Elon Musk's missile blows up 4 minutes into the flight.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is Steve Tates, otherwise known as Dock the Sky, and he’s the one that takes online and expands it on what the heck is going on up by the skies, Steve, Sunday morning, what’s going on? First of all, we had a tragedy a few days ago with the rocket blowing up. Any gut feeling what happened?

0:25 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, good morning John on this Sunday morning, Thursday’s launch, which even Elon must said, and he put this out the press report of it, that they don’t want to expect or they couldn’t expect perfection on this.

0:35 These are test launches. But what happened is we found out nine to twenty eight am Eastern daylight time on Thursday, this big almost four hundred foot stack rocket, this giant booster rocket. Using getload of this, folks thirty three wrapped their engines, pushed this rocket up past the launch pad.

0:53 He got up to about one hundred and twenty seven thousand feet and then something went wrong. And something might be that some of those raptor engines, allegedly we’re hearing five of the thirty three may not have worked properly.

1:07 So the obvious problem is the separation of Starship from the booster. It made it up to that height and then obviously it was a disconnect effort, so the whole rocket as you can see it in the videos maybe people watched it. You see the things starting to spiral around.

1:22 But what’s really interesting, John, is let’s talk about where space begins. This is a question that many people may not know. It’s called the Carmen Line, and officially it’s sixty two point fourteen miles above the Earth, translating to some three hundred and twenty eight thousand, you know, some odd feet and change. So this rocket never actually made

1:40 it there. But just to go from the surface of the Earth to cross the Carmen line it only takes with a proper rocket two and a half minutes, and to get to orbit it takes eight and a half minutes.

1:51 So this is a test flight. You see a lot of the people at SpaceX cheering, and people may be wondering, well, why would you spend three billion dollars on a big fire book. Their climates a success, excuse me, and we have a long way to go, they’re saying, to perfect this.

2:06 It’s an interesting kind of a dichotomy there, don’t you think.

2:10 Speaker 1 Well, I’ll tell you three billion dollars a lot of money. Even if you’re insured. I’m sure the insurance company will put it into the cost of your insurance for the next three or four flights.

2:23 Speaker 2 Absolutely. And another thing that he needs that Elon Musk and SpaceX they need a new FAA license. They got one, and it was a long process, and that’s a long story, but to make it short, there’s seventeen seventy five compliance items that SpaceX has to have down there in Boca Chica.

2:39 For Star Base. They have to have like a biologist on staff. They have to have ways that they can prove that it will not affect the environment, shrapnel issues and get a load of this. They can’t launch on holidays, and they want to make sure that the beaches they don’t take away from the tourism down there. But overall, John,

2:56 I don’t know, I don’t know how to say this. Being a space fan like yourself and following them all the time, I gather overall their goal was to get the big baby off the launch pad and at least to move it up with these Raptor engines. So this was the most powerful rocket launch to date of any

3:12 rocket allegedly between say twelve to sixteen million pounds of thrust, and the Apollo Saturn five, which is still a great rocket, had seven and a half million pounds of thrust. It’s open season on what people might think about, you know, pro or con. But Elon must seems to be well tempered, and he made that statement. You know, this is a test.

3:31 Speaker 1 Flight, and through my mind and my education, I think there’s got to be an easier way to take equipment into space. There is talked about anti gravity and at what point does the government release that.

3:53 Speaker 2 You know, John just the other day. I don’t have all the details. I’ll investigate that for the audience here on the CATS round table. But they had a very big grilling in Congress on what these UAPs really are.

4:04 And I don’t know if we’ll ever get the right answer, but most of that technology that’s probably out there. You’re right, it’s either otherworldly or somehow we’ve developed this anti gravity type technology. But that’s something. But you got to give credit to space X with this particular rocket, the Starship and the booster, you can actually lift one hundred and

4:23 sixty five tons into warbit, But that’s another story as we talk about.

4:28 Speaker 1 But John, in conclusion, if you say, hey, that’s fossil fuel efficient, I’ll save a lot of fossil fuel.

4:36 Speaker 2 Absolutely, my friend. But we always talk to John about the mystery of the week, and this goes to the realm of aviation, another area that of course you have a lot of expertise, but the strangest one this week we can think about. It’s almost ten years about what really happened to Malaysia Airlines flight MH three seventy and

4:54 that’s still out there. And some of the theories were that the captain, I mean, this goes maybe to the bizarre, but who knows that he locked the copilot out of the cockpit, depressurized the cabin, thus forcing the passengers on board to die a slow death from no oxygen while he was on a special oxygen system, that he had

5:14 turned off all the electronics on this particular aircraft. And one of the strangest theories of all is that the aircraft was carrying from Kuala Lumpur to its destination of Beijing, China, so many lithium ion batteries. Some even speculate I don’t know how accurate, it is that the fire could have started in the cargo hold. But that’s so conspiratorial the

5:33 whole thing. And they only found they say, thirty three pieces of that aircraft they think, and only three were positively identified as coming to Malaysia Airlines Plight three seventy. I wonder what your thoughts are, knowing your background and aviation.

5:48 Speaker 1 Well, if it’s true they had those lithium I have on batteries, were finding out more and more that those batteries are a serious, serious item. And at some point, and you heard it first, they’re not going to allow you to put it into a garage in your home because if that car blows up, it’s going to take

6:12 down your whole house and nobody could put out the fire.

6:16 Speaker 2 And that’s strange, John, And again not to attack Tesla or any of the electric companies, but we had a Tessler for a while and we sold it, not because we didn’t like the car. But the reality is when you find out on some of these vehicles that the battery pack replacement is an extremely expensive deal. Obviously in

6:32 this particular case, is we follow the things that you’re talking about in the oil and gas industry, obviously not to change subjects, but I think you obviously are the leader of this. We need to drill, We need to give ourselves more of that fossil fuel because the whole transfer.

6:47 You know, it should be a choice obviously that individuals want to get an electric car and not a mandate from the government. But I know that’s a little out of the realm of what we normally talk about here on the Sunday morning to open people’s mindset.

7:00 Speaker 1 It’s all science, but anything else.

7:04 Speaker 2 Yes, I wanted to always give the live sky report and that’s what people can actually see. So hopefully we’re opening up their minds now we can open up their eyes. If you look to the skies as we move into this last portion of April, the Lyrate meteor shower continues with the dark skies. The moon’s not in the way

7:20 right now. Look into the northeast sky after midnight. A bright star called Vega, which is a star twenty five light years away. That’s the origin point of lyrids. If you see a few, count yourself as lucky because it’s one of the oldest meteor showers of all. And as we’ve talked in the past, John, that life from these

7:37 particular objects like comets, may have seeded the universe and solar systems. Another interesting story, and we want to let people know that. Go to WABC radio dot com for the next updated Doctor Sky blog, which contains all information about what you and yours can see in our beautiful May twenty twenty three skies as we bring in the

7:57 beautiful full flower moon in the early first week of May. Great stuff to talk about.

8:02 Speaker 1 Thank you, Steve Kates, Doctor Sky, Thank you so much for expanding our minds, and we’ll catch up with you again next week.

8:10 Speaker 2 Thank you, John. Good to be with you and the listeners.