Shadowing Practice: "Well, it's Flight 13 Launch Week... Again" | SpaceX Starbase - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Well, it's Flight 13 launch week.. again.
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And that must mean that it's time for another Starbase summary.
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We've got a bunch of stuff coming up in this video here, folks.
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Kicking it off with a couple of engines from Booster 20 spotted at Massey's.
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Also, here is the countdown clock counting down out to a new launch date Thursday.
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We've got a drive-through.. a drive-through?
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Drive around?
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Starbase in this video as well.
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They were out doing some testing with some cameras some cameras
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and also over at Massey's there is booster 21 that's not for flight 13 that's for another flight
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so let's get into the starbase summary with some details we
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tried something new there we put a couple little like clips
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at the beginning to let you know what was going to be happening
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but here is one of the engines that was off of booster 20
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and of these engines
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that we're going to see we see three of them here it looks like two of them were the one
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or two of them were ones that did not, what's the precise way of saying this,
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were not illustrated as igniting on the on-screen telemetry on the SpaceX official feed.
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And then one of these actually did.
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The light lit up, you know, a little circle turns wide, I guess, whenever the engines are on.
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Now, what you see in that little diagram on the SpaceX live stream, it's binary.
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It's on or off.
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It's yes or no, and that's not really how the engines work.
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It's like, it doesn't really mean flames are not, right?
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It can be different phases of the startup, and that sort of talks about whether or not they get shut down violently,
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like a water hammer sort of thing I was talking about last time, or if they're shut down gracefully.
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So just because a little light is on, that doesn't mean that we know, were they like fully ramped up?
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Were they in the startup sequence?
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Like exactly the state of those, but in any event, we did see three of the engines.
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Remember, Elon tweeted about two of them, but apparently we saw three out there.
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Now, that doesn't mean that they're going to go to Massey's, or sorry, they're going to go to McGregor and get tested and come back.
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It's perfectly possible that they had other standby engines that they've already put into Booster 20.
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These went out to Massey's for more testing or whatever.
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So in any event, there we've got the ship back in Megabay 2.
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Got a long shot of the Star Factory here with it.
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It's almost like one of those optical illusions.
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Does it look to you like it's leaning a little bit, but it's curved?
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You know how it is.
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Some nose cones inside of Star Factory.
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I'm just going to pan down the row.
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We've got a big fan in the back, back there.
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Various states of tiling happening.
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I can see a label on this one that told us what we were going to guess.
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You know, honestly, and I will be honest, it's hard to keep up with which nose cone is which.
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And a lot of times we're applying, we'll say a guesstimate, and we're trying to keep track.
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Sometimes it's just like, oh, the next nose cone that appeared, we're going to call this number.
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We don't always see an official label.
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So those take with a grain of salt when we say, oh, that looks like this, that, the other.
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It's not an official statement.
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Now, here's the fancy smancy countdown clock and some speakers, I guess, next to them.
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That's out front of the office building there as yours.
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It's going to be on the left in this drive-through, but I don't know if we'll see it here.
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Hey, big props to the team.
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We've got a couple more people out there, and the team was out doing some in-motion practice here.
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I can say this.
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It's sort of like behind the scenes, right?
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But we have other places where we are in motion, and we just passed the countdown clock, by the way.
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I don't think you can see it.
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where we're in motion, we want to be able to get steady video that we're able to time lapse, we're able to zoom in on, get details, get wide shots for context.
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So the team was actually out driving the vehicle around.
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You can see this is coming from the passenger side here, because it looks like Jerry and I think Dee was out practicing with some equipment,
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some new techniques, some new settings on the cameras to make sure
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that we can get smooth video when we are moving other ways.
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Now here we're just like time-lapsing this together for you, right?
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But over on the right-hand side, we've driven all the way up Highway 4 over to Pad 1.
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Nice little panty, a little jump there, but that's why we're practicing.
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There's a little bit of a track.
