Classic Episode : Elon Musk poised to reclaim title of world’s richest person + SpaceX MASSIVE Test

From February 3rd 2023

Elon Musk is on the cusp of reclaiming his position as the world’s richest person after a surge in Tesla’s share price.

The static fire test took place on Thursday, February 9, with the Booster 7 prototype standing tall on the launch mount at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. As hoped, there were plenty of jaw-dropping visuals to go around and plenty to think about as SpaceX pushes forward with its ambitious Starship program.

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Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Hi and welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast where we cover
Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, Neuralink, Boring Company, and
everything else Elon Musk. So please take a second hit the
subscribe button so you can get daily updates about everything
Elon Musk on your podcast. Player of choice Elon Musk, the
billionaire entrepreneur behind SpaceX and Tesla, is poised to

(00:25):
reclaim the title of the world'srichest person after a surge in
Tesla stock price. Musk has earned $45 billion this
year, and on Thursday, Tesla's shares rose for the 8th
consecutive day, putting Musk within touching distance of
overtaking French luxury magnateBernard Arnault.
In December, Arnault surpassed Musk as the world's richest

(00:47):
person when investors lost confidence in Tesla and grew
concerned about Musk's focus on Twitter, which he acquired for
$44 billion in October of last year.
However, Tesla shares have rallied in recent weeks and have
almost doubled since the beginning of the year, reversing
most of the 65% drop they suffered in 2022.

(01:08):
And on Thursday, the shares climbed by almost 5%, putting
Musk's net worth at over $185 billion compared to our nose
$187 billion. And the rise in Tesla share
price comes after the company unveiled better than expected
quarterly results last month, and other high growth stocks

(01:28):
have also jumped due to the prospect of lower than expected
interest rates. Despite selling off billions of
dollars to finance this acquisition of Twitter, Musk
remains Tesla's largest shareholder and is pledged not
to sell his shares for approximately 2 more years.
In addition to Tesla's recent success, Musk also announced

(01:49):
this week that he will soon present the third version of
Tesla's master plan, which will outline the path to a fully
sustainable energy future for Earth.
Previous version of the planet have focused on taking electric
cars, mainstream autonomous technology and home energy
storage. The company has also cut vehicle

(02:10):
prices while it plans to start manufacturing its long-awaited
cyber truck by the end of the year.
Tesla's rising stock price suggests that investors has
shrugged off concerns about Musk's management of Twitter,
which had been seen as a distraction, and the social
network experiencing hours of glitches earlier this week as it
attempted to introduce new features.

(02:31):
But Musk's 13% stake in Tesla isthe largest source of his
wealth, which is also made-up ofshares in SpaceX and Twitter.
He recently claimed that Twitterwas on a course to profitability
after cutting thousands of stafflast year, saying that he had to
save Twitter from bankruptcy. Space XS Starship Super Heavy
Booster 7 conducted a pre flighttest, a static fire test of 31

(02:57):
of the 33 Raptor engines recently and the hot fire demo
started at about 4:14 PM and lasted for about 10 seconds.
It's considered a full duration test of these engines.
Musk pointed out in a tweet thatthe team turned off one of the

(03:18):
engines prior to the mass ignition and 1 engine stopped
itself. That only 31 engines fired out
of the 33. Elon said, but still enough
engines to reach orbit. So this is a success on Spacex's
part because they didn't know exactly what was going to be
happening during the static firetest.
They knew everything down to what was going to happen to the

(03:41):
engines, how they were going to fire it, how everything was
going to work up until the engines actually static fired.
But after that, they had some calculations that they ran.
They figured it would work right, But you never know with
rocketry. It's literally the hardest
engineering task on the face of the Earth.
And the next step for this rocket, possibly orbit.

