Starship Flight 9, Planet 9 No More // May 25th, 2025 EDIT #spacex #starship #planet9

like plugging the hole in the dam with your finger. Once you plug one, then you that's when you find another. We don't have parachutes on trip 7s for a reason. 9 m class telescope that is just gigantic and unbelievable. Tomorrow begins right now. Good morning. How's everything up in the sky? Ready, go. Hello everybody. Welcome to tomorrow. We have a very exciting show for you today. over there is some very interesting stuff that we need to talk about and quite a bit of anticipation coming up over the next few days for the ninth flight of Starship. So joining me today to talk about it we have Jared Head. We are also joined by Da and also by Ryan Kaitton. Thank you everyone for being here today. Yes Jared, everybody is here. Everybody uh thank you Starlink for for the satellite handoff that made me question whether reality was real or not. And that's just some of the uh technical difficulties that we have. So, um uh something that uh um uh John uh who in the chat room is known as Soccer is Light put together for us. Uh this may come as a surprise to Ryan and I hope that you don't protest too much, but uh we went ahead and uh wanted to pull up this live view of NASA spaceflight stream um to as we're talking about Starship and the preparations that they are making to stack this. Um, so guys, unless I'm misunderstanding things, uh, the the pending regulatory approval is no longer pending and they've actually got the the go-ahad to to actually do this flight as soon as this Tuesday, right? Am I misunderstanding things there? That's exactly correct. Everything everything is signed off, the launch license in hand. Uh they uh the mishap investigation into the last flight remains open, but they have been given a uh an approval by the FAA that they didn't hurt anyone on the last flight, so no one was ever in any danger. Uh so that allows them uh it's a safety determination. That's the terminology used. Uh so that essentially says, "We're still investigating your last flight, but because you didn't hurt anyone, uh we're okay with you giving it another go." Because of course, these are these are test flights, right? And you know, theoretically, part of the uh of the investigation into the previous flight might only be able to be finished once they've tested something on this flight. And you know, you can't test the thing on this flight until this flight flies. And if you can't fly this flight without the mishap investigation being closed from the previous flight, you can never close your mis investig. It's a chicken and egg problem essentially, right? So they they need to be able to fly with mishap investigations remaining open, right? Something I found really interesting too is even though the on the last two flights, the the the failure happened right around the same time um that SpaceX um kind of put out a brief little update that the causes of those two failures were actually different. um you know the the the last one that we had uh in March, you know, we saw one of the Raptor engines unfortunately disappear and cause the rest of the uh the upper stage engines to shut down. Um but on the January flight, this was kind of interesting to me is that even though it was a again at the similar time of flight, um that there was some other type of hardware failure that actually caused that the not explosion that we saw, but you know, exploded and and rained down all the different pieces of debris. Unfortunately for us, SpaceX didn't go into any more details about what that hardware failure was, but alluded that it was not the same as uh the Raptor engine failure on the last flight on flight 8. So, very interesting to me. And do do you guys have any theories as to to what you think that uh that hardware failure possibly could have been? I'm thinking it was probably plumbing. But that's just my my thoughts for it. I mean, it's going to be plumbing related at some point. How how far up the chain do you want to go? Um, yeah. I uh there it would have been nice to have more detail on that on that report by SpaceX. I think I think that's stating the obvious. There was no mention of the fire we saw in the aft section of the vehicle uh in in the in the live onboard cameras from the previous flight. There was no mention of the Raptor vacuum engines and we could see a little bit glowing on an ARVAC on the last flight as well. So, it would have been nice if they touched on those issues, but if SpaceX says that they've solved the issue at this point, I don't see any reason to not believe them, right? I the I've seen people doubting SpaceX and their abilities. This is the company that has launched more than anyone else nearly combined. Why should we doubt them? Right. Well, it's like it's like it's like like plugging the hole in the dam with your finger. Once you plug one, then you that's when you find another. Um, you know, no system is perfect and you're not going to get every system working 100% all the time. So, you're always going to be chasing something to either uh boost performance or get the performance that you quoted or or desired or fix the things that come with everything else working properly. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that we're all in agreement here that we'd want to see this succeed and finally get to the the different de demonstration tests that they had been wanting to do since Flight 7 and get that going. You know, the whole next big milestone was that they wanted to deploy the simulated Starlinks and also do an engine relight while uh they're on their sub suborbital trajectory before, you know, hopefully the following tests after that would be getting all the way into orbit and moving forward with the prop demo and and all those types of things. So, I think we're all in agreement there that we want to see this succeed for sure. Uh interesting uh comments from the chat room. Uh, this is from Joshua Collins. I don't know if they're telling the full truth with saying that they are different. If they had fully fixed the leak in the attic issue from flight 7, then where did the fire on 8 come from? Good point. And I think that that kind of gets back to the point that Da just brought up of, you know, once you plug the dam, then a new leak sprouts uh somewhere