This is the second of a planned four videos from an April 2022 tour of SpaceX Starbase with Elon Musk and Everyday Astronaut Tim Dodd. In this episode, we look at the orbital launch mount and “chopstick” arms planned to catch returning boosters and ships in mid-air, then go to the top of the 143 metre launch tower with a stop at the quick disconnect arm on the way.
At SpaceX, we specialise in converting things from impossible to late.
— Elon Musk
Along the way, Elon Musk notes (9:14) that the Starlink 2 satellites are both too heavy and too large to launch on Falcon 9, so Starship working is absolutely essential to the planned build-out of Starlink, in which the Starlink 2 satellites will provide an “order of magnitude” increase in the data bandwidth to support customers.
At 26:00, Musk rejects zero-sum models of economic and technological development and argues that creating great products and services grows the pie for everybody: “consumption and wealth are not the same thing”.
Success is one the possible outcomes.
— Elon Musk