Shadowing Practice: Single Engine Static Fire? Huh. | SpaceX Starbase - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Alright folks, we pumped the brakes on this one so that we could get the Ship 40 static fire into it.
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So coming up at the end of this, expect to see some static fire from Ship 40 over at Massey's.
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But we're going to start off this Starbase summary on June 18th over near the launch site.
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Looks like we need to roll out and clean that camera lens off.
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It's been hot out there.
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This is one that's right by the road.
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So, you know, it's a little tough to keep them clean.
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But got a couple deluge tests going.
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on the lower deck, I guess it's not really the lower deck, on the lower parts of the Pad 1 flame trench.
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It's just over and over and over again.
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We were talking about this last time and trying to get this thing ready.
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At first it was like, oh, maybe they're just blowing out the pipes after the launch, and now it looks like they're looking at pressures or flow rates or something like that.
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Here we've got some tanks arriving from the port.
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Now we're over at the launch site.
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And okay, we're going all the way around pad two.
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to get them over to the tank farm.
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Oh, what did...
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X gateway to Mars.
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It's the Gatway, the wall here.
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They've got a bunch of scaffolding along it.
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I wonder if they're going to come up with a new, better way to install letters on it.
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I guess we'll wait and see.
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Here's just a wide shot sort of looking in the gate.
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That's pad one in the background there, and then pad two over on the right -hand side.
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And then it looks like some concrete work there.
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You got the tank farm.
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Those tanks that you just saw rolling are going to be way over to the right.
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Here, I don't know if we'll pan far enough to see them, but this just looks like some hey, A scooter?
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Gotta like the personal protective equipment there on the scooter.
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Ah, gosh, we cut away before the scooter went by.
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I had more scooter commentary.
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Good grief.
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Alright.
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The Orbital Tank Farm.
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Well, that's a truck driving by.
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TK001, one of the early stormtroopers, I guess.
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At least it's white in that truck.
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We've got the late night rave going.
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This is going to be a Caesar shot.
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Yep, it's Caesar.
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You can tell by the colors at night.
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Fantastic lens that Caesar uses here.
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All green and some flashing lights over at the filling stations.
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But let's head over on June 22nd to just a wide view of Orville Pad 1.
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You see they've got the big crane there, that gantry sort of mount work.
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Yes, thank you, the service structure.
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still being assembled over on the side.
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Remember, once all this sort of gets together, they're probably gonna use that crane to scoot it over, pick it up and move it over so it's closer to the tower.
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Here's a crane getting hooked up to the Pad 1 ship.
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Quick disconnect.
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We took a little load.
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We changed the white balance, apparently.
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And then we disconnect it and lift.
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Huh.
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I wonder if they just needed to unload something.
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You ever been working on a suspension component in a car or something like that, and you're like, God, this bolt is just bound up in here.
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I can't get it out.
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And if you just lift up on the component a little bit, you use a jack, you just grunk on it a little bit, it freezes it up.
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You pull it right out.
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I wonder if there was some massive bolt or pin or something like that, and they literally just needed to unload it a little bit so they could change something out.
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I don't know.
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I'm making that up.
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That's just what it looked like to me.
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Now here is an interesting flange on a nose cone.
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Here in the Starbase.. oh there's somebody in it.
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Here on Starbase summaries we bring you only the most interesting flanges welded to nose cones.
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Looking on the inside there.
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Now I've seen a lot of speculation on Starbase Live
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and in the comments of the videos what the heck this thing is.
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It sure does not look like crew's going to be crawling through it.
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It's a little...
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Oh, there we go.
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Give me some light.
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Is that an arm?
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Man.
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That's like one of those...
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Stuck in a narrow cave passageway story if you try to come out of that thing.
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It does not look like it's for a full -size docking port.
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It is maybe for wiring or something like that.
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I guess we'll see what else they attach to it.
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Maybe later in the video.
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We're using a little Marky Jig thing.
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to mark up some tiles.
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We've been having fun with the tile designs in the shop, by the way.
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We just did a beach towel.
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It's like a TPS designed beach towel.
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Except I told the shop team that nobody's going to know what it's called if it's TPS.
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Like, what the heck is TPS?
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So I think it should be named Starship Heat Shield Beach Towel or something like that over in the shop.
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I don't know if we've released that product yet, but go check the shop and tell me if we did.
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I don't know.
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Got some beams.
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This is some miscellaneous work over here.
