that's like you know the thing is with the experts they're always going to be frustrated

when the newbie comes in with their first principles thinking but sometimes that frustration

is justified and sometimes it's not sometimes just stubbornness for failing to acknowledge

a better way and i've seen it both directions so which is really interesting so you need

you need both but that tension is always going to be there and there has to be a almost like a

dictatorial uh imperative that breaks through the the expertise of the way things have been

been done in the past to push forward like a new way of doing it and Elon's done that

i've seen a lot of great engineers do that in the machine learning world because there's been

so much development i've seen that happen usually when there's like rapid development that starts

to come into play yeah and yeah and i've seen that autonomous vehicle space

brain computer interfaces that elanos evolved with all of it it's kind of fascinating to watch

um what about the actual design and engineering of the engine since you've learned

about so many different kinds of engines over the past few years just like what stands out

to you about the way that engineering is done at SpaceX or that elan does engineering the hardest

thing to kind of remember is like how much stuff was developed in the 50s and 60s you know the

the concepts finally being utilized today were already literally done in the 60s yeah you know so

a lot of the things that SpaceX is doing isn't a novel concept per se you know they're like for

instance the raptor engine utilizes the full flow stage combustion cycle engine and that was already

developed by the soviets in the 60s for an engine called the rd270 and it's makes sense like on paper

100 it makes sense because you're basically extracting the absolute maximum potential of

the chemical energy in both propellants and you know at the at the end of the day like you

have to be dumb enough to say we're going to try using this thing because it's actually really

complicated to to do what they're doing but at the same time like so are so are rockets like rocket

engines are already stupid complicated so adding you know 10 20 percent more you know pain in the

butt during the rnd if it's you know in the long long long 20 30 year existence or whatever you

know like future of that engine is that going to be worth it obviously SpaceX said yeah I think we

can actually develop this this raptor engine so it's just interesting to see the things that have

been looked at or even reusability you know like the space shuttle was reusable it was fully the

upper stage you know the shuttle itself the the orbiter was you know I mean that thing was for

all intents and purposes a reusable rocket now did it live up to its expectations not necessarily

so it put left a lot of bad taste in people's mouth on the the ideas of reusability so for

SpaceX to kind of come back into the room and on the table and say we're going to use a reusable

rocket specifically we're going to do a fully reusable rocket you know a lot of people are

even still today a lot of people going yeah you're not going to be able to do that

even today even today so like long term you're not going to be able to reuse a scale yeah

but yeah definitely I think the number of people that are saying that today is is a small portion

of those that were saying that type of thing five years ago you know when Elon did that

announcement in 2016 for the ITS it was very very aspirational and people were just like yeah right

you know and there's a large number of people that had the factual reasons to think that and do that

you know at the time they'd only landed like two rockets or something you know and when they did

that or maybe three it was a very small number when they announced that actually they had just

lost a couple months prior they just lost AMO six so they like they were still this young

blossoming company and they come in and be like we've figured out reusability and now we're going

to go full scale make the world's biggest most heaviest most powerful rocket ever and we're

going to fully reuse it and it's going to go to Mars was just pretty out there like it really was

and yeah you know it's all about perspective but now again we're coming up on 100 consecutive

landings of an orbital class rocket that's you know 45 meters tall 3.7 meters wide like this

thing is huge weighs 20 metric tons even empty when it's landing that thing's already huge so

seeing the success of that I think people are now more like well okay maybe maybe there is actually

the opportunity to be fully reusable that's definitely probably the biggest constraint that

I think has been questioned that is a reachability yep and then of course like the broader one of

cost of bringing down costs that you're able to kind of bring down costs so much this something

like colonizing Mars or many trips to Mars will be a possibility that's people don't even that

seems so far out that they don't even have time or give effort to questioning it yeah but it's the

implied questioning can you really do that many launches actually do it can you actually do it

yeah it's it's looking I think it's one of those things where you look at the curve you know you

look at like 10 years ago that was ridiculous following this curve if SpaceX goes from you know

two years ago launching I don't remember what was 40 times to 60 times to 100 times this year is there

is there amount and if we just keep extrapolating that out if they maybe not that exponential

maybe it goes more linear whatever what's 20 30 years like the amount of stuff we can put on orbit

and and the potential we have to do things like absolutely now I don't want to put a time for

you like you know yeah I think but you got to think it's we're increasing the number of launches

we're increasing the amount of things in space we're increasing the amount of payload on orbit

that's probably not going to decrease anytime soon and therefore eventually like the idea of going

to Mars is absolutely reasonable let me ask a difficult question that needs to be asked here

can SpaceX continue its successes without Elon this long-term mission to Mars

I think the discussion about Tesla and autopilot or robotics or a neural link with

brain computer interfaces is a question wholly separate from the SpaceX question

because there's a lot of other competitors doing

some different but amazing engineering that Tesla is doing and both autonomous vehicles

semi-autonomy or full autonomy and obviously in vehicle design and electric vehicles

there's a lot of people that are doing incredible brain computer interfaces

but while there is a lot of competitors to SpaceX and we'll talk about many of them

they're doing amazing work it seems like he's really driving progress here over the past 10 years

what do you think about that okay the first thing I think to remind people is just how many

brilliant people do work each of these companies obviously yes you know Elon's had the some of

the best teams assembled ever just incredible people he knows this he he will gladly tell people

and he says it often like the amazing people the amazing teams here so it is important to remember

that that being said like there is something to Elon's just super far forward not taking no for

an answer on things approach that and and almost to his dismay I think he is afraid of the sunk

cost fallacy so much that it almost almost gets to the border of like being you know like throw

out everything before it's even we've known it up at the same time like it moves the needle so

fast so far so as far as the question of would SpaceX continue to like succeeding and be able to

ultimately go to Mars without Elon the Mars thing I think would probably be hard to uphold

without it I think a lot of that drive for Mars is from Elon it is maybe too fantastical for the

average person and the average employee and maybe the average CEO that might step in to

have a company's mission be to go to Mars like it's just or even governments yeah clearly because

like you said the Mars plan was not existing for NASA yeah still really there isn't much you know

so I think if how many people inside to interrupt how many people are talking about it's obvious

that we need to become multi-planetary right there's not there's the Mars Society and like

serious leaders of engineering efforts yeah or nations and so on yeah which it does seem if you

think about it that it's obvious yeah and the grand eventuality it it is obvious of the of human

civilization this whole human experiment we have here we should be expanding out into the cosmos

100 so I think the big mission if we're measuring SpaceX SpaceX's success on getting to Mars or not

I think they'd have a really hard time continuing to fulfill that drive without Elon at the helm

now I think there's a certain balance and beauty of Elon specifically when it was Tesla and SpaceX

where Elon will go in you know have mild tornadoes around the factory and the engineering you know

and like mix everything up and and things get sometimes just totally thrown together you know

and and totally just like get it done just to to get it done and start moving that direction

and then he'll leave and go do that same thing you know at SpaceX or Tesla vice versa

and then there's a little bit of a calm where people come back in and they fill in those gaps

you know and I think that's kind of always been a pretty healthy thing honestly is like

I think if he is too focused on on any one thing it almost is like spin too much you know like it's

like like too many tornadoes yeah too many tornadoes and and I think it could almost be

like you need someone to come back in and like you know like backfill almost because I've

heard definitely stories of like like well probably a good a good example would be last

last well was that last year or two years ago 2022 yeah was that yeah no 2021 they did a

the first full stack of the Starship Super Heavy and they called it the big surge all

of a sudden like thousands of SpaceX employees you know came down to Starbase and they just

started building like you wouldn't freaking believe I mean it's just things going crazy BP

it's actually the middle that first interview I did with him was in the middle of that surge

there was like commotion like you wouldn't believe you couldn't hardly talk because there's just

so much going on people just welding and blah blah blah you know everything they did during that

period was basically scrapped because it was just not done very well but they got a fully stacked

Starship rocket out on their launch pad you know and it set I think at some point you kind of have

to stabilize some things enough and just say like this is what we're doing to catalyze some things

and say now do that it's almost like do it for fake now do it for real almost it's funny because

through that time because I had a lot a lot of conversation with them I think that process was

hugely stressful there was a sense I don't know where that sense is today but there's a sense that

Starship is going to be very hard to pull off yeah but still borderline impossible to pull off and

that was really weighing having on him and the team and everybody yeah so like to have this chaos

of development is fascinating yeah big time and I think they really had to push you know if they

hadn't done that if they hadn't done that big push you know we might only be now seeing a rocket

stacked for the first time you know it might be a lot more finished rocket a lot more high

fidelity a lot more flight worthy rocket finished and and stacked but and they might not have to

walk stuff backwards but at the same time like you do have to in this world you do have to

push really hard to make rapid iteration and rapid change in progress so it's it's interesting I

don't know so lingering on that another question I really should ask you because of you've seen

you've been in awe of the amazing development of space travel technology over the past few years

what do you think about Elon buying Twitter so in this perfect balance optimized reallocation of

tornadoes throughout the various efforts in human civilization do you think do you worry

about his involvement with Twitter I mean personally I just I see that as a lot less

important than and personally for me inspirational than starship and you know the work done at

SpaceX and Tesla to me those were two very impactful and really really just generally like

you know they're uniting like you know something to rally around get excited about rally and just

like a future look forward to you know the idea of we're going to be building the world's most

powerful biggest rocket ever and it's eventually going to be able to get humans on Mars for the

first time and we're going to transition the world into fully sustainable awesome just totally

badass cars that do all these cool things to me those were like that brought a sense of unity

in a sense of like we can do this personally I just don't think that a social media no matter

what it is I don't see that in a social media and I don't I don't see any sort of

politicking is ever anything that's really ever-uniting thing I understand that I totally

agree with you especially with space how inspiring it is I have to push back I do think the impact

of social media the basic level of meaningful connections of this collective intelligence

that we call human civilization through the medium of you know digital communication which

is social media I think that can have a huge impact it could be the very vehicle that increases

the inspiration that SpaceX doesn't and are different the thing I've criticized them a bunch

for is like why bring politics into this so the political divisions that we see on Twitter

feeding them is tricky it's tricky to sort of understand what is the value of that what is

the contribution of that to this whole effort with God going on so that's been a big challenge

but that said like again this tornado the number of tornadoes in social media I think is really

important because social media has such a huge impact on us as a society and to have a transparent

have a bit of turmoil you know it's like Tom Wei says like my time with a bit of drop of poison

with a little drop of poison so like a little bit of that shake things up I think might be

really healthy I just worry about the long-term impact on the whole Mars project through that

and so but you know what this life one of the reasons it's fun is through the chaos

like none of us know how it's going to turn out and hopefully we try to help each other to make

sure it turns out well and this really isn't like anything about my personal like politics or

anything like that but really just generally any of my friends that are like the first thing you

hear about them in their day is something that happened in politics or something that some

world leaders doing or not doing or saying and not saying I just don't find that to be the most

important thing really I know that obviously that can affect a lot of people that has big real world

consequences politics do well like I just and this is just me I'm such a like oh come together you

know cheerio kind of guy that I just really think like you need something bigger than bickering about

what you know what people said and did and what they voted on and all this stuff to really push

humanity forward like I you know I know that politics and their and and by extracting that

social media can affect things like spaceflight and even our like planetary defense like being able

to defend ourselves against asteroids like if politics has their way and everything goes to

crap and we don't even get to you know yeah we're not gonna be able to you know continue spaceflight

and things like that but like I don't know I just think there's better ways to do it and more

uniting ways to do it than than you know what feels like a mature name calling sometimes you

know yeah I think the political bickering that most people talk about that that's on top of most

people's minds is the thing they'll be completely forgotten by history it has actually very little

impact yes politics matters but like one percent of it I think most of it is just political bickering

the push and pull of the red team and the blue team and then the news media that feeds off the

division for the attention and it's just like a fun athletic event almost with the blue team and

the red team so that you kind of have to have a historical perspective on it like most things

will not really have a significant impact and we should focus on development of science

technology engineering which is the thing that grows the pie a hundred percent it's just this

is what the economists know well yeah just the innovation the engineering that's what actually

makes everybody richer yeah this kind of political bickering is just eating the pie and not just

richer but it improves their lives you know we can look at every modern technology that is

bestowed upon us today air conditioning electricity internet access fresh clean water

running water blah blah blah you know a hundred years ago so many of the things that I listed

either didn't exist or were only accessible by the ultra-wealthy you know and it's through the

innovation of technology and engineering and education that we are able to have it be that

even someone below the poverty line in the most of the developed world will have a good number of

those things in their life and that's just continuing to increase and continue to get better

so I think yeah that's to me that's in the grand scheme more important but to each their own

speaking of amazing technological development you have you have a few videos on this but

how does a rocket engine work you've you're you're wearing some of the instruction manuals

but for one one type of it like what what's the fuel what are the kind of

types of different rockets that you can kind of give an overview yeah ultimately a rocket engine

converts um high pressure and heat into kinetic energy like that's the only real job of a rocket

engine is to take uh high pressure gas hot high pressure gas very energized there's a lot of energy

involved and then literally turning that into molecule shooting in one direction into kinetic

energy so um yeah what you do basically you know I mean the simplest version of it is of course like

famously a balloon you take a balloon you fill it up with air you've got a pressure you let go of it

some of the air shoots out in a general direction ish you converted that pressure into kinetic

energy now if you start scaling that up um you know you can continue to do something like that

like um cold gas thruster would be kind of the most simple and easiest rocket engine to make

would be a cold gas thruster and all that is you literally just take air or specifically nitrogen

because it's a little bit more dense than all the others or you know it's the majority of our

atmosphere um you can uh or sorry it's more sparse um you can condense that down sort of

really high pressure bottle and then uh just literally shoot it through what's called a

délavel nozzle which is something that chokes the flow a little bit gets it to be um takes it and

gets it into supersonic speeds once it's at supersonic speed you actually can't choke it down

anymore you'll just constrict the flow of of mass flow you'll constrict the air flow so you

actually go opposite you start making it wider and once it's already at supersonic speeds if you

expand it and make it wider it actually gets faster and faster so at first you know when it's

subsonic gas you start shrinking you can strict the flow you know it's actually speeding up just

like you know a highway if you go from you know or any of these examples like a a water hose you

you know if you pinch it down you want to flow the same amount of water from point A to point B

through a smaller pipe you can you can flow more water you're the same amount of water from point

A to point B with a smaller pipe it just has to go faster so obviously you can constrict it but

at some point you actually get to a physical limitation and that happens to be the speed of

sound once it gets to the local speed of sound um you can then actually do the opposite you actually

expand it back out and you're continuing to convert um the the pressure into velocity at that point

but it's now supersonic and what's interesting is while you're doing that you're actually cooling

it down too each each bit of that pipe that you're making wider and wider and wider you're cooling

down so the more heat energy you have to work with the more work you can actually do so at some

point a hot high pressure rocket engine is the best source of like that's the ultimate amount

of work you can do and the nozzle so as you're saying there's a bunch of different design options

but it's a critical part of this yeah how you do that conversion which is basically like how

much can you convert is really like the ultimate game how much pressure and heat can we convert

into thrust like that's really at the end of the day that's what a rocket engine is so you

have to have a powerful enough rocket engine to actually lift the rocket and well a rocket is mostly

just fuel it's like 90 90 plus percent just the weight of fuel so you just have to lift the fuel

that's going to take it uh you know into orbit and that's the thing specifically for rockets

you're just saying generally rocket engines but for the task of going to orbit you're fighting

gravity earth gravity which is fundamentally different than moon gravity or yeah mars gravity

yeah uh or like you said traveling out to space earth has a pretty intense gravity it's to overcome

we're lucky because if i think of it as 10 either way like 10 harder it'd be like oh we

could still do it you know we'd still with our current technology we'd still be able to get

stuff into orbit man things like reusability and this you know commercialization the success

that we've seen in the last 10 years we would just be on two thinner margins i think 10 easier and

we would have been like i mean it's just like totally different it's so much so much easier

it's like this big you know sliding scale and 10 in either direction we'd be either screwed or

really happy you know as far as getting into space so it's just hard enough that it things like fully

reusable becomes very very very difficult i think it's completely achievable we have all the pieces

to make it achievable does not disobey any laws of physics it does not disobey any there's no

like hard stops it is just very very very hard and so ultimately yeah like on earth for the first

bit of launch again when the rocket's pointing straight up and it and the engines are pointing

straight down pointy end up flaming down you're fighting gravity and so that's kind of your biggest

enemy um outside of the earth's atmosphere too so what kind of uh sources of fuel is there so

there's chemical rockets liquid solid gas hybrid uh there's electric so what what are the kinds of

fuels we're talking about what are oxidized what what can you just explain your shirt i guess

yeah the components in the shirt so uh so really i mean fuels it's there's kind of two terms well

you'll generally hear the word propellant being used it's anything that is used to propel a

spacecraft or used in a rocket engine so you have to have you know you can have a fuel

you have to have a fuel you have to have an oxidizer and you have to have a spark to actually get

those things burning and that's just a general law of like the universe you have to have fuel

an oxidizer and a spark um now some fuels will by themselves spark like hypergolic fuels but

ultimately you're you're always left with some kind of fuel oxidizer and a spark so um the the

general ones use most often in rockets liquid oxygen is kind of the king of well there's better

oxidizers but they're extremely extremely hard to work with like fluorine um but the generally

liquid oxygen so you just chill oxygen down to its liquid state minus 183 degrees celsius um so it can

be dense enough to store in tanks you know it's a thousand times more dense when it's in a liquid

than it is as a gas um rp1 which is basically kerosene um is a very common fuel another common

fuel nowadays is methane liquid methane um liquid hydrogen is another it's the most efficient

potential for the most efficient since it's uh one of the lightest molecules so i think uh

correct me if i'm wrong but if i can not use this kerosene and then uh starship uses methane

liquid methane yep for fuel and they both use liquid oxygen for their oxidizer for the oxidizer

okay yep um but then you know if you get into hypergolics you'll normally have nitrogen tetroxide

which is your oxidizer and some form of hydrazine for your fuel um there's solid rocket propellants

like solid rocket boosters and those are actually premixed your oxidizer is inherently like baked

literally like kind of baked into the sludge of of fuel so like for SpaceX it's all uh chemical

liquid fuels yep yep so how many solid based uh fuels are there is are they still being used

to days or most rockets yeah and the United States really is the only ones that well the only ones

i guess early on because it was really just the soviet union versus the united states the united

states started to use solids pretty early on uh they're simple and easy but these days like you

know you'll still see them kind of as traditionally like boosters like they're used to just uh help

get something off the ground or help give it a little extra boost um so the space shuttle famously

had those two huge white solid rocket boosters attached to the orange fuel tank those are solid

rocket propellants things like the atlas five can have up to five smaller solid rocket boosters

there's very few rockets that use a pure uh at least these days that use a pure solid rocket

motor for its first stage there still are especially in china there's a lot of startup

rocket companies that kind of use just missile technology you know they might use like a they

might just be a variant of an icbm um that just use solid rocket fuel because it is very

very relatively easy to develop you know model rockets use solid rocket motors and stuff like

that so they're they're still around but they're just not as elegant and not as uh yeah not as

as used these days and so uh what are rocket engine cycles getting i i think getting more to

your towards your shirt question you have a really good video called that i mean a lot of your videos

that are technical are just exceptionally well done so i just i think um you deserve all the

props you get i mean thank you for for doing this work really really really well done uh so it's

called rocket engine cycles how do you power a rocket engine and you go through all the different

options is there something you could say about uh open cycle closed cycle full flow all the different

variants that you can use words to explain yeah without all the pretty pictures yeah without the

pretty pictures so ultimately you know like we said we your ultimate goals you want to get

heat and pressure into an engine so obviously at some point you can either make really thick

tanks of your rocket you can like get it so thick that you store the propellants and really really

high pressures but obviously like that doesn't scale very well at some point your rocket so heavy

you can't even leave the ground or you know it's just so much of your mass is just literally the

walls of the rocket so at some point people realize hey we could actually just pump the fuels and the

oxidizer into the engine at a high pressure and increase the pressure through a pump and obviously

a pump's going to require energy you have to get that energy from somewhere um and again at some

point people were like well rockets are there's already a rocket fuel here you know we'll just

use some of the energy from the rocket fuel to spin these pumps so that that would be considered

like open cycle closed cycle full flow stage combustion cycles are ways to tap into the

propellant actually and then there's tap off expanders like I mean all of them kind of do the

same thing but you end up at some point spinning a turbine you know a turbine can take some of the

heat energy and the and the and the pressure of an engine and then they can that can be connected

to a shaft to pumps and those pumps can you know increase the pressure of the propellants

and force it into the combustion chamber now the difference between open cycle closed cycle full

flow all those is what happens after the gas has flown through the turbine so after you've used

the turbine and spun up the energy you know spun up the engine what happens to that gas so in an

open cycle engine you basically have like a separate small rocket engine in a sense it's a gas

generator they call it and that will be used to create someone you know take a little we'll say

10% of your the propellant flowing to the engine instead you reroute it to like a smaller rocket

engine called the gas generator you point that at your turbine and that will spin your turbine up to

you know ridiculous speeds 30,000 plus rpm and then after it spins it's wasted most of its its

energy you know and it's just dumped overboard that would be open cycle you're not worrying about

it after that point but you are left with a lot of unburnt you know unused fuel a good amount of

that fuel is just completely and especially because the turbine uh you you have to keep it

from melting so you can't run it at like optimal ratios not necessarily stoichiometric in a rocket

engine you actually don't want it to be near stoichiometric where you're releasing all the

energy you actually want to release um you actually want to be throwing out the lighter

molecules so it can be shot out faster generally in the engine so um but in order to have a turbine

survive you have to actually cool you have to have the the gas going through it it can't be

stupid stupid hotter else you're just going to melt your turbine so they normally um especially in the

open cycle you just run it really fuel rich so there's a lot of extra fuel being pumped into it

that will keep the temperatures at a reasonable uh you know at a reasonable temperature so you

end up with this like dark sooty smoke pouring out of that gas generator that's just unburnt fuel

it's just wasted fuel it never got a chance to be used oh interesting you know like in the combustion

chamber it's not it's not being used to propel the rocket you know it's just being used to cool down

the the propellant that's being used to spin the turbine that's being used to spin the pumps

to push a lot of propellant into the engine so you know it doesn't take too long before you know

you're a greedy rocket scientist being like look at all this wasted propellant all this potential

energy that's just literally being spewed out the side of the rocket so that's where the closed

cycle comes in so now we have to get that propellant take it from basically what was being wasted

through the turbine and you're going to try pumping it back into the engine now you don't

literally just pump that that gas that's you know that hot that gas into the engine because it's

actually way too low of pressure uh compared to the main combustion chamber and by that point by

the time it's gone through the turbine it's lost most of its pressure and heat to the turbine so

if you tried pumping it into the engine you know just taking that pipe and sticking it right into

the combustion chamber that the much higher pressure hotter combustion chamber would just go

backwards and it right stall out the engine and blow up the engine and whatever what have you

so what they actually do is they normally will send um there might be some variations of this

but the general concept is you actually flow all of your fuel or all of your oxidizer through the

turbine so that would be closed cycle so there's fuel rich closed cycle which would be your flowing

all of the fuel through the turbine or there's oxidizer closed cycle which is where you're flowing

all of the oxidizer that's going into the engine through the turbine now the trick here

is you have to have that turbine after it's done its work so after it's taken some of the

potential energy some of the heat energy from we're not calling it a pre burner by the way

instead of it being a gas generator you now call that device that's that's creating pressure

to spin the turbine you're now calling that a pre burner because it's just going to pre burn

some of your fuel or some of your oxidizer the trick is that has to be by the time it's gone

through the turbine it has to be higher pressure than the combustion chamber because otherwise

it's going to go backwards still so you really have to get that pre burner up to ridiculously

high pressures like at least 20 higher than your main combustion chamber and these combustion

chambers you know we're talking about engines that are at you know 200 100 to 200 even in SpaceX's

raptor engine up to 300 bar in the main combustion chamber so that's what is that 4500 psi basically

insane amounts of pressure inside these combustion chambers so your turbine has to be even above

that or your your gas generator or your pre burner sorry has to be higher pressure than that even

in order to have the flow going the right direction through the engine so now you'll

you'll have those closed cycles you'll have fuel rich you have oxidizer rich the tricks now you

starting to get it's crazy there's just so many compromises every little decision you have of

like oh i did this now i know i'll now crap it's going to do this for instance fuel rich if you

ran kerosene fuel rich you know how i mentioned soot coming out of the gas generator well if you

run soot um through your through your engine like that and and how to go through your injectors like

back into the engine it'll clog the pores of the injectors and it'll end up blowing up the engine

the soot itself is so damaging that you can't really run a fuel rich kerosene engine what

exactly is soot so it's like fuel somehow mixed up with the smoke like what i wonder what what is

it chemically this is some weird it's mostly just carbon it's mostly just that carbon that dark solid

solid chunks of carbon and it can cake up and just literally like you know like yeah it's it's

it's like ash almost you know like at some point you know especially under those high pressures and

high temperatures it can physically build up and you know turn into like stalagmites and

stalactites of of carbon really hard you know forged in a rocket engine carbon i wonder how

you figure all that out too is that's a big experiment some of that is chem chemist like

theoretical but like you're gonna have to build the thing at scale and actually test it and

trial and try on her there's many decades of trial and error and many pieces of engines that

you're trying to piece back together going like what the hell happened here yeah what happened

yeah okay so uh so that's closed cycle so how do we get to full flow so in either those situations

you're still actually just having the opposite so if you're fuel rich you know all the fuel is

going through the turbine but um only a tiny bit of oxygen is actually being put into that

pre burner to to spin the pumps and the rest of the the rest of the oxygen is actually going

through the pump the primary pump and straight into the combustion chamber now full flow the idea

is you're going to actually pre burn both your propellants both your propellants are going to

go through a pre burner and they're both going to end up spinning one of the pumps so you'll have

a gas a fuel rich pre burner and you're going to have an oxygen rich pre burner each one of those

is going to get just you know they're going to heat it up just enough and get it up to just

enough pressure to spin up that turbine as fast as they need to do to get the pumps up to the right

pressure and still have enough pressure through the turbine to overcome the pressure inside the

main combustion chamber and they're both going to arrive both your fuel and your oxygen are going

to arrive in the main combustion chamber as hot gas is already so what was liquid oxygen is now

gaseous oxygen what was liquid methane is now gaseous methane and they're meeting this combustion

chamber at still ridiculously high pressures again with this for SpaceX's wrapped engine

they're meeting at 300 bar insane amounts of pressure and then they uh then they combust

from there on and because they're already a gas gas interaction they're happy to burn they're ready

to they're ready to burn they're they're ready to mingle as opposed to having a gas liquid interaction

which is what's a lot more normal you know you'll have two different states of matter and they just

might not they might take a little more core you know coaxing to what's that word coax yeah coaxing

coaxing that doesn't sound like a it doesn't sound correct right coaxing coaxing yeah yeah

yeah all right i don't know we'll cut that in post no we'll have morgan freeman uh overdub us yeah

oh each one was coaxing uh the fascinating thing is they're coaxed as gases in the combustion

chamber that word but yeah they they just take a little bit more it takes more time in the combustion

chamber to have a liquid gas interaction like mixed together and and release as much of their

energy as you can before it exits the system are some of the tradeoffs here in terms of efficiency

which which which is most efficient and then also complexity of the design and the engineering

and the cost of the design and the engineering like what are the different tradeoffs between

open cycle closed cycle and full flow yeah it's it's a pretty it's kind of like a uh what's the the

bears uh the goldilocks you know like it's like you kind of generally the easiest is open cycle

because you know you're just expelling the the exhaust gas um the gas generator exhaust you're

not having to worry about it you just spin up that thing as much as you need and deal with it

right no big deal um closed cycles offers 10 to 15 percent greater performance generally

because you know you're not wasting that propellant and but it's it's complicated it's a lot more

complicated especially if you're doing oxygen rich now you're having hot gaseous oxygen uh in

your engine which just generally wants to react with everything it's just a recipe like hot oxygen

is just a recipe for things to catch on fire that shouldn't be on fire so metals you know under

those conditions last times will just spontaneously start burning you know you'll actually turn your

metal and it will now become fuel you'll be engine rich before you know it because your hot oxygen

nice is uh is is eating and using that engine is fuel basically so um oxygen rich is generally

very hard but that is what the soviet union ended up doing with almost their entire line of engines

was closed cycle oxygen rich but you know so those two are kind of generally hard but offer great

performance benefits over open cycle but at the end of the day you know full flow is by far the

it's the ultimate of all of them it's the most difficult but it's also has the most potential

to be the most efficient starship the raptor to the why is that engine using full flow because

it's the best i mean it's just physics wise if you're trying to extract as much energy out of

your propellants there there just isn't another cycle type that that is better than it but of

course it's very very hard to develop you know so far to date the rd2 70 in the 60s was built

um there is a powerhead demonstrator built in the united states in the in the 90s and early

