Elon Musk's Starship Earth to Earth: We Have Reached Peak Idiocy 

Aaand the 90kg CO2 per hour at 5:10 is actually per passenger. So an aircraft would pump out a bit over a 100 tons per transatlantic flight. So the difference is more like 6-fold. The number can vary though based on a lot of factors, e.g. aircraft configuration, engines, etc.

You forgot another problem: governments being willing to let intercontinental ballistic missiles land 20 miles from their major cities.

Please, please let this become a thing. A super expensive form of travel that is really only feasible for the super wealthy and blows up 1 in 100 flights. Oh god, talk dirty to me Adam.

Based on what he promised with Las Vegas loop and what he ended up delivering, I wouldn't be surprised if the final version of the Starship involves shooting people out of a cannon.

"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers, but they also laughed at Bozo the clown."

This is the kind of thing a 5 year old would conceptionalize and forget about 4 minutes later

Rockets are also launched in pitch perfect weather conditions. And this would also need to be true for landing. So perfect weather on two sides of the planet, good luck with that.

"Rockets have indeed gotten much safer, to the point where only 1 in 100 will explode" I nearly did a spit-take that's such a good line.

You didn't mention the biggest problem: An inbound ballistic missile loaded with passengers is indistinguishable from one loaded with nukes. Defense Agencies around the planet will never allow a private company to launch anything like this.

I prefer Carl Sagan's version. "Yes they laughed at galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the clown"

"Officials are still trying to piece together why the missile defense system mistook the 'starship' for a weaponized ICBM, our thoughts are with the families of those lost, Tom"

Congratulations, Elon! You made a mode of transportation more dangerous than motorcycles! Massive achievement!

I worked as a launch ops engineer for a large rocket company (not SpaceX) and it took us between 8-12 hours of prep and systems checks to launch a rocket. Not only that but airspace and wind conditions and weather conditions and down range safety borked every other launch at least once. I think the logistics behind this are even worse, and no it can’t all be automated by software lol

This is actually a good idea. Imagine all the billionaires and corporate executives taking these rockets. Eventually the world would become a better place.

As a small plane pilot, I can tell you that 2G is already something to withstand, and without training, more than a few dozen seconds is hard. Continuous 3G would be torture for an untrained person.

I have an idea. A hole straight through the earth where you board a pod and it gets dropped in freefall and you fall all the way to the other end of the earth in just under an hour. In fact you can travel anywhere in the very same time with a point to point tunnel and zero friction. Just use the magic lube on the magic walls that hold back the magma and radioactive sludge that makes up earth's core. With my technowizzard CGI technology we can build those tunnels 10000 times cheaper than roads. And there are most definitely not a million things we didn't think about, such as emergency exits or anything of that kind.

Maybe normal people actually said to the Wright Brothers that their idea was dumb but all around the world scientist were aware that flying heavier than air machines was possible and there were races with prizes all around the world for the first one that could reach that. Santos Dummont was the first one to takeoff with a aeroplane on Paris, a few months after the Brothers did the same on the US, but they didn't did in front of a crowd since their plan was to refine the machine before revealing it, so they could file patent on a close to commercial able product. While Dummont was scientist in spirit much like Tesla. For most of Elon's stuff is the other way around, uninformed people saying that he is a genius while people with knowledge on engineering and physics are mostly skeptical of his claims.

Just wait, the next thing he's going to suggest is making an 'Earth Elevator' that goes across the center of the Earth, powered by gravity and you can go to the other side of the globe super fast.

Maybe a "HydroLoop" can get you from land to the launch platform quicker?

Wait, let's hear the man out: Billionaires taking a 1:100 chance of blowing up every time they go from A-B might be his best idea to date

I suspect a lot of the stuff Musk proposes is less about making serious proposals and more about maintaining his position as the world's pre-eminent 'futurist' and thus buoying his company stocks with his media presence. Which still makes him worthy of debunking. But I think it's much less complete insanity and more just normal cynical stock manipulation but a businessman who just happens to know how to use a twitter account.

Science in star trek "science boys you have 3 hours to science us out of this black hole". Science in real life, 'spend 20 years to invent a thing, it doesn't work'. Science isn't pirate's treasure.

Even if you are an Elon Musk fan, you cannot deny the step by step breakdown of why this is a dumb idea.

I really needed this channel.... seriously my mental health has improved seeing so many people embrace common sense.

