Antonio Gracias and Gavin Baker discuss SpaceX's Starship launch

Hey everybody, welcome to episode 125 of the All In Podcast on an historic day. We're taping 420. Really excited that SpaceX was able to launch Starship and it made it off the launch pad. Incredibly successful today. Today we have, of course, with us the Rayman David Sacks, the Sultan of Science David Friedberg, and of course the dictator Shmath Polyhapatia. But two special guests are here: special guests Gavin Baker from Atreides. How do you pronounce it? Atreides. House of Atreides, if you know Dune. And SpaceX board member Antonio Gracias, one of the first investors in SpaceX. Antonio, a big day for you. Maybe you could just tell the audience what happened today, why that is so important in the history of this company.

Well, first I want to thank you guys for letting me come on and have a little chat with you about this. Today was extraordinarily important for SpaceX, I think for America, and for humanity. And the Starship is the realization of the vision that Elon had 20 years ago, 25 years ago, even as a child, really, to go to Mars. And the engineers here at SpaceX and the entire team working extremely hard to get this vehicle off the pad. As you said, this is a brand new vehicle. Everything about it is new: the engines, the material science, the structure, the design, all of it new. And the most important thing here was to get off the pad so we could collect data. This technology platform is the platform that will allow us to go to Mars. So from a non-engineer standpoint, why this is important is that what we've proven with this flight: we got past a point called Max Q, which is the point at which the vehicle takes maximum stress. That's how I think about it. I'm sure engineers would tell us a lot more description, or David Friedberg could give you a better script to it. But it's the most funnest part of the vehicle, which means this vehicle will get to orbit. And this is the vehicle that's going to take us to Mars. So today is the day that all of the hard-working people at SpaceX accomplished a goal of making the human race spacefaring. When we look back in history, I believe this will be the day when we mark the technological development that we broke through and built a vehicle that could actually go to Mars.

Now, when we look at it, obviously it didn't make it to orbit. Maybe you can give some context into what is the typical life cycle of a new rocket ship. The Falcon, the original one, has done I think 224 missions, 222 of them successful, I think 160 or so actually landed themselves. Yes, and so you had two or three mulligans in the development of that, maybe two actually. So what can we expect here? When are they going to stack and rack and launch the next one? Antonio, what's the timeline here to getting to orbit? What would we expect versus some of the other projects that we've seen like the Russian rockets?

So look, this is a brand new vehicle. And whenever we develop a brand new vehicle, it takes a long time. Development, my understanding of all this is as a layman and as a board member, non-executive, is it'll take at least two or three months to really get the pad rebuilt and get another vehicle back on for testing, maybe longer. But it's really important to note here that we've gotten sort of used to the idea that SpaceX launches rockets and all these rockets come back and all those vehicles are stable because the Falcon 9 and Heavy are so stable and they're so well engineered. They're amazing vehicles, the most reliable vehicles on Earth in human history. This is a brand new vehicle. This was a huge win. It was an enormous win for the company, an enormous win for the country. Just getting it off the pad and collecting the data, and now we know it works. We just have to get it stable, then get up to orbit. So it's a hard problem, but it's a soluble problem from here. And what we learned here is that this vehicle does work.

Amazing. Can you guys talk about the impact of this vehicle, cost to launch payload, the big metrics that help realize that outcome? Gavin, I think I saw you did a bunch of really good tweets on this. You shared some of the metrics that I thought were really succinct and really helpful.

So but I think the point Gavin is making, if I might just play that, is that it is a step function change. It's not like a small change, it's an enormous change. Can you compare that to the numbers before for folks to understand?

Can you explain how that then translates into going to Mars? So now we can get 100 tons into orbit for two million dollars. What happens next in terms of how that payload capacity and low cost enables full transport to Mars? And I know that the timelines are tough, but it would be super helpful to translate the orbit concept into the let's go to Mars concept.

It's important to know that the size of this thing gives a sense of scale. The interior space of it is the size of the International Space Station. So it's a huge amount of time. I just think about all that's going to take to get to Mars. You have to lift a payload into orbit, you have to create a base either on the moon or in orbit around the Earth to actually refill ships and send them out into space. And this same design will scale up to become the Mars Colonial transporter, a very similar design. That's why it's important. And look, the timeline on that, I don't know. I'm hoping that it will be while I am still able to go. That would be great. But that's really why it's important. Think of this as a small version of the same vehicle we will actually use to go to Mars. And then all the stuff you have to transport to orbit becomes more economic because as Gavin just said, 50x kind of reduction in cost.

