Starbase Launchpad Tour — Part 3

Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut. Welcome to part three of my tour of SpaceX's Starbase factory and launch site with the ultimate tour guide, Elon Musk. Of course, if you haven't watched parts one and two, what are you doing? You absolutely have to watch those first because there's just gobs of information. But this one's a little bit different.

We actually go out to the launch pad while it's being constructed and watch Elon at work and still get to ask a couple of fun questions. Just like before the YouTube play bars broken up into sections. We have links in the descriptions to those sections too. And of course we have an article version of some of the notes and key takeaways of this conversation up at everydayastronaut. com.

All right, let's hop in the car and head down to the launch pad. Which week is the blast. Is the radius actually gonna change the exclusion zone a little bit when one super heavy gets a, it starts launching, or you do the full stack?

[Elon] Well, we definitely won't have people, we'll clear the whole area for orbital launches.

[Tim] Like Stargate and stuff?

[Elon] Yeah. Well, we might have a small crew with some shield, you know, like a rope and being a robust, some shielding on the roof and strong glass. But like, if something does go wrong with the over launch, it's really a much more of a fireball than it is an explosion but it is quite a big fireball.

[Tim] Will you eventually be moving the launch control and everything, or is that staying at Stargate, at the control center?

It'll be at Stargate for now.

[Tim] By the way, I haven't, I just got back into town for the first time since the booster has been up. So I have not seen this.

[Elon] Yeah, it's a lot of progress. The teams are great.

[Tim] God, it's so tall and that's not even the whole thing.

That is the pool tower.

[Tim] But I mean that the booster.

Oh yeah, exactly.

[Tim] Yeah, the tower is done now, right? As far as height.

Yeah. The full full-stack will be a little taller than the tower.

[Tim] Are you guys working on a second tower two already?

We are thinking about it.

[Tim] What's the future for Starbase here? Like, well, will you guys always be launching from here or what happens when the oil rigs go online?

I mean, as long as it's, if we're able to launch it from here without too much operational difficulties, then we will keep doing it. But it is a bit of a challenge with beach closers, like there's like some people, don't want to have the beach clothes that much, but on the other hand, we gotta be able to launch. So it's like, you know, to what degree can we operate from here effectively and still let people use the beach and stuff.

[Tim] Right. So with the oil rigs though, like, I guess how urgent is that to get the oil rigs going? Or is that kinda like, you know, we'll get those going and then, it might be two or three years before you actually start using them for launching?

We're not thinking too much about the oil rigs right now. I mean, we're demoing one rig, just, you know, cause we can just send it to a demo. Like people are really good at demolition and have them do it. So, but it's not occupying any of my insurance.

[Tim] How far out will they, when you do start launching from there? Is it going to be like hundreds of miles or is it like 10 or 15 or something from shore?

We're not thinking about it.

[Tim] This is all good for me though, because I'm so nervous that it'll be hard to watch them once they start launching from out there.

Yeah. For now we're just trying to think about the things that we have to think about.

[Tim] Yeah. Wow. So right in front of us, is that a, is that the QD Arm? This yellow thing here on the sorry, on the right now, is that the QD Arm or is that the, is that one of the catchers?

That's the QD.

Hey, how's it going?

Let me give it to you son. This one is for you.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Thanks.

We're going to make it.

All right, cool. Hey Sam.

Cool, how's it going guys?

Actually, Taylor has a plan as of right now.

Okay.

We rolled this thing over today, so it's all in place. Those cranes are in their set location for tomorrow.

Okay.

Tonight, we are going to re-rig everything.

Do you guys mind being on camera or anything?

We are very shy.

Sam, I know you are.

It's all right for the camera, Go ahead.

Yeah, so tonight we'll create a rig, we're obviously doing that double crane, if we rig it all, our crane operators get in at 7:00 AM tomorrow, get everything finally hooked up. We do our pre-test. We use the launch spoon or the big things cause we don't want things sliding around. Then we lift it in 11 hours.

11 hours, okay, cool, great. Awesome, exciting.

You see the flanges sticking out from the bottom of the launch pad right there, if a T, so right there is a T. You want to head up to the top and we'll show you what our game plan is over there?

Sure.

You're rightfully worried about this, but I think the guys have a pretty good plan. We went over the plan and any contingency planning.

Okay.

All of last night, six welders got all the shelves done for the jack. So the jacks are up there now actually. Hey Yuri do you want to go up with us?

Sure.

Those are the jacks on each leg.

All right.