1:50 i love how quiet this rocket is. *Must be one of those electric rockets* i hear so much about... they run on solar, you know?!^^

wow, this is literally just a more extreme version of every single concord problem

Totally agree with you on the fetishisation of science by non-practitioners in modern culture.

And when it comes to the economics: if you are rich enough to buy a ticket on the Starship, you are rich enough to fly by private jet: much more comfortable, safe, eco-friendly, flexible, and you can also skip the airport security.

You're being INCREDIBLY generous in saying they could board that thing in 30 minutes. It usually takes 30 minutes or more to board a commercial aircraft in the 160-200 seat range. KLM bragged a few years ago about achieving 17 minute boarding under test conditions with their 176 seat 737-800 configuration.

Nevermind that all Missile defence systems are gonna go crazy when one of those starts flying around.

I can't beleive I could get anywhere on earth in only an hour! After a 3 hour boat ride.

This reminds me of a nightmare that I had where there was a ride at Universal Studios Orlando where they used a rocket powered slingshot to shoot you up into space that way the world would look like the Universal logo, but then if the pod you were in didn't land in exactly the right spot because of, like, wind you'd die. That legit sounds like if Elon made a theme park.

It’s important to remember that the 20 miles from city is 20 miles from the last house, not 20 miles from downtown. So there’s a good chance that for any city that’s not on an ocean, the starship port could end up being 50 miles from downtown, maybe more for sprawling cities or cities nearby other cities. In some cases, you may end up being HUNDREDS of miles from downtown if your city is part of a larger megalopolis and in a landlocked area. So imagine living in Montreal, and wanting to take the starship. You’ll have to travel 1.5+ hours to the Laurentides to take the starship. And that’s assuming that elongated muskrat gets permission to land ROCKETS in areas surrounded by highly flammable TREES. And if he dosnt get permission for that… the nearest city on the ocean with a population big enough to support a system like this is BOSTON. Which is a 5-7 hour drive away. Imagine driving 7 hours, spending 2.5 more hours getting to the dock and going through security and boarding stuff, and then a 30 min flight, 2 hours for deboarding, customs, and getting to the city. That’s a total of 12 hours spent so you can avoid a 12 hour flight. If you can get around the whole 1/100 trips will involve a death thing, this idiotic system will only ever work in port cities. Wanna go from NYC to Tokyo? Sure, that’ll work. But Chicago to Paris? Good luck. St. Louis to Munich? Funny joke, will you be here all week? And don’t forget, you need perfect launch conditions with very little wind. Yknow, weak winds? Something that areas 20 miles out to sea are knowing for?

Elon Musk: _"And with your support, we can turn a mildly irritating four hour trip into literal torture for just twenty minutes!"_

"Everyone laughed at the wright brothers, yet they succeeded." Everyone also laughed at the hundreds and thousands of other flying machine builders. And all of those flying machine builders failed

That reminds me of this one Simpsons episode where they showed a future in which garbage cars were space ships that would take off and fly into space just to land in front of the next house five meters away from their starting point. Only that back then that was a joke.

1:15 - Can you imagine waking up EVERY DAY at 6.30 in new york city to a massive VROOOOOMM from a rocket?

"Earth to Earth rocket flight" The Germans actually did this before, they made the first manmade object in space and it could travel from Berlin to London in just 5 minutes! What incredible futuristic 21st century technology! In the 40s...

You left out the biggest and most obvious problem: cost. Concord proved that cost is generally more important than speed. Rockets are crazy expensive, so it would no way in hell be economically viable. And if there were demand for this, supersonic (or maybe even hypersonic) planes would outcompete for the same nieche users (ultra rich, in a big hurry).

Fuel loaded on a manned rocket is always done with the astronauts already on board. That takes approximately 2.5 to 3 hours to complete. So you have to add that time to the launch. If the launch is aborted for any reason. The feul must be unloaded before passengers can get off. So the passengers would be in that thing for 6 hours during an aborted sequence.

The starship itself is an incredible feat of technology and I don’t think it can be stated how innovative it is in this one comment. But using something like starship for EtE travel is probably the worst use you can have for it. The starship is designed to be the largest rocket ever made surpassing the SaturnV that took us to the moon. Using the starship for something as arbitrary as EtE transportation would be like using a flame thrower to light your cigarette, a total waste and not really practical.

Rockets need nearly perfect weather to fly. Launches get scrubbed if its cloudy.

I have a new idea for future transport. We strap rockets to our legs. I call it hyper legs. We can move many % faster and it'll be all cool and futuristic.