Can I ask you another question? Sorry, I don't mean to monopolize the questions, but these are things that I think are super important questions that a lot of people often ask or I hear them asking. But what happens with the space industry in the nearer term? So there's this great long-term goal, get to Mars. That's a big project, but it'll certainly be funding to run that project. But what other economies now emerge as this cost down of 50x happens? And what else do you think happens besides communications and Starlink? Obviously that's already a pretty scale business. What other markets can develop here in the near term? What other economies do you see happening as a result of this cost down?

Yeah, I mean, look, having to jump in here too, but the reality is once you can take that much mass to orbit, you can move anything around the planet very quickly. You can go up and spin below and come down. So transportation generally changes. If you want to fly to Tokyo from New York City, it goes from being a day trip to a matter of hours. It's extraordinary. Or a container ship in a couple hours. Everything that's rapid transport around the earth, you run a package around there, everything gets faster.

Well, I have to say, and the inspiration it provides, it's amazing to be here and feel the inspiration and the juice. I think that's what I was going to ask you about. If you could take people inside mission control, which we were privileged enough to be in, the sense of history and the feeling in that room, if you could describe it for the audience, what those engineers were feeling and what you in fact felt at that moment, Antonio.

So I would start by juxtaposing with Monday. We were here Monday, and Monday I think there was a real sense of concern. The countdown sat around 10 minutes, the vehicle had a valve failure, a valve got stuck open basically, and we had to stop and kind of regroup. And by the way, from my perspective, that's like a solid success because the vehicle did not get destroyed on the pad, which is the number one thing to have happen. So that was kind of Monday. I think Monday was caution and intensity. It was a very intense, will this ever happen, when will it happen? Today, what I felt in that room was a sense of high intensity, a high sense of focus, and also a sense of excitement. People were excited. It felt different today. It felt more electric today. They were super focused, but you could feel the excitement in the room. They believed it was gonna happen. They thought it was highly probable and that it was going to work. And when it did work, I would say it was a sense of elation and joy. This is 20 plus years of work. Elon was in the room with the engineers, and just seeing him light up, seeing the joy that he felt, seeing the joy the engineers felt together. For me, I've been a board member and investor for a long time and sort of been along with this company and seen it develop. It brought a real sense of hope for what's going to happen to this country and what's happening to humanity. And it's such a joy to my heart.

Gavin, do you have any emotional feelings there when you watch, or you want to add?

Yeah, incredible. Okay, with one thought of what I'm doing right now, the after effect, the afterglow, it's just expressions of gratitude. I mean, there has been so much sacrifice here, and we have witnessed it over 20 years from Elon, of course, and the amount of just unbelievable work from him and the entire team at SpaceX, the engineers, everyone who works here. It's been extraordinary, and I'm just deeply grateful. Incredible, and grateful to you all for having us on. Thank you.

Incredible. It's great to hear that perspective because you would not have gotten it from off the Twitter feed, from the mainstream media. David, if you'd come here with us, you could have gotten it. You were invited. You almost shame from Miami. So there's a new term called, as opposed to Shanghai, we're going to Shanghai, and Starship you, we're gonna Starship you next time.

Yeah, I'm bummed I couldn't be there, but I'm excited to see how excited you guys are. And just the point I was making is that when I was reading the mainstream media coverage of this, it was almost ghoulish. It was a type of glee, it was almost unbelievable, right? That the rocket blew up, but they didn't really mention any of the things you're mentioning. From the point of view of the people who were there, it was a triumph and it was exciting because of the data that was collected and the fact that this rocket even got off the Earth, flew up for four minutes. But the media never really conveyed that. So thank you for giving us perspective that you just would not have gotten today from The New York Times or other mainstream media.

