welcome back if you watched our previous
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episodes you may be very familiar with
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Miss Tom heifer Miss Heifer developer
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assistance for neutralizing rockets and
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drones he currently coaches teenagers
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robotic teams they met in the MIT free
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speech Alliance today Mr heifer is going
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to present Starship
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good afternoon Mr Harper afternoon Dr
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Liu good to see you again and yes
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Starship is a very interesting subject
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about which I knew very little so it
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took a lot of research to find out
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what's going on and I still don't know
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but I'll tell you what I have found out
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the Starship test
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what happened and what does it mean
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so first of all what is the Starship so
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Starship is the biggest rocket that has
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ever been built it's about 400 feet tall
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and this Compares it with some of the
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other space launch systems some some of
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the biggest ones and Starship is really
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two different Rockets this part down
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here up to the actual Starship is called
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the heavy lift booster and then on top
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of that the second stage which separates
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and is its own rocket here is the actual
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Starship and so that is shown over here
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and the Starship itself consists of a
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large tank and motor section which has
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liquid oxygen and liquid methane and six
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Rocket Motors down here and then the
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cargo space up here which can hold crew
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or cargo or whatever you want and then
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it has a header tank up here which can
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provide fine control of kitchen yaw of
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the rocket so it has about the first
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stage the heavy launch stage has about
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17 million pounds of thrust much more
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than any of these other rockets and then
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the upper stage Starship once it
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separates has about 3 million pounds of
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thrust so what was it supposed to do I
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apologize this diagram's kind of hard to
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see but I'll walk you through it so
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there were three separate stages of this
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first down here
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is the actual launch stage which it did
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and then it is supposed to fly out and
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go up to a distance of 100 miles or so
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and then it executes A peculiar maneuver
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where it actually flips
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and in the process of flipping separates
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the Starship from the heavy launch
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booster and then the heavy launch
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booster continues the flip and then
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turns itself around and is supposed to
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come back and land normally back at the
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same place where it launched from but in
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this case it was going to ditch in the
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ocean it wasn't going to be recoverable
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and then the Starship was supposed on
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this flight to fly out for another
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several thousand miles and then it would
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also do a turn maneuver and then it was
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also going to get in the ocean that's
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what was supposed to happen let's see
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what actually happened so here's a very
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sped up clip of the actual flight itself
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so you'll notice from the movie that
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there were supposed to be three things
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that happened the first one which was
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the launch from the pad here was
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successful but the launch pad was all
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torn up and big chunks of concrete flew
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all over the place and it's not
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inconceivable that some of those
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concrete chunks actually went back up
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into the motor section and damaged some
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of the motors on the heavy launch
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booster and part of that is because not
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all of the motors in the heavy launch
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booster we'll show those in a minute
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actually work successfully and so when
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this in the process of launch it
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actually slids sideways a bit and it may
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have gotten into part of the launch pad
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that wasn't intended to absorb the
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thrust and that may be why there was so
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much concrete thrown around so then it
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did fly out and then you'll see when it
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gets near the end of the film that it is
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actually spinning it's flipping and
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here's here it is and there's the heavy
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launch section and then you'll see here
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the Starship section is at an angle and
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so it appears that
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it actually it they did not attempt to
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separate the two sections but it appears
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that something broke right here
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and so it was obvious that the flight
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was not going to be successful from
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there on out and so then they issued the
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the system didn't blow up it was blown
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up by range safety it's what's called a
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flight termination system and that's
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included in in every rocket of this type
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every unmanned system in fact drones
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have them
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the only thing I would note is that if
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this had been a manned fly the people
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probably would have been able to get out
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safely because there would have been
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some type of an escape pod up here in
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the Starship itself and so they would no
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doubt have ejected that so the problems
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that cropped up were several one there
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was a question of why didn't all the
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launch Motors ignite and then later on
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in Flight you'll see some of them
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actually failed subsequently in flight
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and in fact what happened was that it
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when it got up here near the place where
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the flip maneuver was scheduled the
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central section of the flight motors
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have thrust vectoring they're gimbled
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and so they can actually control the
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attitude that is to say the direction of
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the missile whether it goes like this or
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this or this and the gimbals failed and
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so then the asymmetry is in the thrust
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of the motors that were still
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functioning caused this to flip so even
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though it looked like it was doing what
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it was supposed to it actually wasn't so
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that was another problem and then the
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other other problem is that while the
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flight termination system did work it
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took about 40 seconds and that's
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unacceptable it's got to work right away
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when you want to terminate the flight so
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they've got some problems that they've
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got to solve so let's look at these
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motors so here's a bottom view of the
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heavy lift booster and you can see
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there's this whole array of Motors in
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here and these ones in the center are
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the ones that are supposed to be gimbled
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and provide attitude control and you can
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see that part way through the flight
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three of them did not ignite on on the
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pad on liftoff so that's cost of
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asymmetries in the thrust and then later
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on in the flight here you can see that
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one two three four five at least five of
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the motors have failed so they've got to
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find out what the heck is going on now
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NASA and probably many in the public
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think that this was a big failure and it
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certainly wasn't a huge success but Elon
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has a different attitude he says success
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is far from certain but excitement is
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guaranteed and his view is that this is
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an experiment that he learned a lot from
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it and next time he'll do better so