2000s i think maybe just the early 2000s um that was just the just the power just the the pumps

and the turbines and the pre-burners no chamber no nothing that was a big deal only the united

states took you know millions of dollars to just develop that and then there's spacex's raptor

engine so you talked about uh the combustion chamber and how damn hot things get high pressure

a lot of heat uh how do you keep the thing cool you have a great video on this

how do you get it from uh from what do you call it metal rich engine rich engine rich

from like the the metal from melting well one of the ways is to let it be engine rich there's

actually you can use a blade of cooling you can literally let um make the wall thicker than you

normally make it make it out of a material that will blade away that will kind of chip away and

take some of the heat away with it it's very again primitive and it's actually what spacex first

used on their first merlin engines they used a blade of cooling um so it's basically a carbon

nozzle and you just let it get either the carbon the inner layer of the of the engine was not those

carbon and you just let it get chewed away and eaten away and that's just something you factor in

it's not uh very elegant and it's definitely not reusable in that sense so there's probably

really good models about like how it melts away the rate at which it melts away to know what thickness

yeah but boy is it dangerous right i just as part of the design seems so silly so obviously you

probably you know it's again it's not the most elegant the problem to your your geometry physically

is changing too because as you're eroding the walls now things like your expansion ratio or the

ratio between your throat and the nozzle exit is changing yeah because the thickness like the

throat diameter is actually like everything is changing so it's it's not great um it might might

not be melting away uniformly there could be some like weird pockets for aerodynamics that

it's just a bunch of chaos just in which i can't imagine having to like figure all that stuff out

honestly yeah um so the uh the more elegant thing to do there's there's a couple other things you

can do but the kind of the most common one especially when we're dealing with liquid field

rockets is something called regeneratively cooling and the the idea is you basically just

flow fuel or fuel or oxidizer through the walls of the of the nozzle in the chamber

before they go through like into the injector into the actual combustion chamber by doing that

you're you're taking heat out of the you know you're taking heat out of the metal of the walls

and you're putting it into the propellant so you're typically heating the propellant up which is

remember when i said there's gas interaction versus a liquid like liquid gas lots of times

even if you pump them both that you know as um they you know both being pumped as liquids

by the time it goes through the walls of the chamber lots of times one of them is phase

changed into a gas so now you do have that gas liquid interaction um that's because they're

using that the fuel or the oxidizer to to cool the walls of the of the engine so when you look at a

rocket engine although it looks like you know a nice beautifully uniform cylinder you know smooth

thing um there's either there's oftentimes like uh the channels actually like milled into the walls

that they run fuel through and even though they're tight you know they can be like two three millimeters

thick they'll actually still have a channel that goes down and u turns and comes around and comes

back all the way down to the tip of the nozzle and everything so it's it's just insane that you know

that isn't that's pre-designed and that that's that's like uh so they design those channels yeah

there's probably some optimization there like how the flow happens well especially because you

you're thinking about a conical thing or like a semi-conical thing where the the area is getting

smaller and smaller and smaller you're flowing the same amount of propellant through it as you are

down you know what I mean like the propellant has to so they have all these unique things like you

know sometimes uh different manifolds where they'll inject more less fuel in certain areas and there

must be like propellant simulation software because they can't surely can't like test this

on actual physical well back in the day they had to just build it well you mean back in the day

walked uphill in both ways was like I mean like anything back in the day before computers

were you like like you just had to do it and like your simulation or modeling was like a sheet of

paper where you're like calculating stuff well but you can yeah heat flux you know like you can

literally see how much energy and how much heat is inside the combustion chamber how much you know

and that is a measurable thing even without a computer now I'm not near smart enough to do

any of this like I've never tried measuring the heat flux of anything I barely even know what

that means I'm just smart enough to agitate it but that is something that people would

calculate and they find out okay copper you know does a better job of transferring the heat

between the walls of it into the propellant blah blah blah compared to XYZ so you know materials

people I like I've met just all walks of life especially just through MIT through everywhere

where some people are just like 100x smarter than anyone you've ever met at a particular thing

like you mentioned copper they'll know the heat dissipation through different materials they'll

understand that like more than like holy shit it's possible for human being to deeply understand

the thing dude aerospace is full of that you'll have people that are so niche in some thing that

no the average person has never even remotely thought of yet this person has done it 40,000

different ways in a you know in an environment being like well we found out that if we turn it

four degrees that way and add 4 percent niobium you know like just things you're like what is your

life and how do you know this you know and the funny thing about them they usually don't think

it's a big deal yeah they're usually like they're they're so nonchalant about it that if you don't

actually you have to know enough you actually have to know quite a lot to appreciate how much

more they know yeah because otherwise you won't even notice it because our popular culture doesn't

celebrate the intricacies of scientific or engineering mastery which is interesting there's

all these people that lurk in the shadows they're just geniuses yes like you see you'll have like

the lebrons who are like good at basketball so we understand that they're good at basketball

they do this thing with the ball and the hoop and they do like it really well better than a lot of

other people under pressure like we celebrate this big public spectacle yeah look out great there

yeah like the people like yeah at these aerospace companies and nasa spacex the kind of stuff they're

doing just the i mean there's geniuses there and it's actually really inspiring i mean i've

i've interacted with a lot of brilliant people in the software world and maybe because i don't

deeply understand a lot of hardware stuff materials engineering mechanical engineering

those people seem like so much smarter i mean it's always like the grass is green or whatever the

expression is but there's a depth of understanding that engineers have that do like mechanical

engineering that's just awe inspiring to me well not to get too like uh i don't know what the word

would be introverted or something or whatever but that's actually kind of the whole point of

everyday astronaut like that's almost the whole point of what i do each year from the beginning

i did a thing called the astro awards trying to be like an award show hoping to you know lift up

and celebrate and and shine a spotlight on the people that are actually doing the hard work and

try to treat them like the rock stars that they are that we don't know about and i think that's

one of the things that for sure i think you know i think elan definitely helped make spaceflight

cool helped make that like a celebration thing where people are physically out cheering for

rockets and science and space exploration um but i think that's just the beginning you know i think

like this should be a thing where the general public uh looks to these people as as the coolest

ones as the the coolest places to work as the most important things you know sports are great

and everything i'm a big formula one fan and things like that but you know at the same time like

we should be celebrating the people doing this crazy work you know clocking in countless hours

just trying to figure out this one little thing that's going to help us further our understanding

i mean what's cooler than a giant thing with a really hot fire that that goes boom and goes up

into the air i mean like there's no it's it's like to me like bridges are inspiring it's like

incredible architecture design and like the humans are able to uh uh work against nature build these

gigantic metal things but like rockets yeah with like a tiny little humans on top of them

flying out into space it's like it's the coolest possible thing everything comes together all the

different disciplines come together for the high stakes drama of you know riding that super powerful

thing up away from the thing we call home earth it's like it's so amazing exactly so freaking

amazing well i think that's kind of part of my like story arc because i i just used to be a huge

car and motorcycle guy like i just loved you know things that go fast and you know are loud and go

fast and make lots of power and at the end of the day like at some point you realize

nothing goes faster and it's louder and makes more power the rocket you know i think that's

i think that's kind of where where i eventually just ended up you know wound up there just because

there is nothing cooler than that yeah that's the ultimate level reach as a car guy is to become a

rocket guy yeah 100 and at some point some car guys literally become rocket guys and strap rockets

to cars and try and break land speed records you know like it's yeah it's it's the same universe here

and yeah uh so ilan with your conversation with him on the raptor 2 was talking about you were

talking about like there's an excessive amount of cooling to be on the safe side as you're

developing the engine uh what kind of cooling was that so that would be film cooling so remember how

a little bit ago we were talking about like keeping the turbine from melting you can just run it

off of like off nominal basically off you know typically fuel rich just run more fuel through

that so it's cool enough you can actually do that locally kind of in your engine so you can keep it so

you know imagine a combustion chamber and the top of it's just a flat like imagine a shower head

and then you have like you know the combustion chamber attached to it the outer perimeter there

the the part where the flame front would be touching the walls you can actually have just

more fuel injectors so you're injecting locally a more fuel rich zone along the entire nozzle

and that would be called film cooling so it's it's less efficient though again you're kind of wasting

fuel there's fuel that's running you know and your your your mixture ratio is off but only for a

little portion of your the big picture you know so that's one of those compromises like you can do

additional film cooling to make sure you're not melting your engine uh you know but at the cost

of performance usually um but you can also be smart and use film cooling you know there's

fun little clever tricks for instance you'll notice on the f1 engine that was on the Saturn 5

you know the biggest rocket that had been built to date prior now to starship the f1 has this huge

huge huge engines there's five of them on the Saturn 5 and you'll notice that like the the gas

generator has a pipe that comes down and then it actually splits off in a manifold and wraps around

part of the nozzle and that manifold takes the hot gas uh from the turbine which which is actually

I mean it's not hot it's actually cold gas compared to the combustion chamber but it's you know in

human terms it's still you wouldn't want to put your hand in it you know not live um and it actually

pipes that gas into the nozzle so that it creates a film cooling of an actual boundary layer of

cooler gas against the hotter combustion chamber gas so basically repurposing that gas that was

normally wasted and they pump it back into the engine and then uh into the nozzle like kind of

further down so the the trick there is it has to be far enough down that the pressure at the in the

nozzle because remember as the nozzle gets bigger and bigger and bigger the pressure is getting lower

and lower and the temperature is getting lower and lower so you have to find this trade-off point

where the pressure is is lower than that gas from the turbine and then you pump it in and it's cooler

than the than the gas still is in the nozzle and it can help not melt your nozzle so you'll notice

that the f1 is actually a good example of regen cooling so the chamber walls you can physically

see the pipes actually um on the f1 because it's so big and they just literally used pipes and

bent them and you can see the the the coolant channels all the way up and down the the engine

until you get to that manifold then from there on it just has what's called a nozzle extension

and it keeps going and going and going and that section of nozzle is cooled by the film cooling

of the gas generator they mean the aerodynamics of cooler gas and the hot gas uh because you have to

have this kind of layer right to protect a layer of cool like understanding that obviously probably

has to do in modern times there's probably really good simulation of aerodynamics but and to do that

in terms of pressure too like to make sure it's in the right place yeah that doesn't like go back

up go backwards exactly if they have that manifold even six inches too high on that nozzle yeah that

it's just gonna go upwards you know pressure always wants to flow from high to low the number

of options you have here that result in it going boom is very large near infinity yeah especially

because i mean you can't do like a small model of it maybe you can no you can't you really scale

very well no you have to you have to do the full testing and that's why you have all the kind of

that's that's why you have a starship all the tests that you know you think why would you

need to do so many static fires and so many tests the why is it failing so many times can't you get

it right but like it's very tough to get it right well and when you're pushing the boundaries you

want to know where and how it's going to fail that's right so you can engineer around them so

that's that's a luxury that SpaceX does have with the scale of Raptor you know they're building Raptor

cheaper than probably almost any other engine you know maybe besides some of their own at least at

that scale um then before they're testing you know i think since last march or last april they've

tested a thousand Raptor you know a thousand engine fires i guess not just Raptors but you know that's

just an insane amount of data and an insane amount of edge cases to learn oh my god we found out that

we were actually slightly overspending our turbine at this degree and this frequency is harmonic at

this blah blah blah and all of a sudden realized it's rattling and you know it did this and then

you can engineer around that you know it's like it ultimately you know i think Elon said something

like high production rate solves many ills or something along those lines and it's just true

if you have an insane amount of engines and an insane amount of data and insane amount of failures

to learn from you just know your system inside now you know those margins you know where the

failure points are you know how to engineer around them and that's how i approach dating no i'm just

kidding because we're talking about engines uh so most rockets i think all rockets have multiple

stages uh today maybe they'll take us in a discussion of what ideas that could be for

single stage uh to orbit rockets but can you describe this whole thing they've been mentioning

here and there of multiple stages of a rocket yeah no that's a good question so ultimately you know

like i said you're kind of pushing about 90 percent the rockets like basically just fuel

with some skin on it you know what i mean um and so uh that skin weighs a lot of oh you know skin

and the engines do weigh a lot you know like i said the the Falcon 99 so it was about 20 tons

just the booster is about 20 metric tons um so it's not an insignificant amount of weight so the idea

is with staging is you ditch anything you don't need more or less so um in the you know Falcon

9 is a perfect rocket to think about this because you have a upper stage and you have a booster you

know our first stage and the first stage burns through all this fuel once it's out of fuel you

let go of the second stage and ta-da you actually just basically started and lit a brand new fresh

rocket you know this brand new fresh rocket now doesn't have all that that 20 tons attached to it

so it's a lot lighter it doesn't need you know as nearly as many engines to push around it needs

just one instead of nine um its engine can be optimized for the vacuum of space as opposed

to having to operate it at sea level with all of our relatively actually pretty thick atmosphere

you know relatively so yours so staging is basically the idea that you get rid of things

you don't need um on earth again kind of that whole like 10 percent harder 10 percent easier

if it was 10 percent easier single stage orbit would be no big deal and it probably would have been

like the the the way to get to orbit by choice just because like it's not that hard but with our

earth as it is uh with physics as it is it's just it's doable and we've had and you know we almost

kind of actually the first orbit to take humans or the first rocket to take humans into orbit uh

for from the united states um which was the atlas rocket um was kind of a stage and a half

it actually only had like one big fuel tank and what that is they actually dropped off two of its

three engines so it just ditched some of the engines but if it hadn't done that you know so kind of

people were like well that was single stage it's like it still had a staging event still had a

ditch mass in order to even make it into orbit had it not done that it would have not been able to

get into orbit so you you pretty quickly look at your trade and say okay well if i want to stick

to single stage orbit my payload mass becomes tiny you know like you might be able to put like

you know a falconine booster on its own like if you just flew one of the side core boosters of a

falcon heavy with a nose cone on it and everything just said i'm just gonna fly this on its own

you might be able to put like a you know 10 kilograms into space or something you know

a very small amount well throw a second stage on that thing and now you can put uh you know

17 000 kilograms into space so it's just an order you know orders of magnitude more payload capacity

because you did staging because you ditched the residual weight so um the other thing that's uh

hard about that too uh is that the engines again that operate at sea level are often not great

in space and vice versa like you physically can't most optimize for space engines you can't even

operate at sea level they'll they'll destroy themselves due to something called flow separation

so um not only are you getting the benefit of ditching all the weight but you're also able

to use a much more efficient and less typically you know a much less powerful engine in space

so you mentioned on uh the multi-stage rockets uh that maybe the dream would be uh if we weren't

living on earth but maybe we can on earth uh to have a single stage uh to orbit rocket where it's

all one package reusable it's even harder it gets even harder so first of all what is uh

just the lingon what is the single stage to orbit rocket and why is it so hard to achieve

on earth you already kind of explained it a little bit but just if we were to say like yeah

that's your assignment yeah Tim you're supposed to get together with Elon and other brilliant

people and like you have to do this yeah why is it so hard why is it so hard um it your the payload

fraction of a rocket is like three to five or six or seven percent would be like you know that's

the amount of payload compared to the total mass of the rocket like you're lucky to get into

beyond five percent so if you're now having to deal with the weight of the rocket by the time

you're in orbit like your your payload fraction just you're you're talking about like margins

that's such it's so small amount of leftover if you have to take all of it with you so the sooner

you can ditch weight the better the sooner you can ditch weight the better the sooner you can

you know and that's what you're doing a rocket the whole time is actually ditching weight all of

that fuel all that big giant flame you see is literally mass being thrown out the back of the

rocket but what typically isn't expended you know at least during nominal operations you're not

seeing the engines being you know expelled out the thing until you get to staging of course and

that's where you know you're ditching all that dead weight so single stage to orbit your margins

just become so small that it it's border it's not impossible but it's just at the end of the day

like almost no matter who you are you end up saying it's just simply not worth it like it'd be

if you have two rockets that are using the same amount of propellant you know they're the same

physical sizes and one of them is cutting you know on a third and has another little engine

it'll have a hundred or a thousand times more payload capacity than the one sitting right

next to it and now so there's tricks you can do to like try to offset that things like aerospike

engines which operate at as efficiently at sea level at you know kind of optimized efficiency

at sea level and just by their by the way they're designed the physics of them they're also efficient

in a vacuum too you can do the things like that and at the end of the day though you just end up

with a worse rocket than if you had just done stage like no matter what and and people say like

well what if you develop the new technologies like okay apply that technology to a multi-stage

rocket and it's gonna do better you know like no matter where you end up it's just always better

to ditch that weight you know is there a cost to having multi-stage because you can still reuse the

different stages that's the dream is you know becomes easier to reuse multiple stages because

now you know like the booster doesn't have to survive orbital re-entry temperatures and

extreme environments and you only have to you know make survivable the upper stage you only

have to put a big heat shield I mean Starship's the perfect perfect thing of this the upper stage

has a big giant heat shield the booster doesn't need it because it's not going the booster's

not going to orbit it's only going a fifth or a quarter of orbital velocity so it's heat that it

experiences is survivable just by the stainless steel you don't need an additional heat shield

so all of a sudden if you're trying to reuse pretend that you just welded the two stages

of Starship together remove those engines on Starship that whole vehicle if you're trying to

reuse it the whole vehicle now has to have a heat shield on one side of it yeah the whole thing has

to have these big heavy wings by the time you come down to it there's probably just zero payload

capacity you basically put your fuel tank in space you know good job so the the dream of a single

stage to orbit a rocket is is that just even the wrong dream on earth that's what most convention

tells you you know by the time if your your if your goal is cheap then you're going to spend

you're gonna have a physically larger rocket that has more engines that has more propellant

blah blah blah to put the same amount of thing here same amount of mass into orbit compared

to something else you know we're talking like rocket labs electron a really small rocket it's

like I think 1.3 meters wide and something like you know 18 meters tall or something it's it's

it's a small rocket if you were to you know the and it can put something like 300 or so kilograms

into orbit you can either launch something that size or again like a false like big old falcon

nine booster the huge huge thing and that would be lucky to put 300 kilograms into orbit you

know so it's like which one's going to be cheaper to build you know ship around all the stuff and

then you also look at you have fixed costs like the idea of flying a this this again everything

in rocket science is a compromise because now you have things like people on console time all the

people that are you know on comms and working on the rocket going down to the pad you know filing

paperwork doing range control making sure there's not planes and boats in the way flight termination

people you have all these fixed costs for any launch I don't care how big the rocket is there's

a relatively fixed cost so now you say like okay I'm going to be paying well let's just make a

winner I'm going to pay five million dollars to fly a rocket between all the people going on site

all the propellant all the licenses blah blah blah if you're fixed cost is five million dollars you

can put 300 kilograms in space versus you have a five million dollar cost of operation and you can

put 5000 kilograms into space like it it's it's the business case is going to send you in one

direction pretty quickly so you mentioned aero spike engines I think the internet inform me of

your love affair with aero spike engine find somebody that looks at you the way Tim now looks

at aero spike engine can you explain what these are how do they work what's beautiful to them

what how practical are they why don't you use them oh my god does it just boil down to the design

of the nozzle so maybe can you explain how is it possible to achieve this thing for an engine to

be as efficient at in a vacuum and sea level and in all different conditions you know what I love

about this is that every question you've asked me is like a one-hour video I was like now boil it

down to 45 seconds go so the aero spike engine basically is an inside out engine more or less

so with a traditional engine you know we've talked about the combustion chamber and the

throat and then it expands out into the nozzle those walls are containing the pressure right

air spike is the opposite it's basically the pressure of the engine is on the outside of it

and it's pushing inward against a spike so it's it's almost like it's like like the difference of

if you were let me think about this if you were standing in like a a tent or a teepee right and

you put your arms at the top and you pushed your arms out like into an iron cross or something you

know you can physically lift the tent just by pushing outwards on the tent walls right well

that would be like a traditional nozzle now aero spike would be almost like squeezing an ice cube

you know if you squeeze an ice cube you can push in on it and kind of that wedge force

will shoot that ice cube so that's kind of what has happened we have the high pressure gases on

the outside of the spike squeezing in on that spike and that's and then it's pushing up against the

you know because it's equal on both sides against like kind of the ramp is pushing up against the

rocket so that's where that force comes in is against the nozzle against the chambers the hard

part with an aero spike so the cool okay I guess the coolest thing about an aero spike is that it

can operate in space you can have what's known as a really big expansion ratio so that's your ratio

between the throat the area of the throat versus the area of the nozzle exit and remember how the

bigger the nozzle is the it's continually just converting more and more is converting that high

energy hot high pressure gas into cooler and cooler lower pressure and faster gas so each

little millimeter along that nozzle is just getting it lower pressure and cooler but faster

now if you take a big nozzle on earth and you at sea level and you fire it you can actually get

even though we're going from say 300 bar the raptor engine you know our atmosphere at sea

levels about one bar it's pretty much exactly one bar depending on conditions but you can

actually get a nozzle to get way below one bar of pressure so every little you know you can go from

300 bar in just two meters down to one bar or below one bar there's actually a limit you can

actually only expand it below you know we'll say something like 70 percent so you can get down to

like 0.7 bar at nozzle exit before the pressure of the atmosphere is actually squeezing in on that

exhaust and tearing it away from the walls of the engine the walls of the nozzle exit

and what happens is it's it's kind of unpredictable you get these pockets these oscillations

and they'll be so extreme that they'll end up just destroying the nozzle so you can't lower

you can't have a bigger expansion ratio then again relatively speaking something like 0.7

like you can't go below you can't get that pressure exit too much below ambient air pressure before

flow separation can destroy the engine so how come this engine can do so well in in different

pressure conditions so because it's inside out the ambient pressure is pushing the exhaust gas

into the wall as opposed to a conventional engine that exhaust or the ambient air is actually squeezing

the exhaust gas away from the walls of the engine and that squeezing away from is what can be

destructive so that since the since it's kind of inside out the ambient air is pushing the

exhaust gas into the engine walls so you can't have flow separation you won't have flow separation

now what happens is so you can have this huge amazingly like efficient vacuum engine that's

that has a we'll say a 200 to 1 expansion ratio which is really big like a lot of sea level engines

are like 35 40 50 to 1 expansion ratios and then in space you know it's common to use like 150 180

