Micah Maidenberg

The company really needs it to start blasting off upgraded Starlink satellites and to start flying orbital data centers that it could use for its artificial intelligence ambitions.

None of that is possible without Starship.

Starship is sort of the thread that runs through a lot of what SpaceX is planning to do in the near term.

The company really needs it to start blasting off upgraded Starlink satellites and to start flying orbital data centers that it could use for its artificial intelligence ambitions.

None of that is possible without Starship.

SpaceX has what they call sort of this iterative model to hardware development where they are open to failure and say that's the price of learning.

The V3 is meant to kind of lock in some of that learning.

A lot of us are going to be watching the debut of upgraded

Raptor engines.

These are supposed to have more power.

SpaceX is also going to be launching from a new launch pad.

That's not technically, of course, part of the rocket, but it's a really critical piece of the overall infrastructure that this version of Starship needs.

You know, the company said yesterday in this IPO prospectus that it spent $3 billion alone last year on Starship.

That's a lot of money for a rocket that poses a lot of challenges, but also offers a lot of potential opportunities.

And investors want to see this vehicle getting closer to just regular flights and real operations.

Thank you.

Okay, so you have this vehicle that is soaring toward Earth.

And after a couple of maneuvers, the crew capsule, right, where the astronauts have been living and working, it's essentially going to slam into the Earth's atmosphere.

And that's going to create just an extraordinary amount of heat that the capsule has to transfer away from it to keep the vehicle and, of course, the crew members safe.

During a press conference yesterday, there was one leader at NASA who basically said he has no rational fears left about this reentry.