Shadowing Practice: Launch Pads and Prep at Starbase (and Beyond) - Starship Summary - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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And it's time for another Starbase summary here folks.
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Dude a couple different things this time.
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We've got some work happening over at pad two.
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Things rolling back and forth as parts come over there for pad one.
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We're gonna show you some Raptors rolling around McGregor.
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Remember Starbase does not exist in a vacuum.
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D-d-d-ch.
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And we're gonna have a S-26 Ghost coming back from the grave.
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That's S-43.1 headed out to Massey's for some testing.
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But it's Starbase summary.
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Let's jump right in over at Orbital Pad 2.
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Got a fantastic shot from Caesar here.
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Got that nice blue in the background.
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But here we're looking at Pad 2, and we've got these burn plates.
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I was going to make a joke about them being holy.
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I don't think that it would land.
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Wow, there's another joke you could do there.
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Hey, let's just move right along.
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Good grief.
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It's basically...
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Sorry.
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It's too early in the video for this.
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Basically, some additional shielding placing that they're adding in over there at Pad 2.
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Some nighttime shots there.
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Is that a Cybertruck with something in the back of it?
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No way.
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That's probably the most rare thing you actually see in one of these videos, is a Cybertruck that's carrying something in the bed.
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Uh, got some detailed shots underneath here.
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Trying to see exactly, eh, just a little elevator action.
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Looks like we've got some ambiance, we're not pointing out any specific exact things, like, oh, this lift ran over this way and did this one thing.
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It doesn't always work out that way.
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Sometimes it's just sort of checking in with what's going on, especially the last couple days.
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It really does feel like, if you're watching Starbase Live, there's a little bit of a post-flight lull.
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We know that they're getting ships' boosters ready for that next flight that's coming up.
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But in terms of work around the pad, it doesn't seem like they're trying to make any huge drastic changes, reinventing the wheel, any big disassembly, right?
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Like they may be polishing some things or replacing some light bulbs, but they're not uninstalling the engine from anything that would cause a huge delay.
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They don't want the pads here to be the long pull
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if they can get those ships and boosters ready for the next flight.
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here we've got a little wow that
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that blinking is on the tower behind it
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but it's just lined up exactly right where it's just sort
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of flash banging you right in the middle of the screen
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so there's a little bit of work over on the are they pipe raceways i think i've talked about
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that before i call it a pipe rack
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but it's like an installed i feel like pipe rack is
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a pipe that's not installed yet right it holds pipe
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that could be installed or used uh but anyways raceway is It's more for electric cables and server rooms, that sort of...
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I don't know, hey, maybe that's what they're supposed to be called.
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But anyways, there we have a little bit of groundwork.
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Remember, we put these together a little bit more cohesively these days.
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We're not just pure chronology.
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We're looking at work that's happening on the pads here through a couple different days.
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Then we're going to go check in with McGregor.
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We're going to go check out S26.
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Well, it's not S26.
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It's 43.1.
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Whatever. But CH4.
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I like it.
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CH4 offloads in all other traffic.
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Nice.
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Every time I see a little sign, it usually grabs my attention.
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I don't know if that's a human thing, but there can be a lot of stuff happening if there's a little sign.
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Sometimes it's like, oh, what's that sign say?
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So here is a flame diverter support beam ostensibly heading for pad one.
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Remember, they've been putting those parts together.
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They're not building it all from raw components over at Pad 1.
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We've seen them sort of, let's call it a sub-assembly, assembling sub-components or parts, partial parts,
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that they then transport over and put together, either in the yard over at Sanchez or other places.
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We see them come in from out of town.
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It's not necessarily all just raw steel beams being put together over at Pad 1.
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But the work at pad one continues.
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You can see that big support gantry structure there that will form the basis of that Tyrell Corporation slant that you see.
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Up at the top of tower one, we still have our weather station up at the top.
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But you can also see a little bit of a safety sort of scaffolding.
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It's almost like a drop deck.
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There you go, that's a great shot actually.
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That makes it easier and safer to work on those undersides there.
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It's not a permanent structure.
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It's just a temporary structure that they can use to more easily gain access, because you ain't going to be in a lift all the way up there on the top of the tower.
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Here we've got that 11,000 raising up, and if I'm not mistaken,
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that's a new configuration, so getting ready to do some different work than it normally does.
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It's lunchtime for the wildlife here.
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One of these days in my copious free time, I'm gonna I'm gonna get a wildlife person on here to talk about what we see all right
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So let's run over to Central Texas like I said Starbase Not everything for the Starship program happens at Starbase
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In fact quite critically a lot happens over at McGregor in here.
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You can actually see uninstalled our Vax
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Going around we saw our back 181 you can see gosh
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a different angle scroll back a little bit You can see the 181
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Central there you can see the one eight and the last numbers of one But they rolled it out, and in just a couple of hours they rolled it back again.