200 to 1 expansion ratios so an aerospace can have something like 200 to 1 it's just at the at sea

level it's kind of just getting pushed and it's kind of getting cut off early almost but it doesn't

matter it's not like destructive it's just not running at its maximum efficiency as it climbs

an altitude as the ambient air gets thinner and thinner and thinner it just inherently is pushing

less and less and less against the walls of that aero spike engine so it actually continually gets

more efficient at you know as it climbs an altitude as as does the normal engine but the

difference is that you can use that huge expansion ratio at sea level and you can't use

a huge expansion ratio at sea level with a tradition traditional nozzle has that anyone

actually flown an aero spike engine no aero spike engine to date has ever been flown on an orbital

rocket why not and would you like to see a future where they're used purely purely because i think

they're cool yeah you know in the same way that's at the core of your love affair with aero spike

engines is just and i said this in my video actually they're outside before i came in here i saw

an rx-7 on in the streets that i just love and that uses a rotary engine on paper the rotary

engine is like more efficient does all you know smaller more efficient all these things but in

practice it's like the thing is actually just like unreliable hot and it you know it blah blah

blah burns oil it's kind of the same thing with the aero spike engine like yes on paper it's more

efficient but now you have a lot more surface area of your your your throat area no matter what is

going to have uh the the throat of the other rocket engine is always where it's the hottest you know

it's the hardest thing to cool and with an aero spike if you know if it's inside out now your

throat is no matter what like way bigger you know it's almost like the size of the nozzle exit normally

but now it's your hardest thing to cool and you have a ton of it and you also have two edges of it

no matter what so even if you have like a you know a circle inside a circle you have like a just insane

amount more surface area to cool with a limited amount of fuel don't forget using your fuel

as your as your coolant so if you all of a sudden now take your throat area and you have

x amount of space that you need to cool you only have you have a limited supply

it's it's like oh it's sorry this is stuff that are there ideas of for cooling

of for cooling aero spike engines it's the same physics supply for a aero spike as they would so

you just run into you just run into a limitation like at some point i'm not flowing enough propellant

right it scales it scares scales kind of poorly you know what i mean like you can increase the

thrust of an aero spike by making it bigger and increase the mass flow and the fuel going through

the throats um or the throat but at the same time like it just it's at the end of the day

it's physically possible it's a lot more complex you have a lot of issues with cooling

and it's just you end up kind of right back where you started so it's like is it worth it to just

keep going down this rabbit hole you're trying to engineer this thing to work when like you could

have probably spent a tenth the amount of time just slightly increasing the performance of your

normal engine in the first place you know again i'm going to anthropomorphize uh that that lesson

and apply it to my dating life and once again just kidding okay um actually just on a small tangent

since you are also a car guy uh what's the greatest combustion engine car ever made to you

if you had to pick something what's the like the coolest the sexiest the most powerful the

classiest the most elegant well designed i don't know what a lot of those things are

different for me but i'd say i still it's funny because now maybe it's just because it's fresh

on mind but i love that mid 90s rx7 which you know especially in japan they had the the 20b

a tri rotor that is like the coolest engine ever to me the fd rx7 it's just too darn cool honestly

it'd be uh there you go well what about the mid 90s that makes it special just that's the only

time everything was it's it's more that i love the engine and i and i like the car it's attached to

him and i'm not actually a big fan of like 90s styling you know personally but just that the

20b it's just such a cool cool engine and it's twin turbo sequential turbos so they used um

they a bigger turbo it takes longer to spool up you know it takes more it's using that same like

a turbine and a compressor and it just if it's a large turbine it takes more exhaust gas to get it

spooled up so if you have an engine that revs to 9000 rpm and you want to get a lot of pressure

out of that turbo you have a big turbo it's going to take forever like you're going to have you know

your floor and then like all right it's going to take a long time for that turbo to get spooled up

so they actually did a small turbo on it and a big turbo so the small turbo would spool up first get

some boost going through the engine get that engine operating get it up to speed get it you

know get some power to the wheels and then once that kind of reaches its limit you'd flow it into

the divert the exhaust gas into the bigger turbo it's this is sequential turbo and then that now

can supplement and actually increase the you know overall performance of the vehicle by a lot and I

just I think that's just so cool it's it's just like the ultimate like brute force out of the box

thinking and it actually made it into production you know what I mean can you uh what's what's the

sound like a can you tell an engine by its sound it sounds like a really really really angry lawnmower

it sounds horrible it's actually a terrible sounding car in my opinion like it sounds

just raspy and like the opposite of like a big muscle car yeah like a big muscle car just deep

gutta roll like deep oh it just hits you this is like it's just gonna annoy the hell out of you and

all your neighbors like it's but you love the engineering I love the engineering of it as it

so to you the car is the engine it's not all the surface stuff all the design stuff uh all the you

know yeah the the the elegance the curves whatever it is well those come and go you know to me styles

change forever yeah the i'm gonna apply that to my uh daily life once again the metaphors just keep

on coming well if you think about it like my taste has changed throughout the years when I first saw

uh a model 3 tesla I thought it was the most hideous car I've ever in the without the grill

I was like this is so stupid it took me all but two months to think that it was one of the coolest

looking cars same with cybertruck I mourned cybertruck when I first saw that thing I was at that

that thing with and I went with uh we used to do a podcast called our ludicrous future

so we talked a lot about like you know cars and EVs and stuff we went to that unveiling and literally

like we had like almost a uh non alcohol induced hangover the next morning of like mourning the

hideousness of cybertruck come six months later a year later and I'm like dammit that thing's

actually kind of cool yeah that also teaches you something about again it's it's the thing you said

uh earlier sort of uh going against the the current or the experts of the beliefs or whatever

is and making a decision from first principles some of that also applies to design and styling

and fashion and culture and all that big time uh some of that you know so fashion especially it's

so interesting so subjective being rebellious against the current the the current fads actually

is the way to pave the new fads when it didn't take long for others to follow you look at like

currently like what hunday's doing with their I forget which one like the ionic or something

like that it's it's square it's like it's boxy you know it's a throwback it's 80s it's got these

beautiful retro taillights it's got these square headlights it's it's it's it's very inspired

by cybertruck in my opinion it might not be it might be coincidental that we're all kind of

getting this retro future vibe but uh I personally like the boxy so I never like yeah I still haven't

understood uh porches porches I still can't quite understand the small size the elegant the curves

I don't quite I don't quite get it like I said I don't love the look of the rx7 I don't love it but

I love it because of the engineering I guess that it represents you know what I mean yeah it's it's uh

it's not the surface stuff it's the deep down stuff it's that 50 50 weight distribution that matters

all right let's uh let's talk about starship a little bit we've been sneaking up uh to it

and from a bunch of different directions can you just say um what is starship and what is the most

impressive thing uh to you about it and you've talked about the sort of the engines involved

maybe you haven't really kind of like dancing around it but because this is such a crucial

thing in terms of the next few years in terms of your own life personally and also just human

civilization reaching out to the stars it seems like starship is a really important vehicle to

make it that happen so what is this thing that we're talking about yeah so starship is uh currently

in development the world's largest most powerful rocket ever built fully reusable rocket uh two

stage rocket so the booster is landed and you know all this is currently aspirational until

it's working uh so I'll I'll I'll say it's I'll say what it's aspirationally going to be and obviously

I have faith that that will happen but just factually so the booster will be reused landed

and refueled and reused the upper stage will be landed refueled and reused and ideally rapidly

in the in the sense not talking about months or weeks of refurbishment but literally talking

about like mild inspections and ideally like under 24 hour reuse you know where you literally

land it and fly it like an airplane um so it utilizes liquid methane and liquid oxygen um as

it's as its propellants it utilizes the current iterations of it are 33 raptor engines on the

booster engine on the booster and six uh raptors on the second stage so there'll be three that

are vacuum optimized and three that are sea level optimized on the upper stage that are primarily

they'll be used I think at stage separation anyway um in space but um though their main

reason that they use them is so they can use them for landing too the three sea level engines uh

to be able to propulsively land the upper stage as well so the three raptor engines are the ones

that generate the thrust that makes it the most powerful rocket ever built by almost double compared

to the Saturn five really the n1 had 45 mega newtons of thrust the Saturn five had I think

35 or 40 mega newtons of thrust and this has 75 mega newtons so we're talking almost double

it's it's a lot of power um that could be the sexiest thing I've ever heard okay the so uh so

what are the different testing that's happening so like uh uh what's the static fire with some of

these raptors look like and where do we stand you were you were just talking about offline

like the thing that happened uh yesterday yeah that was impressive you know everything in this

is kind of iterations and so um you know the the milestones that we're seeing we actually have on

everydayastronaut.com we have a milestone checklist of like all the things we're hoping to see

that we kind of need to see before the first orbital flight of this rocket so um a big milestone

they got checked off yesterday was a wet dress rehearsal so it's literally like fueling the rocket

up getting ready to do everything but lighting the engines basically so we're talking about

loading it with propellant all the way uh this is the first time yep right there was the milestones

right there at the top click that big picture yep just anywhere that big picture yeah so the

there's the wet dress rehearsal so what what's the wet dress rehearsal yep so that's where they

for the first time they filled it completely to the brim with both liquid oxygen and liquid

methane now they had done component level testing where they fill it with liquid nitrogen which is

you know it's an inert gas so it's not like say it leaks out it's not going to explode

you could just have a big giant pool of liquid nitrogen like flooding the area but it's not

going to be an explosion so they've done that for cryo testing to make sure all the components and

stuff can handle you know being at cryogenic temperatures um it's kind of a good analog

before you start putting your your fuel in your oxidizer in there but now as of uh yesterday

they fully fueled the rocket with propellant both stages the first stage and the second stage

wall fully stacked on the on the pad like basically I mean it's the first sense we really got of like

this is what it's going to look like right before it takes off you know kind of breathing

coming into life for the first time what does the pad look like so there's a few interesting

aspects to this what's up with the chopsticks and all of that yeah so the the launch pad is is is

unique I've never seen anything like it um in the prior history of spaceflight but it's a really

simple launch stand they basically have like this almost looks like a stool like a you know like a

milking a cow stool thing with a a hope a big giant now I know you're from Iowa but yeah

yes we all know what that's doing oh yeah we all we're all been sitting on that stool milking cat

yeah uh with the with a giant hole in the middle and that hole in the middle of that

stool is where the rocket sits and it sits on these you know launch clamps um and then next to it is

the so that's the orbital launch mount and then next to it there are the OLM some people will say

next to it is the orbital launch tower the OLT and that is not only um integral to fueling up the

upper stage you know the upper stage has to have propellant lines run to it so that they can fill it

with propellant and you know all that but it also uh they ended up making it so instead of having a

big crane on site to stack the two on top of each other they literally just use that tower

as a crane so the crane has these giant arms lovingly called the chopsticks or the whole system

can be called mechazilla and that will grab on to first it'll grab on to the booster pick it up off

of its off of its transporter that transports it from the production site lifts it up puts it down

onto the launch mount and then it will pick up the second stage or the upper stage starship

and plop it down on top of the booster and they did that for the first time last year actually I

think it was like valentines last year was the first time they used the chopsticks to stack it and

now they're doing it quite frequently you know but ultimately those chopsticks have to serve a

second purpose they're actually going to utilize if you say catch it's not so much they're going

to catch the booster with these chopsticks it's not like it's you know a dad trying to catch a

falling child you know it's more that the the booster and the starship will someday land on

those arms yeah so um they're more less stationary I'm sure there's some bit of you know adjustment

that the arms will do but more or less the rocket's gonna propulsively land and get picked up by like

what's essentially like two like relatively small ball joints that hold the entire thing

and so it has to land very precisely on these these mounts then onto the launch mount and that's

what's going to just place it back onto the stand and allow it to be refueled and fly again what's

the idea of using the arms versus having a launch pad to land on what's what's the benefit you are

basically removing the mass of what would be heavy landing legs and you're putting kind of that

landing infrastructure onto a ground system so you're not having to carry those landing legs

into orbit but it's also elevated off the ground is there some aspect to that where you don't have

to balance the thrust and all the you you can negate some of those like there's like plume-plume

interactions there's like you know the exhaust hitting concrete and especially with the rocket

this big it's gonna you know use like three raptor engines firing you know if you have them

firing really close to the ground you're just gonna absolutely destroy and crater the ground

and you're gonna refurbish the the ground and the landing pad every time and you know or have

huge landing legs that are super long and tall you know to make it so it's it's elevated enough to

not do that um so yeah you're kind of you're avoiding that whole mess by by catching it high

enough off the ground that you don't have to factor that in and it's that's how many engines are

involved in the landing part is the three raptor engines well we haven't actually you know we haven't

to date seen the exact landing sequence so it might be something like at first they might light up

you know seven or something or nine or something some number to to accelerate quickly or decelerate

quickly same thing um and and then shut it down to three or something to for a little bit more

granular control because unlike Falcon 9 Starship has enough engines and variability to actually if

it needed to hover you know to maybe more precisely align itself with the pad it would have that

capability and especially having multiple engines you know if you only have a single engine running

you can't really roll you know your roll axis you can do pitch and yaw because the the engine is

kind of like a rudder it it can move in two axes so you can easily pitch and yaw the vehicle

but to actually induce roll along its its vertical axis you you would either need like auxiliary

engines to roll it or you'd need a pair of engines so they can be opposed and induce roll so by having

two or three running they have all three axes of control that they would need kind of like a broom

stick you know and uh balancing a broomstick on your hand they can just move it over and if they

need to align it to those landing nubs you know on the landing arms and stuff like that then

uh they can do that uh speaking of pitch and yaw the thing uh so Starship flips on its belly

flops there's a interesting kind of maneuver uh on the way down to land uh can you describe

that maneuver what's involved with that yeah so this is definitely a first I don't think anything's

tried landing like this before but the idea is when you're falling through the atmosphere the

atmosphere could actually do a lot of work for you you know you're moving quickly something is

falling from space there's a lot of energy involved you have a really good video on this as well

and uh thank you um the uh as it's falling you know you can let the you want to let the atmosphere

do as much work as it can and so um if you have a uh unsymmetric you know it's not a ball that's

falling this is some kind of object with with shape some you know at one face of it is going to

have more surface area than the other face so you know in the in the shape of like a cylinder

if you're falling you know like a soda can if you're falling top or bottom first it's a certain

amount of surface area if you flip that on its side you actually have a lot more surface area

so with the same exact vehicle you can actually have a lot more drag you can actually slow it down

a lot more using the exact same like same atmosphere same same vehicle just by turning it 90 degrees

you can slow it down substantially like three or four times slower so that's energy that you

don't have to use anywhere else you know you don't have to use an engine to slow you down you

don't have to do anything else so SpaceX realized okay if we flip this thing on its side and let it

fall like a skydiver almost you know instead of like pencil diving into the pool you're belly

flopping you're maximizing the amount of surface area that's in the windstream that's being slowed

down but obviously like in order to land especially if you're SpaceX and you know Elon's obsessed with

like not having different parts you know he wants the best part is no part so if you're going to land

with the engines you might as well use engines that you've already have the engines that are

you know used for the other portions of flight so you kick those on and you use those engines to

actually turn it 90 degrees from belly flopping to feet first and that way you can use those same

engines to land and you don't have to have like auxiliary landing engines you don't have to have

forces you know even if you were to land like on its belly with a separate set of engines not only

would those engines weigh a lot you know and be extra complexity etc etc but you also don't have to

make the ship be able to handle landing you know like on its belly as opposed to having the forces

be vertical through it but it's a giant thing you have to rotate in the air huge and as you also

highlight you know there's liquid fuel slushing around in the tank so like you can't I guess use

that fuel directly after another kind of fuel like there's just complexities there yeah that

involved plus the actual maneuver is difficult from the like like what are the thrusters that

actually make that make all that happen you're you're adding a lot of complexity not a lot but

your complexity to the maneuver and possibility where failure could happen in order to sort of

save in order for the air to do some of the work so what what is some of that complexity just you

can linger on it you know if you if you think about what it's going to take to go from horizontal

to vertical this rocket in particular that starts up has these big flaps so it has kind of two

nose flaps and two rearward flaps the rearward flaps are a lot bigger because the majority of

the the mass the engines and stuff are in the back of the the vehicle so in order to kind of be

stable and they just fold themselves inwards like on their dihedral angle at a dihedral angle in

order to increase or decrease the drag so you can control it's all three axes of control while it's

falling you know on its belly you can control it that way using these four different fins so you

have these giant moving surfaces that take thousands of of horsepower it's just insane

amount of torque in order to move these quickly enough to be a valid control surface so that's a

huge complication is moving these fins and developing that that landing algorithm and the

you know the control for a huge vehicle with flaps going like you know in and out in and out in and

out to stay stable then right as you light the engines now all of a sudden you want the top

you know that you want to flip the rocket 90 degrees so the rearward flaps the bottom flaps

fold in they tuck all the way in to minimize drag that's going to make it want to you know

swing down you extend the upper flaps that makes it so the nose wants to pitch up you kick on the

engines they're now lighting all three engines at least as of the last like successful attempts

they light all three of the sea level raptor engines and they're pitched all the way like

you know 10 or 15 degrees or whatever the maximum pitch is on them and that induces you know it

does that kick maneuver to kick it over from horizontal to vertical now the problem is you

lit your engines while you're horizontal so they put some horizontal velocity into the

rocket they're pushed the rocket you know at the time the nose is at the time of lighting those

engines the nose is facing the horizon and the engines are facing the opposite horizon yeah

so you now shot at a decent amount in you know the direction that you're not falling you know

so you have to factor that in to where you're landing because you're going to land on this

precise in this case you're going to land on the inside the arm the loving arms of the chopsticks

you know the creed arms wide open you know try to land inside this exactly the song that you're

playing through my head as I watch this now thank you thank you for forever joining those two

I appreciate this and you have to very precisely control so what you have to do is now that it's

done that kick you also have to cancel out that horizontal velocity so it's actually going to

rotate beyond 90 degrees to cancel out that horizontal velocity and then modulate the engines

to make it so the thrust you know is is perfect so that it can control itself into a controlled

landing and all this is done in like 500 meters like 1500 feet you know you're doing all of those

things stupidly close to the ground it looks absurd so far they've done five of these tests

all the first four all blew up you know they're all coming in from about 10 kilometers or 33,000

feet falling flipping you know again this thing is huge that just the booster or just the upper stage

of this is like 50 meters tall you know so it's 150 it's like 45 meters about 50 meters tall about

165 feet tall nine meters wide so 30 feet wide it weighs you know something like god I don't remember

it's something like 120 metric tons so 120,000 kilograms you know two quarter of a million

pounds empty and it's doing this flip maneuver and it has to do all this perfectly so the first

four attempts of this were pretty spectacular failures so just to clarify which stage is doing

this maneuver it's the upper stage is doing this belly flop maneuver yep so this is the the stage

that would presumably have humans on board if we were to use and if things continue to play now

here's here's something I would love to see yeah just saying this yeah if you already have these big

aero surfaces the flaps they also have to move they're on heavy motors and hinges and flaps and

all that stuff I'm actually surprised that for earth they aren't just looking at landing it

horizontally on a runway like space shuttle oh I mean that worked the brand edit you know the

soviet union's brawn I rolled my heart real hard there so thank you wow wow really get impressed

I'm very impressed and you know the brand edit we have other space planes like the x37 b we have

the upcoming serenovada's dream chaser it's yeah you have some extra mass in the wings but so does

starship starship has the extra mass of those flaps and you know the the motors and the hinges

and all that stuff I I would like to see the trade on like is it actually lighter weight to do that

versus doing what space x is doing so yeah I mean that's the that's the funny thing I think

realistically if Elon walks in the door tomorrow and says guys we did some simulations and actually

it's like we can get another 5000 kilograms in the space if we just land it horizontally if we

kind of give up on our ego and land horizontally at least on earth then you know I think they could

be doing that pretty quickly because that's the thing is this ultimate thing has been to land on

mars and you know other planets and mars doesn't have a runway doesn't have a you know thick enough

atmosphere to utilize aerodynamic flight like that so you have to do propulsive landing for mars

you're gonna land on an unprepared surface you know so it has to be able to do this at some point

the ultimate it sounds ridiculous and it is but the ultimate goal of it is to land on mars

there's not much of an atmosphere to like to help you with the for the belly flop to be useful

there's only one percent the atmosphere on mars as there is on earth but you still want to utilize

as much of that atmosphere as possible so in the upper atmosphere it's still going to be

coming in more or less kind of perpendicular to the airstream I guess it's probably more like

you know 60 degrees 70 degrees to the airstream like where it's belly flopping and it's going to

especially do that on mars it's going to need to you know use up as let the little bit of

atmosphere there is you know you're coming in at insane velocities and so even that one percent

thin atmosphere is still going to do a lot of work now on mars that there's only 38 percent

of earth's gravity on mars so the belly flop maneuver is a lot it could be a lot more conservative

you could do that at like 5000 feet up and it just wouldn't matter as much because there's not as much

gravity loss or gravity drag so you can kind of just more slowly gently you know you don't have to

do this crazy extravagant like belly flop you know flip maneuver but it would still something

at some point you would transition from more or less perpendicular to the airstream to you know

an horizontal to landing vertically I like how we're having this old boring conversation about

the differences of landing on earth versus on mars this is surreal that this is actually a real

conversation that this is something that we're discussing yeah because it has to do both yeah

but in my opinion yes I think we'll pretty quickly see an evolution of starship that's like

dedicated versions for certain tasks sure and at the end of the day again if it's if someone

runs the simulation says it's actually more efficient and it's better just to land horizontally

on a runway then that's what's going to happen you know it it doesn't matter but they still

will develop you know if the ultimate goal is to land on mars and they'll have a dedicated

mars variant you know which will likely look different than the earth variant you know and

they'll still probably be launched on the same booster you know what I mean so there's oh you

mean like that particular vehicle will not be returning back to earth it'll need to be modified

because uh because the ultimate is to have one starship that goes to mars lands on mars and

takes off of mars lands back on earth and is reused again yeah over and over and over and

there's a chance that you you know you have just a a cycler just uh you know if you're if you at

the end of the day you're just really trying to see what is most feasible what's the most

efficient you literally have a vehicle dedicated to mars mars is easy to do a single staged orbit

it's a lot lower gravity a lot thinner atmosphere you can easily do a single stage orbit you get

into orbit you'd park to a dedicated you know transfer vehicle that goes between earth and

mars it only stays in space you don't have heat shields you don't have landing legs you don't have

all these things that you need and ideally it's nuclear powered so it's super efficient that gets

you back to earth once you're at earth you rendezvous again with another landing starship

and that starship might be a horizontal runway starship you know like yeah there's no I I don't

see the and I think ultimately it'll win out where we don't have a one-size-fits-all I think

that's the that's the flaw of the space shuttle really is that it was trying to do everything

and ended up kind of doing nothing well but that's I think what SpaceX has proven I mean

SpaceX already has variants coming there's already going to be a dedicated lunar lander

for NASA for the Artemis program there's already going to be a tanker variant there's already going

to be likely just a pure cargo version there's likely going to be a human version we'll likely

see evolutions of this thing happen you know relatively quickly and one once it's all working

it's only a matter of weeks before people riding on it would be complaining about the speed of the

Wi-Fi as the old like Lucy K joke with like you're flying on a chair through the air

it's incredible you didn't even know this existed and now you're complaining about it

it's great exactly so you you tweeted fun fact about starship by doing the flip around 500 meters

versus higher up like 2000 meters the difference in delta v is 500 meters per second that's a 20

ton fuel saving which means basically 20 tons more you can put into orbit that's more than a

