Shadowing Practice: Flight 14 (and Gigabay) Milestones Shaping Up - Starbase Summary - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Well it's been a week of milestones out at Starbase.
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We've got some big flashy milestones like the Ship 41 Static Fire.
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Gonna have lots of footage from various angles for you of that.
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Milestones happening out at the launch pads as well.
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It's a little more subtle, a little more zoomed in.
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Like some testing there at pad 2 after the successful Flight 13.
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And then also topping off of the Gigabay.
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We're gonna get into all of this.
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Of course, in this clip, the beam is going down, not up.
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It goes the other way.
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But let's hop right in, talk through what we see in the video, because it's time for another Starbase summary.
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We're going to kick it off with Ship 41's journey, starting over at the production site.
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Came out from between the megabays, coming up past the mural here, Old Remedios Road.
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Nighttime rollout.
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The gang was all there to catch the cool shots of the nighttime rollout.
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You'll see both Caesar
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and Colleen's names here also some Starbase Live operators who logged into the robotically controlled cameras
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that were deployed to get.. that's a cool shot.
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Isn't that a cool shot?
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The fixed shots like that where it's sort of moving through frame, it's one thing to sort of track it.
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That's cool, but to have a fixed shot where it's sort of moving through frame
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and you have some context in the background, the huge buildings in the background, it's tough to be so close to these things and get any sort of real feel for how big they are.
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You almost always, hopefully when we get going down the road here, we're going to have a truck for scale, a person for scale, something like that.
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Just fantastic lighting there.
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We need to send Caesar and his camera to space, right?
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No, he can't get the stars and the bright, yeah, there you go for scale.
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The dark stars and the bright foreground in the same shot.
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I'm pretty sure Caesar could figure it out if we got him into a mission.
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I don't know if Caesar's up for the season.
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I'm not signing you up for anything specifically, dude, but let me know.
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Well, don't let me know.
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What can I do about it?
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Let the chat know.
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I don't know what Shaq can do about it either
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but made it all the way over to Massey's and then got some propellant loaded in.
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You can see all the venting here.
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I do like all the work lights at Massey's.
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They really sort of give the whole thing this industrial ambiance when they're doing work over here, but Here's the single-engine static fire.
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Not as much sound and fury coming out of there.
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You saw a little bit of the ice shake off of the sides.
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You know, I didn't actually check in advance
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if we removed the time delay from that or if we left the time delay in, but I'll talk to the editor.
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We'll figure it out.
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It's the beauty of YouTube movie magic.
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It's not really a movie.
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Starbase summary magic?
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Whatever.
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But we didn't...
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It's tough from this side because you have the heat shield side, so we don't see as much of the frost forming.
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Here's another bit of an angle.
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I think this was from one of our deployable cameras catching over here because it says Starbase Live, but you can see the ice shaking off even though you
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don't really have a good indication of how much ice was on there from these angles.
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Of course, it works that way because the top side of the ship, I'm going to call it the top.
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It's the non-tile side, right?
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The part that would be on top as it's diving through the atmosphere, sort of belly flopping.
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Oh, six-engine static fire.
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We'll continue this explanation in just a second.
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Here's six engines.
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Now this was a long static fire, so I'm going to have him back the audio off a little bit there.
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Remember, you can always switch tracks, go to the gear and go to...
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We're still putting it under Klingon.
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Go to the ambient audio track there, where you can listen to the original sound without the commentary over.
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You're always welcome to do that in any of these videos.
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But this was a long.. it was almost 60 seconds or something like that.
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Static fire that we caught here.
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I was talking about, from these perspectives, sort of, we're on Highway 4.
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We're looking out towards Massey's in both directions.
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The Rio Grande is just beyond the test stand here.
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So the river is there, and then the other side of that is Mexico.
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But the top, the stainless steel side, it's all stainless steel, but the side without the tiles is facing the Rio Grande.
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That's the way the exhaust sort of goes.
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And from both of these angles here, we're looking at the underside of the ship, so we don't really see the frost sort of forming up the side when they're doing the testing.
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Also, the exhaust goes away from us, which is quite nice.
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But here, in this view, the Rio Grande in Mexico would be on the left-hand side, and then Highway 4 would be on the right-hand side.
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Same thing here.
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They've turned the ship around, and they're rolling it sort of this way, but Rio Grande on the left here, and then Highway 4 on the right.
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Here it's going to come over to Highway 4.
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That looks like it was the turn onto Highway 4.
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There's the little winding bit of Highway 4.
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That's actually a really cool shot.
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I'm glad they got that without moving the camera.
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Here are—there's a Cybertruck for scale down there with the light bar on top, letting all the traffic go past, and then continuing on its merry way.