The jacks that we got. So on top of that column right there, there's some shim plates we believe are off by half an inch.

Half an inch.

So what these guys done, they added weights where we think we're going to be high and we'll keep the crane on the whole time while we're jacking. And then Robert, you want to talk about the lap plates that you guys have?

Sure. Yeah as we're leveling we might get some gaps there that are bigger than you'd like for your weld gaps. So if that happens we got some plates to bridge that gap, so we weld that while up top.

Its a lot of steel.

Yeah. And then over here, that little thing I pointed out in the launch mount we got new plates in here. So we'll be able to go right.

Its okay, I got it.

Yeah, so this is key. This is to track them.

Sure.

Same thing on that side. So we'll get rotation and then our crane will be fixed by the six jacks, but we only need two jacks actually there, I think there are 200 ton jacks, but we have all six so we can really dial it in.

All right. Okay, sounds good.

I mean, we moved in and we add guys right back inside of it going. Again, it's all bonus time work in terms of fluids routing. And those are the hoods. So when the QDs retract on the hold-downs, the top inner phase is that hold-down hood or sorry, the QD hood. And so it clamshells back in. It's all through like just a strike, not a dynamic system on its own, but the hold down hydraulic actuator, actuates the hold down, the QD and the hood all altogether.

Well, as you can see, there's a lot going on here.

Yeah, that's why I wanted to bring you up here. We've got a handful of guys on pad D right now. Some more on pad D so that we're ready to take a ship. So we we've been out of this the whole time, but we've got a few days on that. So we do want to knock some of that out right now, so that we're ready for shift 20 when it comes out here.

And then we got a bunch of people in the prop farm and then tomorrow at 5:00 AM, when the guys get in and they start rigging and lift at nine, this whole area is cleared. So all the guys that were going to be on the launch belt, all go over to the prop farm. So actually some of the guys work tonight. It's not actual physical work, but prep for the army that goes over there tomorrow so that we can be effective with like 70 people.

Got it. Great. Well, it's definitely a beehive of activity. That's good.

It is super exciting, there's a few things to be worked out. After listening to what you said about contractor stuff. I got with our supervisors here and we're trying to figure out what the right number is. And also since we have all these great individuals here right now, it's also a good time like, oh, is there anyone from here that wants to join SpaceX? So we're looking into it. We've incorrectly searched for like six months continuously without looking back into it and looking at the proper head count.

Okay. Yeah if somebody's long-term we should make them long term not temporary.

Yeah. It's easier too, because these guys come and go and then contract ends. It might be another company.

Yeah, yeah. It's not set up the right way.

No, it's better for them now that I'm in SpaceX.

Yeah. The logistic plan right now is wild. So we're also running out a lot of parts, so McGregor is shipping us a bunch of fittings and seals. We got Cape and Benny ready too to ship us stuff. We'll back-order all those other sites on the stuff we take. But we're just trying to keep, like, we're trying to keep feeding these guys with parts right now.

Okay. And that launch ring is complicated.

Yeah. I do however, like the approach of having the hold downs on the inside like that, where they fold into each other, like, I like that design, however, everything else, we need to take a look at it. Just like how thick the steel is to begin with. We obviously learned trying to bolt in and align some of the lugs is not the right path. We learned that line boring as we got good at it, we got really fast at it too. So at least for the next launch mount, We're thinking line boring is the better step. Reduction in mass is gonna be huge for us.

Yeah. It takes a long time to weld thick steel.

Yeah. I mean, this is going to be a one inch weld here all the way around, inside and outside. One pass on the inside and outside just one weld pass will get us 40 miles per hour on booster and ship.

Okay. Great, well, super impressive. If we can mount this thing in 11 hours. Frankly, even tomorrow that'll be great.

We had a hot wire that grain and then one of our new roads that we did collapsed on us. So we had to find a different route this morning, this grid weren't in place, we did lose a little bit of time having to backfill. But that went off pretty well. and the second largest grain in the world, third largest grain in the world, we have two operators for that bit. So one guy from our team, Dave, right's going to run the yellow, Giovanni is going to be on the big crane.

Okay.

They're gonna load share properly and get this thing up.

Great.

This is brilliant because we want to spend four days reconfiguring this thing.

Yep. Like the two things we really need to get good at here is toll stuff and small stuff. That's what Bill Riley would say.

[Tim] It's also pretty amazing that a project of this scale, you're still measuring things in days. You're still like a day, you know? I mean, that's impressive. What other people are like.

Yeah.