Falcon 9 has ever launched just by flipping later that's really interesting so there that

that was the decision to to flip close to the ground yeah yeah the closer the ground the better

the more again the more the atmosphere is doing work and you know we get into that video really

dives into like gravity losses and gravity drag the more time you're spent every every second that

your rocket engine is running earth is stealing 9.8 meters per second of acceleration against you

there's just inherently 9.8 meters per second squared of acceleration so every second that

engine is running the first a big majority of your thrust is actually being just stolen by earth's

gravity well so if you're the longer you're fighting that the more inefficient it is so

i d i mean the best thing would be you flip at you know 100 meters off the ground you like all

your engines to maximum thrust you pull 50 g's you know you land on a dime basically obviously

there's no margin there there's you know and there's diminishing returns on that that gravity loss

thing and your high thrust weight ratios so that's a pretty good compromise like yes it looks scary

but they could be a lot more aggressive with that yet and squeeze out even a little bit better

performance but there are diminishing returns so that's kind of the the magic number we've seen

so far today but we'll likely see that you know be played with you've attended some of these what

does it feel like to see starship in person first of all one is just sitting there stacked

and second of all one is doing some of these tests some of these maneuvers well first off

if you have the freedom of traveling and happen to live within a reasonable either by plane or car

it's worth going down to south texas it's so starbase is right on the border of mexico and the

united states and very southern tip of texas right along the Rio Grande and it's it's insane because

it's right along a public highway you can literally anyone can drive down this assuming it's not closed

for testing because they do close the highways during the week a decent amount while they're

doing tests but sans any of those days anyone can just drive down and see these things up close

and personal with their own eyes like we're talking you know from 100 200 meters away you know so

two football fields away from the world's biggest most powerful rocket imagine being able to do that

during the you know soviet union and you know during the n1 and the satin five you know imagine

just being able to drive up right next to the launch pad there's no way you know and so to have

this kind of access to to this program is so incredible the craziest thing is when you when

you're driving out on this on highway four it's bumpy it's it's you know riddled with potholes

now because of all the insane amount of trucks having to go out there and traffic and you're

going through this it's just this weird you're like where am i you occasionally are seeing like

you can kind of see the i mean you can see mexico out your right window as you're driving down this

highway you know you're just sitting there like where am i and then all of a sudden you kind of

turn this corner and the trees and the brush kind of clear out and all of a sudden you get a sense

of everything on the horizon and at that point you're pretty much five miles on the nose or eight

kilometers away and from there you can just see through the the heat haze through the you know the

atmospheric distortion and you just see this weird like it looks like a city almost on the

horizon you know there's tons of these tall buildings there's a weird ominous launch tower

thing with arms wide open and sometimes add you know a giant metal rocket and it just looks so

so weird i mean it's the word surreal i think by definition i think if you are expecting it

it's not surreal i think surreal kind of means like unexpected surprise or whatever you know

even if you're expecting it even if you've seen pictures even if everything it is surreal yeah

you stand there and you just go what is this and and also i mean there is a there's a kind of

magical aspect to the this is the place where over the next few years we'll start as a human

species reaching out there traveling out there well for sure see the development of the rockets

that i think will take us further than ever before be born right there what's it like to witness the

actual testing of of starship so far it's been high stakes like it's it's been insane because

those the the first site kind of mentioned earlier there's been s and eight nine ten

eleven and fifteen that have all done these suborbital hops the highest one went 12.5 kilometers

and the the rest of the four went 10 kilometers in altitude and then turned off the engines and

just fell now the cool thing about that is the general public could be about five five miles

away so again like eight kilometers away and the weird thing is this rocket's slowly accelerating

they didn't want to exceed a certain speed so they didn't have to worry about the aerodynamics of it

they just slowly climbed and it probably also to appease the faa they're like here we'll just

limit the thrust-away ratio and just you know make make it so it's slow and controlled no big deal

so it's basically more or less like slightly above a hover just climbing forever for minutes

for like four or five minutes you just hear and feel the roar of this thing normal rockets like

after the first 30 seconds or minute you know they're so far away that you're just diminishing

you know it's just it's just fading fading fading fading you still get that rumble that that sense

but but those first five flights uh the suborbital hops were just I'll cherish them forever because

you just you're watching this thing that you've driven up next to you've seen it with your own

eyes that's bigger than most buildings in a you know fairly dense urban area you know it's this

massive thing you've stayed in there you stood there you look at it you're like wow that's crazy

you've seen people working on it they're little ants compared to it then you drive away and you see

it on the horizon and all of a sudden that thing leaves it starts moving hovering hovering essentially

and the first time I mean you know you put for me at least I put my hands on my head when I

I just I can't help it I'm not it's not so I don't know what it's surreal like you said

I don't know what in human nature decides this is what to do when you can't believe something but

that's what happens and when that thing first took off it was just like my brain couldn't process

seeing you know because I had spent so much time driving around and seeing it all of a sudden you're

watching it just take off and you're like it's moving and all these you know the most complicated

rocket engines ever made are all firing simultaneously and it didn't blow up on the launch pad and

slowly increasing and it's just crazy and the sound the everything about it and so by the time

the first one is specifically it was it was December 2020 was the first SN8 it went up and

I actually we all lost it in the sky we couldn't quite see it but our we had telescopes and and

you know hide telephoto lenses tracking it and what's funny is there is a pretty strong wind

up there at altitude and it was moving there's a lot of gaseous oxygen being vented out of the rocket

and it's you know being blown by this air so it looks like it's moving actually quite quickly like

away from us like it was strafing to one side so I'm watching the monitor I'm going oh my god

they're moving it like over Brownsville and we're all all of us everyone on this this hotel balcony

is looking out down like way out over you know and we can't find it and we're like where do they lose

it like we're thinking like oh my god this is going to crash down in Brownsville and and finally

they shut the engines off and we're watching it fall and again we're tracking it we know it's falling

and it's falling falling falling it's falling super controlled and we're like oh my god this is

perfect and all of a sudden it clicks and I see it with my you know my eyes I finally like tracking

it's it's straight out like straight in front of us and it looks like it looks like it was a blimp

just barely moving now because it is falling slowly thanks to all of its drag and again that's one

of those moments I'm like it's falling so slow you know because it's so big it's so massive it's

falling sideways you know I've seen Falcon 9 boosters and Falcon heavy boosters and they

scream they come in so fast and you can barely even see we can just barely track them all

of a sudden light their engines and they just celebrate so quickly this was like the opposite

it was like is that thing ever coming down it was just falling so slowly and so right there just

felt like it was so close and so when it finally lit its engine and it flipped I was losing my mind

because I'm like it's working you know this crazy plan this huge massive thing is doing this absurd

feat and the first one well the first four again didn't work out as planned but getting to that

point already getting to that flip maneuver was a huge milestone and it was so exciting just going

through those those firsts were amazing and I think you know we're coming up now on them doing

the full stacks of the booster and the upper stage I think when we see that fly when that leaves

earth for the first time it'll be like I said almost twice the amount of thrust is anything

else it'll be the biggest heaviest largest thing to ever fly it's going to shake everything I can't

wait I have all 33 Raptor engines I've been active at once have they tested that no that's

coming up that's kind of the next milestone I don't know you know when this will come out but

we're that's like the next just a few days very quickly here then but if people listening to this

if they're listening to it early on they'll likely be able to catch you know I think at this point

it seems like next week so step one would be static fire yep holding on to the rocket and lighting

up the engines and so so far they've lit at most they kind of they went for like a more than 14

engines static fire I don't recall if it was like you know 16 or something engines lit at once and

they ended up going down to 14 engines that's the most engines they've ever lit so the next step

and the final kind of step before they fly this thing is they're actually going to light all 33

engines simultaneously and although that sounds scary let's not forget the Falcon Heavy that's

now flown five times completely flawlessly has has 27 engines running simultaneously so they

definitely have you know SpaceX has experience with a high number of engines running at the same

time but it is still like this is going to be a lot of moving parts and a lot of potential and a

lot just a lot of everything what are the upcoming milestones expected milestones and I think there's

one in particular I'd like to talk to you more about but leading up to that of course is like

what what are some of the tests here on the way so is this the static fire the the fully stacked

with the two stages will there be and then all that leading to an orbital launch test what

so what are the things we should know about and what do you think like what do you think the

timeline will be with like the orbital test timeline the reason that we have this website

the expected milestones is because I always tell people to ignore any time you ever hear for any

of this stuff yeah just pay attention to milestones because when you're doing stuff for the first time

you know you just have no idea so just to understand the expected milestones here

the first column is the event the the second column is the date and status tbd complete green

means what green means it's been completed and it shows the completion date there and the completion

date yeah and then the others maybe maybe more maybe not for the full full stack testing the

d-stack and the there's a 33 engine so so realistically we're expecting them to d-stack

and SpaceX I think just tweeted that actually they're going to be d-stacking the second stage

from the first stage kind of get the ship safe while they test because they don't want to you

know 33 engines is pretty high risk if they do blow up the rocket it when they test it for the

first time it's not going to be fully fueled I don't think at least but there is a limit to how

they do have it weighed down enough that the launch clamps can hold on to it because if you

think about it like normally the launch clamps are holding on to an entire rocket weighing

5 million kilograms 5 million you know it's weighing an insane amount so those clamps don't

actually have to hold 75 mega newtons of thrust they really want to have to hold on 25 mega newtons

of thrust you know what I mean they're not designed to hold down all 75 they do have to

have enough weight on the rocket so that so even when they do these the testing of the 33 engines

it'll have to have enough propellant in there that they don't exceed the clamping and the holding

force of the stand otherwise it'll break free from the launch stand and that booster will go

flying off uncontrolled it's a difficult thing to figure out in the test how many simultaneous

things you test right so they're kind of mitigating risks which is why like they're d-stack you know

they don't want to have although the ship could be on top of it to help weigh it down and simulate

the you know the launch environment better at some point they that's a risk they're just going to

take when they go for launch and so for now they're taking the ship off in case something goes wrong

during the 33 engine test and then once we see if the 33 engine test goes well hopefully we see the

the second stage get stacked back on it we'll see them get closer like closing out all the items and

hope the big one too is the FAA launch license there that's a little be publicly filed we'll see

that you know in the system having a launch license and I I have no sense of that type of thing you

know that's outside of but that's but that is a big milestone and it might be something that could

potentially hinder you know hold up the launch date we'll just be waiting for a launch license

yeah I'm sure there's a lot of fascinating bureaucracy and politics and legal stuff and

all that kind of beautiful magical thing when you live in reality because it is I mean it is a big

rocket yeah well and the biggest thing it's not so much the FAA doesn't necessarily care about

the success of the rocket they did really just care about the safety of public and public property

you know so it's it's it's a matter of being convinced and having the the data to prove okay

if this thing blows up we have a control of how and when it blows up we have control of

you know x y and z here's the potential damage here's the blast radius you know this again is

over twice as powerful and twice as much potential actually it's a lot more potential

for an explosive energy if it you know where it happened to well let me walk back a little

because in order to have a real detonation you have a perfect mixture ratio of your fuel and

oxidizer if when a rocket blows up typically you know it kind of unzips and some of the fuel will

mix into some of the oxidizer and you could have some explosive energy but a lot of it's actually

just a deflagration it's just you know flames and and there will there would be explosive energy

but it's not like at your lighting all of it simultaneously it's a giant bomb it's just really

not so that's good but at the same time even in those circumstances the amount of energy

is still absurd enough to likely blow out windows you know for miles and miles and miles including

my studio space well if the cameras hold up it would be one heck of a show hopefully of course

would not would not happen so how does that take us to an orbital launch when do you think that

would happen in my opinion this is a very fluid and this will change literally by the hour so you

really think that it's very difficult to really say like even even for something that could very

well happen this year even just a few months away you should make it a prediction by the way

you like superstitious on this kind of stuff a little bit like you don't you're worried about

jinxing it and that kind of stuff no because I would imagine you would be like waiting

for all of these launches that keep getting delayed where you start thinking that there's

certain things you do will control the weather my socks I'm aware of these socks just scrubbed

again you know like yeah you're lucky you have to wear the same lucky socks otherwise it's going

there's going to be bad weather yeah so the reason that I say this and why it's so difficult is

they did a first full stack test in July of 2021 and the expectation was we're a month or two away

from a launch yeah so like realistically for 18 months have been in a purgatory thinking that

we're a month or two away of an orbital launch now I did say for the record when that thing

stacked and when a lot of speculation was saying you know a month or two I was saying I don't expect

it to fly in 2021 you know and I've been just say I just saw the amount of work that still needed

to be done like on the ground systems the tanks the launch mount all the stuff I'm sitting there like

there's still a lot of stuff they're gonna have to validate it they're gonna have to test everything

every component and you know people were like how dare you say that even Gwen Shotwell the president

of SpaceX is saying Q3 of 2020 and I'm like okay but like I'm just I'm not going to be surprised if

it slips into 2022 and here we are the beginning of 2023 and I I think we're finally within like

two months I I'm expecting like I'm trying to keep my March and April as free as I can we'll put it

that way I love it actually just in a small tangent on Gwen Shotwell like what do you

from everything I know she's an instrumental a really crucial person to the success of SpaceX

in running the show she's the president the COO what do you know about her that

sort of the genius of Gwen Shotwell man my understanding is she's really the glue you

know she's the glue to the tornado tornado comes in and then she comes around and just

really executes on on and and helps you know a famous story is that at some point Elon walked

in or she's sprinted into a meeting because Elon was actively trying to cancel Falcon Heavy

saying it's too far like it's too much development we're still too far away and this is like

you know this might have been like end of 2017 or something and it flew for the first time in 2018

so we're we're talking like it's close to the end of development you know there's hardware

being built all this stuff and Elon's literally in a meeting telling people they're going to cancel

it we're going to move on to BFR or now Starship and just go full steam ahead on that and she runs

into the meeting and reminds Elon we have X amount of customers that have already purchased a ride

on Falcon Heavy we can't delay that you know so it's that business sense of like we yes it's great

to innovate but we also have to pay our dues and and and make the money to continue our operations

and I think she's just a lot better at she has I think she has such a great perspective on everything

it really seems like everything she doesn't I wish she did more interviews because I would

love to hear more from her um but man like it just seemed hear that Gwen for both of us yeah she

hasn't actually done them in interviews right not really no she's done like a TED talk um a couple

little things here and there but not really many interviews and I would just love to hear like what

you know what on a daily basis like what is she doing that to keep her head on and keep everything

so organized you know it's you know yeah I my understanding is that she she is absolutely

integral and does just a insane amount of work in SpaceX yeah I mean the so it's the project

planning but also the how the teams integrate together and the and the hiring and this is the

man I think it's a lot of it honestly even just the business making sure the money's flowing

in a positive trend more or less you know that yes Elon's obviously a money guy but he thinks

he's so I think Elon is so risky you know he just loves to throw it all in that he leaves

little margin for error you know he's he's been really lucky with rolling his dice you know especially

like when he started SpaceX and Tesla that was the ultimate roll the dice but I think she's a healthy

balance to be like well here's our you know operations and how we continue to do this without

risking everything you know and Starship's close let me be clear Starship is close to

risking everything already it's just such a big fast-moving high-risk developmental program that

like I I personally think you know SpaceX would probably be fine if they shut the doors on Starship

and just flew Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy for the next 10 years they would still be commercially

valid they could not spend another dollar on research and development they could fire I don't

want them to fire everyone involved in anything research and development and just ran operations

on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy and they would still be dominant for 10 years and they would still

have a business case and they'd still be fine but they're all in like all chips are pretty much

as many chips as possible are in for Starship. I mean this I don't know what else I could say

is there's not I've talked to a lot of great leaders there's just not many people like Elon

that would push for Starship where when they're already as far ahead very successful company

yeah sort of everyone doubted that it could be a successful company it was so close to

bankruptcy and failing and then to take it into a financially viable successful company

and just when you do you take on a project that again risks everything well he already did this

with Falcon 1 to Falcon 9 like literally people were like what are you doing they basically signed

over and were fully ramping up Falcon 9 by the time they finally had their first Falcon 1 success

they had one more flight they only flew Falcon 1 successfully twice they flew five times all

together the fourth one was successful they flew one more time and the anyone else out there would

have been like let's keep flying the Falcon 1 we have a working rocket we can start you know making

money and profiting and already he was risking it all and saying nope we're going from Falcon 1

to Falcon 9 it was a huge huge leap you know it was that I think it's at least as big as a leap

from Falcon 1 to 9 as it is from Falcon 9 to Starship or around relatively a similar leap

so it's just that same thing again people are going why are you leaping into this

insane program and system and risk when you have such a you know you finally have this

workhorse of a rocket that's so dominant in the industry yet they're going 10x you know

it so happens that you've been selected for the dear moon mission that will fly Starship

once around the moon with nine people on board you are one of those people so

just pause to take that in everything that we've been talking about you will not just

be reporting on you will be a part of it so tell me about the objective of this mission

and how does it feel to be a part of it well man yeah yeah it's basically it's the Willy Wonka of

space like a generous yeah a generous individual purchased a ride from SpaceX as early at least

as far as I know the earliest I knew about it was February 27th 2017 who's the individual

you Sakuma Izawa but at the time I'm telling a story at the time we didn't know okay great great

so February 27 2017 a press release comes out from SpaceX saying someone purchased a ride

through us around the moon we're gonna fly someone around the moon and at the time was on

a crew dragon capsule and a Falcon Heavy it's like wow and that was enough that little moment

right there that's press release so first time I'm like I'm gonna make a youtube video about this

and I stood up turn on my camera put on my at the time space suit and I basically yelled at the

camera for three minutes about someone's going around the moon you know fast forward to 2018

end of 2018 or near the end they introduced there's a SpaceX press conference I'm I'm there as a

member of the press I'm reporting on we're going to meet this person that's going around the moon

and come to find out boom they're going to be riding on Starship now they changed from Falcon

Heavy and Dragon SpaceX is no longer going to do that they're going to upgrade them basically to

Starship so instead of being in like a small tin can they're in this giant luxurious you know mega

rocket around the moon and it comes out this individual named you Sakuma Izawa who is a Japanese

billionaire purchased this ride and instead of inviting you know his friends and you know colleagues

and whatever whoever's family members or whatever he decided that the most impactful thing he could

do with this opportunity is invite more or less artists and the original thing was like artists

you know journalists a painter an athlete a you know a all you know photographer videographer

you know all walks of life is when they said athlete they thought of you like I know a guy

this guy rode rag bad once but uh so and at the time you know is like this is crazy I can't

believe this is going to happen and you know he had this this vision of we're going to find people

from all around the world I'm going to invite people from all around the world from different

walks of life different different you know trades and I'm going to share this experience so that

they can share it with the world and really have an impact much greater than you know any one country

or any one individual or any you know a set of military trained you know astronauts could could

do offer up a new perspective beautiful I literally I mean at the press conference I cried like I

had a couple tears my eyes I was like this is so cool if you could just pause on that so he goes by

mz mz yep how incredible is that it's I'd like uh I I think it's you often don't realize the

importance of individuals in human history like they they they define because this this could be

we talked about the importance of Elon in particular you know most of the work is done by

large groups of people that are collective intelligence that we band together but like

these individuals can be the spark of the catalyst of that progress and I mean just this idea of

getting not just civilians which is already incredible but civilians with a sort of an

artistic flame that burns inside them they're able to communicate whatever they do are able

to communicate something about that experience and it's just a genius idea to spend quite probably

a very large amount of money for that I mean it's uh it's it's it and the and that will be part of

history yeah and it's easy these days for people to be cynical you know especially about like

spaceflight and wealthy individuals but really in my opinion and maybe you know just the time I was

just so couldn't believe this this idea you know I'm someone that has studied a lot about

you know the Apollo program the people that have been to the moon and they're incredible

individuals incredible individuals but they're so saturated with tasks you know and they're

military trained and often um that they didn't really have the luxury of just being able to soak

in the experience of going around or to the moon and seeing the moon up close with your own eyes

like that just psychologically has to be insane and so to have this opportunity to be able to

observe our closest celestial neighbor with your own eyes and your sole purpose is to soak it in

and share it and communicate and create with the rest of our planet like that to me is just beautiful

so that is the objective of the mission that right there is the objective of the mission

and how does it feel to be selected as one of the nine to do it it's it's it's a it's a gradient

it's slowly it's doing a few things um since I've known it's become um I think the closer it gets

the more excited and the more nervous I get you know it's a the more real it becomes the more

real it becomes you know the announcement was a big uh it just got announced at the end of 2022

publicly um who's involved and so you know prior to that like I had you know each step of the

selection process you know there's a pretty comprehensive selection process with interviews

and stuff each each step I'd try not to get my hopes up and frankly like this let me be clear

this was not something that like I've always wanted to do you know it's not like I'm out there I didn't

start doing youtube videos because I wanted to even go to space like none of that I and I've said

hilariously I probably said dozens or hundreds of times on air like yeah I don't ever want to go to

space because it's not like my it's not a driving force it's not really a thing I even really truly

pictured or let myself fantasize about frankly so each step of the selection process I didn't really

let myself dream about it too much or you know but I kind of it kind of chip away like oh my god

this is actually becoming more real this is actually more more of an opportunity and I get

equally more nervous too like you know frankly is it's I've you know I've seen spaceflight

stuff go wrong I've you know I've think about this stuff a lot so like yeah I get more nervous

but I also get more excited about that opportunity like it's an opportunity that how can you pass

and it's still I still have to actually stop pause think and actually realize the reality that like

that I am going to the moon I'm going to see the moon up close uh flying around the moon I'm sorry

some people get mad when I say going to the moon since I'm not landing on it um but flying around

the moon seeing the far side of the moon with my own eyes and seeing earth and seeing the earth rise

behind it yeah it's going to I just I can't I can't tell you what it's going to be like and feel like

but it's insane to me that like we're having this conversation that that is my my reality you know

like and that someone was generous enough to consider the option of sharing this with with

frankly strangers yeah and the the process that they had for selecting like how um how much thought

and time went into the selection process is incredible you know they did a public call at the

beginning of 2021 and so the the team's involved in in in whittling it down from a million applicants

there's a million applicants that whittled it and they got it down to eight crew members and

two backups yeah um amazing people I would have you know I don't know how they wound up

where they did but it's it's incredible I feel a very deep connection to everyone that's already

involved in what can you say about the crew you've gotten a chance to meet them and talk to them

and Steve Ioki's on the crew like well who else is there so uh you're obviously the star athlete

on who else in terms of the artists that are there so oh man we might just want to pull up

it's just I don't totally butcher and forget anybody but because so far I haven't actually had

the chance to meet everyone in person you know so far a lot of this was done during the pandemic

but we've met through a couple different things we've had a couple different times to get together

but so so far I've not met Steve Ioki yet uh or top um we've been on calls and stuff I also have

not yet met uh Dev Joshi who is uh an actor from India so yeah we can Steve Steve Ioki American

DJ and producer and musician top from uh South Korea is also a musician and a producer so this

all across the world is like truly global uh all different kinds of walks of life all artists of

different forms and Steve is Japanese uh his parents are Japanese but he you know

lit born raised in the United States uh Yemi is a dancer and choreographer from the Czech Republic

Rhiannon is a fine art photographer from well England in in Ireland I guess she lives in both

and kind of a bit of a she's all over the place uh technically she's Irish I guess uh I Tim Dodd

yep that's me from the United States uh then you have Kareem who is from England and does

also is a photographer and documentarian does a lot of work with oceanography and uh and volcanoes

so he does really incredible work Brendon Hall is a documentarian and filmmaker uh Dev Joshi

sorry Brendon is also from the United States Dev Joshi is an Indian actor I believe also

I believe he's also already been producing and things he's very young I think he's only like

19 or 20 and he's I mean he's been acting since he was like five years old or something he's a

he's a Bollywood star like he is a star in India which is really cool right um Caitlyn