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I'm not gonna like bag on Europe, right, for the whole heat wave, 'cause it's a serious thing, and people are literally dying to the heat.
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But down here where we've got air conditioning, we build these massive buildings, and SpaceX has painted it black.
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They're going to air condition the silly thing. So air conditioning is...
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solved Science.
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I guess you could say.
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They'd also be better off if they painted the building white.
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Thank you.
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But in any event, we've got a little basket there.
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Is that a worker or a...
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Yeah, it's just a worker who...
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The basket's bigger than you think it is.
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Writing down.
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I thought that was like a backpack leaning in the corner of the basket, but it was actually a full -sized grown man or woman, whatever, writing in the basket there.
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We've got our favorite Cybertruck.
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Parking lot.
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There, see a lot of employees driving those things around.
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Ship 40, oh, there we go, yeah.
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Sneak up in the middle there.
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Kaleen caught a shot of Ship 40 in the Mega Bay.
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So that means with Ship 40, we're going to have to see Ship 40 roll out of the Mega Bay to Massey's.
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Oh, nice.
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Thank you, Kaleen.
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And then we should see the static fire, and then we should see it roll back again.
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Yeah, I guess this is a couple days ago because it's the 23rd of June.
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But once again, got that...
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fresh waxed heat shield look.
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Almost as nice as the beach towels at Shop .NASA space flight.
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Alright, I'll stop, whatever.
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We've got an American flag there in the foreground and ship 40 coming on out. to do its roll.
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Okay, it's already snuck out between the two mega bays.
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It's driving up Star Remedios Road.
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Oh, we're not supposed to use that anymore.
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We're not supposed to put Star in front of things.
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This is not the Star Road.
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It's just a regular road.
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But it's rolling in front of the mural there.
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And it is going to take a right turn onto Highway 4.
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and make its way out to Massey's.
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Gonna get some close -up shots here of it.
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A little tough at night, especially with those lights there, but let's see.
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Got a couple of the ports.
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Some valves as a quick disconnect sort of set up there.
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Some little tubes that are interesting.
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Those little trapezoidal tubes, vertical tubes.
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Almost look like stringers, but not really.
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They almost look like more of a raceway or something.
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It'll be interesting to see what those things are.
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Colleen set up on the side of the road here, and as it rolls up Highway 4, it's a bunch of blinking light Cybertrucks.
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Then we got the, that looks like a Ford.
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That work body truck there pulling the light kit.
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Ah yeah.
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Whoa!
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Oh that was cool.
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Wait, rewind that.
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Did they like jack up one side of the SPMT?
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It didn't look like a bump in the road.
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It looked like they leveled it all of a sudden or something.
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One of the times I wish I was allowed to scroll back.
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Y 'all are allowed to scroll back and look at that again.
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- Thank you.
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Anyways...
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Got a couple...
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shots of this just going Bye.
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That is a lot of movement in the shot there.
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Yeah, it's cool though in the end.
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We got to it in the end.
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But now it's going to be rolling away on its way over to Massey's.
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Now, of course, it's on the crab -looking stand there, the static fire stand.
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They don't have to pick it up and put it on a new stand or anything like that.
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They roll that thing all the way out to Massey's.
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They plop it down on the static fire test stand.
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You get the SPMTs out of the way, and they just...
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Static fire it on that stand.
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That's why it's called a static fire stand.
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S -F -S.
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Yeah, that's right.
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Say that ten times fast.
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Anyways, it's just more efficient than having to have a crane over there
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and then pick it up off one stand and put it on the other.
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Why would they build a chopstick there, but then it's a whole tower?
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Just why?
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Why would you do it?
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Just put it on the stand and just roll it out there
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and park it and static fire it and then pick it up and drive it back over on the stand again.
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That's actually a really cool idea, the way that they're doing that.
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Especially once they try to get to a higher cadence here.
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Oh nice, Caesar must have run all the way up the road.
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Because this looks like the.. have they turned into Massey's?
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Yeah, because there's those bollards there.
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Ah, you can tell it's a Caesar lens because look, there's like stars in the background.
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We need to send Caesar to space.
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Because Caesar could take Photos of the earth and photos of the stars at the same time.
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All right, ship 40 testing, unclear if it was a static fire or an abort.
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Wait, I don't think it was a static fire.
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I think that was like a little flash down there at the bottom of the first test.
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But you come back the next day, here we go, and you actually get into the single engine static fire.
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- The first time I was in the first time, I was in the first time.
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Very plumy.
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just just right out over the Rio Grande.