[Tim] Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's nonstop. It's just not like you're doing that because there's a launch in two days, you're doing that the whole time this place has been developed. It's been like down to the, you're counting every minute and second.

I told the crane operator as well, what would you do if there's an asteroid heading to this planet in eight days?

Yeah, exactly.

That's what they were told today.

Yeah.

And who knows, maybe there is.

Yeah, I mean, you never know. I think if we operate with extreme urgency, then we have a chance of making life multi-planetary, just a little, just a chance to know for sure. If we don't act with extreme urgency, that chance is probably zero. And the rate of innovation is not gonna be constant, this year, they're gonna we're either going to increase the rate of innovation or it's gonna slow down.

If you look at a new American access to space with a crew, we were able to go to the moon in 69, then with the space shuttle we can only go to low-earth orbit and the space shuttle retired. And then for almost a decade, America had no access to space for the people. So this is a pretty bad trend, expanding to zero, We need a very strong trend in the other direction in order to have any chance whatsoever of making life ultimate multi-planetary.

So that's the reason for the extreme sense of urgency.

[Tim] This is legitimate.

Yeah, I mean I'll be long dead before, you know, Mars is self-sustaining but hopefully the momentum is strong in that direction by the time I die, which probably isn't soon, but no, no. All right.

[Tim] Sam, what if right when I got to the top, I'm like, oh, by the way, I have a horrid fear of heights. No I don't, but that'd be funny.

I'll go to the tower next time then.

[Tim] Dude, it's huge.

Oh, it's very impressive. It's great to see the progress and nice work guys. (noise from work site) Yeah, I mean, it'd be amazing if we can mount this thing tomorrow, which is looking like we've got a good shot at that. (noise from work site) - Getting far more paving going. So we can get the power guys or the arms a little bit more room to work on.

[Tim] So what is the current plan for B3? Are you thinking about putting more rafters up under it still and seeing how it does?

Sorry for what?

[Tim] You offer B3, you talked once about like maybe putting nine up under there or something.

We're just gonna focus on four with some work. Like I said, it's a rapidly changing situation. I mean, its like a guided missile, like a guided missile is going in the wrong direction at any given point in time, but it costs course-corrects.

Yep.

You don't want to be a super precise canon ball when you don't even know where the target is.

[Tim] Yup.

The overarching optimization is what is the fastest time to a city on Mars and then subset, fastest time to a fully usable rocket, subset fastest time to orbit basically. So, so, well, all of the initial production is simply a learning exercise. It is not, none of the initial ones will be long term. So it's really just a question of like what knowledge can you learn in the shortest period of time?

[Tim] Do you, I mean, I feel like you didn't quite have this freedom with Falcon 9, when you were developing Falcon 9.

Actually, sorry, our car is there? No, we did not have this flexibility with Falcon 9.

So you gotta be a lot more rigid and yeah, you gotta nail it a lot more when you were developing Falcon 9 because you were flying cargo pretty much today and getting ready for commercial resupply. Like you had to pretty much be a lot like think if we could.

Technically we did have the Grasshopper program.

[Tim] Right.

You know, sharing ideas to run the Grasshopper program that we learned a lot, amazingly, the reason why Grasshopper did not blow up. So that's, you know, shocking, but we did blow up.

The F9 R?

Yeah. And ironically, that was when I, like, I was like, telling the SpaceX Board, hey, let's have a board meeting in Texas and you could see the rocket go off and land. That's the one time it blows up.

I did not know that. I did not know that.

So, man it is sweaty out here.

Yeah. Let's keep going. We'll take more people.

It sounds good.

Yeah. All right, I'm gonna sign off at this point.

[Tim] Yeah. Any last things you want to say to all the people excited about this program?

Yeah, I mean, basically just, I think it's cool too that people are getting excited about rockets and kind of finding out, how do rockets work and, thinking maybe about life becoming multi-planetary and being a space experience civilization, cause the experience makes our future inspiring, you know, that's, it might be the most inspiring thing. So it certainly is the most inspiring thing for a lot of people.

And so I hope this gives people confidence about the future and that humanity will have an exciting future in space and we can make science fiction, not always fiction, but a reality one day.

[Tim] Thanks, I like that. Yep, thanks Elon. Thank you again, Elon for all of the time that you spent, for everything we got to do and for allowing us to share this with the world and thanks again to Cosmic Perspective for helping shoot this video and just all the other stuff that they help with. So find them on Patreon and on YouTube.

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I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut bringing space down to earth for everyday people.