Farrington from the United States is an Olympic gold medalist snowboarder so she believe it or

not is the athlete not me right and then uh and she's one of the backup crew members as as as so

is uh Miu from Japan who's a dancer that's amazing I mean it's such an interesting group I mean

is there something else you could say about MZ about Yusaka Maizawa? Yeah Yusaka Maizawa so he

he's also a musician so he was actually in like some kind of punk hardcore Japanese bands in the

early in the 90s and stuff in the early 2000s he started a record company and and distribution

and sales ended up in in fashion and owns one of the biggest fashion companies in Japan and has

become a fine art collector and just kind of a philanthropist and and he's been out to space

already he's already not only been to space like you know he's been to the international

space station he's been on orbit and on the ISS and so he what's cool is like you know there's

talks of frankly to be to be honest like we still don't I still don't know all of the details about

this you know we're not yet into training I kind of always assumed prior that there'd be some

professional astronaut you know when they talked about in 2018 there's talks of we'll have a

professional astronaut on board but realistically now like MZ is a trained astronaut you know he

has trained a lot like six months you know plus to be able to fly on Soyuz so as far as like

it's good to know for me that I have someone on the crew that has experienced with space flight

has trained and has some knowledge on space flight as well you know that's that is an

important aspect for sure so you made an excellent video about flying in the fighter jet that I think

you mentioned may be relevant to the training is there some high level aspects to training

that you anticipate that you might be able to speak to yeah so you know so far I think we can

really lean on what has happened with the other you know commercial crew missions and in private

missions like the inspiration for mission or axiom where SpaceX flew individuals they train for

about six months a lot of like reading manuals and learning the spacecraft yeah you're gonna do

like a rocky for montage or I hope I just get shredded I hope it's physical a lot of physical

training and they're like we didn't tell them to do it he's just seems to want to film himself

shirtless in the snow doesn't make a how is this always doing this I can't get him to stop punching

me so yeah hopefully uh realistically I that's a manual I like it there's there's a physical

component to all this and that's that's really I mean that that's fascinating it's also inspired

the sort of civilians can do this that's that's really interesting yeah I mean this is and to me

this represents this and the other commercial space you know private space flight missions

like this represent really a turning point like truly an inflection and again it's easy for people

to be cynical that oh you know why are people wasting all this money doing space flight stuff

it's like well I'm sure some people were saying that same thing about you know airplanes and and

early aviation going like why are we can't believe those people are wasting the governments you know

funding these stupid planes and stuff how's this ever gonna benefit me and nowadays like imagine

if all the planes just stopped working like we'd freak out like our economy would collapse yeah

it would suck you know and I you know might be a long time before we get to that reality with

spaceflight well I know if if spaceflight halted today you know space assets all of our you know

on orbit assets our life would be crippled and I don't think people realize that yeah so it's

already we're already reliant on it yeah but now we're getting to the point where it's we're really

turning that corner where it's the average person alive today you know if you're born uh you know

now we're from now on I think there's a real decent chance that by the time you pass there's

an opportunity to have flown in space yeah I mean I if I'm being honest I still haven't lost the

the feeling of magic of flying an airplane I often catch myself thinking like how is this real

how is and like the contrast of this incredible thing that's incredibly safe flying through the

air taking off and landing while everyone else just looks bored watching like I don't know uh some

romantic comedy on their phone with wi-fi yeah so yeah it's just it's like the contrast of that is

like wow we're we're incredible we're incredible as a society and it's like we we develop some

amazing technology that improves almost immeasurably our quality of life and then we take it for

granted and now still reach for the next thing and the next thing in life becomes more beautiful

and complex and interesting and yeah it's just the same stuff will be uh happening oh yeah uh

with space travel oh it'll become mundane and boring at some point the tough thing about space

travel of course uh you know I don't even know if it's such a giant leap over airplanes because

airplanes are already incredible but the tough thing with space travel is the destination right

is the is the is the landing on a whole lot of the world whether it's docking with with different

transport vehicles or the space station or it's landing elsewhere I mean it's it's it really

really is incredible I think you mentioned since there's uh there's artists there's filmmakers and so

on and you're all of those uh on top of being a great athlete I don't know I'll just stop the

running joke at this point uh but is there have you uh thought about um just just in general like

we've offline talked about microphones and like all the different ways to film space launch uh

for yeah rocket launches uh have you thought about the different options of like how to capture

how to capture this uh have you have the team have been like brainstorming and thinking about this

do you anticipate it being super challenging because there's so many opportunities to sort of

think of how to do this so one of the the fun things to remember is that starship is huge

like its internal volume is the pressurized volume on starship is is bigger than a 747

pressurized volume and it can take 100 metric tons to anywhere with enough refueling 100 so

we have in theory very little mass and volume constraints unlike prior all other spaceflight

missions ever you you're like you're counting you know grams down to you know and just really can't

risk you know you have very defined parameters on on what you can and cannot do we're going to

likely have the luxury of being able to film and capture this in a way that's just never been done

before you know we won't be inhibited by mass and volume constraints like prior yeah so all that said

and done i'm hoping that we'll be able to just arm ourselves to the teeth with the absolute best

cameras and equipment possible backups on backups and you know and pre wire you know like pre rig

things starship is going to be a transportation system and it has you know it's being built

from the ground up there's no reason why they can't put infrastructure in for cameras that are just

housed in the vehicle you know um these are talks that i'm excited to have because i i really ideally

one of the things i'd love to do i'm going to be pushing really hard to actually try live streaming

from inside during the launch during the launch last stream from the inside that would be incredible

wouldn't that be it's possible to pull off that's really really incredible there is the magic to

the live stream because like that's real that's right there that would the world would tune in

that'll be truly inspiring yes to me that's one of those things a lot of people ask why they aren't

doing it of course nasa and other individuals have their reasons of why not you know there's

obviously some technical hurdles but now with starlink and other capabilities there's less

hurdles there's obviously some transparency reasons why you know and safety reasons why it

might not be a great idea to live stream a risky rocket launch you know the challenger i think put

a pretty bad taste in our mouth as far as publicizing an event and having every student in the

united states tune in to you know a tragedy but um that's something i'm pushing for really hard

just because i think it could be magical i think it could really connect with people in a way that

hasn't been done before speaking of challenger have you thought about the fact that you're riding

a thing as we've been talking about that's um that's a giant explosive powerful rocket

have you um have you thought about the risk of that the danger of that have you contemplated

your own mortality how could i not you know i've seen with my i've seen and felt four of these

prototype vehicles blow up you know with my own eyes um i don't know if there's anyone else

you know early days some of the you know mercury and gemini astronauts watched failures of rockets

and then got on them i don't know of too many people that are dumb enough to do that though

these days the stain age um it's it's obviously i will have to see a lot of successful launches

and have to have a lot of confidence and in the engineering the data that they have developed

a safe system because currently the current iteration of starship has no abort system has no

escape tower so you know dragon capsule which is currently flying people has a launch abort

system it has super draco engines that either by the push of a button or by the automatic

triggering of the flight computer can shoot the the capsule off of the rocket in milliseconds

and pull it safely away get it far enough a way that it can pull the parachutes and safely splash

down um starship by all iterations i've ever seen does not have that the space shuttle also

did not have that so it's not absurd to not have an abort system like it is there is you know

know certain engineering principles that that prove that that could be a completely valid thing

you know the space shuttle through 100 flew 133 times fully successfully it did have two failures

resulting in the loss of 14 lives um 85 or sorry 98.5 success rate pretty i mean yeah

there's other i've probably done things that are a lot riskier i have race motorcycles drag race

motorcycles and you know written like an absolute jerk on the streets on a motorcycle i'm sure i've

had a higher than a 98.5 percent survival rate or lower than that i mean at some point um so it's

that you know yes it's it's risky it's scary and um i think about it a lot a lot it definitely is

one of those things that i you know i i will have to see and i'm i'm in no hurry for this to happen

either you know personally i'm in no hurry because it's like i would rather see this thing be developed

and integrated and see 10 you know or i was gonna say 10 dozen but i'd be happy with a dozen fully

successful like oh we've got this thing totally nailed down uh you know before i get on it but

and that likely is the reality there will likely be a dozen or two or three launches because just

even to get to the moon on starship they have to refuel it in orbit um so it will arrive get to earth

orbit basically empty and out of fuel so i'll have to dock with a fuel depot fill up and then go to the

moon so just to even get that full you know we're already talking about you know a handful of launches

so there will be a lot of launches before we fly would they do a test flight without humans on board

that goes to the moon or no i'm not sure i'm not sure if they'll do that exact flight profile but

by then they will have already flown most likely the Artemis 3 program will have flown a starship

variant to the moon that that lands on the moon um so doing at that point you're pretty much i would

like them to test the heat shield at that entry velocity though because it is uh you know it takes

another it's about 30 faster to get you like it to go 30 faster than the lower third to get out to

a trans lunar injection and although that only sounds like oh it's 30 faster it's you know the

the re-entry heating experienced by a vehicle goes up by velocity uh cubed not squared so and not

even not linear so it's not like we go twice as fast to get you see twice as much heat you know

30 faster 30 more heat it's and it's not squared it's not go twice as fast to get four times as

much heat it's go twice as fast get eight times as much heat on re-entry so 30 faster on re-entry

is actually a really really big deal so i would love to see that because you know there's certain

things that i would love to see milestones that i would love to see tested out and proven um before

i get on board but at the end of the day i really do believe that um just like falcon nine and the

success of that that they're going to push it and get all the the kinks out well before anyone's on

top of it nowadays falcon nine and dragon is you know arguably the one of the safest most reliable

and best rides you could take to this to space are you afraid of dying

yeah yeah is this one of the first times you get to you're young yeah have you gotten a chance

to think about death is one of the first times you've really contemplated it i mean yeah i mean

like i said i've had i've had dumb moments on motorcycles where i kind of saw you know like

i'm going to smash into this thing at 120 mile an hour and i'm so you've had moments when you

realize it could end just like this where you literally and i i have for most of my adult life

had dreams of falling and hitting the ground and it just all you get a ring in your ears it all

goes black and in my head i go oh shit that was it have you seen a therapist about this or i wonder

what it means so i'm and i'm sure there's a fordian interpretation somewhere in there

that i'm going to also apply to my dating life no the joke is the running joke continues okay so

i mean it's it's it's fascinating in general as i hope we'll talk about in the early days

of spaceflight that there is there is a the task of reaching out to the stars is a fundamentally

risky one you have to take risk and of course there's really rigorous safety precautions and so on

but still is still a risk well and i think like most people that the for me the idea of dying

isn't so much about myself it's about those affected by you know my my loved ones my family

you know my girlfriend my my friends you know obviously i don't want to have this be a traumatic

experience for anybody you know it's already gonna be hard like it's already i know uh my mom gets

my parents and and family and friends are very supportive um and you know my parents are you

know all about it of course but my mom is also very emotional too so you know she's so my speaking

of athletes my brother-in-law has actually been on american ninja warrior two seasons um phenomenal

athlete and even just when he competes my mom gets so emotional like she can't even hold it together

seeing that so what's it gonna be like when she sees her son get on top of a skyscraper and and

ascend on a column of flames into the heavens like that's going to be very difficult you know um

um and i've you know i've taken them out they've seen they've seen star race and they've seen

starship they've seen a couple launches i don't know if that's going to make it feel better

hey exposure therapy i guess exposure therapy okay uh have you had that conversation with them

about this like before agreeing uh to join i mean was was that what that was or is it one of those

things like uh you just you don't have that conversation i suppose it's understood that

there's a love there's a passion here and and realistically i'm not i'm going to be convinced

and statistically convinced that this is relatively safe you know like again in the in the 99s percent

safe yeah again there's things that people do every day that are less safe than this you know

like you ride in the motorcycle again yeah riding a motorcycle doing wheelies at a over 100 mile an

hour not you did wheelies over 100 what hot all right i'm not a smart guy always okay well you

know formation flying in the fighter jets was likely a more dangerous thing yes then what i'll be doing

in spaceflight so as surreal as it is we're talking about you flying around the moon

let's rewind and talk about the origin story what's the origin story of everyday astronaut

i used to be a professional photographer so from 2008 until the end of 2016 that was my

income was photography full-time like you were an instagram model into butt pictures of yourself

instagram fitness model obviously um now the uh i did i did a lot of weddings i shot 150 weddings

all around the world so subjects all kinds of material like uh like uh did you portrait also

a lot of portrait work and then just you know random like commercial things like you know food

and beverages for businesses or like you know wheelchair ramp company i shot their product

like you know it's random whatever a professional photographer does in cedar falls iowa you know

when did you all fall in love with photography with a visual medium do you remember yeah i do

actually remember i so i i drew up uh i grew up drawing constantly i i was the weird kid that

might i would bring a sketch pad to the restaurants like every restaurant when i was growing up until

i was like 18 19 i literally would just sit there and draw or waiting for food and my parents

like fostered that they would you know and i i'd be the weird kid but i'd be engaging and talking

but i'd be sitting there drawing and i was always obsessed with realism and like recreating and

you know visualizing things and so when i got my hands on the camera was actually my dad's old

pentax that i first shot uh on a film camera and developing the film i didn't personally develop

like you know getting the film back back in those days um you know i just was like so excited about

the idea that i had this visual thing that i saw with my own eyes and now i can stop time and capture

it and and show it to other people just kind of like to me that was like the ultimate form of

of realism was like literally showing you the photons basically that affected this film um and

so i i mean i was i was 19 when i got my first digital slr at canon 20d and started shooting um

and yeah i just i fell in love with it it became like i got a job at a camera store and you know

basically all my extra money went into buying everything that i could at the time and i only

worked there for about exactly a year before i went into pursuing photography full-time and

i basically was shooting weddings so that i could travel and pay like you know afford to be able to

uh do some big trips every year and and develop some kind of you know portfolio of traveling and

and not necessarily like not for you know i guess instagram wasn't much of a thing at the time it's

really just i liked making big prints and having them displayed and that kind of stuff and pretty

are you still a canon guy you still canon elitist no no i i i moved around i i did sony for a bit

i still kind of shoot mostly canon glass but adapted to either sony like lenses sorry like canon

glass look at you what do you think about the um these things that i'm using sony a7 for great

it's great see yeah it's uh i've uh i've been you know i googled around just trying to find a

camera that can do video and photography pretty well and obviously going with just like generic

lenses prime lens i resisted everything my whole journey with these camera thing i'm trying to figure

stuff out is like prime lens it seems so stupid so for prime lens it's like a fixed zoom thing yep

it's like why because i remember i was going to like ukraine and thinking it's similar like uh um

yeah very similar to spaceflight but you're very constrained because you're going into an unknown

environment you go into a war zone you go into a front you don't know what like you don't know

anything right and there's like a little suitcase you have to like see figure out like how do you

film this what's what's robust um what gives you like a good image versus a flexibility versus the

weight this weight is important there you have to think about like can you really bring like a

bunch of zoom lenses and all that kind of stuff so i have to learn really quickly but yeah i've um

it's a whole journey that you've already been on but it's it's nice to have a beginner like me like

to explore that i think there is a there's a nice thing just like as we've been talking about with

the beginner's mind to um not let equipment get in the way of like what your vision is of what a

thing should look like yeah sometimes like especially if you're a professional videographer

photographer a cinematographer whatever you call it you can like fetishize equipment too much you

could get so much equipment and i've interacted with because i've been trying to learn from other

people that have so much more experience than me i think their advice is often like

um very pushing a lot of equipment versus like the final thing like how do you create the art of it

like because to me even photography is just like storytelling and so like a lot of the discussion

to me that i enjoy especially talking to creative people is like the the final story like how and

i've learned you know like light light light is a weird thing like it's so interesting it's so

interesting how you can create emotion with light like with a little you can take a like a phone

and like you light your face in different ways and like it changes the emotion oh yeah it's so weird

i'm like holy shit like because like that's the conversation when i have good people give me advice

how to light a scene all that kind of stuff is great but the reality is that a little bit of light

in a different direction that you have to understand how that changes the contour on your face and

everything and the expression that your face can like the the expression that could be effectively

communicate under under different lighting conditions and then like the mystery of like

having some of your face in darkness and some not when you can only see the eyes and not the face

when the background is visible or not i mean the the yeah it's yeah it's all just like this

interesting art form that can be so powerful when you're telling a story well and what's fun for

with me with photography and rockets they're both like the ultimate story of compromise

because when you start learning about photography learn about you know how the aperture affects

both your exposure but also your depth of field higher shutter speed affects both your exposure

your depth of field how the you know a medium format camera versus a crop camera affects you

know everything is a compromise and price versus performance you're like there's always a compromise

you're always literally doing like a trade study of what can i afford what's my outcome like blah

blah blah blah how fast is he how to focus or whatever same with rockets like there's a million

choices and every single one of them affects every single thing so there's always all these

trades and it's so cool you can see the same totally different outcomes based on the same

like requirements you know like do x and here's how we're gonna do it and you know two teams of

people will come up with wildly different things when did you fall in love with rockets so yeah so

the the story kind of keeps going for me so i was doing sorry to interrupt you can't talk for

diary man we'll get we'll go on a deep rabble hole there so um so it ended uh you know i'm

through all this doing a lot of weddings i was already getting saturated and feeling

like i'm not being as creative you know you can only shoot them so many weddings before you're

like well now we do this pose this pose this pose you know even if like they're amazing places like

you know in front of a castle in germany or something i'm still like well i need to the day i'm

i'm not being very creative you know so i remember craving like some some projects and so

i was sitting at my friend's coffee shop in my hometown in cedar falls a sidecar coffee

and i'm sitting on this red couch and i see this article from i think gizmodo and i said

you could own the flight stick of an apollo command module and i knew enough to know what

that meant but that's really about the end of my space knowledge and so i clicked on it the click

bait got me like i'm like oh yeah i'm gonna see if you know and i see that the minimum bit was like

250 000 i'm like okay no i can't own the apollo joystick you know but i got me on this website

called rr auction and so i started scrolling through that looking for things that hadn't been bid on

and they had like you know at the time they're doing a huge space auction and so i'm looking for

things just out of curiosity fun these are cool like it's starting to really you know like i said

i like space but i wasn't like in love with it or anything but i'm very just seeing all this stuff

like this is so cool look at all this old history stuff ended up seeing a um there's an article for

a vm stk 44 flight suit high altitude flight suit that came from the soviet union and looks

you know it's like a mig fighter jet fighter pilot suit very similar to like the sr 71

like kind of pumpkin suit um pre semi pressure suit with a you know full helmet i mean it full it

looks like a space suit you know for all intents and purposes it's kind of like a space suit

and i just bid on it you know i've been like i think 325 dollars and next thing you know like

it arrives at my door yeah and from that point on like literally i got it out i immediately try

to put it on and the first thing that i do is almost die in it because i closed the helmet

down on myself and locked it and didn't know how to unlock it so i'm literally and so i as soon as

i seal it up i'm realizing i can't breathe i'm going to run out of air so luckily like there's

a hose you know that kind of that long hose thing that would normally plug into an air supply

had a little plug on the end of it so i just unplugged it and was able to temporarily breathe

through the hose until i figured out the locking mechanism so there was my almost that was my

mortality rate thing right there so that was probably above a 98 or below a 90 you're there

panicking inside yeah for a few seconds already reading like my premature obituary like idiot

dies alone in space suit in his living room you know like just imagine yeah that would be like

darwin award for sure for sure oh so um so i get the space suit and it kind of literally take my

breath away you should feel bad for that one you you introduced creed to me so you should feel bad

about that one ours right open yeah okay so um so i ended up like the space suit kind of like more

less haunted me because it kind of just it sat in like my living room for a long time and i didn't

know what to do with it and actually had a friend who is also a photographer wanted to do like a photo

he was just kind of taking pictures randomly he's like hey bring your space suit over we'll do a

picture it's like all right you know i walk across the street literally lived across the street

taylor and i and i put the space suit on i took this funny picture and be like this is awesome

and i got a lot of like fun out of like creating a character you know of everyday astronaut or at

at the time i guess i didn't know an astronaut and then that kind of just continued i was like

thinking of more and more funny situations where i could have this astronaut on earth

doing mundane everyday things and came up with the name everyday astronaut and originally it was

just literally a photo project like this whole art series of an astronaut doing these things these

funny whimsical you know silly mundane things but i was researching a lot about like you know

trying to hide easter eggs like i was going to hide in like the you know the echocardiogram of

of allen shepherd you know like his first flight into space and photoshopping that into pictures

and like you know doing all these little like facts about spaceflight but they're just hidden

little elements in these photos and man doing that i just fell in love with it i just was going

over every little detail that i could learn is i just couldn't stop learning and i was i was

getting excited because i was like i could be teaching people about all this exciting stuff

and all the cool things people figured out you know 40 years ago 50 years ago and was trying

to portray that through images on instagram and you know it it took me a little while but

eventually i realized you know on instagram your retention rate you're lucky if you get like

like two seconds of someone looking at an image you know or maybe nowadays 60 seconds of a quick

little instagram short or something but um yeah it doesn't give you a chance to really

teach to explore a little topic that you felt like you felt the curiosity about the thing

there's so much to learn here there's so many opportunities to have a light bulb go off or

someone to be like this is awesome and so uh yeah i think i started so at the by the end of 2016

like throughout 2016 i realized i want to be done doing photography as a profession and i want to

pursue everyday astronaut but i didn't know what it meant yet i just knew like i had this thing

you know and at that time i'd been doing it for roughly two years and had you know seen i don't

know like 50 000 instagram followers or something i thought like i could just be a full-time influencer

now you know like just go around taking pictures of myself in a spacesuit and doing public appearances

and write a children's book or something i don't know i don't know what this thing is

is i'll figure it out you know and so um it basically i gave myself like a runway of one year

of 2017 of like i'm gonna throw stuff for the wall and see what sticks um so i was doing like

twitch streams i was playing Kerbal space program uh which is like a video game like a physics-based

rocket building simulation game but it's also like it's fun and silly because you're not playing

with like humans you're playing with these little Kerbal like little alien guys and it's

fun and silly um you know streaming that on twitch and doing things and and doing is posting

some of those things on to youtube but finally like i said it actually happened to be february

27 2017 when SpaceX had that announcement that their flights went around the moon that i'm

i gotta tell people about this and stood there and made my first like produced youtube video

and i didn't want it to be over three minutes i was afraid that'd be way too long for youtube

and i got it down to like i don't know two minutes and 40 seconds or something and that video

while wearing the i was wearing the space suit the space suit yeah and very like horrible audio

it looks like it was color graded by a seven-year-old with a tan marker or something like it just

looks terrible sounds horrible i'm yelling no one's happy but but the video you know did

relatively well like i had no followers on youtube like i had you know maybe 102 or something is the

video still up yeah that's great okay that's a watch this is so cringy and as it should be you

know your first video should be terrible if it's not terrible and you spent too long trying to make

it yeah so um the the thing that clicked for me is i had very little audience and all of a sudden

that video kind of took off you know relatively i think it got like 10 000 or 12 000 views and i was

like holy crap that's way more engagement than i don't have famous i'm famous now 10 000 people

that's almost my whole town first of all that is kind of crazy like 10 000 people is crazy

it's crazy like if you if you had 500 people attend a thing that you do that'll be like

you're like a rock star it's crazy we lose perspective i yeah we lose perspective very

quickly very quickly so i made another video um this one i spent more time on and i had

before photography actually i used to do like wedding videography too so i had done my woes

with videography and weddings and stuff i hated video like i thought video was the worst took so

long to edit you know i love photography because it's like boom you snap it boom post you're done

in an hour you know and video it's like this whole cumbersome thing so i thought i'll never do video

and here i was making this long what it's the time seemed like a long seven minute long youtube

video about how the falconine lands and again like that one i posted and it actually it did

really bad and i was really upset i'm like i spent two weeks on this stupid video you know

i worked really hard scripting and blah blah blah and then it you know i had like a thousand views

or something i did much worse in the first video and i was so upset and i kind of like was ready

to keep throwing more spaghetti at the wall to see what's gonna stick for everyday astronaut

and i think it was like a month or two later i happened to like you know check the analytics

on youtube and also boom that video like kind of took off and i got like 40 or 50 or 60 thousand

views or something i was like no way and it just kept you know that just honed it in more like okay

youtube will bring a bigger like bring an audience to me as opposed to like instagram i had to

find and you know try to get the audience to come to me and this was like they were gonna do the

legwork so if i make decent videos um and i realized like really the fun thing for me was explaining

a topic that was scary and intimidating and try to make it you know fun and engaging

what were some of the struggles of building up a youtube channel so for people who don't know once

again you have a youtube channel i'll call it everyday astronaut and there's some incredible

videos on it so what was the what was the some of the challenges and the struggles in the early

days definitely like at first you're not going to find your own voice and i know like even you

know jimmy talked to you about that like how your first video is going to suck you don't you're not

going to be yourself you're going to be nervous you're going to be not going to know the tone the

pace the the things that are interesting and actually originally i i had constraints i was

really worried about making a short video because i thought there's no way anyone's going to watch

a three minute video and then a seven minute video and pretty quickly i realized like youtube as a

whole was kind of changing but also there's always that historic backbone of like 22 minutes of

programming for a 30 minute spot on tv like no one goes over 22 or 44 minutes you know if you have

the full hour special or whatever like that is the absolute limit of what a human being can watch

you know basically is what i thought yeah and slowly i just kept playing and getting longer

and and actually more and more in depth into the topics and instead of getting like pushback you

know and being like this is so boring i realized as long as it's like as i was walking people through

the whole step a lot you know giving them all the context they need they're happy to get as deep

into the weeds as i can get them and so that just kind of fed the the snowball just kept rolling

and i'm like all right and you know before you know what i'm making hour long videos like an hour

long is is more or less a normal length on my channel for a for a produced video and they're

really really in depth but i love like that process of trying to preemptively kind of guess

what the questions might be and and you know part of that is like we do like script read throughs with

like our supporters and do like cuts of videos and people a decent amount of people see it before

it goes public and i would get those questions out of the way you know we get those people asking

the questions and then i love nothing more than trying to you know get all those questions answered

by the end of the video a question about being a creator on youtube that could be a challenging

psychological aspect to it which is like you might invest a huge amount of your effort into a thing and

it doesn't receive much attention at all and you know there's something about youtube and in general

social media that makes you feel really crappy about that if you let it if you really look at

the numbers it's very very difficult not to pay attention to that i mean that's the reason why

i turn off numbers on my um on my interface for stuff that i've created because i just see it

having a negative effect on your mind but even then you still it still has an effect uh that

mean your uh your epic video on the the history of soviet rockets comes to mind and we'll talk

about that in a second but uh it's called people should check it out uh the entire soviet rocket

engine family tree so that's something you've researched for two years yeah right you put

your heart and soul into it there's a lot of passion there's a lot there's a long journey it's

and i think about like an hour and a half video um is there like uh is there challenges is there like

how difficult is that to put so much of yourself into a video and it maybe not do so well yeah that

that's the that's the struggle for sure honestly especially as like as we grow i i try to make

better and better videos which means hiring more and more people to do you know higher end animations

and spend more time editing and shooting and scripting and just but at the end of the day like

it still can't be just losing money and i have videos that definitely lose a lot of money because i

you know hire 3d artists and stuff and um and i was so certain the the soviet rocket engine video

i thought was just purely going to be a passion project i did i honestly was like if it ever crosses

a million i it's a home run because i had to do across like a couple million i think it's a

a little over two which is insane to me like i just really thought this was more something just to

put on the shelf as a resource almost for myself you know like just to kind of have that knowledge

bank and something i've always wanted to straighten out in my own head and and kind of know the

history a little bit better but come to find out like it took a while you know it was a slow

turn well that's i remember when i when you first released it and that's when i watched it i remember

like this has so few views yeah i remember being just sad like i was like sad about the state of

the world because i know how much love you put into it how like how much i don't know i to me for

some reason that somehow would directly connect to huge views but see you know what made me sad is

like if you use a different thumbnail or a different title that could affect the popularity i know

and then i just could imagine the torment you're going through what if i use the different thumbnail