(04:03):
SpaceX didn't disclose much information beyond what's going
to be happening after the staticfire of the 33 engines of the
Raptor 2 engines, but we're assuming if everything went
right, the next step for booster7 is to stack the Starship on
top of it. This is the physical stuff
that's happening. Stack the Starship ship on top

(04:24):
of it. That's about 160 feet tall,
meaning that the whole stacked ship will be about 400 plus feet
tall all together. And they're going to be doing an
orbital flight test in March or April.
Now, what happens between now and March or April?
Well, they have a deluge system at Star Base that just came in
from Florida, and they're building it out as we speak,

(04:47):
night and day, 24/7. This static fire only lasted 10
minutes, but they're doing cleanup for the next few hours
afterwards and the next few days, they're making sure that
all the data points have been reached and have been sent out
to the appropriate committees. Well, it may be NASA, and it is
most positively the FAA because the FAA will comb through this

(05:08):
data and make sure that SpaceX is going to have a safe and
reliable flight when they do theorbital flight test.
Doesn't seem to be a problem with the FAA, doesn't seem to be
a problem with any of these Raptor engines.
So it seems like the FAA is probably going to push this
thing straight through. Now, if you think about it, the

(05:29):
Raptors have about 51 or 510,000lbs of thrust each.
The whole rocket, £15.8 million of thrust in the SLS rocket.
The Space Launch System, NASA's most powerful rocket, only has
£8.8 million of thrust on lift off.

(05:51):
So Spacex's Starship is about double that.
And there's a series of clamps and restraints that held this
rocket down during the Starship's static fire test.
Now, SpaceX has been known to docrazy things at Star base.
They've launched Starships into a suborbital flight and landed

(06:14):
them and also exploded them whenthey landed.
But now they're going a little bit more cautious.
We have Gwynne Shotwell, who's the COO of SpaceX.
He's also the president of SpaceX said she didn't expect
the pad to have the same issues that they had with the 14 engine
static fire test. And because the company
performed some work on the pad and she didn't really tell

(06:36):
exactly what that was. But she from things that we've
seen, they've added new reinforced concrete to the pad.
And from what we saw from the videos from numerous sources,
the blast from behind the launchmount shows that there was about
a, there was a huge mass of smoke that billowed out of this
thing and it didn't blow up the launchpad though.

(06:59):
And that's a success because every static fire before this,
the 11 engine static fire and the 14 engine static fire ripped
that thing to shreds. And there was concrete flying
for miles from that pad all around Star Base and all around
the Boca Chica area because it'sso powerful.

(07:20):
These rockets are so powerful that it would basically ignite
the the concrete and blast it upinto the air.
Numerous birds. There was a huge flock of birds
in front of this booster right before they blasted it in the
environmental study that was happening last year.
They put a precaution in there saying that we can't control

(07:42):
wildlife. They do their own thing and this
is not going to be a stopper forSpaceX in the future.
And locally, some people had to leave their homes.
There's an over pressure notice that's handed out to the people
of Boca Chica Village and duringthe static fire test, everybody
has to leave the area. And if it's a long duration

(08:03):
test, if there's, if they're going to be a couple days,
they'll put them up in a hotel. But this didn't happen to be a
long test. It was only 10 seconds.
And at about 4:00 in the afternoon, everything was good
to go after a 10 second static fire test.
So the FAA, everything looks good, the locals, everything

(08:25):
looks good. Everyone's back in their homes
and now we just have to wait forthe FAA to approve SpaceX for
the orbital flight test of the Starship.
Now, when I was talking about this earlier, the the gigantic
smoke cloud that happened duringthis static fire test, gigantic

(08:45):
exhaust, it dissipated pretty easily into the Texas sky.
And this is the methane, it's methane fuel.
In this, there's some carbon dioxide and water vapor, and
these are the byproducts of that.
And there is more water vapor than there is methane in the air
from these things. So it didn't really damage
anything in the environment. So this is a partial test,

(09:09):
though this isn't a full test ofall 33 Raptor engines.
So we're not exactly sure what the environmental impact will be
or if it will affect any of the clouds nearby or any of the
wildlife nearby with any of thiscarbon dioxide and wire water
vapor. But the area is wide open.

(09:29):
So I believe it's going to dissipate more than it in a in a
closed area. So we'll see what happens with
the first environmental checks after this with the FAA.
If they approve them, then SpaceX should in theory be able
to watch this Starship in the next few months.
And this is a massive, massive deal because this is literally

(09:51):
the most powerful rocket that will ever be built.
Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's company, is building something
similar, but not quite as big, not quite as powerful.
SpaceX fully reusable. Blue Origin kind of wants to
make it fully reusable. They're on that path, but they
haven't shown anything it to thepublic that shows that they're

(10:13):
on the right path to make it fully reusable.
Now, Spacex's COO Gwynn Shotwellsaid something interesting the
other day at a conference. She said before they fly people,
they want to have 102 hundred plus of these launches, of these
test launches before they put people in the Starship.