else. So they I I I want to take them at their word that they did fix that problem and it's one of those you don't know what you don't know scenarios that they fixed the thing that failed but a new leak sprouted somewhere else. But of course, we can only speculate on that. And that that's that's part of how you address complicated engineering systems is you divide things up into uh different segments or different areas of concern and you address each of those as they come up. And again, like you you fix you fix one problem, you know, you're you're you no longer have a flat, but you don't have a wheel on the car. So, you need to mount the wheel on the car and figure out how that works. Um, now that now that you don't have a flat. Yeah. And I mean, a lot of these things sound very silly, right? Like like why are we having, you know, engine issues on an upper stage? And it sounds very silly to us because we've had, you know, so much success through SpaceX's Falcon 9 because Falcon 9, I would say, now has a long heritage, over a decade long of flying consistently enough that we could claim it to have heritage. Um I mean I mean it's another rocket ever bar soyos right this is the most experienced American launch vehicle ever manufactured in the history of aerospace. How you can't top that. Literally we're literally coming up on a decade of reuse at the end of this year. Like that's I can't even believe it's been almost a decade since that happened. December that 10 years. Holy cow. But comparing comparing Starship to Falcon is like saying that that my SUV is is the same as a Vespa like no no I no it's a correct this is a correct point Da but I'm just saying that that this is a lot more complicated so I don't think really anybody with a good understanding of what was actually expected of like the power and the the sophistication and other things like that. Um, I don't think anybody really thought that this was going to be some sort of like smooth flight testing program to go with it. I mean, we were expecting, you know, like, you know, you're going to break a few eggs to make the omelet, right? And we were expecting a broken eggs on the path here. I mean, we've blown up a lot of uh serial number starships um to do this, right? So, um, it's I just think a lot of people were not expecting these flight tests to actually go like a lot of flight tests go, which is like a true learning curve in what you're doing here. Um, and it is important to remember that this is a very critical part of the human landing system for Artemis as well. Uh so there is a little bit of desire amongst the powers that be for traction to begin to be felt on the wheels as they spin uh against the ground. But at the same time, you know, we'll we'll have to be patient as things continue to try to speed up. So, I I feel like there's an expectation that because of Falcon 9's development history and how it has been going recently with few mishaps and quick resolution to easy to fix problems that are the type of thing that you find very very late in a development/production cycle. The the same would apply to Starship even though it is a vastly different and immensely more complicated vehicle. It it's it's largely the same as it's as as starting over, but you're starting over with the experience of having solved a a bunch of similar problems on Falcon 9. And now that you're getting those resolved, you're finding the the car the quirks and nuances of how those problems present themselves with this massively larger and much more complicated vehicle. And that's what they're digging into the nitty-gritty of. And I have I have no doubt that they'll they'll figure it out and handle it and and make it work. But what is unknown is how many flights and how many uh destructive re uh re-entries and uh and and whatnot are they how many vehicles are they going to have to go through in order to be able to get to that spot. And fortunately for the people that work at at SpaceX and for the development of the of the system, they've got a lot of runway and they've got a lot of money behind them to be able to do what they need to do to get there. Uh, but I think there's an expectation that maybe it should be happening quicker than than is realistic with with such a dramatically different vehicle. Similar thought to what Dystopian Prophet said, I have no doubt that SpaceX will succeed with Starship. The question is when lunar landing before 2030, he thinks probably not. We'll see. 2030 on Elon time is like 2050. Oh gosh, I hope not. I really hope not. Yeah. I mean, I have to be honest. Right now, we're meant to have an Arteimus human landing in like two or three years. And when you look at the state of the Starship program right now, I can understand I can understand the doubts, right? But we also kind of have to let's just maybe this is me just being optimistic, but let's just assume if this flight goes well, Starship can be in an orbital capability in under two months time. Look how far the program has come in the last two years. In the last two years, it would have gone from first flight literally destroying the pad. Theoretically, it could be in orbit in two months. Yeah. Uh so that's that's that's progress. That's good progress. 2027 2028 might be a push, but I think you know 2030 and beyond is is is pessimism. you know um I think 2027 2028 is possible if SpaceX goes at the rate at which they are developing for and you know yesterday or the day before we saw the last bit of the highway being torn down. They're expanding their factory. They're building the gigabyte. They're literally building something 75% the size of the VAB to ramp up manufacturing cadence. SpaceX is sending messages of intent that they plan to rapidly increase the amount of development they do with the Starship program faster than they ever have done before and they could be only a couple of months away from orbit. I I honestly think we're about to see a huge increase in what what this vehicle is capable of doing. Yeah. And and let's let's be realistic to Josh's point. And I think a lot of people who follow Starship are more surprised at these two of at these two recent failures given how smoothly flights three and three through six had gone. There's a little bit of luck that there's a little bit of luck that goes into this as well. Like you you you