Astronauts first walked on the moon in 1969. You got the flag up now and you can see the
stars and stripes. If you asked people back then what they thought space missions would look like
now, they might be surprised to hear that the last time human beings went to the moon was in 1972.
Even though there hasn't been much progress for decades, 2020 will go down as the year everything
started to change. One, zero, ignition, liftoff. Godspeed Bob and Doug. When SpaceX sent NASA
astronauts into orbit, it represented more than just a mission to the International Space Station.
It meant a private company had built the infrastructure that could one day make space
travel possible for everyone. Welcome back to planet Earth, thanks for flying SpaceX.
This day heralds a new age of space exploration. We're gonna go to the moon, we're going to
have a base on the moon. We're going to send people to Mars, and make life multi-planetary.
SpaceX has big ambitions and it plans to achieve them with Starship.
Tt's hard to grasp the size of Starship but the Falcon 1 booster which was used for SpaceX's first
successful launch in 2008 looks tiny beside it. Starship is made up of two parts: the spacecraft
is stacked on top of a huge rocket booster called the Super Heavy. Together they tower 120
meters high which is a bit longer than a football field and bigger than other super heavy rockets.
By the way, that's what we would look like in comparison. Not only will it be big, it can carry
up to 100 people and a lot of cargo. Starship is meant to hold a payload of up to 150 metric tons
which is the weight of about 21 African elephants. That requires a lot of power for liftoff.
Monstrous engines filled with liquid oxygen and liquid methane will boost the rocket into orbit.
Six of these Raptor engines will be used in the spacecraft but most of the power comes from the
up to 37 Raptor engines in the booster. After lifting Starship into orbit, the booster and
the spacecraft will separate. The Super Heavy returns to Earth while Starship goes along its
journey and that journey can be anything from making trips to the International Space Station,
missions to the moon, and of course, landing on Mars which is not easy. Starship will be
entering its atmosphere at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour or 25 times the speed of sound.
It will need to decelerate and perform a specific maneuver in order to land. And it's not just speed
that Starship has to worry about but heat. It'll be coming into the red planet's atmosphere really
hot so the heat shield will see some wear and tear sort of like what you get from wearing out
a brake pad of a car. One of the reasons SpaceX switched the material from carbon fiber to steel
was to better withstand higher temperatures. It's also cheaper. But even before making the long trip
to another planet, Starship needs to refuel in Earth's orbit. One Starship will meet another
one that could have launched from the moon, for example, powered by its own Raptor engines
and then once it reaches Mars it could refuel again there for another trip.
But none of SpaceX's ambitions would be possible were not for the one standout feature of Starship:
it is a fully reusable rocket. Never has that existed before. The Falcon 9 was the stepping
stone as SpaceX frequently re-flew parts of that rocket but the company's plan from the
beginning was to build an entirely reusable one. You can imagine that if planes were not reusable,
very few people would fly. The spacecraft will land in a way that might attract some crowds.
It will fall back to earth like a skydiver and belly flop at a 60-degree angle before slowing
to the ground, rotating vertically, and then arriving at its landing pad. Because all parts of
the rocket will be reused, the cost of each launch will drop significantly. For example, a NASA space
shuttle flight was around $450 million. SpaceX has estimated a Starship launch could be as little as
$2 million. At its factory in Boca Chica, in a remote area at the southeastern tip of Texas,
SpaceX plans to churn out one Starship every 72 hours with a goal of having a fleet of about 1,000
in service but the question is: how will Starship make money right now? It can be used to carry
Starlink satellites into orbit as part of SpaceX's plan to provide internet coverage anywhere around
the world which I talked about in another video. And revenue from Starlink could eventually bring
in 30 billion dollars a year. Another use is providing Earth-to-Earth transport. For example,
going from New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes which will likely be expensive. And Japanese
billionaire Yusaku Mazawa will also help fund Starship's development as SpaceX's first
private passenger to fly around the moon in 2023. But these are small goals compared to the
ultimate purpose of Starship. Elon Musk's greatest ambition is to build nations in space including a
city on Mars to ensure humanity's survival in case something happens on Earth. Starship took
its first big step toward that goal with its tiny hop in August. This is a Starship prototype which
looks like a floating tin can. It lept 150 meters in the air using a single Raptor engine - setting
the stage for Starship's plan to land on the moon by 2022 with cargo and then with crew soon after
before ultimately sending people to Mars in 2024 although Musk is not known for making deadlines.
But one thing is certain and that's this. There are many troubles in the world, of course,
and these are important and we need to solve them. But we also need things that make us excited
to be alive, that make us glad to wake up in the morning. Space exploration is one of those things.
So if you asked people in 1969 what space travel might look like today,
even though they might be surprised that progress has been stagnant for decades,
SpaceX appears to be changing the game. I hope you enjoyed that story about Starship. Hey guys,
I'm Cindy Pom, thanks so much for watching. If you like what you saw, give it a like,
and don't forget to subscribe to my new channel. I'm always looking for good stories to tell so
if you have an idea, feel free to leave it in the comment section below. See you soon you.