Supersonic Jets, SpaceX’s Next Starship Launch & Trump’s Golden Dome Defense System

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Steve Cates, Dr. Sky, what’s going on up there? Well, Steve, welcome to Sunday morning, and we’re together, and I’m sure your show last night was great. You’re on every Friday and Saturday between midnight and 2 a.m. in the morning, and I might have been sleeping at that time, even though I try to stay up for you. Steve, What’s

0:28 the big items you want to talk about Sunday morning with our audience?

0:32 Speaker 2 Well, first, thank you for the opportunity to do the shows, and I appreciate that. Happy Sunday. We have three major topics today and always ending off with a mystery.

0:40 Speaker 1 Of the week.

0:41 Speaker 2 John, as you probably know, and many in the aerospace industry, not only is the United States attempting to build a successful series of supersonic transportation aircraft like airliners, We found out just a while ago that a company called Boom Supersonic is developing their aircraft, which will go two times the speed of sound. What’s interesting, John, they also now

1:05 have orders placed. This is a pretty well-funded company. They’ve got orders placed by some of the major airlines. So obviously, the future of travel in the air will be something maybe a little less likely that you’ll have to spend too much time on an airplane with supersonic speeds. But, John, the interesting part is the Chinese, of course, always doing

1:25 their thing. They’re developing a craft called the TMS-10. It’s another one of those supersonic aircraft. But both of these aircraft, they’re not making that supersonic boom go away. They’re just going to be limiting it so that they can pass all the regulations. But what’s fascinating about that, John, is there’s a NASA craft called the X-59 that’s been leading

1:46 the way in talking about how to mitigate or kind of remove, at least for the most part, the sonic boom. All this technology is great. What say you?

1:57 Speaker 1 Well, I used to fly the Concorde, and that was a great airplane, and I’m very, very disappointed that they’re creating supersonic airplanes 50 years later, 60 years later, that is not as fast and is not as good as the Concorde was.

2:14 Speaker 2 You’re so correct, John. That whole project with the Concorde was amazing. that it happened so long ago, as you described having the personal opportunity to fly on that. Very few people have that experience. And that, in the world of aviation, is one of the all-time greats. But let’s hope with this technology that supersonic travel with commercial airliners

2:35 is not something of science fiction. But we move on, John, to the next topic, Starship. SpaceX’s great effort to launch this particular Starship craft The next Starship launch should take place on Monday, probably sometime as early as early morning or maybe later in the day. That’s the first launch opportunity.

2:54 Why is this so important? This is the 14th attempt. And what they’re going to be doing this time, the rocket that launches it is so powerful, the world’s most powerful lift rocket, 16 million pounds of thrust. On top of it is the all-important spacecraft. This time, they’re looking to see if they can successfully do six orbits around

3:14 the Earth And this is interesting, because if you’re ever going to get to the moon and Mars, naturally, you just don’t want to have these things drop into the ocean. They’re also going to be launching a whole new class of Starlink satellites on board that Starlink rocket. So we wish them well in making six revolutions of the Earth

3:31 something that hasn’t been done in such a long time. The craft then will hopefully soft land in the ocean off South America’s Chile. Great things happening, John, with SpaceX as always.

3:43 Speaker 1 Well, I mean, it seems like they’re way ahead of where NASA was. Absolutely. And to be able to– NASA, every time they took off, they threw away the whole rocket. Absolutely. Yeah.

4:01 Speaker 2 Well, this one is a little more difficult and success that’s been given to SpaceX so far. We wish them well on this because Elon, obviously, being so busy with all these different projects and companies, I’m just so amazed that we see these rockets, the booster rockets, what, soft land back to Earth, the stuff of science fiction, many,

4:20 many things, John. But we end off with the mystery of the week. And here’s something that many people really do not know. What are the details behind the Golden Dome defense system? You know better. President Trump, of course, is looking to have the entire North American continent covered by this blanket of rockets, not only, or satellites, I

4:39 should say, up in outer space. some ground-launch rockets that could intercept incoming ICBMs. This is a trillion-dollar project, and the president’s hoping to succeed by getting this done before the end of this decade. But, John, also, fine details.

4:55 There will be potentially, as the secretary of the Air Force already declared, that we now have U.S. space weapons in orbit. Some of these fancy weapons that they have or will be developing— be these kinetic weapons. What are they?

5:08 They’re not explosives. So, if you have a satellite that’s doing something it shouldn’t, say, against the interests of the United States, you could slam something into it. But the original intent of this is to be able to shoot down rockets, these ICBMs, let’s say, from Russia, China, North Korea, who knows, anyone that’s trying to be an adversary to

5:26 the United States. You want to hit them with these beams of weapons, like lasers, and all of the particle beams as the rocket gets up into the low atmosphere. You want to hit them during the boost phase. And, John, if that can neutralize the concept of nuclear weapons coming down from other countries, it’s a major project the president

5:45 has going on with the military and Space Force. And it all sounds very interesting, John, to protect the homeland and to protect North America.

5:53 Speaker 1 Well, that’s our number one priority because you don’t know where you’re coming from. And Space Force has a lot to do with it and I jokingly said to one of my friends that was with Space Force, he was a general in Space Force, I said, do they have photon torpedoes or do they have lasers, phasers on them?

6:10 And he didn’t want to comment, but I understand he’s got some unique weapons on some of those aircraft that have not been disclosed yet.

6:24 Speaker 2 Well, John, really quickly, this was going back in the early iteration of the Reagan administration when they had the SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative. And there was a project proposed by Edward Tuller, the father of the H-bomb. He brought together a project called Brilliant Pebbles. And these were small kinetic weapons in space, not explosives, that would, of course,

6:43 hit these other satellites that were adversaries, say, to our nation. But the interesting part is they didn’t have the technology then when this particular project was proposed. But, John, the great technologies today and with AI intercession, who knows what could happen, but let’s protect our airspace and that of North America. Always a privilege to be with you, John,

7:03 and wish everybody a most joyous, beautiful Sunday.

7:06 Speaker 1 Steve Cates, Dr. Skye, thank you so much for calling in, and we’ll catch up with you again real soon.

7:12 Speaker 2 Thank you, John.