don't you you've you've not gotten to an into a car accident because you're a good driver or you know you just missed all the stupid people. Like there sometimes it just happens and you've got to figure out how to get through that and and correct it in the future. like you're not going to you don't always you're not always going to suffer leaks because you put a joint together, but any number of little things that that could have gone well can can go poorly. Take Apollo Apollo 13 for an example. uh you know a switch malfunctioned three two and a half years or three years before it was being used and they got all the way to launch and they it wasn't until they were you know on their way to the moon that they decided to short circuit and cause an explosion like stuff like that just happens even if you were good. Yeah. And and to kind of piggyback on Apollo as well, dada, um you know, we always hold the Saturn 5 in such high esteem. Um but let's not forget Saturn 5 had significant issues, too. Like Apollo 6, like nearly almost every single stage of Apollo 6 during the flight. Something went wrong and could have caused uh the lo like loss of loss of vehicle at that point. Um what was Apollo 13 had uh a center engine shutdown on their second stage, right? So, they had to burn longer and things like that. Apollo 12, we almost had to do full abort uh because, you know, struck by lightning only only thanks to uh STce to ox, which everybody should have that on their light switches at their homes, you know, and ox. Um it's it's one of those things where you got to you got to roll the dice often with these uh with these vehicles and luck is a big um I think we often forget about that like like that right there right with Colombia like dang that was that was going we put all in on the chips on that for that test flight. Holy smokes. Like that that is the gut to me that's the gutsiest thing besides landing on the moon Apollo 11 uh that's ever been done simply because those guys got on top of something entirely unproven and uh and just said let's go for it. So some other funny things I've heard John Young say um but we could talk about it in After Dark. So yeah, that was such a crazy thing and learning, you know, way way later about how dangerous it actually was. So that was a Yeah, I agree with you. And uh um I like this comment as well from uh Eeka. The money spent on Starship has been spent on the ability to make the next one cheap compared to any other rocket. And yeah, I would agree with that. If they can get to these next milestones, then I Yeah, I think that they'll be able to do that. Yeah, it's one of the things that uh people always forget about and and and then uh Eeka who always brings up really great points is just you know making sure that we all get to understand which is that infrastructure is really important and it's not just your ground support equipment your GSSE that you have to worry about. It's your logistics. It's your tank farms. It's your um your control centers. It's your your tracking stations and other things. Like holy moly, there's a lot. And then they're doing it all in Florida, too. So like like I think people keep forgetting that it's not just Starbase like in Texas, you got Florida as well. And you know, SpaceX is really wanting to push everywhere. Like I don't know if you've recently read about the work that they're doing, you know, out at Vandenberg in Florida um for the expansion of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy to fly out of there. Um and then also someone in our chat room earlier mentioned that uh that you know the FAA has now approved uh SpaceX to fly up to what is it 25 flights now per year annually out of Starbase. So instead of five, we're now up to 25. Um, so every just about every other week, you know, that's a that's a heck of a test program for a rocket. So absolutely that's that's a lot of that's a lot of opportunity to gather data and data is everything in a test program. So yeah, and you know, another example too, all that stuff that they are are setting up in in Cape Canaveral, just another example of what Brian brought up of their intention and and how serious they are about this and getting through the uh these setbacks and and getting it fully operational as the Empire would say. Yeah. And Nick Yeah. fully oper this fully operational launch system. Um I was going to say Nick Trier's got a great one that I think also a lot of us forget about too which is that Falcon and Starlink are paying the bills. So all the investment in Starship is deferred profit and as soon as it is operational they will clean up. So yeah, and if you think about the, you know, Starlink V3 and what the what just one of those is going to be capable of doing and then, you know, how many of those are going to be shot out of a PEZ dispenser on orbit at any given time and uh and the jump that Starlink has had on everybody and just, you know, it's it's, you know, it's the baby tomato catch up. Mhm. So, one other thing I forgot to mention is whether you're in favor of it or you're not, name me one other aerospace corporation which has incorporated their own city. Hey, yeah, great point. I I think that says all you need to know about about SpaceX's intent to be honest. Yeah, great point. Be able to have the to the powers to be able to to control operations in the surrounding area a bit more. Yeah, man. Hopefully for the better. Yeah. So, so I I think I think if you're not doing it for the better, your employees are not going to be happy. I'll I'll just put it that way. So, I mean, one of this this might seem very small to some people, but the uh if you didn't know, there used to be a uh automatic message service which you could sign up for and every time the beach was closed, it would give you it would send a message to your phone. that has been upgraded over the last few days that the rollouts for vehicles like boosters and ships. Those live updates also now go to that beach closed text service. So whether that has anything to do with with Starbase being incorporated properly, I don't know. But either way, that's a very useful addition because it essentially allows SpaceX through the county to provide live real-time information to residents of Brownsville and Bokh Chica or anyone who wants to sign up for the service, right? Give