(10:34):
So they're going to ramp up production of these Starships
and they can only do five of these launches per year in
Texas, if I'm not mistaken. I may be a little bit off there,
but I'm, I think there's 5 to 15launches per year.
I'll have to get back to you on that one.
So if they need to do hundreds of launches, if they can prove

(10:57):
that they can do 5 successful launches per year, 10 successful
launches per year, they may movethe production and everything
else over to Kennedy Space Center in Florida where they
could have a, a faster cadence, a faster turn around for these
ships. And once they start catching
these on the robotic gigantic meccazilla arms on the launch

(11:20):
tower, it's going to be a turn around time of hours, not days.
And they'll be able to launch numerous rockets per day if they
have flight clearance because they could possibly have the the
Kennedy Space Center for the whole day.
They could sanction off for a 24hour period to have Kennedy

(11:43):
Space Center reserved for launches of the rocket.
And that's usually how it goes. If there's a Falcon 9 rocket
launching from Kennedy Space Center, more than likely it's
the only rocket launching that day.
So if they have numerous rockets, they could possibly
work with NASA and work with theFAA to get numerous flights per
day. And if that's going to happen,

(12:05):
they're going to get to 100 flights relatively quickly.
And Artemis 3, that's going to be the first time the people go
back to the moon since the Apollo program.
SpaceX has to be ready. So they're going to do hundreds
of flights before that. And in a few years, Artemis 2
will be going around the moon and coming back with people

(12:26):
inside. And SpaceX by that time should
have had at least 50 to 100 flights and get ready.
Because when people get inside of the Starship and start
orbiting the Earth, it's going to be a amazing, amazing change
in spaceflight. Twitter is reportedly making
millions of dollars from just a small number of its most

(12:49):
notorious users, according to a recent study by the Center for
Countering Digital Hate, the CCDH.
The report estimates that the social media giant could
generate up to $19,000,000 in annual advertising revenue from
just 10 accounts that were previously banned from the
platform for promoting hateful content and dangerous

(13:09):
conspiracies. The study analyzed the
engagement of these 10 accounts,which include prominent figures
associated with the extremism and conspiracy theory groups
such as Andrew Tate, Andrew Anglin, Robert Malone, and The
Gateway Pundit. Over a 40 day period in December
and January, the CCDH analyzed nearly 10,000 tweets from these

(13:32):
accounts and found that they received a combined total of
54,000,000 impressions on an average day.
Projecting this average across ayear, the accounts could
potentially reach nearly 20 billion impressions.
To determine the ad revenue these impressions might generate
for Twitter, the CCDH created 3 new Twitter accounts that

(13:52):
followed only the 10 users namedin the report.
The authors found that the ads appeared about once every 6.7
tweets, and using data from analysts firm Brandwatch
estimated that Twitter ads cost an average of $6.46 per 1000
impressions. Based on this information, the
CCDH calculated that the 10 accounts could generate up to

(14:15):
$19,000,000 in annual ad revenue.
And the report highlights the value that a small number of
highly polarizing accounts can have for a platform like
Twitter. It also sheds light on the
potential profits Twitter can make by reinstating even more
controversial users, as the company has recently announced
plans to allow previously bannedusers to appeal their

(14:37):
suspensions. However, Twitter's advertising
business has suffered majorly since the takeover by Elon Musk,
with high profile advertisers pulling back from the platform
and revenue down by as much as 40%, according to Platformer.
The report also notes several instances when ads from
prominent advertisers appeared next to offensive and

(14:58):
inflammatory posts from the users, in which raise questions
about Twitter's commitment to responsible advertising.
So the CCDH report confirms thatTwitter is displaying ads next
to toxic accounts that promote hateful views and falsehoods,
despite the fact that these individuals are well known for
their harmful content. And the findings highlight the

(15:19):
need for social media companies to be more accountable and
responsible when it comes to thecontent they promote and the ads
that they display. Thank you so much for listening
to the Elon Musk Podcast. Brought to you by Stage 0
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(15:39):
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