SpaceX Starship Flight 4 - Launch Briefing!

Starship launch just days away! Are you ready?
The last of Starbase's 2nd tower segments moved! Why so late?
Final prep work on Starships heat shield! Is it really that important?
And a sad announcement regarding Starship's first publicly announced mission.

Starship launch in just five days? Was the final test successful? Is the launch date still holding?
Foundations for the second tower! When will we see its base?
Potential and surprising parts for the last Block 1 Booster spotted! SpaceX launches a satellite for the European Space Agency! China is about to land on the far side of the Moon!

#SpaceX #starship #elonmusk #starbase

Editing: John Young, Alex Potvin, Stefanie Schlang
Photography: John Cargile, John Winkopp & Stefanie Schlang
3D Animation: Voop3D
Script & Research: Eryk Gawron, Oskar Wrobel, Felix Schlang
LIVE Production: Astro Roadie
Host: Felix Schlang
Production: Stefanie & Felix Schlang
Graphics & Media Processing: Jonathan Heuer, Felix Schlang

Credit:

⭐SpaceX
⭐NASA
⭐VirtualSpace_3D on X: @Lolomatico3d
⭐The Ring Watchers on X: @RingWatchers

📄Links for this Episode:

[Whataboutit]

Successful reentry or fireball of doom? What do you think?

[BMitchel-qykg]

I worked at VAFB in 1965 and watched Atlas launches, then was lucky enough to watch the Saturn launch to the moon from the press pad. watching Space X launches on WAI still gives me "chill bumps". Bravo for your work.

[UnrealatedContingency]

I feel bad for Tim Dodd the everyday astronaut. Image the excitement of thinking your going to space. Only to lose it.

[MrGeneralScar]

I also think the reason why OLIT2 has more piles is because its designed for the future rockets which will be taller and heavier. Just because we dont have all the segments yet for a taller tower, doesnt mean to say they wont knock up an extra segment or 2 to build this tower, or just remove the top segment later and shove in some extensions and put it back on later to make the tower taller.

We know there is a plan to make starship taller, making it taller may also mean taller tower, or it might well just mean tower will be same size and ship will be taller than tower sitting on the mount. One thing is for sure, the tower itself will have to lift heavier boosters and ships as well as possibly be taller itself which means more weight and stronger foundations needed. For certain the foundation of the launch mount itself will be stronger to account for a heavier next gen starship. Last thing they will want to do is tear down the entire launch mount to upgrade the foundations to put gen2 ships and boosters on it.

In fact I wouldnt be surprised if as soon as they finish tower 2, they take tower 1 offline for months to make the retrofits needed to support the gen2 stretched boosters and ships. This new tower is not being built for today's starship, its being built with the future gen2 ships and boosters in mind. What's the bet it will be taller right off the bat? Not just a bit taller, but at least a full size segment taller. What if the current 9th segment, is actually the 10th segment and they just have not built 1 segment yet? I reckon they could knock out 1 more segment from scratch in the amount of time it will take them to be ready to lift it into position.

[casnimot]

Regarding Starship: Starship gets a lot of attention, and I suppose that's understandable, but the star of this is actually the booster in my mind. You can construct a 2nd that doesn't need to come back down, and that can be used to establish robotic resource gathering right now, regardless of whether Starship can ever safely re-enter.

It's about cheap heavy lift. Don't forget that.

[lvlndco]

Felix, you like working with numbers, right? Can you work up an episode going over the economic impact of Starship development? It would be interesting to see the number of direct employees and contractors, then supplier companies.
Oh, also one on the safety of the command center. With it being fairly close to the launch tower do they have some kind of automatic blast shields that will drop down to shield those in the command center if it goes BOOM close to the pad? Those big windows scream danger.
It is odd that DM was cancelled. Granted Starship develop has been slower than Musk had wanted, but this is something many said could not be done, so a 5 year development period without any infrastructure already in place was very optimistic.

[johndoepker]

PLEASE emphasize MORE in your videos that Starship/SuperHeavy is a prototype and still extremely young in its design and development!

[neoanderson]

June 6th it is!! Go Starship go!!! <3
Some people don't understand how things work. Some will never do. Since they made that announcement of sending people to the moon for a fly-by, I was very optimistic of the timeline. Alot of people still couldn't get their minds around how a private company was able to do this and not some government funded one....
While Starship is a bit behind schedule, you can't overlook how much progress and knowledge was acquired already during these early phases. This is the biggest thing we've been able to launch into space and we're expecting to carry massive cargo along with people in the near future. Without any doubt we'll see these type of missions in the not so distant future. For sure before 2030.. :-)

[acejace]

I'm wondering about the feasibility of Starship if a single tile failure would result in RUD. In engineering circles, there tends to be a small chance per unit of a crack, defect, or anomaly. With that many tiles and tile mounts, there's a relatively high chance for a failure point.

[franknolte]

If the integrity ( or rather lack thereof) of all heat tiles is a critical single mode of ship failure, then there is much work to be done. But hopefully IFT-4 moves things closer to that 100% tile integrity mark. Perfection needed, but progress is essential. Good luck Spacexon this next launch.

[Sir-WMW]

5:38 Wow I can't believe you actually caught the cow being picked up and moved by the wind.... amazing!

[ChrisNett]

It will be successful!!! The difference between each flight test we have seen massive improvement and I think each flight is only going to get better as time goes on!!!

[krcbnpp]

Felix... Wanted to let you know that you and your team are awesome, you handled the glitches and the streaming problems really well. Thank you for all you do, a very devoted follower.

[caibelo]

Easily best space news channel on YouTube

[Slappi]

"....cause a rocket might land on you!" LOL!

[scratchbuiltdozer]

Super cool to see the truck and car at the launch tower. Glad you all made it safely.

[mirochlebovec]

“Epic fireball of no return….and that was my phone.” sounds like a comedy villain scene.🤣

[debbiek]

I think she will fly high and proud..like an eagle!!

[vmoutsop]

Doing things like this, essentially for the first time, there is no such thing as a delay, it takes what it takes and then that becomes the benchmark.

[toma.]

The talk about redundancy for safety, I guess, is history. A single tile and the whole thing is destroyed....insane.