them real-time updates of if the beach is open or not. And that's, you know, the most of the criticism we we see going around nowadays is activist groups going, "Uh, they're closing the beach. I can never access the beach anymore. It's always closed." First of all, it's never always like it's closed for the minority of the time. Second of all, you can literally get a text message telling you if it's going to be closed or if it's going to be open. They're making this so accessible to the general public. I I I don't know how you could ask more of them. Absolutely. I'm sorry. This makes me laugh real quick. Dystopian prophet. I hear this in Emperor Palpatines's voice. I find Ryan's abundance of faith disturbing. I don't I'm with you, Ryan. I I want this to happen so bad. By the way, I like Eeka's comment um there talking about, you know, true uh you know, plans for a city on Mars, too, because that is a goal of SpaceX, right? Is is oh my god, large scale human colony human settlement on Mars. So, it makes sense as to why you might end up wanting to do Starbates because what does the infrastructure for a city look like and how can a company teach itself on how to build that infrastructure? So, what better way to do that than having your own town? And uh Matt Miller has a really good point in the chat room, which is that here in the United States, at least company towns, not a new idea. Um but they also have a very bad history. So that's why everybody's a little like a little I don't know about that, you know, kind of uh kind of attitude um towards a company town. But I mean, we'll see. I it's it's not going to be like a a original design of of what Epcot was supposed to be kind of thing, you know. Um and if if you don't know the history of that, you know, I'm sure Jaime's made a video somewhere um about that. Um but yeah, we'll see. And it just it just seems like a lot of the stuff that SpaceX does doesn't really do much um for their like spaceflight stuff actually contributes towards the long-term goal of humans on Mars. So we'll have to see what West Virginia would like a word. Okay. Well, you know what? You're just going to have to go down those country roads when the time comes. Um, one I tell you what, I think me and Ryan would both agree. We would be perfectly fine with getting paid in heat shield tiles, right, Ryan? One one example of success for a company town would be or uh what is what is it? Disney whatever the town Disney is in Florida. Like they own all of that land. They've made they've incorporated their own cities so that they have their own police and fire department and they they don't have to deal with local municipalities or local governments uh in order to be able to handle their business. They have their own water supply, their own sewage treatment that they they do everything themselves and and that makes them largely self-sufficient in that respect. And I that kind of that kind of practice I think is is good to understand what are all the complications of actually making a city useful for people. Yeah. Cuz you're going to need everything when you go to a different planet. You don't have anything at all. And honestly guys, I hadn't even considered this before that Starbase Texas is literally practice for them learning how to run a city. This is, man, I can't believe I hadn't even made that connection before. That is that is mind-blowing. Yeah. Always pay attention to what SpaceX is hiring, right? Like, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to end up actually doing what they're going to do, right? Because like I've got I've got several friends who are who are reactor engineers who got hired at SpaceX. Um, but like I I mean I don't know if that's going to mean anything in the future or not, but you know that's if I understand correct if I understand correctly that's to generate their own power. Yeah. Well, I mean nuc nuclear is the way to do it and and we're certainly not afraid of that word um here at tomorrow. So we're big fans. Solar is great, but at the same time you're going to have issues with it at times. So, and here and I was about to block the road live right now. Get out of the way. I was on I was on time for work, but there was a rocket in the road. A likely story, Johnson. [Laughter] Move that thing or I'm going to get out and beat you. I even have proof it was on the NSF stream. Come on. I was the NSF stream. Um, oh my goodness. H some great uh some great comments though in the um the chat room. Uh I did want to uh something that hasn't been uh talked a whole lot about, but uh Raj Luther brings up uh when it comes to cargo and crude Starship launches, will Starship be safe enough without a launch escape system or will SpaceX introduce one? Good question. I mean, we can only speculate about that, but I'm, you know, we don't have to assume that they would have to have figured out some stuff, especially if they're going to, you know, fly NASA astronauts on it. Um but then again that might not come until way way later in the program because the current plan which is you know up for uh potential major changes. The current plan is to have Orion capsule take astronauts from the surface of Earth and meet up with Starship do all the lunar landing stuff and then bring it those astronauts back to Orion to come back to Earth. So they might not necessarily need to have a sort of launch escape system until much much later and when you know they get to that point where people are actually flying on Starship from the the ground first. So that's probably not going to be a thing for a couple of years. Here's the part about that that terrifies me. Do airlines have launch escape systems? Airlines collide. I think the people just die. I there's there's I was gonna say hold on Ryan first then then you Jared there there's two sides to this argument right because you can say well airliners don't have launch escape systems well Starship can't glide well Starship blows up much bigger than than an airliner so you know you can bounce backwards and forwards on this argument for for a little while right but I think it should be noted that I personally don't see Starship carrying humans. Transatosmospheric is how I'll describe it. You know, launching from Earth or returning to Earth on board Starship, at least until the early 2030s at a