1:54 Oh good, more Space Trash in low earth orbit. Guess we truly are headed for straight for the Wall-E timeline.

I love these videos because they’re so great at showing how the empire just absolutely has no clothes, with proper research to explain it.

Alternative: just use a Zoom meeting

Fueling the star ship will take longer than any of the other steps you've mentioned combined.

Yeah the Wright brothers excuse is pretty bad. Yes they learned to fly but even when they had a working prototype it was nothing that was even remotely commercial viable for a long long time. At best it gave rich thrill seekers a short ride of a couple miles or two. Able to carry one or two people hanging on the wings and other such silly things. They also had a working prototype before trying to sell it while Elon Musk seems to keep wanting money, investors and selling his product before is more than a dream on paper. It would be like the Wright Brothers selling international flights before their first test even got off the ground.

I don't see the problem... A genius way to get rid of the rich!

In my 8th grade, like 8 years ago everyone in the class had to come up with an invention. My dumb invention was pretty much the same as starship earth to earth, I called it a space train.

Elon Musk is just doing these videos for ad revenue at this point

I got goosebumps when you described Scientism accurately in one sentence.

In conclusion, this proposed system is not only more dangerous but also even more harmful to the environment than the old Soviet practice of leaving nuclear waste unsupervised on a public parking lot

The moment when bringing back the Concorde and Tupolev 144 sounds like a more sustainable idea

aerospace engineer here. I agree with pretty much all you say that it's a fucking stupid idea with the only goal to make tech-nerds go "such wow". but you asked to correct your numbers so here they are: 4:10 I don't know where you got that 25% fuel for suborbital fights from, but it doesn't apply to starship e2e. It might be true if you just want to go "up" and back down again (like sub 2000km flights), but in the starship promo video they boast with 27.000 km/h, which is close to orbital velocity. calculating fuel for rockets is only dependent on payload mass and the velocity you want to achieve. so there is just a small difference in fuel between going e2e and going to low earth orbit. I did some napkin math and maybe you can save 500t of fuel, but it doesn't really matter since it doesn't change the magnitude of the result. let's just focus on the first stage, since we will need to fill that 100% either way to reach those speeds. the capacity is about 1000t of methane and 2000t of o2. So burning that would release a bit less than 3000t of CO2. that's pretty much in line the graph you showed at 4:45. the passenger capacity of this thing is unknown, Musk claims 1000 passengers, which is wildly unrealistic in my opinion. But assuming that gives us about 3 tons of co2 per person for a long-haul flight. your airplane co2 numbers are also quite off and I wonder where you got the numbers from. 5:02 "total emission of an airplane transatlantic is 1 ton"? that should raise your alarm bells man. I think the numbers you found are per passenger. A 787 can carry about 100t of fuel, so about 300t of CO2 for a long-haul flight (up to 14.000km, so pretty much anywhere on earth), make that half for an transatlantic flight, it doesn't matter. nowhere near 1 ton for the whole plane. the passenger capacity for the 787 is 250 people, for full fuel capacity that's 1.2 tons of co2 per person. as you can see, the co2 difference is not that big, about a factor of 2.5 (but it largely depends on the passenger capacity of the theoretical e2e starship, which cannot be known). that's mostly because the rocket only boosts for around 5 minutes and then cruises above in the thermosphere, while the aircraft has to plow through the lower stratosphere all the time. that means from an energy perspective, flights of over 10.000km would at least economically make kinda sense with e2e starship. that doesn't mean that all the other concerns are not valid of course, the idea is still dumb.

"What's wrong with concept of strapping people to intercontinental ballistic missiles and shooting them across the planet?" 2:38 Made me laugh so hard! 😂😂😂

Classic Vaudeville routine: "They said Galileo was crazy. They said Edison was Crazy. They said Luigi was crazy!" "Who's Luigi?" "He's my brother-in-law.... he IS crazy."

Literally the only use case I can see for this is the scene near the end of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance where the protagonists only have a couple hours to stop a plot to cause a global war and the only way to get there in time is using a rocket, which itself is a combination electromagnetic-launch/chemfueled beast intended to be SSTO but having atmospheric control surfaces to land. Oh, and it's supposed to be remote-controlled, the cyborg occupants still nearly shit themselves at the G-forces involved. The sheer fact I'm quoting something from Metal Gear as a primary use case should show how mental the project is just from a concept standpoint.