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Hey, this is D, actually.
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It looks like they both took turns in the passenger seat.
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But here we have the pad and the wall on the other side of it.
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Are we going to go to the finished wall in a second?
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that's going to be pad one over there got a bunch of the pumps condensers and stuff like that
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interesting again we're on highway four we're coming up to the
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the fill station in the turning circle here asu is going to be on the left hand side
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but we're sort of looking at the tower here's trucks in
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line for the fill station there's going to be the fill stations over there bad one behind it, a bunch of the tank farm stuff there in between the two.
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And I don't actually know.
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I don't know what all we're going to see.
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We're going to find out.
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This is the turning circle.
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That's the end of Highway 4 out towards the beach.
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There's the ASU.
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So we went down there and we sort of did a turnaround.
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Looks like a crane there.
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Taking that apart or putting it back together.
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Got some deliveries for...
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Was that Jerry of the Wind?
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It was the videographer your selfie there real quick.
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Driving along, we're going to come up to Hopper again here.
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This is definitely a, it looked like a gimbal sort of setup.
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Jerry was holding the the holding something in a gimbal sort of setup
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so maybe that's why we get this smooth horizon actually not
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a bad pan there we're going to go by hopper here
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of course right in front of hopper is where we deployed the danger trailer this is danger lot hopper lot
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because it's so close and it's 700 feet away from the pad 2 launch mount.
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Trailer got some solar panels folded in half like tacos last time.
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That really wasn't that bad there.
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Sort of the track as we went by Hopper Lutt.
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Getting zoomies now.
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This is not how fast they were driving.
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Clearly time-lapsed here.
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There is the NSF Highway side we just went past.
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Some SpaceX trailers there on the corner.
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Hey, if anybody has any experience combining a wind turbine system with a PV system,
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photovoltaic solar panel system, I'm all ears.
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The requirement is that we have to be able to get combined telemetry from the two.
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Some of these things that I've seen, you can have telemetry from one, telemetry from the other.
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But something that seamlessly combines the telemetry from the two different sources, we are looking into something like that for some projects.
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I don't think that those SpaceX trailers the countdown clock, do we see it?
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No, it was over on the left hand side right there
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but you couldn't quite see it I don't think
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that those SpaceX trailers have any telemetry or anything like that we want telemetry that tells us what our charge levels are, what our draws are we have remote
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IP controlled relays so that we can turn things on and off we can go to low power mode, savings mode, that sort of stuff
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but I am super curious I also would not mount a wind turbine on the same structure
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that had a camera on it because it would shake like crazy
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but uh you know i'm curious
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if anybody has any ideas on how you can do
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that use a bunch of victron equipment if anybody out there is familiar with that
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so all the way over past the gigabay a lot of
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cladding going up there not as much as out at the cape if you've been following along on the socials
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with Julia Bergeron's shots of the Cape.
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Gigabay over there.
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At the storage yard, there's the old Rocky Garden back there.
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Looking a little sparse these days.
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What's not sparse is the big Elon's used Cybertruck factory here.
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Parking lots, whatever you want to call it.
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But all of these, you see them all over the place.
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I think they're largely, well, not largely anything.
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I think they're there so that employees use them.
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I'm not exactly sure what the arrangement is on how you might rate a Cybertruck.
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Like, is it just employees?
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Do you check them out?
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Do you rent them or lease them or something like that?
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But we know that a lot of people drive around with it.
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They've taken it moving a lot of things with the Cybertrucks.
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There's a Pad 1 OLM section arriving.
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Very cool.
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I was saying they've taken a moving a lot of things around with Cybertrucks, especially over at McGregor.
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Shout out to the Cybertruck team, which actually took one of our clips from McGregor Live and put it, I think they reposted it today.
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today, yesterday, whichever day you're watching this, whatever, they reposted it and they put a Cybertruck carrying a Raptor 3 or hauling a Raptor 3 or something like that.