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Now, that doesn't really mean anything.
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Two hours isn't particularly enough to do a test.
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Maybe they rolled it over, they found something different, they wanted to bring it back, maybe the stand just wasn't ready.
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It doesn't mean that there's any doom or gloom happening.
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There you can see it rolling back out again.
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Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
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But you've got to make that noise.
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We also see some of the Raptor C levels.
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Those RVACs have the big horizontal transport thing, and there's another RVAC going.
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The little vertical engine was a C-level.
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There's an RVAC.
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It's interesting that they tow them backward, and it has to have something to do with just the efficiency of putting them on or off the trailer.
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You'd think that, like, bugs would get in there, but maybe they have a.. hopefully they have a plug or something.
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Also, at McGregor, this is where they hotfire the Falcon 9 cores.
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These are usually new cores that are coming into service, and here you can see this is 107.
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That's something that you won't see a lot of the times on the launch broadcast, but here we have these great shots of the cores going by.
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They have a stand where they static fire these.
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They'll run up all the engines.
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You can really tell the difference between the RP-1 powered Merlins here and then the vacuum powered?
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No, I almost said RVAC.
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The methane powered Raptors, the differences in the stands, the plumes look really different.
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But I bet you we see that doing some launches.
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In the future, it is one of the things we try to keep track of.
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Hey, we're getting back over to Starbase.
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There's a good fin test rig, but big thanks to the McGregor Live.
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All those views that you saw there, we catch those live as well.
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The team over there, Rex with the cool Raptor treks, Rhino getting a lot of those stats together for us.
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We appreciate them.
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Little known, all the work that goes out at McGregor, both on our side and on SpaceX's side.
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People should know it's not all Starbase.
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But, hey, look at this.
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It says, nothing was visible, though we did see a plane.
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Oh, no kidding?
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
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All right.
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Well, we did.
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We got a lot of cameras.
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A lot of them are dome up.
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That's a booster cryo stand going.
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Dome up just means that they can point above the horizon.
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They can point at things at the sky versus on the ground.
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And so all of our dome up assets will aim at the moon whenever there's a re-entry or something with the moon.
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We can aim them up at the sky.
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It doesn't mean we're necessarily going to catch anything, but why not try?
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And I know we had a couple assets aimed north, or aimed up.
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It's not really north, sorry.
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I'm trying to catch that, but we didn't really catch too terribly much.
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Here we're rolling around nose cone pieces, as it turns out.
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There's that S43.1 nose cone.
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Testing header tanks, catch points.
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It's not subscale.
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That's not the right way.
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It's not a complete starship, but it's components of the starship being tested, right?
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You can test how flanges, mounting points, attach points, quick disconnect plates, how a bunch of different things,
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how tanks work, how plumbing works, how piping works.
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And subscale is not the right term, but it's like a partial.
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It's not a fully integrated starship.
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Almost more of a partially integrated starship, I guess, is the way you could say it.
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Like, where are the flaps?
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I don't know.
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So rolling this out to, I almost said to McGregor, wow, I'm going to have to keep this stuff straight a little bit better
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if we start adding in some other bits of the Starship ecosystem here.
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But rolling out at night to Massey's, at least they start with the same letter.
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You can at least give me that.
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But you can see some of those attachment points.
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you know, you'll see a lot of load testing, you see flanges, you see, alright, we're going to connect some stuff here, then when we cryo-test this or whatever, we're going to push on it,
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we're going to pull on it, we're going to do this.
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We've seen all sorts of different weird contraptions and passageways
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that you wouldn't normally seem to see on a ship or a booster, just so that they can put those loads in those specific parts of the vehicles to do the testing, to do the work up front,
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because they need to understand it's great to fly them.
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Don't get me wrong.
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There's no truth like flight truth, right?
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But that doesn't mean you just cut out the entire part of your program where you're simulating it, you're subscaling it, you're unit testing it, you're doing partially integrated parts,
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testing out all the different things.
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Just because flight data is the best data does not mean that you only get flight data.
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And that's really honestly where Massey's comes in.
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You see all of these tests not only proofing and qualification that sort of stuff But just testing like hey, what if we welded this this way and then it got really cold and we pushed on it, right?
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How does that work?
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You see the same thing out at McGregor They put those
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engines through the paces before they ever come down to starbase and we even saw
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Before flight 13 we saw after the the pad abort right where they fired up the engines
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and stopped them before they let that thing go we saw engines from that end up at McGregor within days.
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You can drive it in a day.
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You just put the stuff on there.
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It may take longer than that to take it off, but it's not like they have to transport this stuff halfway across the country to the test facility.
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They can run it up to, it's near Waco, Texas, which is going to put you, what, is that seven hours north of Starbase?
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See, I'm from Corpus, so I usually stop in Corpus, so it's like, wait, how long is the drive straight through?