They don't care. And it was a way to paint somebody who they dislike and they are threatened by in a negative light. The front page of the Wall Street Journal says 'SpaceX's Starship explodes shortly after launching uncrewed test flight.' If you take Antonio Gracias's explanation, which was articulate and transparent and fair, and this headline, you could not be more further apart on the spectrum of truth. Antonio just said that this is the date, this is for the audience of which there are millions of people now. Antonio said this is the day that you look back on when we are multi-planetary as this Cambrian moment, this incredible point of innovation and human ingenuity and teamwork and sacrifice. As Gavin said as well, just giving up five years of your life to move in the middle of nowhere, live in an Airstream trailer. And then the Wall Street Journal, whose perspective is, I mean, it was just fireworks. It was just a fireworks display. I sent a note to my own teacher, he just said 'please ignore the news media, it's total BS. This is a huge success.' It's a huge success. And we should just step back for a second and enjoy the success. Because part of the problem with the news media is this is a moment that should galvanize our country. This is about America. This is an American company. This is about America. I think they can't see that it galvanizes potentially support for a human being that they feel deeply threatened by, and that's what it all comes down to ultimately. And that's what you see in the headlines. That's why what's so interesting about this is that the behavior of the mainstream media did not paint this as something unsuccessful or a joke or 'rocket goes boom' or 'fireworks.' When you look back on something as meaningful as this, it'll just make them even less credible. That's what they're doing to themselves, shooting themselves in the foot. It's pretty sad.

Yeah, Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times, everybody just painted it as a failure. And it's like, oh, here's a collection of the headlines. Well done, producer Nick. I mean, literally you would think if you're at the mainstream media that SpaceX failed. And it really, when I was talking to Elon months ago about this, he said 'listen, 50-50 we get off the launch pad. If we can get off the launch pad and we don't blow up the launch pad, that's a huge success.' The fact that this thing got as far as it did in four minutes and they got all that data, and they've got, when you see the scale of this factor, and I hope you all get to come down here and all Americans get to see this. Because for me, being friends with Elon for as long as I have, to watch him go from the idea of this, he showed me, I went with Elon to see the Hawthorne factory when he was considering renting it. And from that moment to now, to see the suffering that he went through personally to do this and the team, the amount of suffering to get to this point has been so tremendous. But when you go to the Gigafactory in Texas, when you see what's happening here at Starbase, it should let you know that this is still the greatest country in the world with the greatest entrepreneurs. And he is truly the greatest entrepreneur of our lifetime. And I'm not just saying that because he's my bestie, I'm saying it because it's objectively true. And when you see headlines in the press, look at what has been accomplished. Look at the Teslas on the road, look at what happened with this rocket ship, and judge the man by what has been produced to date, understanding he's going to keep going. And the team he has inspired is relentless. I sat there on the deck an hour or two after all this went down and I just ate some chips and salsa with a half dozen of the people who were in mission control. They loved the podcast, they listened to every episode of All In, I kid you not. And they said 'will you talk about this on All In?' I said 'well, we talk about something.' All in, thank you for what you've done for humanity. This is the most inspiring thing I've experienced in my life. We love you guys. SpaceX, charge ahead, be relentless as you've been, and know that despite these absolutely insignificant headlines, what you're doing is so meaningful to every American and every human on this planet. Don't stop, go faster, go harder, be more relentless. We're all cheering for you. This is one topic we can all agree on. This is something that can galvanize America. We are leading the world again. We're leading the world in the space race again. We're going to be on the moon, we're going to be on Mars. What about Uranus?

That was great. I'm surprised I beat your mouth to the punch there.

Yeah, no, we were all cute. He was having a moment, he was like daydreaming about the future and not thinking about the line. I was taking the number of shares of SpaceX and multiplying it by a billion trillion dollars per share.

Wow, yeah. The rest of us are thinking about humanity, America, inspiring people, and Shabbat's got his little calculator out. I'm gonna have like a babushka of planes.

Trying to ruin the moment, make it about you. Oh my God. Let your winners ride. Rain Man David said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy.

I did have a business question about how the Starship impacts Starlink. Very simple. There's a graphic online you can find on the SpaceX YouTube channel and they show the Starship and it literally looks like a goddamn Pez dispenser shooting out the next version of Starlink. And these are, without I don't want to speak about any specifics, but you can watch it spit them out. You can put out more and they're obviously going to be more powerful. And if you have seen the size of the satellite, I have Starlink at both houses, the ski house and my main house as a backup. It's getting scary how good it is. And if you look at the size of them, and again I don't want to speak about any future products, it's not my place, but if you see the size getting smaller, there's one or two things that we all know about technology: cheaper, faster, better, smaller. So I would just say if you're a fan of Starlink, just keep those words in mind. It's going to be pretty amazing what Starlink's gonna be able to do.