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There you go.
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That's what you like to see.
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It was north of 10 seconds.
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It wasn't a little 2 -second static fire.
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It wasn't a 30, 40, 50 -second static fire.
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It was between -- I saw a couple different numbers on it, but it was north of 10 seconds is what I will say here.
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Some ice coming off of it.
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Nice, Colleen.
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Got some ice breaking off the side of the tank there.
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And this is a good sort of zoomed in shot.
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Those trees, gosh, we need to be like five feet higher so we can see underneath it.
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But it is all good.
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More ice falling off.
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Remember, you can always go down to the settings wheel, you can switch languages back over to get the ambient track,
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the ambient track, if you want to hear the sound of the static fire, pretty sure we had some mics out for that.
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Follow me to your next great...
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Oh.
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Oh, it's like a kitchen supply truck.
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All right, well, SpaceX tweets out, Xs out, posts out that it completed a...
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Full duration static fire...
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for a single engine.
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They didn't say it was successful.
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They did say it was a single engine.
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Then they rolled it back the next day.
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So it was curious that they didn't actually static fire the whole set of engines.
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What's up with just the single engine?
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What's up with it just being just over 10 seconds?
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So 15 seconds, I probably should have looked that up before I did the commentary, but welcome to Starbase Summaries.
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So are they done with it?
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Are they happy with it?
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Is that all they needed to do?
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Is this some new testing paradigm where they, you know, are they static -fired them enough?
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They don't need to static -fire them more.
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Maybe one engine is enough to show that the plumbing is working after they've all been static -fired at McGregor?
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I don't know.
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I guess we will see, get some more data points in the old graph and see if this is something new.
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Is there some reason they didn't do the other engines?
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I guess we will find out.
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A lot of cool, gratuitous zooms here, sort of pans and tilts and looking around the different spots of the ship.
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If you'd like to examine those in detail, you can always roll back.
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Big thanks to Colleen and Cesar for heading out to get those.
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So what is that?
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That thing's not even supposed to reflect anything, and it's peeling.
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That mural is the most difficult thing to keep in good shape out there in South Texas, with the wind and the sun and the wind, and there's more wind in any event.
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Thank you so much for hanging out with the Starbase Summary.
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My name's John there up at the top.
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You might have some commentary from Martin in Dutch.
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Big thanks to the team.
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Ah, good times.
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We'll see you on the next one.
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Thanks for watching, as always.
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Context & Background
The transcript from the video titled "Single Engine Static Fire? Huh. | SpaceX Starbase" provides insight into the operations at SpaceX's Starbase, particularly about the preparations and activities surrounding the launch site. The speaker shares observations about the facilities, ongoing tests, and equipment movements, incorporating engaging anecdotes and light commentary. This context is essential for learners as it encapsulates a specific area of interest in technology and engineering, fostering both vocabulary and comprehension skills applicable in real-life discussions about space exploration. By analyzing such content, you can not only learn technical language but also improve your overall English proficiency.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- “Pumped the brakes” - This phrase means to slow down or halt progress, often used metaphorically.
- “A little tough to keep them clean” - Refers to the challenges of maintaining cleanliness, relevant in various contexts.
- “Getting this thing ready” - A phrase expressing the process of preparing something for use.
- “New, better way to install” - Emphasizes innovation and improvement in methods or techniques.
- “Fantastic lens” - Describes high-quality equipment, useful when discussing photography or videography.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
To effectively utilize the transcript for practice, follow these steps to enhance your speaking skills through shadowspeak:
- Watch and Listen: Start by watching the video to familiarize yourself with the tone and context. Pay attention to the speaker's nuances and pacing.
- Read Along: As you watch, read the transcript. This will help you connect spoken words with their written form, improving your recognition of vocabulary and phrases.
- Choose Sentences: Pick out the phrases listed above. These are not only commonly used but also versatile in everyday conversations.
- Shadow the Speaker: Repeat after the speaker, mimicking their intonation and rhythm. This practice is an excellent way to improve English pronunciation while actively engaging with the content.
- Record Yourself: Speak the chosen sentences aloud and record yourself. Listen back to identify areas for improvement and adjust your delivery accordingly.
By following this step-by-step process, you can effectively learn English with YouTube videos like this one and significantly improve your spoken English skills. Engaging with dynamic content such as this promotes consistency and confidence in your language abilities, making learning both enjoyable and impactful.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being assembled · is just bound · should be named |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've seen · we've released · has painted |
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.