You missed one tiny little detail: ICBMs are slightly harder to land than regular aeroplanes.

isn't it amazing that all the worlds problems happen to be able to be "solved" by products this guy happens to sell? When I see Elon Musk these days I can't picture anything but the monorail salesman from the simpsons.

All of Elon Musk's "ideas" come straight from science fiction. I was reading about sub-orbitals being normal way back in the mid-80's. Books that were written in the 40's and 50's at that. It's just pure science fiction with little to no practical utility aside from 'hurr durr futurism lol'.

The other issue with the Wright Brothers argument is: Even though naysayers claimed the flying machine was impossible, anybody could tell that it would revolutionize the world. This idea, even implemented perfectly as described, would mean several negatives, and wouldn't improve anything.

He doesnt need the rockets to be safer, he just needs to make you sign a contract before each flight and make sure the press won't cover the accidents, which is probably cheaper.

I always thought SpaceX and this Rocket to earth stuff was some of Elon's dumbest projects. Not only do they seemed doomed to fail like most of his money burning ventures. It also proves he's a massive hypocrite. Most his projects are about going "Green" and saving the planet.... Then he pushes commercial rocket flight, one of the worst forms of transportation possible for the environment. About the only thing that could be worse is a nuclear powered submarine with a leaky reactor core.

It makes me mad actually outraged that such a huge amount of resources might go to something so stupid. Elon is a danger to everyone.

"You know, rocket have this attribute of being really fucking loud." Couldn't have phrased it better.

Airline Nerd Rant Incoming: Nevermind the safety record or the physics, he doesn't even have a sound route network! He's ignoring everything we know about the airline industry. In the 2010s, mid-sized airplanes were developed which could fly long distances once only feasible with larger planes (and larger fuel tanks). This changed everything. As an example, it used to be that a passenger in a mid sized city, like Denver, would get on a little airplane which would transport them to a big airport with a denser population, like Las Angeles. In this busy city, there were enough people to fill a big plane. This large aircraft, now having enough passengers to be economically viable, would go to Tokyo. Today, however, a passenger can embark on a fuel efficient mid-sized plane, which can fly far but doesn't need as many passengers to turn a profit. A lower population city like Denver can now provide a nonstop flight to Tokyo. There is no layover in Las Angeles, and the passengers are happier. Customers overwhelmingly prefer direct flights, so the airlines completely restructured to buy more smaller long range airplanes. The jumbo jets which once flew between major cities are being retired. Airlines don't want to buy 500 passenger airplanes anymore, but Elon suggests we fill these Starships with 1,000 people??? Only routes between major world cities can accommodate this. And no one will want to go through security to get on an airplane in Denver, leave the airport in Las Angeles, go through more security to get on a rocket, and THEN go to Tokyo. His enemy isn't just supersonic airplanes, it's every airplane that can fly a direct route...

Correction about the fossil fuel bit: Methane can be produced completely carbon neutral. The sabatier process takes CO2 and hydrogen (which can be made from water via electrolysis (which can also be powered by renewables)). The process results in methane. Methane also burns into CO2 and water. So yes, it is technically a fossil fuel, but can be carbon neutral

based on 4/20/23 "rapid, unplanned disassembly", everything will be fine

NASA astronauts' training is of 2 years and our boy Elon wants to send regular Joe on orbital flights.

You didn't even touch on how unbelievably expensive it would be in fuel alone. The whole ticket would be obscene. And of course his "vision" explicitly stated it would be CHEAPER

Won't his 46,000 satellites be in his way by that time? 🤣🤣🤣

10:13 "Not even reality or basic maths can stop him" 😄 It's round about the same absurdity level of all his other claims, but yeah this one probably takes the crown.

"Being smart can make you rich, but being rich does not make you smart" -me watching Adam Something. I fucking swear if this was already a quote and I never knew...

"Yes they laughed at galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the clown" I means that just because someone laughs at your ideas, it doesn't make them smart ! Stupid people can laugh at smart ideas, but smart people can also laugh at stupid ideas.

This idea of using rockets for intercontinental travel is an old one, that appears most often in older sci-fi, like 1960's, 1950's and maybe even the 1940's. I believe that "The Man in the High Castle" and I think that it's a thing in some Bradbury stories, such as "The Martian Chronicles"...and plenty more from that era.