minimum. I think that's being very optimistic. Realistic maybe a decade from now. Pessimistic maybe the 2040s. Um, so you have to consider that. But then you also have to think maybe they will actually get to a point where Starship is so reliable that a launch escape system seems outdated, right? Maybe we will get to a point where the um loss of life compared to the successful missions uh that ratio is such a degree where it isn't determined by the regulators that they they need a launch escape system, right? Uh I think we maybe it's just a shift in tality that will have to happen. Maybe it's a proof of capability that will have to happen. Maybe it's both of those things. You know, we'll just have to wait and see what happens. But I would not be surprised if there is a future where launch escape systems become a thing of the past because rocket technology gets to the point where it is so reliable that it just seems silly. You know, we don't have parachutes on trip 7s for a reason, right? Because they they add weight, they're pointless, and they wouldn't do anything to help in the event of an emergency, right? It's not it's not a thing that it it would hinder more than it would help. I I think it's a a percent chance of or probability thing of of what uh what the accident or event is that would warrant that kind of escape as well. Um for example, crew on on a Dragon uh they don't have a means to escape the capsule, but they have a means to remove the capsule from say an exploding vehicle beneath it. um and then you're relying on a recovery system for the for the dragon in order to be able to to re uh preserve life. Uh that doesn't mean that that's the only way to approach that problem. U an escape system like even space shuttle they they played around with all sorts of escape systems and none of them ever ever really worked or were tested or proved any kind of usefulness in the event of the actual uh the two accidents that that claimed lives there there were there wasn't anything that you could have done during those phases of flight to be able to preserve life. And maybe like in the case of airliners falling from the sky, there's a percent chance of probability that uh makes survivability possible. and they've done the safety precautions and they've got uh you know flotation devices underneath the seat cushions and blah blah blah blah blah to be able to to do what they can. But you you're not going to be able to to preserve life in every situation in every condition and and the percent of probability of something catastrophic happening uh is is low enough to be acceptable to for that to be an acceptable risk. Yeah. Um, yeah. Jared, do you point that you wanted to make? Go. I'm sorry, man. I really hate the the airplane versus rocket argument. It drives me up a wall. Um, because from an engineering perspective, rockets are are two to three levels above the complication and energy of an airplane, right? Like it just makes no sense to me to compare an airplane and a rocket with each other in terms of like what they do and the safety that you would have to exercise with them. Um and a lot of that comes from the fact that that up until recently uh rockets are not exactly something that you operate daily, right? So um like like a single Falcon 9 booster is not flown multiple times a day. Uh, however, when I'm getting on a plane to head to San Francisco, uh, from here in LA, that may be that plane's seventh or eighth flight that day and it still has two or three more to do, you know. Um, so man, it's just to me it just feels like like a very bad argument um to make. I I um I don't ever want my airplane Yeah. I I don't ever want my my airplane to be considered as quote unquote safe as my car to drive because if I have if I have a malfunction in my car, I pull off to the side of the road. Maybe I get stuck on on a freeway or something. If I have a if I have a a a mechanical condition with my airplane, then I'm falling from the sky or I an engine cowling is, you know, is lost or something like that. Like there those are those are magnitudes different of the failures invol involved with a vehicle are magnitudes different from an airplane and the failures involved in a rocket are magnitudes different from the from a that of an airplane. Um th those will should never be classified as the same kind of uh reliability or maintenance schedules or inspection procedures or operational cadences. They they they should never be that that that easy to fly. Yeah. When something's bad enough um and something goes wrong, you've got the rest of your life to figure it out. So that's one way to put it. And and when we do start qual qualifying those as same then that's when you're going to start seeing loss of life or loss of vehicles. Yeah. I mean it is something that has to be prepared for right. Anytime you're pushing the envelope it's going to happen. Anytime you are pushing the boundaries out into the frontier it's going to happen. Like you know we often think about like the Oregon Trail right and how many people died you know on the Oregon Trail. uh you know heading out to the west coast of the of the continental United States in the middle of the 19th century. Um and like I don't feel like we should be at an acceptable rate like that of loss of human life in space flight. We just we do have to understand that at some point there will be a loss of vehicle, loss of crew event and that we're going to have one simply because one simply because all timelines lead to 100%. Right? One of one at some point whether we want to or not. Um but also we need to understand that that's not an excuse to like not think about these things or try to prevent them from happening in the future. So uh yeah, there you go. Two cents, take it to the bank, whatever you like. I disagree. I have never once died of dysentery. Well, I once died of snake bite and let me tell you, I always got attacked. Oh, man. Before I fored that river and you liked it. Oh man. Well, I think that uh we could speculate uh quite a bit, but um what we do know is that as of right now, um this is scheduled to launch on Tuesday if uh there's no other delays. We're watching it roll out to the pad right now to get stacked on top of of the booster. Oh, and we haven't even talked or mentioned rather that uh we kind of brought this up last time