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No problem.
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Hey, y'all need some more footage like that?
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Hit us up anytime.
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We have plenty.
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We've got some Padawan flame trench walls arriving.
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Nice security camera frame right there.
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I feel like it's a flip book is this a gif it was just slowed down
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and that camera's only doing 30 fps
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so here is another interesting bit of goings on booster 21
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not 20 21 over at massey's i think we're gonna see
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some cryo to yeah well it says right there on the 10 cryo test over at massey's you can tell
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because of the the ice that's forming on the side there whole crew was out
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and about getting that there we got some ice going kind of up and then melting down.
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Let's see how many of these do we get.
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I actually don't know how many we get.
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I know that there were multiple cryo tests that were performed.
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I saw them on Starbase Live, but I also saw them on social.
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I saw them all over the place.
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I saw them on our Discord.
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Here's the third one.
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Neat.
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Is that sort of holding or is it climbing up?
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It's climbing up.
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A little slowly.
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Now see, if you look into the hot stage ring, you see where the dome sort of sticks up into the top of the hot race.
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I don't know if we'll get a banged-in shot on that.
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But you can see...
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Oh, yeah, there you go.
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Thanks, Caesar.
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See how it turns the corner there?
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And the top of the dome is even frosty.
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Like, you can see that thing is filled to the brim.
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And it doesn't even have a brim because it's a dome on the top.
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It's closed on the top.
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But you see that all the way up there, turning the corner where those struts are attached.
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If you ever see cryos out there and you see that sort of hot staging ring, you can really see how much that ship, or sorry, how much that booster, that doesn't look like a ship at all,
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it's not pointy enough, how much it is filled up.
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Now, the existence of ice doesn't always mean that it's completely filled up, but it's a pretty good proxy, especially if the ice stays, like if it lasts a long time,
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it can get pretty cold in there, but if that ice is like super white, and it stays white for a good amount of time,
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it's pretty, it's a pretty good indication that there's fluids on the other side.
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But for now, that was the Starbase summary.
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Let me know what you thought about the little sort of speedrun intro at the beginning.
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I'll be at Starbase Thursday, 5.45 p.m.
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Window opens for Flight 13.
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But for now, we will see you nerds later.
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Thanks for watching.
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About This Lesson
This lesson uses a casual, informative video about SpaceX's Starbase to practice real-world English listening and speaking. You'll focus on understanding conversational flow, technical terms in context, and mimicking natural pronunciation—key skills for IELTS speaking practice and everyday communication. The video's tone is friendly and explanatory, making it ideal for shadow speak exercises to build fluency.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Countdown clock: A timer showing time remaining until an event (e.g., "The countdown clock is set for Thursday's launch").
- Telemetry: Data transmitted from a device (e.g., "The on-screen telemetry showed engine status").
- Ramped up: Increased in intensity or power (e.g., "Were the engines fully ramped up during testing?").
- Standby: Ready for use if needed (e.g., "They had standby engines for the booster").
- Take with a grain of salt: Don't take something too seriously (e.g., "His guesses about the nose cones should be taken with a grain of salt").
Practice Tips
To improve English pronunciation and fluency with this video, try shadowing—repeating phrases immediately after the speaker. The video's speed is moderate, with pauses for explanation, making it a great shadowing site. Focus on mimicking the speaker's tone: casual but clear, with emphasis on key details like "again" or "three engines." For IELTS speaking practice, pause the video and summarize short sections (e.g., "Booster 20's engines were spotted at Massey's, with two not showing ignition on telemetry"). This builds both listening comprehension and speaking coherence. Notice how the speaker uses phrases like "in any event" to transition—copying these will make your English sound more natural. Repeat tricky terms like "telemetry" or "ramped up" until you match the pronunciation. Consistent shadowing with this video will boost your confidence in understanding and using conversational English.
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 | were not illustrated · was just slowed · were performed |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | they've already put · we've driven · I'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.