It's interesting you chose New York to London as an example. London is some distance away from the North sea. The rocket platform would have to be built about midway between Margate and Felixstowe, so you're looking at a ferry ride of at least 90 minutes. Finding a suitable landing spot for a city like Paris would be even harder. Needless to say that this concept will make budget airlines like Easyjet and Ryanair look good.

The thing is, cutting down travel time just isn't that important in a world where we carry our work, entertainment and social life in our pockets. There's really no problem with an 8hr flight from London to New York, so there's no need to "fix" it!

It often feels like those elon musk ideas are thought up when he's in the shower for 5 minutes and then he sends a one-line message to his secretary so that his companies work it out without any sort of forethought put into the viability of the idea. Being surounded by yes men makes for poor business.

Dude you're rapidly becoming my favorite RU-vid channel 🤣 I burst out laughing when the cgi rocket landed neatly up right 🤦🏾‍♂️

Say it with me guys: Transportation doesn't need to be fast!

My favorite key feature of a transit system is that it's absolutely indistinguishable from ICBM launches

I'd much rather have an ariship using a few days to reach my destination if it means I can have comfortable cabin like on a boat or sleeper train at a reasonable price; than another even more uncomfortable and more expensive experience than normal aeroplanes have today.

I mean, the Wright brothers didn't immediately start trying to convince people that flying machines were the best way to get to the local store. I feel that that is the key difference. Musk just buys stuff and then tries to shoehorn that thing into as many applications as possible, regardless of efficiency.

It is a known fact that elon is the type of guy that skips on logistics, skips all the things that are boring and goes straight for the fun part.

A few days ago I watched the recently released "Could Starship Be The New Concorde?" by Primal Space. After watching your video, I felt like watching it again, just with a little but more scepticism. Also kind of funny that the Wright Brothers where indeed featured, as if you already knew. The trip on a boat would already eliminate all the speed advantages of the Starship. Actually, if Europe would build high speeds rail, we would not need any planes between Amsterdam and Berlin or most other large Western European cities, due to the long times that are required, or at least recommended (two hours) to be at the airport before flight departure.

You have missed the part where no one except for Elon Musk and his friends can really afford this rocket flight

Hong Kong to Singapore by rocket?!!?!Perhaps Musk is really Wile E. Coyote in a suit.

When I saw the trailer I immediately thought that the system could easily disguise a nuclear weapon

I can't wait to fly on the Cyberpunk 2077 SpaceX ICBM!

It wouldn't even take an explosion to kill this concept, just one abort or one close call with 1000 passengers would ground this indefinitely. Move fast and break things is not a good approach here.

It is perfectly possible to transport people this way, the difficulty is to have everyone alive when the rocket reaches its destination (if the rocket manages to take off)

You even forgot getting passengers suited-up and fueling time. Whatta con job

I'm reminded of how many times the cold war almost went hot due to one side thinking the other fired. That happened at least twice that I know of, and in one case Moscow saw a launch they thought was from a US sub, IIRC the Soviet leader was told he had 20 seconds to return fire, said he didn't believe the US was that insane, poured himself a glass of vodka, and waited it out. Turns out the memo about "hey we're launching something, it isn't a nuke, don't nuke us" from the US got lost in the channels.

I like that literally every single aspect of this idea is fundamentally flawed and it's still being advertised as a totally possible concept even by SpaceX's representatives.

“Starship” … I don’t think Elon quite know’s what that means. Nor has he seen a single episode of Star Trek. A ‘Star Ship’ travels … BETWEEN THE STARS.

Easy fix: Strap on exceptional people like Elon Musk to a rocketship.

Addition to the G's part: The average G- Force during a commercial flight lies between 0.75 and 1.25 G with 0.5 to 1.5 G's in a turbulent flight. So while saying that the average flight subjects you to 0.2 to 0.4 G's is technically correct (if you subtract or add those values from/to the normal 1G we have on earth) someone might misinterpret those numbers

As a mechanical engineer I was always fascinated by all the things Elon Musk did when I was still in University and I am still fascinated at all his rocket tech. But now that I have graduated and have a little knowledge about manufacturing and design efficiency, I can see all the flaws in his technologies. e.g. electric cars instead of electric public transport or electric trains which would be a better idea or maybe electric roads like the overhead lines that trains have I think it is only possible in America to do these crazy experiments with govt. funding. We don’t have that luxury or funding in my country (India)

This has quietly got further away. In 2020 they bought two oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico. They were going to refit them to a launch and landing test platform. But in Feb they said they had sold them. Which adds a few years to the timeline.