about how this is the second flight of booster 14 and unfortunately they are not going to be attempting a catch of the booster because it's the first time that they're reflying a booster. So, uh doing a a planned uh landing splash down in the ocean. It's still going to do a burn as if it was doing a booster catch, but at a safe distance just in case there's anything that goes wrong. So, I think that we uh yes, they uh um are also going to be doing a uh engine out test. Uh the producer that you can't hear is uh telling me in my ear. Um, and yeah, so I think that we all are in agreement that we hope that everything goes well with uh those tests for reflying the booster for the very first time and finally getting those uh tests accomplished that we have been expecting ever since flight 7. So yeah, fingers crossed and we're really hoping that uh that everything goes well with this, right, guys? Yeah. Yeah, we're going to see a higher angle of attack. Maybe uh they've added a new plate to the hot staging ring so they can push the booster in a known direction with the exhaust from the ship. They're going to be testing engine out capabilities of those middle three Raptors. So they're going to knock out one of the one of the middle three. Uh so they'll have two in the middle and then using one of in the uh middle ring, one of those 10 as a as a backup, see if that's capable, and then they'll shut down that one remaining Raptor from the middle ring. So they'll do their final burn on just two on just two Raptor engines there as well. and it's going to come to a stop above the ocean. So, it's not going to actually splash down softly like we've seen uh on the previous flights where that's happened. Uh it's going to stop a little bit above the ocean and then it's going to smack into the ocean. So, it should be a loss of vehicle upon impact and we won't have any, you know, super heavies bobbing about uh in the ocean like we've seen before. So, wait a minute. Does that mean that they are potentially testing for a hover slam? Are we going to see a gigantic drone ship at some point? Hm. Probably there is a there is a line in the environmental assessment that allows SpaceX to land the ship and the booster to my knowledge on a drone ship. I don't think that will ever happen unless their terminology is a bit confused and they're talking about offshore platforms as in like an offshore launch platform, but I really really really highly doubt that Starship will ever actually need downrange recovery because it's so big. Like the only reason Falcon 9 does it is because it physically cannot have the performance to get back to the pad. Starship is like huge. Yeah. And Jared, we're gonna let you uh head this one up. So, there has been a confirmed new dwarf planet and it may or may not have something to do with the the theories around Planet X, Planet 9, whatever you want to call it, the the theories about a large body in the out in the solar system. What's what's going on with this? Tell us what's what's happening. Yeah. Well, we're having a a very in Yeah, a very interesting uh yeah, as best we can. A very interesting uh you know, result from studying um the sky as we do to try to find objects that are far out. One of the big things that we've been looking for is a hypothetical planet 9. Something that would be a couple times uh the couple Earth masses in size way out in the outer solar system. We look at the orbits of trans neptunian objects or these very distant uh objects in our outer solar system out into the Kyper belt and the inner or cloud uh that region. And uh we see are all the ones we've discovered so far. there's a consistent angle that just doesn't make sense with how inclined or angled they are to the plane of the solar system. So, we're all kind of scratching our heads and the best way they could figure out how to describe that uh is through like a planet with mass ejecting these objects into that. Uh but we have just discovered something. It's got a really great name. It's called 2017 OF 2011. Uh, and that's what we call and man, let me tell you that sound I'm gonna go to my travel agent and just say, "Yeah, 2017 OFF201 sounds nice this time of year." Uh, and it is a specific type of trans neptunian object called an extreme trans neptunian object. Now, this means that it goes out very, very far. That means it orbits way beyond Pluto. We're talking way out to almost 150 to 250 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun or what we would call one astronomical unit. Um, and 2017 OF 2011 uh goes as close as 45 astronomical units and then as far out as as uh 880 astronomical units. Wow. That is that is one of the furthest objects orbiting the sun that we have discovered. Uh so it literally takes just about 25 to 26,000 years for it to go around the sun. It is one of these things that goes out so far um that in the study they've basically determined that the uh galactic tide or basically uh the gravitational field of the Milky Way itself um would shape the orbit of this object over very long time scales as opposed to say like the interaction of the sun and other planets like we would with with Earth here in our in the in the inner solar system itself. Um so that's really really far away. The thing about it uh is that whatever OF201 is it is very bright. It reflects light uh very very well. So um so we don't have an exact diameter of it but based upon the data that we have um the diameter is going to be anywhere we think from about 550 to 850 kilometers which that would place it firmly in the range of dwarf planets. Uh so this would be a new dwarf planet that would have been discovered in the outer solar system. Uh, and this orbit that it's in as well does not fit with the planet 9 hypothesis or that hypothetical larger planet out in the the Kyper belt, the distant solar system. its orbit is at such a point or it's such a such a shape that it would not allow uh for that hypothetical planet 9 to be there because the gravity should have just ejected it by that point. Uh so un so we'll have to see um what happens over that and uh yeah it's just a very exciting discovery. uh that we'll be keeping a very close eye on. And this is just really cool that out at the most distant reaches of the solar system, uh dwarf planets. They're there. So dwarf planets. So yeah, just