i it's that jimmy uh the mr beast yeah torment like just a slightly different title uh or slightly

different could change everything i have videos ironically the last like i don't know five videos

i've produced are horribly flopping like some of my worst videos have ever made statistically the

the interesting one is like the you summarize incredible video you summarizing that people should

go watch about all the the awards video for 2022 like all the cool stuff that happened 2022

i remember that not being that popular there's a few ones recently that are not that popular

like writing a fighter jet i thought i thought that was gonna be easy like one or two million

i don't know if i've paid the flights off to go there you know what i mean like in that video it

makes no sense and frankly here's here's at the end of the day yeah i i realized like i have

lately especially the last like a year or two kind of disconnected from the that aspect of it i'm

super fortunate i have very generous like patreon support and people that can help me sustain to

produce people people go support supports him on patreon well it's that but as you know as a creator

like that is what keeps the lights on it and makes it so it you know i can go this deep like if i

didn't have that if i had to rely solely on like youtube ad revenue i mean i would just

they'd be super different videos i wouldn't spend as much time researching because i just

you know they just be more glossed over it's like a hurry to turn them out so i can keep the machine

going and i have this incredible freedom to really dive into a topic like a video that

i've been working on now for almost three months is how to start a rocket engine and let me tell you

it's not as easy as one might think or i guess as it is as difficult as you might think i mean it's

it's an insane topic and what do you mean by starting me like the ignition yeah like how do

you physically get them running you know like there's all these you know the valves and the

if the turbine the turbine you know that we were talking about earlier like that has to run on the

pumps but it itself is powering the pumps so how do you get that like chicken and egg how do you get

that thing started you know there's tons of it's so cool there's so many ways and so for me you know

that required reading a lot and talking to people that know a lot more than me and just really trying

to make sure i understand enough of it to explain it and try to weave a narrative you know and so

that video is three months in the making we're still probably another two or three weeks out

and it's i don't expect i mean i think this one will do relatively well you know but in the grand

scheme of youtube like still child's play you know but i'm okay and i'm okay with that i've

i'm at that point actually where i am okay with that it still stings and i'm more worried about

just like can i continue to do it at this quality and at this level if it's losing money you know

what i mean so it's there is a trade-off and i am kind of having to navigate that but but but you

have it's sort of the depth of the impact you have is um is a is a thing that youtube can't

give you numbers on but it's a really important thing to sort of remember that it's really

not just about the youtube numbers or it's for for people like you they're basically educating

and revealing the brilliance in a technology that will make humans a multi-planetary species

and give hope to millions of young minds that will build that future i mean that's immeasurable

that's not just the views but you know it's um that's really important to sort of remember

as you're creating it that's something i i i i try to think about as well so like views um

yeah and that and that becomes more don't matter i realize that more and more like every day you

know the more the channel matures the more i realize the importance of it as an overall mission

as opposed to like you know in the first year or two it's a rat race of growth and of popularity

and all that kind of stuff you know and you feel that you feel that it's a driving force these days

not so much just because that will wear you out very quickly so back to the soviet rocket

the epic video probably the most epically researched video you've done i mean it's like is it

it's true it's truly an epic video uh so what uh again called the entire soviet rocket engine family

tree took you two years to research what are some fascinating things you've learned about the history

of rocket engines in the soviet union and in general um through a process of making that video

the the coolest thing to me is how it's this weird blend for the soviet union went through a

an insane iteration process and made so many engines like i didn't even touch you know any

like maneuvering thrusters or missile engines like i only really dealt with main propulsion engines

on orbital rockets and there's still way too many to talk about i mean it's still dozens and dozens

of engines and i i could have gone deeper into this which is hilarious um they iterated so much

made a new engine for just at the drop of a hat yet they still also like did super primitive things

you know they they physically are still today lighting the main combustion chambers of the

soya's engines of the rd107 and rd108 with essentially matchsticks like they literally stick

a t-shaped thing up into the chamber and have a pyrotechnic in it that ignites the actual

propellants in the combustion chamber it's not the most elegant solution in the world yeah they're

still using that so they went from like the whole spectrum of like it's a the mixture of like make

it better faster harder stronger gooder all the way around to also if it ain't broke don't fix it

it's like it employs all of the above so it's like it's uh a lot of innovation but also they

use duct tape so it's like all of it together yes uh-huh that's exactly like that's exactly the

way to put it and and they did things that are insane they developed a full flow stage combustion

cycle engine this engine had it been used i mean it would have put the f it was same relative size

as the f1 engine on the Saturn 5 like in that same category way up there of like you know 6.7

like mega newtons of thrust or something around and then the f1 is like seven or something it's

it's huge yet way more complicated way more efficient way just better engine in that sense

as far as far as performance goes yet it never flew it never left the stand you know they they

never built the rocket around it the n1 which was the you know the most powerful rocket to a

flown so far to date um like it never made it through its first stage burn all four attempts

failed spectacularly and yet it had so much technology on it that was still unrivaled today

almost like finally now we're beating it the nk33's that they developed for that rocket like finally

today were to the point of like having better engines than they built in the 60s yeah what

stands out to you uh from the n1 family of rocket engines well it's interesting because the n1

was the kudsnetsov design bureau and he was actually an aircraft manufacturer so he was

one of the first people outside of kind of the the missile and rocket program you know he had all

these other uh big wigs kind of in the other okb's that were developing missiles and rockets and

then all of a sudden here comes uh nick like kudsnetsov who um had never developed a rocket

engine and so his first attempt at a rocket engines was the nk series nk15 and k33 and

they were amazing they were brilliant they were these wonderful closed cycle oxygen rich engines

um that were that were awesome they were awesome engines and that were you know because i love

that because he his direct um boss he since he wasn't necessarily in the in the aerospace you know

in the i guess the rocket missile defense world um he didn't have to uh at the fall of the soviet

union he didn't have to give away all of his things to the same people as the other people

so he hid you know like 80 of his engines in a hangar and uh and then we still literally used

them in the united states we used all together i think it was like eight or ten of them um repurposed

them as they're called aj26 is in the united states but like we still were flying soviet

rocket engines in the 2000s because they were better than engines we are building today like

that's to me that's my favorite fact about the n1 rocket engines that they're still that good

that that there were the the best choice for at the time um orbital sciences some of the culture

that uh engineering has led to these things that still work it's incredible yeah um you said that

the rd won't so anyone is one of the coolest engines ever made why is that yeah so one of the

fun things about the soviet engines is it'll look like a lot of their engines look like multiple

engines because you see multiple nozzles you see multiple combustion chambers and you'd think

well obviously you know the nozzle is the engine right but what they actually would do the real the

real heart and the real power of the rocket engine actually comes from the turbo pumps comes from the

pumps themselves and you know as we talked about earlier that that includes the turbine and the

in the actual um pumps that flow the propellant into the into the chambers and so the soviet union

was incredible at developing these closed cycle high powered turbo pumps but if you try to scale

the combustion chamber too big um you end up with what's called um combustion instability

you're you're having you have such a large surface area of crazy flames you know and and combustion

happening they can get these weird pockets and oscillations and frequencies and and they just

couldn't make big combustion chambers they never figured it out they never quite well they they did

actually kind of figured out but they they didn't like it so they ended up just shrinking down and

having small combustion chambers and just sending splitting the pipes basically instead of one fuel

pump going into one pipe going into one combustion chamber and one oxidizer pipe pipe going into one

combustion chamber they'd split it off into two or four engine into two or four combustion chambers

and kind of spread that work around so they didn't experience this combustion instability

so the rd 171 is like still to date the most powerful rocket engine ever built the turbo pump

is insane i don't even remember how many you know like 200 000 horsepower or something comes out of

that turbo pump in order to flow the amount of propellant necessary at those rates and at those

pressures into the combustion chamber so it has four chambers and it's just it's just an absolute

marvel of engineering and yeah and then the cool thing too is specifically the rd 171 it's engine

engine all four of those nozzles can actually pivot and and rotate and i just now as i'm explaining

this realized that has to mean that they have joints like flexible joints in the high pressure

pump lines in order to like i never i'm this is the realization i'm having right now because

normally you put the gimbal above the turbo pump like the the mount where the engine swivels

so that you have low pressure coming from the tanks into the pumps and then you just have a

straight you know fixed pipe flowing into the engine so you don't have to bend that pipe and

have it be dynamic if they had the four chambers moving independently from each other that means

those four chambers all had to have a flexible high pressure pipe going which i don't even i don't

know if that's uh why am i just now realizing this yeah so there's engineering challenges with that

insane i i never even thought that was a thing you would ever could do honestly i would i got

to look into why and how and what yeah i wonder why that the design decision was made so the easier

thing to do normally is you would keep those nozzles fixed and then a fixed like say the the

soju's engine the rd 107 and 108 they have a fixed main combustion chambers and they and they use

these little vernier or some people got mad at me for saying vernier and verner engines that

swivel themselves and those provide your your control authority so that the main chambers

stay fixed and then you get your your role in your pitch in your yacht of auxiliary thrusters

by the way did did you get anything wrong in that video that people told you about yeah i have a

few things yep um first off we had a graphic error where we actually were you know we copied

and pasted a lot of our like after effects projects so our nuclear engines one of them

on screen says that it runs on rp1 it does not has basically all the wrong stats we just didn't

catch it in the edit you know that we literally copy and paste it and i say it right on screen but the

like and the voiceover but on screen it's wrong the other thing and i'm excited to ask you about

this uh i watched and i spoke with a lot of russian speaking individuals we had a lot of

research assistants that were reading and blah blah i tried really hard to learn how to pronounce

surgey korelios name and i'm still gonna say it wrong no matter what but i my understanding

yes and from listening to native speakers is closer to koreliov than it is korelev

yeah definitely surgey koreliov see i i will never say it that perfectly but i i know it's

not just korelev i mean again the the the english translation of it likely i should have just said

korelev and said i'm saying it the dumb america way but but you're old you are comrade

excellent so uh well let me just ask you in a difference in in the culture because you've

researched so many rockets from so many different eras the seven five and just everything you're

seeing now are there some interesting differences especially when you look at the space race between

the soviet rocket engineers and efforts versus the american

the others i mean there's definitely huge huge cultural changes and the fun thing is that they

kind of spawned from the same they have the same starting place both you know the soviet

rocket engines and americans all came from the nazi v2 rocket and the a4 engine literally

physically spawned from that because at the fall of you know at the end of world war two

we took a handful of german scientists and the soviets took a handful of german scientists

and they both got their own a little bit some blueprints here and there and the others got

some blueprints so we literally have the same it's a weird thing where we're starting from the same

like thing and letting two uh two divergent you know divergent paths go crazy on their own

development so it's really fun to see the cultural differences one of the things the united states did

is they really would kind of take an engine and and just perfect it more or less and then

and not really evolve that much like they they i don't know and i don't know why i

actually need to do a history lesson on all of the us engines but it's literally like as far as

orbital class engines before now i mean it's like a dozen or two you know it's it's it's a tenth the

amount of the soviets and the soviets just literally made up a new engine every time they had a new

like they wouldn't uh and it was like a completely different engine yeah so i just yeah i wonder if

there's some aspect to the culture i don't want to overstate it but uh there is more of a safety

culture i think in the united states and i think if you care about safety or rather like you have

you're more risk averse yeah so you care about safety more about the value of human life and the

risk taken there that you will iterate less so yeah i think the soviets especially in the early

aspects of the program i don't want to overstate this is some of it is just through stories you

just hear anecdotes there are more willing to take risks yeah risk with human life risks with

spacecraft for example the first orbital space flights from the soviet union the the cosmonaut

had to eject out of the capsule and parachute to a landing yes that's not very well like known

and it wasn't they were hid that even from history is as best they could at first because they were

slightly ashamed that they couldn't have a full recovery system with their spacecraft

they could physically recover it but they wouldn't have been able to recover the cosmonaut in one

piece so instead they had them just eject out of the thing and parachute to safety like that's

insane and so there definitely was some some extra risks and but also a freedom to just like

push things to the limits and try everything you know they threw all the spaghetti on the wall

that's funny that most people probably don't even know the first person in the space in america

and obviously everybody knows that in the it's it's like it's it's kind of interesting how the

space race and even world war two even like the history books you ask most americans they think

that america won world war two like without america like they the the real heroes of world

war two is america yes british people they say and everybody has a pretty good justification

like without britain without churcho their hitler would have taken over the world and

i think probably the strongest case is the soviet union case that they're the ones that won the war

the reason it's the strongest case is where most of the fighting happened right most of the death

happened most of like most of the destruction but everyone has their perspective and certainly on

the space race you know the great accomplishment is the first man on the moon from the u.s perspective

yeah i was gonna say and then uriga garen and from the russian perspective first man in space

and that i think still persists and some of that in healthy forms is probably constructive to a

little bit of competition this pushes all the all the great scientists on each side but anyway what

do you think about this uh uriga garen mission of the first human in space and the vastok mission

in 1961 just in general when you when you look back at that time leading to the the the first

man on the moon yeah april 12th 1961 erie's night baby that's uh yeah it's it's insane what's insane

to me is is the first person in space didn't just go to space he went into orbit you know

uriga garen flew around the earth in orbit and re-entered that's a monumental task compared

to suborbital so the united states did um two suborbital flights in that same year i believe

in that same year at least i'm pretty sure in 1961 they flew for the first time orbitally in 1962

they weren't terribly far behind to get a human into orbit like in the grand scheme of things you

know 10 months difference but at the same time like the fact that soviet union just went straight

to flying someone into orbit is monumental and i'm sure they did not do excessive uh rigorous

testing here because there is a space race and you have the first is important just imagine being

urie what do you say when they're like launching them like let's go or something like uh i mean

you're taking uh we're talking about you being a starship like you're taking a pretty big risk

being launched out into orbit oh hopefully a lot less risk than what urie went through

so urie's urie the crazy thing remember those matchsticks we talked about you know there's

there's 20 main combustion chambers on soyuz and there's four and hit 12 more vernier engines

that all need to be lit so you're right at you're sitting on top of this this booster

and they light all of those 32 combustion chambers on the ground and then it has this insane

separation process between what the soviet union would call the first stage and the second stages

but we would call it like the core stage and the boosters they all four these boosters have to

peel away perfectly from the core stage simultaneously you know if one of them sticks on mission

failed if one of them doesn't eject properly and drags into the other tank you know you're

it's it's it's a goner so the the staging process of of the soyuz is is insane to me that that

that ended up working out i it's just the the technology in soyuz and i mean more or less

that same rocket is what's still flying humans that are cosmonauts from you know rostcosmos and

going to the international space station are flying on a variant of that soya's rocket still

today it's still like that big of a workhorse what do you think about rostcosmos as it stands

today uh its history and its future in comparison to nasa and other national efforts and in

comparison to commercial space like yeah i mean utmost respect for the engineers involved and

you know everything that's happened i think uh energon mosh is like still some of the one of

the greatest engine manufacturers when they have the funding to do so but man it seems like they're

they're falling from grace as far as uh space prowess you know the rostcosmos went from

having i think they got very comfortable at the top of you know from 2011 until

2000 until 2022 or until 2020 they were the only ride of the international space station

since then like it started i feel like in 2018 honestly i think that's kind of one things

that's the first time i specifically remember a pretty nasty like thing happened in 2018 i think

it was uh a soya's mission to the international space station had one of the boosters not the

tach and had to have an abort but you know that that happened then all of a sudden next thing you

know there is a progress being docked to the iss a couple years ago that spun the iss cartwheeled

the iss out of control followed a few months later the pierce module docks the international

space station spirals the international space station out of control again with like a thruster

getting fixed on there was a hole in in as a russian segment uh there's well i think the most

recent one right now there's a soya's dock to the iss that has a puncture in it and it's leaking

coolant and will not be returning humans on it so they're actually having to fly up an uncrewed

soya's um and that one likely wasn't a manufacturing error it probably was like a micrometeorite

puncture rendering spacecraft unusable we don't know for sure yet um but it's just really been

like this fall from grace where where they have they have all the potential they have some of the

best engines some of the the best rockets and especially like right before the collapse of

the soviet union the the brawn shuttle and the inergia rocket were incredible had they been

able to evolve that into brawn too and the reusable inergia they had a fully reusable

inergia on the drawing board and like i honestly fully think they could have done it

as a possible to return to a place where there is friendly competition between nations that ultimately

unites and inspires the peoples of these different worlds these very different worlds

that have especially recently uh come to conflict over the over the war in Ukraine

the tension builds uh the war the conflict the suffering is actually creating more and more

division creating more and more hate i think as we've talked about i think science and engineering

and especially the most epic version of engineering which is uh rocketry and space travel unites people

the unites people even in a time of tension conflict and war so do you have a hope that

we can return to that place i think historically spaceflight has been one of the most bonding

things you know we look at we have countless examples of you know cold war enemies coming

together and working together lending a hand um apollo 13 for example of course you know there

is the potential that who knew where it was going to re-enter since it was not in the plane

trajectory at all for re-entry and the soviet union said hey wherever you know wherever they

landed like we'll help you guys out basically you know and that was a pretty big thing at the time

obviously um we also in 1975 saw the apollo soyu's mission which was an apollo spacecraft docking

with the soyu's spacecraft the first time there's international collaboration and again 1975 still

very amidst the cold war yet we have this collaboration um that i don't know what else

could have done that you know i mean and think about what it actually takes to do that you have

to come up with a a docking module that is you know like that takes the two different air

environments and the two different docking systems and talk to the engineers and mission

planners and figure out you know trained together the the cosmonauts and the astronauts trained

together and got to know each other they were crossing boundaries and borders and coming together

for this mission and even if it was totally a fluff piece like even if it was totally this like

you know cynical you know just trying to make a pretty face for everybody even for the for the

cameras or something obviously it still had an impact yeah the symbolic impact but there's also

the practical impact i mean a lot of people have to work together yes and that and that has a ripple

effect on the culture on the different engineers uh yeah 100 and even just the the astronauts and

the cosmonauts involved like think about what what probably went through their heads during this

process of like going from oh my god i'm gonna have to work with them to getting to know them

and then sharing meals in space like that's a crazy transformation of timelines and i would

love to i i i do think that spaceflight has the the ability to bond us in unites because it is

ultimately you know this little tiny little planet we're floating around on you know it's the only

it is the boundary that we all share you know you only can it only takes you getting off this

planet to realize oh my god we're all neighbors we're all living in the same house together and

i i do think ultimately you know as we continue to uh expand our horizons and expand our exploration

that it has the potential to to unite us more than than it has the potential to divide us

so one of the potential conflicts of the 21st century that i think everyone wants to avoid

both in the cyberspace and in the hot war space cold war hot war all kinds of war all kinds of

economic conflict this was between the united states and china so china is going full steam ahead

in developing a space program doing a lot of incredible work like you mentioned 64 launches

in 2022 uh with two failures but you know moving straight ahead uh and by the way the failures

we had a lot of startups like a lot of the launches were from brand new companies so

to have two failures out of 64 i mean that's still an impressive if you look at operational

launches it was flawless do you see a pathway where there's again in that same way collaboration

or friendly competition between all the different uh companies and nations of the united states and

china in the in the next as we push towards the moon uh mars and beyond i held a dumb hope that

china would actually be allowed to sign on to the Artemis accord to be able to take part in

this next step towards the moon i'm just imagine if like if they provided a you know a propulsion

module or a land or something and we actually came together to land on the moon instead of

having another space race you know it's like it would have been so cool and yeah i still am hopeful

that similar to to back in the cold war that we might have something like that someday where we

actually are collaborating and it feels like sometimes we're really close to that and other

times it feels like we're really far from that and it just sucks because i know and you know

i try really hard on my channel to to always separate and celebrate the work being done

you know because at the end of the day there's someone that's just going home to their family

clocking an hour is working really hard on on pushing their program and and doing engineering

work you know and it's uh we don't get to choose where we're born and what we're born into um so

i i really like to avoid you know the the political aspects of things and the geopolitical aspects

and just appreciate the science and the the science we're seeing and the the progress that

china is doing in the last 10 years is is very akin to the you know early spaceflight programs and

and with the runway of like just going keep on going like i see no reason for them to be slowing

down so it's it's definitely something to watch and and be interested in and who knows i mean

they're really genuinely might be erased to the moon again and they're really genuinely might be

erased to mars the part of me is excited about that because a race is is pretty cool yeah it's

but hopefully it's friendly competition and some collaboration it is true that maybe i'm being a

bit cynical but nations sometimes the governments and leaders of those governments sometimes ruin

things like you don't often have like statistically speaking it's harder to have a leader of a nation

that looks beyond the political the particular political bickering of that nation and you have

like a jfk type character that really steps up and inspires i think statistically speaking is

better to have somebody like elon who's a leader of a company a commercial effort that is able to

look beyond the borders of nations and certainly inspiring educators like yourself to look beyond

the borders of those nations and the geopolitical conflicts and so on to to inspire the to inspire

people i think that's just made so much easier like you can have more reach tim tim god can have

more reach than nasa right like in terms of inspiring the world and that's fascinating

like that that gives power to the individuals that see past the this the silly short term

geopolitical conflicts yeah that's the whole police yeah yeah do you worry that there might be a war

in space yeah let's let's let's let's look out into the future so forget so the interesting

thing about these rockets right let's not forget rockets do what rockets do that they can carry

payloads that can be weapons do you worry about this i worry most about space wars as

leading to the kessler syndrome of having a cascading effect of like a spacecraft blowing up

and then affecting another spacecraft and that blows up and then all of a sudden you're trapped

and have this debris cloud that we can't you know go we can't go into space anymore like that's my

biggest because frankly at this point we we could annihilate ourselves with terrestrial

stuff anyway you know what i mean we don't need space to to to end society as we know it you

know what i mean um but we do we could really and the the good thing is i think everyone well

mostly everyone seems to understand this for the most part that like we really can't be risking

blowing up stuff in space in low earth orbit because it could easily like we could strain

ourselves from space assets for 50 years if oh can you elaborate on this so like what is the

danger of the debris there that uh could jeopardize yeah so space so for instance and there's only a

couple years ago russia did a an anti satellite test on a on an orbital there's a we've done this

through the us has done this like i'm not painting it on them but we kind of know nowadays like don't

do anti satellite tests on orbital things because those things stay in orbit you know when you blow

something up in space it's not like you know people think you know when in space like oh you

throw a something it's just going to keep going forever and ever and ever yeah i mean that's in

the in the sense that it's not going to be slowed down due to you know due to air resistance it's

going to continue to do that but it's staying in orbit around the earth like you just slightly

change the orbit of it around earth when you throw a ball or something you know so the scary thing is

when you blow up a satellite all those pieces of that satellite are now millions of bullets

in a halo around the earth in a very specific halo you know so some things get blown up uh

faster you know uh and according to its orbit faster so they'll go a little bit higher elliptically

some things will get slowed down in that explosion and actually re-enter some things will go sideways

and change its inclination of that orbit so you have this debris field but it more or less becomes

a band of like no no you know like a big scary sharp scary bullets that can destroy another

spacecraft and so then all of a sudden especially now starlink you know we're talking about thousands

and thousands and thousands of satellites in space if all of a sudden one you know a couple of them

crash and and you know blow up and obviously you have all the shrapnel going everywhere and then

that hits another satellite that creates shrapnel well you can literally blanket our entire lower

orbit in 17 500 mile an hour bullets you know we're talking that the the the connect the

kinetic energy in this is so hard for people to fathom because that you know that's over 10 times

faster than most like rifle bullets and even like a big 50 cal is not going to be you know

we're still talking about about 10 percent that so you think about the kinetic energy

it's insane so a fleck of paint can go through panes of glass at that velocity you know a little

piece of metal can puncture you know blow straight through so like so our actions that seem small

so small-scale military actions can have can have dire detrimental effects to the whole

space program like global space program oh yeah it can affect everything in everyone

including the like including satellites oh yeah especially satellites like that's

the one I mean the the good and the bad thing is the good thing is a lot of satellites don't

operate in low earth orbit like a lot of the the ones that we use day to day a lot of them are

in medium earth orbit like their gps or their geostationary which are way way way out there

and because of that they they won't really ever deorbit or like it'll take you know millennia

to deorbit because you know just because something's in space doesn't mean it's there forever especially

like in low earth orbit the atmosphere doesn't just suddenly stop it's not like you hit the

karmic line 100 kilometers and also there's zero atmosphere the atmosphere just slowly tapers you

know you can experience that yourself as you climb a mountain you slowly realize just less

and less air you just keep going and just because you're in space 200 300 kilometers up

there still trace molecules you know there's the occasional oxygen molecule there's the

occasional nitrogen molecule and so that is actually drag so as a spacecraft in low earth orbit

depending on its altitude will take anywhere from five years to five months to deorbit you know or

two months or one month like depending on its orbit or its altitude will have some parasitic

drag still and slowly throughout time slow down which lowers its orbit which drags it down more

lowers its orbit and etc etc until it reenters so if we end up with uh some kind of catastrophic

event where the entire low earth orbit is you know has been inundated and blown up it'll take

months for the first band you know to clear up it'll take years for something like beyond there's

charts you know people have all this stuff available you shouldn't look at that terrifying by the way

but this is really the but again the caveat is for the most part the low earth orbit stuff

would clear up within years so we could get back to doing some lower earth like starlink stuff would

probably be able to be re and you know we could kind of redo it and build up from the ground up