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Because I've got to stop in to Mom's house and get some carrot cake when I'm driving through.
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Anyways, here is that test article going into the test stand test structure.
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And again, nope, nope, okay, never mind, put it back out, it's all good.
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Oh, okay, now we'll put it back in.
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Somebody had to go in there and sweep it off or something.
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You see it a lot, you see fit checks, then they make sure it's going to work the way they need, they need to readjust something.
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When you see a little back and forth like that, it never really means that it's a big issue.
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This is interesting, it says painted white there.
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It looks like a really nice coat, honestly.
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But I'm wondering if this is a new aesthetic, or is this a primer, like a base coat, something they're putting under this.
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I guess we'll continue to see what happens with it.
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Here's the Gigabay.
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If you've been keeping up over on the Space Coast, that Space Coast Gigabay has almost all of those panels all the way up the top.
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But over at Starbase, we're still sort of three, well, I'd say three levels.
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Those aren't really levels in there, but they continue to make progress.
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There's all those cranes in the background.
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This is looking from the Margaritaville Hotel over there, South Padre.
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And these are some tanks just coming in to the port.
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But that's your view.
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That's the Gigabay and the Megabays and the Star Factory and the Rocket Garden in the background.
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That's the Border Patrol imaging dirigible, whatever you want to call it, in the foreground.
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There's your two launch pads.
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Those are some metal structures on the barge itself, metal structures from the Cape.
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But pad 2 is on the right here.
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Pad 1 is on the left.
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And you're sitting over there at the Margaritaville.
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You get one of those south-facing rooms during a launch.
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That's literally how you watch the launch.
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So it really is a cool thing.
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Massive thanks to the hotel for working on us for how many years has it been?
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We've been working with the hotel there for years.
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But in any event, folks, that's a Starbase summary.
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Let me know.
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Every now and then, Starbase is a little bit slower.
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We'll maybe toss in some McGregors.
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Maybe I'll get you all an engine firing or something like that next time, a static firing of an engine.
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They do those all the time over at McGregor.
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But as always, appreciate you all hanging out, and we will see you nerds later, hopefully down in the comments.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 214 sentences and 2504 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:00. The speaker talks fast, about 193 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% 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 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- pipe /ˈpaɪp/ (noun) — A wind instrument consisting of a tube, often lined with holes to allow for adjustment in pitch, sounded by blowing into the tube.
- booster /ˈbustɚ/ (noun) — Something that boosts.
- installed /ɪnˈstɔːld/ (verb) — readied for use
- summary /ˈsʌm.ə.ɹi/ (noun) — An abstract or a condensed presentation of the substance of a body of material.
- component /kəmˈpoʊ.nənt/ (noun) — A smaller, self-contained part of a larger entity. Often refers to a manufactured object that is part of a larger device.
- anyways /ˈɛn.iˌweɪz/ (adverb) — Anyway, anyhow, in any case.
- pad /pæd/ (noun) — A flattened mass of anything soft, to sit or lie on.
- dome /dəʊm/ (noun) — A structural element resembling the hollow upper half of a sphere.
- integrate /ˈɪn.tɪ.ɡɹeɪt/ (verb) — To include as a constituent part or functionality.
- necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ (adverb) — Inevitably; of necessity.
- coat /ˈkoʊ̯t/ (noun) — An outer garment covering the upper torso and arms.
- wildlife /ˈwaɪldlaɪf/ (noun) — undomesticated animals, especially mammals, birds, and fish, which live in the wild.
- nope /noʊp/ — No.
- asset /ˈæsɛt/ (noun) — A thing or quality that has value, especially one that generates cash flows.
- folk /foʊk/ (noun) — People, persons.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- roll around (verb) — To move about on the ground while rotating and turning one's body.
- back in (verb) — To reverse a vehicle into a space.
- back out (verb) — To reverse (a vehicle) from a confined space.
- check out (verb) — To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
- come back from (verb) — To become successful, confident or effective again after an injury, setback, failure, embarrassment, etc.
- come down to (verb) — To reach by moving down or reducing.
- come in /ˌkʌm ˈɪn/ (verb) — To enter.
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 81 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, I'm, we've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, aesthetic /ɛsˈθɛ.tɪk/, methane /ˈmiːθeɪn/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: partially /ˈpɑɹʃəli/, partial /ˈpɑɹʃəl/, flash /flæʃ/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, shield /ˈʃild/
- Long words — get the stress right: necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, temporary /ˈtɛmp(əˌɹ)ɛɹi/, efficiency /ɪˈfɪʃ.ən.si/, configuration /kənˌfɪɡ.əˈɹeɪ̯.ʃən/, elevator /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/
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 pipe, booster, installed.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | they've been putting · you've been keeping · We've been working |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | could be installed · be called · being put |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | i've talked · We've seen |
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.