Yeah, I thought that maybe I read this somewhere that Starship can carry 600 plus satellites, whereas the previous top of the line rocket, the Falcon 9, could only carry was it like 50 or something? Or yeah, maybe a little less. Yeah, there's like 30, 40. So you're talking about 20 times the number of satellites can go up and at a lower expense. And I guess SpaceX has gotten permission from the FCC to put up about 12,000 Starlink satellites, so you could do that with just 20 missions. The big disruption is going to happen by the end of 2026 because this next generation set of spectrum licenses that the FCC sold came with a condition that you had to launch satellite capacity by the end of 2026, I think, otherwise you lose it, or you have to do your first launch by the end of 20. And the point is that the only company that actually has the capability to build and to launch is SpaceX. So they have a complete monopoly. And because they're advantaging their own solution, it puts everybody else behind the eight ball. So not only will they probably offer the best global internet connectivity at every single natural point in the world that you could be, which is going to be a really big leap, they're going to do it at a throughput that's going to surprise people. And it's also going to render every other existing provider in a really difficult situation. What is their alternative? You can't launch with ULA because they're inconsistent. You can't launch with Blue Origin because they're inconsistent. You can't launch with the Europeans in general because they're inconsistent. SpaceX is the only solution, but then SpaceX is just going to manage themselves. And there's nothing illegal about that. So you're going to be left with a bunch of these existing telecommunications companies in a really difficult spot in the next couple years. So it's going to be really dynamic space, I think very much worth paying attention to.

Two-line sentences in regards to the All In community: stay in a nap. Man has not slept in the last couple days. No, he's taking a well-deserved nap right now, so hopefully we'll have him on in a future episode. Very quickly, where are you taping from, JCAL? Just curious, where are you taping from there?

I'm at Starbase, and there are little tiny homes and Elon lent us one to stay in here. And it's just inspiring to be here. It's been a great experience. I've been here a couple times, and the scale of the factory, the ships, just over the last, like they said, the last time I've been here a couple times maybe three or four years ago, it really is growing exponentially. And the other really positive thing is people are driving again, back to the enthusiasm in the public. And what you don't see mirrored in the press, which I think was a really astute point, Sacks. I met a guy who gave me a ride in his golf cart. I was late to a meeting, guy says 'hey, are you going somewhere?' And I said yeah, because I was literally running down the street trying to catch a flight. And the guy drives me in his golf cart, and I say 'hey, are you here for the launch?' I said 'yeah, I'm here for the launch.' He says 'so am I.' I say 'can I ask you, do you work for SpaceX?' He says 'no, I'm just a fan of Elon's, I'm a fan of SpaceX.' And I said 'can I ask where you drove from?' He said 'I drove 19 hours from somewhere in Texas, Houston or something.' He drove 19 hours to come here to spend the week to see the launch. And the crowds here have gotten bigger and bigger. There's hundreds of people. I think it's called South Padre Island over here, like a little beach community, kind of like a Las Vegas on the beach or a Reno or New Orleans. And they're just lined up there with cameras. These are Americans, just Americans in RVs, in cars, setting up cameras to see history happen. And it's truly inspiring. These are just ordinary folk. This isn't the media, this isn't affluent people or necessarily, they're just Americans who are inspired. And that's what all entrepreneurs who hear these stories about what's going on down here, you'll overestimate what you can do in a year, you'll underestimate what you can do in 10. And I think that's, we all know Elon pretty well here and have watched this journey. They're cooking with oil, they're moving fast, and the iteration process is extraordinary. And they're making everything here, and it's Americans making everything. The tiles, I remember being here three years ago and Elon and I at 2 in the morning we're walking through the factory while they were working 24 hours a day trying to figure out the tiles on Starship to get it back in. And they were making the tiles themselves, just trying to figure out that formula. That's the level of detail that's occurring here. And as Gavin said, there's a thousand different things changing on each iteration of this. So more great stuff to come, I believe.

Yeah, this has been another episode of Phil Helmuth mentions his relationship with Elon. Thanks everybody for tuning in.

No, I mean, what am I supposed to do? I'm sorry that my friend started a rocket ship company. I don't apologize for it. You guys are doing great stuff in the world as well. So do we want to talk about AI? Do I want to go to this Tiger marking down their book? Where would you like to go?