A YouTuber's intelligent question helped Elon Musk to make a vital change to a new SpaceX rocket.
Everyday Astronaut, a YouTuber with around 1.25 million subscribers, was first invited to SpaceX's Starbase facility at the end of last year. However, after being invited back earlier this month, Elon Musk revealed that a question the YouTuber had asked actually led to changes being made on one of the newest rockets.
One of the improvements to the new ship is to use excess gas from the Starship's main engines for manoeuvring thrusters instead of separate cold gas thrusters. This correction was made after Everyday Astronaut's query asked of Musk.
In his recent tour of SpaceX's Starbase, Everyday Astronaut - otherwise known as Tim - revealed that Elon Musk admitted that he made the changes in the new rocket after the pair's previous discussion. In the clip, Mr Musk even calls the said changes “one of the biggest improvements we (SpaceX) made” to Starship.
“It occurred to me while I was explaining it to you,” Mr Musk said in the YouTube video, adding, “I was like 'wait, what are we doing?'"
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It is to mention that in the original meeting between the pair, which took place in August 2021, Mr Musk was discussing the nature of the new Starship SpaceX rocket. He stated that the Starship comprises the actual ship as well as the attached thrusters because of which “you don't even need a cold gas thruster system… you already have hot gas”.
Tim then interjected the SpaceX CEO by saying, “But this is only for the booster, right?” At this moment, Mr Musk appeared to come to some sort of realisation, as the video showed him in thought. He said, “Although arguably, now you mentioned it, it might be wise to do this for the (space)ship too.”
What he realised was that the ship, as well as the thrusters, also don't need a cold gas thruster system. Back then, he reassured Everyday Astronaut that SpaceX would fix it.