again gps wouldn't be wiped out and our geostationary satellites wouldn't be wiped out but the scary

thing is we wouldn't be able to relaunch and replace new things because we're stuck we we're

not going to fly through that debris field you know and we avoid that by avoiding military actions

in space and these days like there's more and more uh requirements and legislation and especially

trying to get international collaboration on having end-of-life plans for satellites so that

satellites especially those in low earth orbit have like drag devices to increase them once they're

done they literally pull like even just a ribbon like a silly little like you know 40 foot long

ribbon will sit there and it'll slowly it or it can speed up its reentry process by months or years

or whatever so we're starting to see that this is now an importance there's a really cool company

called stoke aerospace out in washington is one of these launch providers providers that's really

looking not into just trying to be the next you know SpaceX launch company they're really seeing

satellite uh bringing stuff down from space is actually being especially right now we have all

of these hundreds and thousands of satellites being launched every year someone at some point

is probably gonna have to do some cleanup and so they're looking at at being one of those companies

to do that well what do you think about starlink and the efforts of starlink to put a very large

number of satellites out there and provide internet access to uh to anyone to anyone generally i think

starlink is phenomenal and i would be saying this if it was any company i want to make that clear

that people think i'm just some you know SpaceX fanboy or something and anything they do is perfect

i think i think as your fan i could say you're basically a fan a fanboy or just a fan of everybody

that's doing space though and i don't like there's no even in this whole conversation there's no way

we cover like 10 percent of what i wanted to talk to you about so we're jumping around i mean there's

we could talk probably for now an hour about Artemis uh we could we could talk about anything

with ULA obviously the all the other all the other commercial efforts we could talk about the

nasa efforts that you know the i mean yeah and satified like are we gonna really go with this

conversation i thought about satify and we might okay so like anyway starling fan of everything

starlink is in general exciting to you and not for the space assets but just the potential

for humanity like i i really think even as a consumer of the internet personally our studio

space down in texas we're stuck with with media comm which has like the least reliable internet

service period that's the only option either that or they're trying to charge me like $20,000

to run a fiber optic cable like a thousand meters or something like it's it's insane i'm not going

to do that i bought starlink it helps but it's still not you know amazing but it has you can see

where this is going in a year or two three five years they're like oh i can totally screw this

other internet provider and this is now by far the best option and it's available literally

anywhere you don't have to be limited to your internet local internet service provider um

and and on the global scale of course you have you know people be able to learn and learn about

rockets learn about uh water management and architecture and city planning and fitness

and health all of the all of the modern conveniences that we google every single day there's people

that don't have access to that right now you know i i'm a self-taught rocket nerd i would not be

who i am if it wasn't for the internet in the last seven years you know six seven years so unlocking

the intellectual potential of places like africa of rural areas that don't currently have internet

access um that's a genuine that's a huge thing that's like humanitarian 101 is give people access

to information and you like you know i think we have this uh potential to try to step in and

fix other people's problems but the reality is like people are smart no matter where you are

you give them the resources to learn they're going to solve problems they're going to problem

solve they're going to engineer they're going to but if you don't give them access to that

information they're going to be stuck in there in their cycles you know and so i i think the

potential for starlink is incredible i think it's already impactful it's already affecting

people in you know in rural and indigenous areas and it's already affecting businesses and all that

stuff i think it's great i think it is you know there's some downsides with astronomy with with

ground-based astronomy that it can hinder observations from the ground um there's already a lot of

communications between space x and um astronomical societies and things like that because it is a

real concern you know it's it can ruin observations it can ruin data um but like one of the big ones

for instance recently i think a new thing they're going to be working into is that currently if a

starlink is flying over um over a ground-based asset a lot of a lot of ground telescopes actually

have a laser that goes up and it measures the atmospheric distortion and the telescopes literally

sit there and like by the millisecond fixes like changes the focus and fixes those atmospheric

distortions and that laser um can interfere with satellites so previously i i'm pretty sure

that space x actually had to you know request that as they're flying over these satellites they

are these telescopes they turn off the laser and when you have tens of thousands of these

things flying it's you're going to be turning off the laser more than it's on you know and just

being this insanely inconvenient thing because you're gonna have these junctions happen often

and i think one of the things to space x is like okay no no you guys keep the laser on we'll deal

with your laser um good good step you know things like that mitigating the brightness of them so

they're not visible uh under most conditions of course like they're still always going to be visible

in some um but then ultimately for me it's like this you have this weird like almost like a puberty

of space flight and and astronomy where currently it's not cheap enough to really do a ton of

incredible science or space-based telescopes you know we have web we have Hubble we have uh you

know all these other you know awesome space-based telescopes um chandra you know all etc etc whatever

and you uh but it's still so expensive to launch them yeah that we're still so reliant on our ground

telescopes but in the future you can see a world where oh this is so cheap we'll just launch like

we can launch 50 james web space telescope size telescopes this year for half the price of doing

it on earth you know and get way better data so in the future i think in 20 30 years we'll look at it

and be like oh man that was an awkward time where space assets were interfering with astronomy

but i think in the future it's like can you imagine doing space you know astronomy from the ground

that's insane you know there could be complexities to just having that many uh just another topic so

another complexity is associated with having so many satellites especially with competing companies

and competing nations do you see that as an issue having tens of thousands hundreds of thousands

satellites yeah it becomes a very interesting robotics a collision avoidance problem the the

one thing to keep in mind is perspective like i know 10 000 satellites and 20 000 and 100 000

satellites sounds insane and it sounds really scary but i mean just even look at how many planes

are in the air at any given time and the planes are bigger they're flying slower which actually

means there's a greater chance of collision if you think about you know two objects occupying space

if they're one's moving really fast like imagine trying to you know throw two basketballs at each

other relatively easy now try shooting two bullets at each other and have like you know at 90 degrees

from each other you have to have your timing down like really perfect to do that now take that times

10 you know and these objects are taking up a physical space very small amount of time they're

relatively small like most satellites are not very big and they have in limitless altitudes to deal

with so even though you can have what look like convergences you know they can be 10 20 50 100

kilometers difference often and and you know they're dealing with this like all the the all

space assets know hey i'm at this orbital plane and this blah blah blah and they know their altitudes

and know their safe distances and have these margins built in and it's space so there's

like an insane amount of room you know so there's there's a lot of margin there's a lot of margin

but of course you can't excuse that all the way like you have to still have plans and and be

considering that and considering collisions and considering all of the above

when do you think the first human being will step foot on mars

you don't like timelines but is this something and you're very much focused on

kind of the short term of incredible progress that's happening and it makes the whole sense

but there is the mars plan that that was it the origin of the commercial space flight efforts

do you still see and dream about that day let me be clear that i don't want to go to mars

but i do think if you're if you're making me guess a timeline for when humans will walk on mars

i even a year ago i still would have said by the end of 2020 like the 2020s decade you know

so by december 31st 2029 i thought humans would have walked on mars i'm starting to think

that's still too optimistic but i do i i definitely think by 2040 like i i for sure

think that i and i really think it's it's just hard to predict that curve you know that that

project out that curve we're going to go from feeling like it's impossible like it's feeling

like it's enough you know it could be another by the end of this decade jfk type moment especially

if china steps up with the space race yeah it could be like uh all right nasa nasa kind of says

all right this elon fella like really make this a gigantic effort well and if starship works out as

planned and as as nasa has invested in human landing system they're relying on spacex to land on the

moon spacex can land on the moon they can land on mars now whether or not the life support and the

human considerations of of long term spaceflight missions and high radiation and blah blah blah

refueling on mars is a huge huge huge deal they definitely could send a starship to mars um and

land ideally land in one piece on mars as soon as they can land on the moon they can land on mars

basically i mean those two things are very so in some ways mars is almost easier if you can use

because you can use the atmosphere to slow down it actually doesn't take that much more

delta v to actually land on mars than it does because on the moon you don't have any yet you

have to first get out to the moon then orbit the moon you know you have to slow down every one of

those is a maneuver change then you have to slow re-orbit until it coincides you know hits the

moon and then if it's slow down enough to not explode when you hit the moon so there's a lot

of delta v there a lot of change in velocity um mars is is actually by the time you kind of crunched

the numbers it's it's relatively similar it's just a lot more difficult like timeline wise and

you know accuracy and all of these other communication you know there's a lot of other

things obviously involved i'm glossing over making it sound easy it's not but um but you know i think

if i think there's a real decent chance we could see a starship vehicle land on mars

uh uncrewed by the end of the decade though end of the decade i mean there's also a sociological

element maybe a political one where i think you're allowed to take more risks with mars than you are

with the moon because we've done the moon 1969 yeah it's been a while so pr wise you have to be

much safer yeah with mars like everyone's like it's super dangerous like super like so you could

take a little more risk 100 especially with uh with man missions but actually just uh going back

to the moon landing apollo 11 mission we haven't talked about this yet what's the the the amazing

engine there but it again the romantic question and you look back at that moon landing um one small

step for man one giant step for mankind uh what do you think about that moment in human history

do you do you go back to that often or are you focused just like with the cars on the on the

engines no no i i i still when i need inspiration i rewatched this documentary called um when we

left earth i think it was like a i think it was discovery channel did it six part episode uh it

it was narrated by gary sinise phenomenal overview of the space race and that will get my juices

flowing every time every time just it's so well done and it's it really just summarizes that program

so well and when i and beyond it goes all the way to the space shuttle but um yeah when i when i

watch footage of humans walking on the moon it's just i can't believe we're done enough to do it

with the technology we had and the risks they took to do it and the insane engineering that it took

to do that is just absolutely astonishing the the amount of the sheer like logistics of what it

took to do it with the the technology we had back then is like how did we have so much money and

effort and energy and time and resources human resources to do this like it's just just the

weakness of the computers they had back then they had to do so much i mean yeah it's so much was so

little it's insane and but at the same time like i don't know if we want to talk about conspiracy

theories or anything but like it is all of like we have the proof in the pudding of like the 400

thousand people on payroll like all of the paperwork all of the oh you mean the the question the

conspiracy if we land on the moon yeah like well i mean i think the receipts are there like literally

we did but it's like a lot of things like that i mean we actually generally live in a in a pretty

cynical time where people distrust institutions part of the thing was the space program is one

of the things that can help reinvigorate the trust in institutions by institutions

even that word is a bad word now by institutions means a bunch of humans get together and do big

thing together yeah um yeah but you know like if i was conspiratorily minded it's like how the

hell did humans do that yeah so i i think that's a very cynical take unfortunately but it's still

an incredible one and also you know there's grow there's um until you look at the receipts there's

a kind of um like a rationale to that kind of conspiracy theory because so much pressure

was put on the space race the the pr of it yeah to be the winner so it makes sense that you might

want to try to take shortcuts and fake things and you know propaganda the you you know different

kinds of messaging and i'm sure stuff like that was happening some kind of like little you know

adjustment here and there to present things better and so on but ultimately the actual

engineering project of landing on the moon i the fact that humans did that i mean it is sad

that we didn't have better like ways to record it and as i watch like spacex efforts and blue

origin and these efforts it's still not trivial to record the um how just amazing awe inspiring

spaces because it like you know like it's like Elon jokes about like space does look fake yeah

like i think there is some element of it where you have to be there to experience it really

and i don't like i think it's an uns it's currently is still an unsolved problem of how do you

capture the awe of that i mean you're one of the early people that are part of the crew that is

exploring that very question i'm sure you won't find all the answers but you'll start to say like

how do we convert this into a visual format into some kind of format that captures the the magic

of it hundred percent and that's a perspective thing that i think about all the time you know

what i i'll i'll do a lot of thinking about like what is the thing that's reacting to people is

like the sound is it the perspective is it like seeing a little tiny human next to a landing

leg that makes people go oh my god this thing is huge you know just reading you know and digesting

that and trying to help to convey that as best as possible because the stuff that we are and

have worked on is is so cool it's so exciting and it's so it's so important and like actually

you know so much bigger than any one of us physically and metaphorically it's just so

it's just i wish everyone had that that experience and had that light bulb go off and that's the

cool thing that you're like smack in the middle of solving that really difficult and fascinating

problem of how how do you capture the magic how do you inspire like that's not just an engineer

problem that's a communication problem education i i find specifically for myself that i get most

excited about something when i learn a lot about it like when i learn the ins and the outs and i

learn all the little problem solving and the you know the cool like oh my god they had to do

what to make it work wow that's amazing and that's i try to just always go back to that

thing of like what can i teach myself like if i'm every video i i expect that i learn something

making it no matter what like no matter how much i think i know about something at the end of the

day if i'm not learning something it's not a good video you know and i always think that people get

excited when they learn and when they have some questions answered for them let me ask you a

couple of quick out there future is the questions i have to i'd hate myself if i don't ask you so

first let's talk about nuclear propulsion so out there interesting propulsion ideas uh so what do

you think beyond uh the chemical engines that we talked about what do you think about using nuclear

fission and maybe nuclear fusion for uh for propulsion we already have thermal nuclear

reactors uh there are nuclear engines that have been tested both by the united states and soviet

union that were 100 valid like totally ready to go efficient super awesome um yes yes yes

hardcore yes um and what what they're using is yeah basically a fusion reactor you're flowing

hydrogen through it and heating up the hydrogen taking it from liquid to gas you know and by

heating it up you're you're adding energy to the propellant and then you're literally just using that

now steam hot hydrogen and flowing it through a deal of el nozzle and you also have to use that

that energy to spin the pumps to still pump the thing so you're still kind of using like a lot

of the tricks you're using but instead of a chemical reaction you're literally just using

nuclear fission to heat up propellant and do the same thing and at the end of the day you end up

with like 800 to 900 seconds of specific impulse which is double that of chemical propulsion most

of that comes just because hydrogen's so light you're only emitting you're only ejecting hydrogen

out of the nozzle so the lighter molecule is the faster it you know just like if you had a

you know it's a golf ball versus like a bowling ball you can only physically throw one so fast

and the other one as a human you're not going to do very well with so you can just you get you have

the more potential for a higher exit velocity so nuclear thermal amazing you can just shoot these

little hydrogen molecules out crazy fast crazy efficiently we already have it like we can do it

yes yes yes and actually we're already reinvesting in that again as the united states is is looking

into basically ramping back up our nuclear propulsion why haven't we done it yet and

what do you think the challenges are there and do you think that's an obvious future like would

you see in 50 years we're not using like we're not for major projects like a starship type of

project we're not using chemical propulsion anymore for getting off earth you'll always want to use

chemical propulsion because the the gas would come irradiated like you don't you don't want to and

actually the thrust to weight ratio of these engines are relatively poor they're they're very

heavy they have a nuclear reactor like they're not they're really the reason we kind of give up on

them is they're really most useful for like interplanetary if you're trying to get a big like

if you're trying to send a huge payload off to mars nuclear thermal is amazing it's still could

be beneficial even going to the moon you know like in an earth moon system you could use

nuclear thermal very effectively it could be a great choice but it also that starts to get into

that trade of like we can just kind of use a little bit bigger rocket and and fly a normal you

know it's that whole trade thing but another reason why we kind of stopped using them the one

that the united states developed nerva was so heavy only a Saturn 5 could actually lift the

stage of it like the upper stage so replace the s4b with a nuclear thermal with the nerva engine

the soviet union developed one about one tenth the size and and thrust that was small enough to

fly on a proton rocket but neither of them ever flew both of them have been tested and like thumbs

up ready to go which is just a huge shame to me because they're they could unlock a lot of

interplanetary potential and yeah just all around us which potentially interstellar as well

not quite i don't think nuclear thermal not we're not quite getting there but then you get into

like nuclear pulse drives and things where you're literally like basically ejecting a bomb out the

back of your rocket and exploding and having like a shock absorber and pogo sticking your way out of

the solar system that that's i mean by all physics sure you know there's not nothing wrong with that

it's not breaking any laws of physics and you know i but i just don't see us getting to that need

anytime soon i don't think we're gonna just travel yeah i mean that's that's i think we're

gonna want a better understanding of physics and physics itself yeah i do you have a hope that maybe

theoretical physics will open the door to some exciting propulsion systems yeah i do i think

we're still at the very infancy of our understanding of everything and how things work and you know

a hundred years ago it would be stupid to try to predict the things we know today and

who knows like even you know i think about things like james web looking deeper into our solar system

than ever before and physically being able to see objects that we just have not even been able to

physically see before on being able to study black holes for example uh a better better the stuff

that's happening outside of black holes at the edges of black holes and how the information is

stored uh the hundred percent holographic principles just there's so much weirdness around

black holes yes around where gravity starts bending light it's like all right we'll get to look at that

now and start to wonder like what is going on and how can we like use that somehow for propulsion

i mean it seems like awfully crazy and futuristic at this moment but i think that's because we know

almost nothing about um you know that those kinds of objects where again where the general

relativity and quantum mechanics start to start to um have to be both considered to describe

those kinds of objects and as we study those objects we might figure out some kind of unification

thing that will allow us to uh understand maybe how to use black holes to for propulsion like yeah

to uh i could say a lot of crazy things but like basically but the the point is it'd be stupid for

us to even guess about things we don't even know about yet you know what i mean like and so therefore

i'm not going to say that the best option for interstellar travel is nuclear drives like that

could be like someone saying you know in 1600 the only way to fly is by strapping a thousand birds

to your head you know like but that said i mean everything you're saying is right but human history

is such like at the beginning of the 20th century physicists rutherford everybody there's there's

brilliant people that said we've basically solved all of it right if you talk to most physicists

i think they're going to say like we've pretty much solved like the standard model describes physics

extremely accurately right uh general relativity explains the cosmos as we observe them extremely

accurately yeah there's a whole dark matter dark energy thing oh whatever yeah but uh outside of

that we so like we basically solved like like where are you going to find gaps in knowledge

that are going to somehow create warp drives or something like right so wormholes uh but uh that's

it seems like throughout history we prove ourselves wrong time and time again yes no i and i this is

well outside of any of my knowledge base so i want to make sure that if i say anything stupid it's

because i'm i just a peasant here in physics land but yes we're all peasants in physics land

but i i really just think like it's very humbling that we're still using chemical propulsion and

variance of like injecting mass to to propel ourselves and i and no matter how you get at it

and i think someday i i would expect that our species has figured out a way to to get beyond that

gotta ask you another wild question what do you think of bob lasar who uh claimed that uh he worked

at and saw in area 51 a propulsion system fueled by i'm quoting here maybe from wikipedia i don't

know where i got this from uh fueled by an antimatter reactor which used us fuel the chemical

element with atomic number 115 at the time it wasn't synthesized it was later in in uh 2003

synthesized named muscovium he said that the propulsion system relied on a stable isotope

of element 115 which allegedly generates a gravity wave that allowed the vehicle to fly

into evade visual detection by bending light around it no stable isotopes of muscovium have

yet been synthesized all have proven extremely radioactive decaying in a few hundred uh milliseconds

one do you believe him which i i find him fascinating because it's uh i find the human mind

even more fascinating than um then then something like an antimatter drive because i think it's such

a giant mystery that we haven't even begun to explore deeply anyway um in that sense whether

he's lying or not are both interesting things to explore from a psychology perspective but

but to i mean it's basically saying that i guess it's an alien uh extraterrestrial engine thing

what do you think i mean i'm happy to change my opinion based on new evidence at any point

i have like the biggest part of me wants to just be like this is obviously just stupid and a hoax

and just total you know quack and then another part of me stills like this is exciting and fun

to think that this is all real and then another part of me goes why how how good is this guy at

lying and making stuff up because it's all really good like good storytelling good like

i don't know what to think honestly i don't know i'm really very skeptical about anyone

explaining anything like this like i mean my my radar is like screaming i mean like this is all at

full crap you know but i'd say like there's still a part of me that's just like man that is kind of

cool how does he know that and like you know what i mean it's well i think you're actually i think

you're actually in the in the best kind of place because it's um i'm afraid of being the kind of

person that hears something like that and says is definitely um he's definitely full of crap and

basically close my mind off to all that stuff i'm afraid of being somebody who closes my mind off

to a thing that's actually uh a early thread to a brilliant to a to a future to a fascinating

solution to a mystery so uh but in this case i mean i have so many red flags from a psychological

perspective that um that but again outside of this particular individual i do wonder if aliens

have visited us i think aliens are everywhere i think the universe is teeming with alien life

i mean there's it's very difficult for me to statistically understand given how life finds

a way here on earth just everywhere the entire history of life on earth from the very origin

of life it seems to be damn good at doing its thing evolving to get better and better and

better at doing its thing now there could be some special aspects to the origin of life itself

which is completely not understood so maybe the true magic is in the origin of life or it could

be that there is some magical leaps uh to uh eukaryotic cells for example that the universe

our galaxy is teeming with alien life but it's all bacteria they're all boring bacteria or exciting

bacteria no offense to bacteria the but the no-intelligence space-faring civilizations

i don't know but i just if i were to guess i had to bet all my money there is space-faring

civilizations everywhere in the universe and the fact that they're not they have not been

directly definitively observed confuses me and i think it's a mystery and if i were to

suggest what the solution to that mystery is is they might look extremely different from us

and we might be too dumb to detect them yeah and like and so there i think you have to be

extremely open-minded at what would we be looking for right that and that that's a very practical

thing to be open-minded about and practically speaking if we were to be able to even detect

them from a distance get a tech uh a technical signature of a distant planet of a distant star

system that has alien life honestly the number one thing i kind of want to know is like what's

your propulsion systems like how do we travel faster right like there's a bunch of details

probably but first let's get together and teach me how to go fast go fast i like motorcycles i

like rockets tell me what you got yeah uh yeah like how like i'll show you mine if you show me

yours kind of thing at the inter interstellar intergalactic level um yeah anyway i just wonder

maybe it's a cheat code in this video game we call life but i want to i want to use the

cheat code to figure out what kind of propulsion systems are possible and it feels like other

alien civilizations might help us give us um give us a guidance on that of course i think

even just discovering boy one of the things with the space program like everything we're doing with

mars like the secret thing i'm really excited about the romantic thing is humans on mars but the

secret thing is building giant stations on mars that allow us to definitively hopefully find the

traces of life that either currently doesn't live or has once lived on mars because if that's

the case that means for sure life is everywhere oh 100 and then you're like and once you know

that sorry to keep interrupting not shouting the hell up is this supposed to be an interview god

damn it all right uh that uh like that just the knowledge of that just the knowledge that a

four minute mile can be run i think will open our minds completely to really really hardcore push

to interstellar travel or colonizing mars becoming multi-planet and terry species it'd

be truly inspiring you think that big way do you do you get nervous so like i'm gonna i'm the

interviewer now don't you get nervous that we could make spectacular discovery on mars that

not only has there been life there's actually like pretty advanced micro you know our multi-cellular

life totally thriving in certain regions we just hadn't visited the man on mars and we make this

big discovery that a relatively large percentage of people just simply wouldn't believe it do you

think it's all yeah 100 fake and that they're just doing this to control us and that blah blah

blah blah like we could make the most important discovery in human life like in all of human

existence that that we're not alone in this universe by you know cellular at least and a good

percentage of people i'm thinking 20 30 for in today's world 40 plus percent of people

wouldn't even believe it existed interesting i i'd be it's just a very important thing to

think about especially as an educator like yourself i think the the current cynicism towards

institutions and science is temporary i think it's they're basically the internet woke up

the internet smells bullshit and it looked at uh i'm sorry i'm not being ages but saying older

scientists and they looked at them and they kind of said you're kind of full of shit you got a lot

of ego uh you're you speak down to everybody you're not very good at communicating i think there's a

lot of truth to what they're saying and i think the young scientists that are coming up will be

much better at not being full of shit being authentic being real not treating uh people

like their children they can't possibly understand like taking it very seriously that there's a lot

of intelligent people out there they're curious they're full of desire for knowledge like being

transparent about all the uncertainties of the scientific process all the tensions the conflicts

all of that and i think i think once we fix the science communication system adapted to the internet

i think that won't be an issue i i hope i hope i mean that's why people like you are really

important is is like communicate with authenticity um but yeah that's definitely something to think

about i mean yes the early uh me listen scientists too like the phosphine discovered on on venus

is like they're extremely skeptical always uh so definitely there will there'll be a lot of

skepticism uh and it depends what it looks like if it kind of looks like this thing kind of looks

like bacteria back on earth uh yes uh so it means contamination is very difficult to avoid in general

but if the thing looks like fundamentally different yeah then you're like all right yeah that like

totally different dna rna like this is not we've never observed this ever yeah then uh then you're

like all right cool of course so that another promising thing that difficult to be definitive

about but let's get better and better direct imaging systems there's now like i don't know

how many but thousands of planets are being discovered outside of our solar system there's

moons being discovered now earth like planets being discovered so like all of that if we could

do direct imaging of those planets more and more and more there could be some gigantic listen if

there is like a uh car chef like type two civilization we're going to see the damn thing it's going to

be producing a lot of uh it's going to be uh radiating a lot of energy so the possibility

of detecting someone that that's also a real possibility with something like james web telescope

like those kinds of efforts that starts becoming a reality uh have you read andy weir's project

hail mary i have not no you're going to love it like it is basically uh almost answering that like

how could they not see us type of thing almost where he creates this this incredible i don't

want to spoil anything but you know um it's just the the sense that like we could have totally

different perspectives with with an alien race and not even like consider that you know the two

of us are coexisting almost yeah i don't want to spoil anything because it's really really really