a just another dwarf planet way out in the uh in the in the distant solar system. And by the way, it is now Go ahead. Oh, I was going to say we discovered it at about 90 astronomical units away. Um, so it's it's already in the top 10 of most distant solar system objects that we've actually spotted. So it's uh it's out there. This one's this one is far and away. And I'm sorry, did you mention how how large this thing is? How does it compare in size to Pluto? Yeah. So, just to kind of go over it again, uh we think of OF 2011 is somewhere between 550 to 850 km in diameter. I'm sorry. Um no, it's it's good. It's good to review it. Uh we know Pluto is somewhere on the order of just under 2400 km in diameter. Um but it's important to remember that if OF201 is at towards that upper end, the 850 kilometers, um QR, which is a a dwarf planet, um is just a little over a thousand kilometers in diameter. So if we're going to call that a dwarf planet, we might as well call OF201 a dwarf planet as well. Dwarf planets are planets, too, everyone. Yeah, they are. So, as as an ignorant uh uh astronomy person, uh I almost want to throw this out here. That's really fascinating about how the gravity of the the Milky Way is potentially what is, you know, causing it to slingshot back around. But is there any potential chance that we that there might be two planet X's that we're actually in some sort of trinary system and not just a singular uh solar system and we have two different objects on either side that are pulling these objects back in. Uh so the interesting thing um is I will first of all give you a review of planet 9 uh which is that Mike Brown the guy who you know killed Pluto whatever you want to call him um the astronomer who did that um uh Dr. Mike Brown is a part of the team that is hunting for this hypothetical planet 9. Um, and they had a good idea as to where it should be in the sky. And they had been hunting for about a decade now with no positive results whatsoever, which they expected it only to take maybe a few years if there like truly was an object there uh to catch. So yeah, we we don't know. So um and and that is that is great. Like it's always great to have a big like question mark about something, right? Like could this end up telling us something about the formation of the solar system which we can then apply to uh exosystems throughout the universe that we may be able to study. So, um I So, um dark matter unfortunately does it doesn't work particularly well at the small scales. It works really good at galactic and extragalactic scales, but at small scales um the influence is not particularly noticeable. It's it gravity wins I guess at small scale is how we'll say it. So, I do really like this comment from Aravl and I I agree with this actually. The fact that we found two of these that super long elliptical objects makes me think that there are actually hundreds and these are just the ones that happen to be close to us at the moment. I think there might be some truth to that but especially giving their given their orbital period. We haven't existed for one full orbital period these for a lot of these. Yeah, we actually, you know, in terms of the size of these objects, the returns on them the higher you go are like incredibly diminishing. The drop off is is unbelievable in terms of what we expect. So, um, like the amount of confidence in things that are as big as OF201, we expect that in the in their in the Kyper belt that there should maybe be about 15 to 20 of these kinds of objects. That's it. So, that's why it's such a big deal to find something like this is because we ain't expecting a lot of things of this size out there. Um I mean we think total you think in excess of 100 kilometers in size somewhere on the order of maybe like 8 800 to a,000 in that region. So uh but you know we'll see we're in the very early days of studying the Kyper belt simply because it's so hard to see these things and you have to have the right instrumentation for that. Uh so it may end up being that there is a instrument bias and that there's actually a lot of these things out there. So basically like our telescopes and instruments that we're using are just not designed to find these things. So that means we end up not seeing them. So you know it's like small exoplanets. We know that there's got to be tons of small exoplanets out there. But we don't see a lot of them yet simply because of the fact that we don't have the stuff to detect things that are like the regularly that are the size of the earth. So I don't know is it that we don't is it that we don't have the capability or we haven't put concentration to to uh to that that kind of study. Uh a little bit of both. So um the thing about science is that to study stuff you have to convince other people that it's a good idea um to study these things and then you get the funding for that and it can be very difficult if you are going against the grain in order to get that um which doesn't mean that you don't get funding unless you be labeled a heretic. Yes. Lest you be labeled a heretic. um es especially if you're going into things that are very well understood like say you want like say you have a a hypothesis that runs completely opposite of how we understand gravity to work um that would probably be very difficult to get funding for a study like that not impossible um but to get the type of funding that would allow you to do a a study that would deliver results um that would be unbiased enough to be accepted for peer review by the community at large. It would be very difficult to do something like that um simply because gravity very well understood as to how it works. Uh the mechanism as to why it works. No. Um but the how of gravity and why it works. Yes. So just an example uh of something there. Um also the availability of funds uh helps out with that. So that's something that we're about to find out. um over the next couple of years here um as to what happens when you dry up grants and other things like that. Uh and uh not you don't have much of the actual funding that you need in order to do the big science. So you're about to find out. Uh I think GTH42 kind of rephrased my question. Is it a sensing or a scale problem? Yes, it's both. Uh we we need bigger telescopes. helpful. We need bigger. So, we need bigger telescopes