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that's something
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that we saw a lot of talking about um back in the day there were some plans maybe
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that they were possibly going to build some uh turnouts like places along highway 4
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that were paved underpinned etc etc um so
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that they could let the traffic pass when a ship is rolling out
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so it's less impact of the traffic
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and i think they're still just driving around it i haven't seen any specific turnouts
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but y'all correct me if i'm wrong uh the good news is which is what i We talked about...
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Wow.
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Good job, me.
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We started off talking about milestones.
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This successful six-engine static fire is one of the requirements...
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That's actually capped off on the bottom there.
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Is one of the requirements for the next flight of Starship, coming up on flight 14.
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And we did get socialmediax.com confirmation from SpaceX referring to it as a successful static fire.
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Is that almost directly SpaceX?
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There's like SpaceX actuals and there's SpaceX and there's SpaceX employees who are apparently allowed to tweet this stuff sometimes.
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Sorry, post this stuff sometimes.
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Old habits die hard.
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But we did get confirmation from people who you could sort of cite as a primary source
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that they were happy with what happened with the six-engine static fire.
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So they also called that single-engine static fire a de-orbit burn, right?
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The type of burn they would have to do with an engine to bring a starship back down out of orbit.
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I kind of give them credit for that.
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It's not an exact setup.
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It's not the exact simulation
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because it's not been loaded with partial fuel for X amount of days in a zero-G, micro-G environment.
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And it's not the same as being in space, but it's one engine firing for the right amount of time.
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it's sort of a limited deorbit burn test.
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I see that a lot, and I think a lot of people don't really understand.
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It's sort of what you can simulate on the ground.
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But the only way to get the real data is to actually fly the thing.
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So that is a good indication that they're moving forward.
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Looking out for the booster next.
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Moving up to the slightly backwards in time and slightly up the road, the work on the Gigabay has been progressing right along.
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Last time we saw them putting more and more of the side cladding up.
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Here are we working on those doors.
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This looks like the opening of the door here.
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And I cannot tell you on the far side of that steel beam exactly what's going on, but here we're looking up one of those big pathways for the Gigabay, or up the big pathway for the Gigabay.
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And you can see the door tracks in there.
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You can see that it's not completely sealed in front of the door tracks on the left-hand side here, but a little tough to see exactly what's going on.
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Hey, it happens sometimes.
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and other sparks behind it.
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I feel like there should be sawing noises and hammering noises, but you're like looking over the top of the castle parapet and you like can't really see what's going on.
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And then there's like hammering and sawing and trees timbering and stuff like that.
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And then this giant wooden rabbit rolls out.
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Anyways, only the real ones get the reference there.
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So here is up near the top.
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We've got some folks in the crane basket there.
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It actually looks like they're delivering things to the top of that crane boom.
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There's a group photo!
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Okay, so here this is going down, but this was apparently the final structural gigabay beam.
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And I did a little bit of research on this.
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It's coming down here because I think they were doing a photo or something.
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But apparently it's a tradition.
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It's not just the flag that you put on top of the building, but there's a tree.
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It goes back to ancient Scandinavia I read from a few sources online,
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and it's like an offering to the forest gods who were upset by the trees you cut down to make your gigabay.
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I feel like you should probably have an offering to whatever ancient evils lurk in the mines from
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which they wrought the ore that they made the steel from.
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But I, whatever.
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Hey, it's tradition.
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How does it work?
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Here's a big section.
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Another sort of thing.
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It's a bridge screen section.
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Sorry, y'all.
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This is how my mind works.
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It's like, why did we put a tree on there?
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I feel like we should put a rock on there
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or something but it's about the completion of the work
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and you know luck has nothing to do with it
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but you'll take all you can get sort of deal
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so we're going to put the flag
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because we're proud we're going to put the tree
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because we're grateful uh that our hands were able to rot such large works man
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that sounds weird whatever looking back into the background here it's
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like we're starting to get the parts of the orbital launch mount for pad one here.
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So you can see a lot of these different pieces
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that sort of came together to form that big box that now sits atop the launch structure.
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Eh, the bottom really, but it's the launch mount, right, for pad two.
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They're making another one for pad one.
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That's what that was.
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Looking into to a nighttime shot here.
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Here's a barrel.
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Wow, that's some wild aberration.
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What is going on?
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That is like a lens thing.
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Look at the side of that beam in the way that the light is big.
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I am going to have to look into that.
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That was actually wacky.
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Optics, people.
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Who thinks they know?
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It's got to be something with the camera lens and the way
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that the camera lens is zooming past something in the foreground to focus on something in the background, but it looked like it was a funhouse mirror almost.
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Now let's say we were sandblasting that and then painting it.
