Joe Rogan invited Elon Musk to his podcast show, ‘The Joe Rogan Experience,’ for the third time. The new episode aired on February 11 via Spotify, they discussed a variety of subjects including, aliens, SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, among other things (video linked below). During the podcast, Rogan asked Musk when would SpaceX’s Starship be capable of carrying passengers and reliably landing –“Probably two years away,” he replied, “We’ll have a lot of flights between now and then.” Musk suggested SpaceX targets frequent Starship flights by 2023. “…Approximately two years if current trends continue […] If you plot the points on the curve of progress then we should be doing regular orbital flights with a high probability of safe landing in two years so,” Musk stated. In fact, SpaceX’s first Starship passenger will be Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, who scheduled a voyage around the Moon for the year 2023. He envisions turning his space tour into an art project called ‘Dear Moon,’ in which he will invite his favorite artists to see Earth and the Moon from space to create inspiring art upon return.
Great interview!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2021
Starship is under development at the SpaceX South Texas Launch Facility located at Boca Chica Beach where multiple prototypes of the spacecraft are undergoing testing. The most recent Starship test was a high-altitude launch in which the vehicle performed an incredible aerodynamic flight but failed to land. Rogan asked Musk how he feels when a Starship explodes during testing, “… This is a test program, we expect it to explode. It's weird if it doesn't explode, frankly,” Musk replied, “because we're trying to develop advanced rockets at a high speed and if you want to get payloads orbit you have to run things close to the edge and the whole rocket is evolving, the engines, the structure, the avionics, the software, the ground systems, are all evolving simultaneously… and the whole production system, which is actually harder than the rocket design,” he said. Musk also shared with Rogan that SpaceX will attempt to launch a Starship to orbit this year, “Our goal is to get to orbit this year.”
“… I’m not sure people totally understand, like Starship is the largest playing object ever made. This thing will be about over 5,000 tons weight on liftoff is going to go straight up […] this is much heavier than any aircraft by far… no aircraft even comes close to this with weight,” Musk said. Starship has “more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V.” Rogan asked him why does Starship need so much thrust –“We're trying to make life multi-planetary, you know uh extend life beyond Earth," Musk responded, "In order to do that you have to have high tonnage to Mars and that means you need a big rocket and you gotta’ fly a lot.” You can watch Joe Rogan and Elon Musk’s full discussion via Spotify The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, or watch the segment of their SpaceX discussion in the videos linked below.
Featured Image Source: The Joe Rogan Experience via YouTube
About the Author
Evelyn Arevalo
Evelyn J. Arevalo joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover news as a Space Journalist and SpaceX Starbase Texas Correspondent. Evelyn is specialized in rocketry and space exploration. The main topics she covers are SpaceX and NASA.