and we need more of them. So, because the bigger the telescope, the more uh the more light it captures, right? The more basically the more data, the more photons you get for your whatever you're looking at. Um, and then the more telescopes you have, the more opportunity for these to occur, right? And and I would add you got more choice. I would add to that a third uh aspect. Is it a a lensing problem where like Hubble gets this much of the sky and JT JWST gets that much or or or something different? Like what what what if you were to imagine your your uh the best kind of telescope that would be able to sense these objects, what kind of characteristics would it have? What would it be similar to? Oh, um gosh, ground ground based, space based, wide aperture, narrow aperture. Yes. But I I know I know Porquos do, but like like give me the give me what would what you would really want. Like this is your mission. I'm going to find all 15 of what of these. What what what does your telescope look like? Where where is it? What does it what does it do? Well, for to start, um, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope uh will be extremely helpful in something like this, um, simply because it's going to have absurd resolution abilities while looking at absolutely massive swaths of the sky all at once. Um to give you an idea of how big Nancy Grace Roman can see, um there was a study done of the Andromeda galaxy where they used Hubble to actually be able to resolve the individual stars in Andromeda. So that way we could compare the population of stars in Andromeda to the population of stars that we see here in the Milky Way to basically confirm that our understanding of stellar physics or the way stars work is true, which by the way that study did confirm. to the population of stars in Andromeda, very similar, if not almost close enough to basically say it's a match to what we have here in the Milky Way. Um, and that study with Hubble required Hubble to take somewhere on the order of of a tripledigit number of images. It was somewhere between 150 to 200. I can't think of the exact number right off of the top of my head. um with Nancy Grace Roman with the field of view that it has it would have required a grand total of two images for that. So um so that's why very wide field of view telescopes are sort of becoming a like the new hotness. Um so that's why Nancy Grace the Roman space telescope that's why we're so excited for it. That's why we're hoping that uh it is not cancelled as per what the president executive branch wants to do with it. Um so I mean we'll I don't think Congress is going to let that happen because basically the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been on time and on budget and it's built. It's ready to fly. Um and like those are things that just don't happen with like flagship level missions like that. Uh but it did here. Um, also, uh, the Vera Vera Rubin Observatory as well is a essentially a groundbased version of what Nancy Grace Roman is. Um, it's going to look at the entire sky over a decade, uh, over a huge field of view. Um, I mean, the entire sky every few nights with a 9meter class telescope that is just gigantic and unbelievable. um at at what it can resolve and how much uh how much it can take in. The the camera I think on it is something like 3 gigapixels of data. Um it's it's got so much like we literally had to rethink how you store and transfer and interpret data in order to get all the data from Vera Rubin Observatory that'll be opening very soon. So, uh, you know, we'll we'll have to we'll have to see. Um, to to kind of wrap this up, um, I I did just want to say that if we knew how to pitch well enough to be able to get missions like this to get off the ground, we would have three of our own space telescopes, a probe on the way to Neptune, a whole bunch of Mars missions, and all of them with a tomorrow sticker on it. So, um, yeah, if we if we knew how to do that, we we would have that sort of stuff going on. So, I guess we don't have that sort of salesman skills yet. If there are any other eccentric billionaires looking to do things, we we got you. Yeah, we're happy. They would they would all be sponsored by Dave Avery. Speaking of which, thank you for the five mile memberships gifted. Yeah. Thank you very much. For those of you who have been gifted a uh membership, you will be able to join our after dark show uh immediately following this where we will uh continue to talk about a couple of space related stories and uh things that that are going on. So uh we had just a handful of other little kind of small things, but we can discuss that uh in in after dark because you just kind of some mildly interesting uh uh news stories through throughout the week that uh wanted to share. But we've been going on for a little while. So, uh, without, uh, uh, keeping you guys going for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for much longer, uh, did want to give a, u massive shout out to all of the patrons who have been helping to support this show. Uh, you can sign up to be a member of the, uh, tomorrow membership for as little as as $1 a month. That grants you access to the after dark show that we do immediately after our live shows. And, uh, sometimes we have additional content, including live interviews with folks in the space industry that we've been talking to. Um, so it's because of people like you who have been supporting our show that we are able to do these things and uh again huge thank you to everyone for all of that. So with that we are going to go ahead and uh uh close this week's show for now. We will be going uh immediately into after dark after this which you can find the link in the description and if you are a member or if you just were gifted a gifted membership you should be able to get the the notification and link for that shortly after. So once again, thank you very much for being here. Thanks for uh joining in with us talking about this interesting developments with this new dwarf planet and all the interesting stuff with Starship and fingers crossed that everything goes well this coming Tuesday and if not that it just gets delayed a little bit so that the flight can be successful. So thank you again and we will see you in after dark not long after this. Take care everyone. [Music]