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I'm pretty sure that's what I saw there.
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Interesting.
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You know, we saw the lighter colored paint that we saw over on some of the structures in the Sanchez area, right?
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And I think it's some of the lighting here.
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Sometimes Sometimes this paint looks really light as well, but it doesn't look white.
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Oh, that's cool.
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The BQD cover testing, shown in real time, it says.
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It's a specific note saying it's shown in real time.
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But I was sort of conjecturing maybe some of that's a primer, a base coat, or something like that.
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Look at that little shield that goes down to cover the little connections.
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And I wonder if we're seeing a similar sort of thing here, but it's not exactly the same color.
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Like, is this a shield base layer coating, or is this going to be the final color?
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you do not want to get your fingers pinched in
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that thing do you think they have like little laser lines
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that make sure
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that there's nothing blocking ka-chunk gosh like your garage door right your garage door won't go down
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if you're like standing in there your kid runs through it
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or whatever when it's in motion and breaks the laser beam
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and disables it do you think they have industrial controls like
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that on these or is it like well if there's something small in the way
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We have to close these doors that doesn't seem like a thing.
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I don't know think that drink through that with me down in the comments All right,
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billiards test you got a little guys are there in the background This is just the bottom flame director area.
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It looks like you're not seeing the Splash come out of the top so a partial test there
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There's that painting see how light the painting looks this is what I was looking at here Like the paint
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that they've applied there in the center of the box than the sides Looks very light colored compared to the sort of,
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honestly, rough and busted looking diagonal triangle sides there.
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In any event, folks, hey, that is an indication that we are getting closer to Flight 14.
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Saw some dates starting to come out and some notices in the middle of September there.
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We need the booster to get out and get its work done, but it's all progress in the right direction.
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Also, big congrats to all of the folks out there standing up that Gigabay that gigabay.
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It is an absolutely massive structure.
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You know, put a tree on it, put a flag on it, put whatever you want on it, but thank you for your hard work out there in the Texas sun.
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It's been a Starbase summary.
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Appreciate y'all watching, and we will see you nerds later.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 213 sentences and 2500 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:50. The speaker talks fast, about 195 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| static adjective | /ˈstæt.ɪk/ | Unchanging; that cannot or does not change. |
| beam noun | /ˈbiːm/ | Any large piece of timber or iron long in proportion to its thickness, and prepared for use. |
| angle noun | /ˈæŋ.ɡəl/ | A figure formed by two rays which start from a common point (a plane angle) or by three planes that intersect (a solid angle). |
| milestone noun | /ˈmaɪlˌstoʊn/ | A stone milepost (or by extension in other materials), one of a series of numbered markers placed along a road at regular intervals, typically at the side of… |
| summary noun | /ˈsʌm.ə.ɹi/ | An abstract or a condensed presentation of the substance of a body of material. |
| shield noun | /ˈʃild/ | A broad piece of defensive armor, held in hand, formerly in general use in war, for the protection of the body. |
| folk noun | /foʊk/ | People, persons. |
| lens noun | /lɛnz/ | An object, usually made of glass, that focuses or defocuses the light that passes through it. |
| indication noun | /ɪndɪˈkeɪʃən/ | An act of pointing out or indicating. |
| audio adjective | /ˈɔ.di.oʊ/ | Focused on audible sound, as opposed to sight. |
| mount verb | /maʊnt/ | To get upon; to ascend; to climb. |
| delay noun | /dɪˈleɪ̯/ | A period of time before an event occurs; the act of delaying; procrastination; lingering inactivity. |
| coat noun | /ˈkoʊ̯t/ | An outer garment covering the upper torso and arms. |
| shake verb | /ˈʃeɪk/ | To cause (something) to move rapidly in opposite directions alternatingly. |
| requirement noun | /ɹɪˈkwaɪɹmənt/ | A necessity or prerequisite; something required or obligatory. Its adpositions are generally of in relation to who or what has given it, on in relation to whom… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| roll out verb | To deploy or release (a new film or software, etc.); to launch (a product or service), especially in a gradual fashion across multiple regions. | |
| come down verb | To descend, fall down, collapse. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| get out verb | To leave or escape. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| go past verb | To elapse. (said of time) |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | it's been · They've turned · haven't seen |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were deployed · were paved · been loaded |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 60 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shield /ˈʃild/, indication /ɪndɪˈkeɪʃən/, shake /ˈʃeɪk/, garage /ɡəˈɹɑʒ/, partial /ˈpɑɹʃəl/
- Long words — get the stress right: indication /ɪndɪˈkeɪʃən/, confirmation /ˌkɑn.fəɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, operator /ˈɑpəˌɹeɪtɚ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like static, beam, angle.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.