worth the read or oh you mean a different perspective like the aliens have a different

perspective than humans yeah like both we just like we see with this visual light yeah someone

could see in x-ray etc you know like and just the way we even come to the same perspective like

looking and observing is just so different fundamentally that like we could i mean it's

not quite like that it's not like it's like oh they were actually on the moon and we're you

know it's nothing like that but uh but it's such a unique and incredible story i think

any weir's one of the the best science fiction writers i don't i can't say that with much

authority because i don't listen to much science fiction so zero authority i really like andy

weir's books and that is no different but that sounds like i'm really worried about that it

sounds like uh i would really love it i've uh differently i've been very uh i've i've done a

lot of reading in my life but like the science fiction is one of the things i've been really

really weak on i haven't really read much and i just made more and more friends over the years

recently um that say that i absolutely must read some of these things are you do you physically

read or do you do audiobooks while you run instead of both i i do both yeah well physically i

sadly don't it's a kindle right yeah yeah yeah yeah but uh but when i while i run i also do uh

so i do both i do about uh on a normal day especially not that i've been really focused on

on reading it's about 60 minutes of reading on a kindle and i want one to two hours uh because

i run about two hours when i don't have like other stuff like today i won't run uh so it's

about three hours so on average i would say it's like two two and a half hours a day then i read

and audiobooks are just the same they're a little slower but they're they they can especially for

the classics they can capture some of the magic with the deep voice usually with the british accent

i love it i also read that uh listen to sorry that uh a book on propulsion like two years ago i remember

but i remember that was extremely definition by yeah it was ignition by don d clark yep it was

very difficult to listen oh i yeah i see i don't read i listen while i'm on road trips or running

or stuff like that too so i swear there's probably 40 or like not 40 but there's like eight minutes of

we tried bmz 15 yeah 13 bm 4 12 r m n l mitral michael hythergine for like i swear it's multiple

minutes of explaining one trial on something because there's just so many different chemicals

they try i don't know it's it's it's almost a joke okay i literally audibly laughed out loud

listening to it because i'm like this is so ridiculous i'm sure it makes sense reading it

but like listening to it is just hilarious but it's great though what do you think of some of

the challenges for long-term space travel do you think about this kind of stuff the biological

stuff yeah um do you do worry do you think about radiation on mars uh and out in space over periods

of uh actually the effects on the human body forget to even their radiation over periods of months

and years yeah i think realistically we have a really good handle on what the effects are

are and we actually have the solution to like everything it's just whether or not we can like

you know for instance one of the you know low earth orbit one of the biggest challenges

eventually after your long-term space travel is bone density loss and not having gravity you know

you actually have issues with a handful of things and artificial gravity is easy in terms of relatively

easy as in terms of space flight you know you can you have two vehicles just tethered together and you

know just spinning as given enough distance and a decent enough spin velocity and you can you can

get one gene like relatively easy we're talking again relatively easy especially after talking

about theoretical physics like this is that's easy stuff um we haven't done that yet but like

there's there's no reason why we can't produce artificial gravity if we say that that's

um you know a big enough hurdle that we absolutely have to overcome this okay cool we'll just spin

up two vehicles that are going to mars and people will have but you know that's the thing is mars

is only about we'll say six months there then you're hanging out in mars you have 38 of gravity

and then six months ish back people live on you know the international space station at

six months stints we've had people for basically a year up on the international space station

it's not like it's it's not life altering yeah you have a couple days of not being able to walk

very well and you do have some bone density loss and some other concerns but like again that's

it's solvable and i think you know the first mission is to mars i think it might we might

we'll probably do the trade is it worth it to like land on mars and have a crippled crew that can't

even physically stand yet you know for a day or two before they get their you know feet from

underneath them or is it do we need to spin up two spacecraft or you know a tether and have

like you can't do it like starship you know even though it's 30 feet wide or nine meters wide

if you spin it on that one axis um that's not enough space to get one g uh without your feet

and your head being at two different uh velocities so you get really sick it'll you'll always feel

like you're falling your brain will tell you that you're falling constantly um but then again okay

so this is this is a whole thing is i you know and i don't know if there's we don't really have the

data yet on like going from zero g we know the effects of that we know the effects of one g really

well that's our majority of our data set but we don't really have much data on the long-term effects

of uh you know one six gravity like on the moon or 38 percent gravity is it is one six gravity

actually enough to counteract 95 of the effects of low gravity or is it 15 you know is it one

six the is it like a linear thing is 38 percent gravity totally you know 38 percent as bad as one

or whatever you know is it a slight like where is it out on the on the scale so there's a chance

we don't need anywhere near one g of gravity to counteract the bulk majority of these problems

we could have 0.1 g or whatever is the you know the right compromise of of vehicle complexity

and human biology and all of these other effects like we this is absolutely a solvable thing that

is and and all we figure some of this out through just experimentation 100 along the way yep one

of this is back to my dating life i think one of the essential fundamental research questions

i'm wondering about is the dynamics and so the details of how you have sex in space

asking for a friend of course i mean that there literally is sort of work on this right because

like if you think about long-term space travel i mean sex is uh sort of like the there's the

recreational aspect of sex but the most important aspect of sex for long-term space travel is uh

procreation is and also the full biological cycle of that so the from the embryos the

development of the baby the giving the birth and all that kind of stuff so like you know there's a

lot of really difficult problems of biology there to understand and uh but perhaps it's all some of

that again just like you said brilliantly some of that can be just solved with engineering outside

of the human body by creating a gravitational field like that but maybe along the way you can

figure out how to do that without doing it we're balancing the cost and so on and radiation is the

other thing like radiation we know we have a really good data set on what radiation and

doses do to humans like we we know we can measure radiation we know we can approximate you know and

kind of give edge cases for the mars transient and getting to mars and being on mars and the

simple answer to that is like at the end of the day if we have to you know dig into mars or find a

tunnel to to live in so you get some extra mass in between you and cosmic radiation so be it like

that's the that's the answer then again none of these are like insolvable problems they're just

things the hurdles you would have to overcome based on you know the the risk exposure and the

posture there imagine being the first child the first baby born outside of earth that'd be pretty

cool yeah that'll be i would love to be alive to see that that'll be a big one i don't know if they'll

i don't know because it's such a dangerous thing it's so risky i think that could be in

our lifetime you think so yeah i would like to think in a perfect world of her thinking futurism

that in 30 to 50 years i definitely think we could have a full-time like permanent major

civilizations you know like like um like what blue origin wants to develop where they have a huge

like sphere you know and you're doing a lot of especially heavy industry off of earth so you're

not polluting earth like that makes so much sense to me um i yeah i think i think we we could live

in a lifetime where you know we thought that since the 50s and 60s that people are going to be living

and working in space like crazy and at any given point we're lucky to have 12 people in space today

but i really think in our lifetime we're finally getting to that point of

yeah that that's a reality let me because you mentioned blue origin i can we just lay out some

of the competitors to spacex so much of what we talked about is uh spacex specifically because

they're sort of pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the commercial space life but there's

a lot of like you said incredible work being done for large companies and small companies startups

and so on uh so who are the competitors to spacex a ula you know launch alliance blue origin there's

a virgin uh is a galactic orbit orbit would be the competitor virgin orbit uh there's uh rocket labs

electron rocket that you mentioned um there's the folks you covered firefly yep and uh what are we

missing there's the the epic space launch system from nasa i guess that is thankfully nasa but prime

contractor bowing and bowing north locket yeah north bridge the boosters yep okay nice so like what uh

what's what's interesting to say to lay out the land here that you're excited about just in general

i think if you aren't working on a reusable some form of reusable vehicle like physically working

on it pen to paper not beyond pen to paper like bending metal for a reusable vehicle you're gone

you're toast i think we're well into that being the only provable you know way forward the only

way you're going to compete and survive is a reusable rocket fully reusable would be great but

that's obviously massively aspirational still um but it will come but to me um the yeah the list

you pretty much had it right on the head there's there's astra was another orbital rocket company

yeah um they there there's a lot of companies and i think right now the the ones that i personally

really believe in um you know rocket lab is is awesome i really think that they are one of the

few that i believe can actually build a falconine class rocket uh like today with the with their

technology with their knowledge with their investments with their funding you know and they've

proven themselves there's very few they have actually made it look easy i think there's a

lot of startups and a lot of new rocket there's a too many launch providers popping out of the

woodwork right now they won't all survive of course i think realistically if you look at

like airplanes how many airplane man you know there's a handful of airplane manufacturers

there's not hundreds and thousands of airplane manufacturers i think it'll be a similar thing

for spaceflight i think we'll see we'll see you know realistically in the terms of jubbo jets

and passengers there's basically two you know there's airbus and there's Boeing um so i i think

in the long run there'll be two or three major players i think there'll be you know 10

minor like as far as launch providers as far as the one's actually leaving earth and getting into

orbit i just don't think there's a ton of room for individuality really you know yeah i i would

love to see it like a really serious competitor uh to SpaceX in the way that SpaceX does things i

don't know if you'll like it's quite what i it's quite the right kind of competitor let me let me

say this uLA has all of the potential but just operationally they're you know they're either

Lockheed Martin and Boeing's like love child yeah they're kind of set up in a far too traditional

manner where they just really aren't given the opportunity to innovate like a lot of these

startups are so rocket lab was a little bit more of that nature what do you think about

there's just blue origin in general the origins i man i what blue origin has done with new shepherd

is amazing and people just lot it because it's suborbital and it looks very phallic it's

it's uh so i guess the meme matters also it's modern day but it's sad because people don't

see what they are also working on which is new glenn you know i i see comments almost every day

still of like it doesn't matter because you know they're they're working on tiny it's like no new

glenn is more powerful and more capable than falcon heavy new glenn is almost more of a

competitor to not quite as to starship but it's almost in that class it's it's a it's a heavy

lift launch vehicle it's huge it's crazy it'll be nuts they're very actively working on it you know

i still think we're three years away from it launching but that's a very strong competitor

in the class of rockets that space x is currently making so space x is currently leading the way but

that it's it couldn't become a close race and what it's just i we'll just for now we'll ignore

space x and we'll just kind of talk about like i think who's kind of coming around the corner

here who's here so let me just do a quick overview i'm going to shoot myself in the foot for getting

some cool people here and some yeah some exciting companies but relativity is one that

if you you should definitely get tim ls on the show who's the CEO of relativity they're doing

3d printed rockets the ones that have the world's largest 3d printer they're getting really close to

their first orbital launch the cool thing about them the reason that i think they're exciting

the reason that i i think they have the potential is just how quickly they can iterate i think 3d

printing a rocket is really dumb i think iterating with 3d printing on a rocket is brilliant because

you can literally change software and have like very little you know upload a file and have a new

rocket like that's amazing so in terms of long-term iterative process if we're really talking about

like hitting the ground running and and just seeing where the the evolution takes you i think

that's about as good as you can get you know i think what spacex is doing at starbase just

physically bending cheap steel is probably also a very valid solution i so i really think and they

have the engineering chops i think they've got some amazing people there again rocket lab i

adore what they work on and you know like everyone there's a caveat here that everything

takes longer anything any company tells you it's two or three times longer just period rocket

lab's no different but i really they're they're working on a neutron rocket that's going to be like

i think 8 000 to 15 000 kilograms to low earth orbit like it's a good medium class rocket will

compete right along with falcon nine hopefully by the way neutron would be its name right yep

yep it's not like kind of neutron it's not some kind of fascinating new physics breakthrough

where they're using neutrons no no but they are using they're also using liquid methane

and liquid oxygen i just think it's a really it's a seems like a great rocket and

assuming they can actually get it flying in two or three years i think they're going to be

it's here to stay you know i'd be remiss right now i'm editing a video from an interview with

stoke aerospace out in in kentucky washington um it was just one of these companies that

they have a long ways to go like they're still in the very they're they're behind the curve

frankly in in terms of launch vehicles right now because like i said there's so many coming out of

the woodwork but the idea they're working on their solution to a fully reusable rocket is

amazing one of the coolest concepts i've ever seen are you going to cover in the video yeah yeah

yep that'll be hopefully coming out the next depending on what the schedule like is down there

i'm i'm work i'm actively editing that as we speak and it is so cool i mean it is like

it's it's genius and um if they can actually get it to work i can see them merging i can for sure

see someone potentially like i perfectly in a perfect world they merge with rocket lab

um they stoke develops the upper stage and maybe even the engines they are the two guys the the

ceo the co-founders of that company um have they are engine like propulsion engineer magnificence

they have they used to they both have worked at blue they developed engines in a hurry there

and then left blue and it felt like it was getting too slow for them and now they are i mean these

these guys fired a 15 chambered rocket engine instead of four from the soviet and we're talking

15 chambers single turbo pump uh 70 times in the month of october wow that's impressive wow and that's

like that was on average you know if you think about like days off time off you know parts changing

yes over twice a day on average of a hydrolox engine that's insane so i i love them and i hope the

best for them uh but they're also topical right now they're top of my head so uh what about firefly

what i like about firefly they've already got kind of a traditional aerospace backing they're

starting to buddy up a lot with northup grummans they're going to be building the booster stage

for antaris which is currently flying only out of wallops virginia and is one of the only other

commercial providers for the international space station and northup grumman is a very

traditional aerospace company you know like lots of solid rocket boosters and they've purchased

ironically their their current antaris is reliant on russian engines and ukrainian boosters two

things that i don't think you're going to be able to get your hands on too much anymore so yes they're

looking to uh some us propulsion and stages so they actually are partnering with uh with firefly

and their new antaris rocket will be a first stage built entirely by firefly so i'm excited that

firefly already has the propulsion technology um and they actually develop the ironically their

their tap-off cycle engine was developed uh in partnership with ukraine with ukrainian engineers

uh who developed the the whole turbopump system so it's like it's this cool

meddling of of these worlds um their former ceo tom racusek was like i have an interview

with him and he's anyone that can just spout nuances and facts i just love i just soaked

that guy's information up as best i could because he is brilliant literally a doctor a rocket doctor

you know it's so yeah i mean that's what like you said that the fascinating thing about these

folks they're they're legit they're they're such great engineers that people that they bring these

rockets to life and then there's all this stuff that we know and don't know about in uh in china

and other parts and other nations they're putting stuff into orbit one of the sad things also is

like you know with lockheed and and bowing is um and just military applications in general there's

there's so much technology that's currently being developed that we probably know nothing about yeah

and uh ed it makes me a little bit sad of course yeah uh for several reasons one is that the use

of that technology is has really much like it's not it's not that inspired it's like a very military

focused yes to kill someone it's to kill someone yeah uh there's not even like a a side application

right and and the the big one is that the secret it's it's shrouded in secrecy as opposed to being

a source of inspiration yeah hundred percent but that's the way of the world like was that one

plane that you covered that was like we know nothing about oh the x-37b yeah x-37b yeah

orbited for over 900 days and returned like yeah i want to know that thing up to i don't know that's

what's it's so frustrating we know when it launches people you know amateurs track and know they even

will be like oh it changed orbit you know it raised and lowered its orbit blah blah we generally have

just almost no idea what it's doing up there and it just saddens me because i want to know and it's

awesome it's a great vehicle war what is it good for uh you mentioned Kerbal space program the video

game uh someone asked you what video game you recommend for learning about space and rockets and

you said duh Kerbal space program so tell me about this game what is this game and i also saw heard

that a second one is coming out so what what what uh you know i've been playing more games recently

because games are fun and they remind you that life is awesome uh so why should i play this game

if you want to learn about rockets how to fly how to build how to get into orbit how to get to other

planets there's no better way to learn about rockets than playing Kerbal space what does it

entail like do you actually like uh it's like sim city and microsoft flight simulator for rockets

oh interesting so you will get to like what do you design the rockets yeah yeah it's okay so i

started playing it in like 2014 i think around as i'm like falling in love with space and i became

obsessed with this game like literally you you know you you you take a like you get a little

command module click you click on a fuel tank boop you choose your engine boop you choose a

stage connector boop you connect more tanks and build these space planes and fantastical things

and it's all like physics based and it's available this sounds like a commercial it's available on

pc and mac and and console like it's it's available everywhere but wait there's more but wait there's

more and you you uh you said like you streamed yourself playing this at those any of those videos

up oh yeah yeah yeah there's some of my actually the first videos i ever uploaded to youtube were

like recaptured streams from twitch that i just physically uploaded to youtube this is awesome

and so it's it's me playing Kerbal we i used to do this kind of like a podcast style thing uh i

should get back into this because it's one of my favorite things i ever did it's called we called

it today ish and space fight history but these days i'd probably just play Kerbal but i had

my friend come sit next to me his name's jacob and he is a former professional pole valter

just this really knows nothing about rockets yes knows nothing about space hilarious like in the

sweetest most fun way he like he you know as an adult asked me which is bigger the earth of the moon

and i love that for him you know that's that's fantastic he's just a delightful human

he would sit next to me we would recreate a historical spaceflight mission and Kerbal

space program and he would just sit there and play guitar and sing about what i'm like doing

and asking questions yeah and it's still one of my favorite things i've ever done yeah you should

definitely do something like that so basically just uh yeah shoot the shit with a friend get

their curiosity going let them just sit there and ask questions it was awesome like i mean

yeah those are some i i've done it a handful times i think we probably did like 20 or 30

episodes or something and it is it's definitely something i would like to get back to doing

can you in the in the game i go to go to the moon yeah so it's technically a different solar system

it's the Kerbal system and you're on the planet Kerbin so there's the moon

mun there's a second moon in the system uh on this planet uh it's called min miss they didn't

want to pay license fees or what well it's just a little easier it's a little bit smaller so the

physics are easier um because oh so it tries to be consistent with physics yeah oh yeah the physics

are all are all like real world physics and i mean there's aero simulations there's all of its like

one to one you know for earth physics that's awesome it's just on a not easier scale solar so it's

easier to to navigate but there's still like there's a planet called eve that's kind of like venus

so it has a really thick atmosphere really thick really soupy it's um it's and a lot more gravity

so it's just really really hard to get off of um it's easy relatively easy to land on eve but like

that's kind of like the ultimate boss in the game it's like getting off of eve so that's one of my

favorite things to do is build these crafts to to get to eve and and try to return home

you mentioned that there's almost like a podcast thing you also did our our ludicrous future

what uh is there a podcast in your future are you are you thinking do you enjoy the

medium you're so incredibly good at talking it's less effort to uh sort of to produce are you is

that something in the in the back of your mind also oh man i love talking yeah you're very good at it

i mean yeah um i i find that i it's just the problem with for me with with podcasts and i

think that's the podcasts that i've done have tried to be relatively topical about like the

current spaceflight affairs and four three or four years ago that was actually you know manageable

for me to keep up with these days man i can't keep i just can't keep up with it i gave up on

trying to be super topical and i realized that maybe my my biggest talent and the things that

resonate most with people is just trying to explain the like the basics and the and the the root it

really gets i'm really just trying to like i'm trying to do less live streams if i can but then

again like starship i gotta stream that there's no way i'm not gonna do that but i'm really just

trying to get back to like making the deep dive videos where i have no limit on how long and how

deep and and just really go for it because that's actually what i love to do the best yeah i mean

that's like uh views aside those are just works of genius and you're getting better and better at

them and like that's the that in in terms of the beautiful things you can create in this world

those are that so like if you continue especially where the the way space travel is developing

right like that your voice is very much needed so i think it's wise to um to do what you do best

and i think i'm feeling more and more especially this last year i did a lot of like live streaming

and traveling back and forth between florida and california and here and just handling major like

big live streams really stressed myself out and at the end of the day i was like all of this is

taking away from my ability to make videos and that's ideally honestly if i like had my choice

of things i would just ignore everything else and just sit and lock myself in a in my house for a

year and just sit there and make videos and and go and travel every every other month you know

for fun like not for space stuff just go and and do some light traveling you know some like around

the moon or what yeah just some light traveling uh what advice would you give to young folks uh

or just folks struggling to find their way in life uh whether they're in high school college

or beyond like how to have a life they can be proud of how to have a career they can be proud of

you've had a really interesting journey yourself what what from that can you draw give your advice

to others to be honest like i feel like it's so painfully obvious to follow your heart and follow

like what makes you happy that i'm just shocked that people allow themselves to sit on like mediocrity

you know like to just sit there and be like well this is just what i do you know and some and for

a lot of people that's perfectly fine like i have you know some of my best friends are clocking in

and out and they're perfectly happy they have a wonderful life absolutely no judgment there of

course um but for people that are stuck feeling like they're not sure of you know what's next and

how to bring light into their world uh you really just gotta listen to like what does make you happy

you know people feel guilty about oh i play video games for eight hours then start learning how to

make a video game learn how to do reviews of video games or make there's so many you can work in the

video game industry you know you don't have to isolate your love from your work you know and

it's just funny that we you know maybe uh maybe you feel guilty that you drink too much okay i don't

know if there's a good advice go go learn how to make alcohol you know be a start a liquor company

yeah start a liquor company well it's it's great advice but it's also in your own story it seems

like you've almost stumbled on like some of it is just exploration and keeping your mind and

heart open to discovering that thing that grabs you right it's not what you fall asleep thinking

about you know like but you you stumbled on the space almost accidentally right i mean yeah yeah i

think it would you when you were doing up being a professional photographer would you have known

oh no well do you want to know what i wanted to be when i was a kid what's that well first

when i was young i wanted to be a tractor i'm not quite sure i understood yeah how that works that

works then i wanted to be a scorpion trainer yeah thought i could train him to cut people's

lawns better and better yep yep and then honestly the majority of my childhood was lawns god i think

you know understanding of physics early on was just a little the pinchers man the pinchers uh

then uh from like probably six until like early college i wanted to be a prosthetic engineer

and never once did i think about anything rockets really you know i had like a i had

like a space shuttle poster i had some space shuttle legos you know i liked space and you know

i knew well of this space shuttle but you know it was a far down the list as far as things that

i thought were cool ninja turtles lamborghini coontosh b17 g flying fortress yeah i guess i

guess that means if you just keep your heart open to falling in love with an idea with a passion

yeah you could start from that from ninja turtles and scorpions in the lawn to uh being one of the

best one of the top educators inspirational figures in space and actually uh traveling around the

moon and who knows maybe one day stepping foot on the moon and mars even though you say you're not

interested it seems like you stating that you're not interested in certain things somehow results

and you are and you're doing those things my friends joke that like i'm gonna be the first

person to go to the moon against their will like i guess all right yeah this is uh all right what's

the food like guys we're gonna start a fundraiser please like tim just doesn't want to have to

he doesn't want to go you know definitely don't want to do it all right tim you're an incredible

person thank you so much for everything you do i've i've been a fan of yours for a long time

not just the the content but just who you are as a human being just how excited you are

for everything it's it's just an inspiration your joy to watch thank you for being you

thank you for doing the stuff you're doing uh i can't wait to see what you do next man

thank you so much for talking with me today that was awesome thank you so much it's my pleasure

thanks for listening to this conversation with tim dodd to support this podcast

please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from hg

wells life forever dying to be born afresh forever young and eager will presently stand

upon this earth as upon a footstool and stretched out its realm amidst the stars thank you for

listening and hope to see you next time

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

Keywords

SpaceX, Starship, Rocket engines, Tim Dodd, Everyday Astronaut, Falcon 9, Elon Musk, Rocket fuel, Rocket engine cycles, Rocket cooling

People

Bob Lazar, Elon Musk, Tim Dodd, You Sakuma Izawa, Gwen Shotwell, Steve Ioki, Dev Joshi, Caitlyn Farrington, Yusaka Maizawa, H.G. Wells

Companies

Rocket Lab, Astra, Blue Origin, Relativity, SpaceX

Organizations and Institutions

FAA, NASA, International Space Station (ISS), Soyuz, Roscosmos

References

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Tim Dodd is host of the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel, where he teaches about rocket engines and all things space travel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:

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EPISODE LINKS:

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Tim’s Website: https://everydayastronaut.com

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OUTLINE:

Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

(00:00) – Introduction

(06:18) – SpaceX rockets

(26:56) – Falcon 9

(31:08) – Starship

(35:27) – SpaceX rocket engines

(43:05) – Elon Musk

(58:41) – Twitter

(1:04:46) – How rocket engines work

(1:09:37) – Rocket fuel

(1:13:03) – Rocket engine cycles

(1:25:27) – Rocket cooling

(1:40:24) – Multistage rockets

(1:43:57) – Single-stage-to-orbit

(1:49:33) – Aerospike engine

(1:57:18) – Greatest car engine of all time

(2:02:27) – Starship

(2:05:19) – Wet dress rehearsal

(2:11:29) – Landing

(2:25:47) – Seeing starship in person

(2:34:54) – Starship orbital test

(2:41:32) – Gwynne Shotwell

(2:46:43) – dearMoon project

(3:05:46) – Fear of death

(3:14:12) – Everyday Astronaut origin story

(3:40:04) – Soviet Rocket Engine History

(3:58:51) – Russia, China, USA

(4:13:20) – Starlink

(4:21:06) – First human on Mars

(4:24:04) – Moon landing

(4:30:11) – Nuclear propulsion

(4:37:51) – Bob Lazar

(4:44:54) – Aliens

(4:48:42) – Sci-fi books

(4:52:00) – Long-term space travel

(4:58:47) – SpaceX competitors

(5:10:07) – Kerbal Space Program

(5:16:33) – Advice for young people