CSPAN - SpaceX Launches Starship's Ninth Test Flight

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May 27, 2025 18:55-21:00 - CSPAN

02:04:55

SpaceX Launches Starship's Ninth Test Flight

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chris gibson

21:43

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john mcardle

cspan 00:04

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unidentified		A lot of others are pretty much the polar opposite of term limits.
		And unfortunately for Wrangell, because I think he had a distinguished career, he had a lot of ethics questions in the final years of his service.
		And I mean a lot.
		There were so many pieces to it, I can't even remember all of them.
		Now, he survived it.
		He didn't survive as chairman of Ways and Means, partly because the Democrats lost control in 2010 of the House of Representatives.
		But he managed to get re-elected and he retired on his own accord in 2016.
		So it was a long, distinguished career, and parts of it were undistinguished.
		And you know what?
		That probably applies to all of us, whatever we do.
		The New York Times, I'm sorry, the Wall Street Journal obituary on Charlie Wrangell delves into some of those issues that you refer to just to spark your memory on, but this was after he becomes chairman of Ways and Means in 2007.
		his leadership short-lived.
		News outlets reported that he solicited donations.
		We're going to leave this, but you can finish watching on the C-SPAN Now video app as we take you live to the headquarters of SpaceX in Texas called Starbase as the company prepares to launch the ninth test flight of the Starship.
		Yeah, my first time here and it is mind-blowing.
		I went out to the pad this morning and the scale of the vehicle is just insane.
		Dwarfs everywhere.
		And for those of you watching at home, in case you missed the news, Starbase is no longer just a cool name.
		It is now officially an incorporated city in Texas.
		And we'll have more on that a little bit later today.
		Yeah, right now, though, we are counting down to Starship's ninth flight test, currently targeting the very start of our window at 6.30 p.m. Central Time.
		Good news right up front, not tracking any issues with the vehicle.
		Weather is gorgeous out there right now.
		Rain this morning, little bit of wind, nothing now, nothing to worry about.
		Looking good for a launch.
		Starship development is moving quickly here at Starbase.
		So fast, in fact, that we already are reflying the Super Heavy booster today, which last flew on flight seven.
		The primary objectives for today are very similar to our last two attempts, except for the booster, which, in addition to flying for the second time, has an exciting return journey planned for its return back to Earth.
		That's right.
		It's going to be getting some serious rigor.
		And pretty important, we are not going to be attempting to catch the booster today.
		We're going to use this launch to kind of further accelerate the development.
		We're putting Super Heavy kind of through the ringer, some serious rigor.
		We're going to go through all of that in just a couple of minutes.
		We're also hoping to get ship into space.
		And it's got a couple of objectives, like deploying simulated Starlink satellites and then a range of experiments during its re-entry.
		We're really trying to test the limits, the capabilities of that heat shield, the flaps, the structure, everything about it.
		Primary payload on this flight, once again, as always, is data.
		It's definitely a very big day for both stages.
		There's always a chance we don't reach every objective that we set for ourselves, but success comes from what we learn on days like today.
		And of course, whatever happens, excitement is guaranteed.
		Yeah, that's right.
		Progress is not measured by single flight tests.
		It's whatever that timeline overall is and getting us closer to establishing self-sustaining civilization on Mars, making life multi-planetary.
		Every time we're learning something from these flights that will get us there, that is progress.
		Exactly.
		Starship is the first orbital launch vehicle engineered to be fully reusable and built for frequent flight and heavy payloads, just like today's commercial airliners.
		It's the product of years of rapid development, testing, iteration.
		We're trying to fly as frequently as possible, fix problems as they appear, and then fly again.
		It all started here at Starbase back with Starhopper.
		It was a small single Raptor prototype.
		Kind of looked like a water tower.
		We turned it into a water tower eventually.
		It made its first low-altitude hop back in 2019 here at Starbase.
		You could tell that's the pad that we were just looking at.
		It looks dramatically different now, two towers.
		But Starhopper delivered.
		It was able to prove that we could use that Raptor engine for controlled takeoff and landing.
		And that is so wild to see that that there on your screen was just six years ago, and now we're here today with a full-size vehicle.
		So from there, we move to full-size test articles with increasingly complex test flights that reach progressively higher altitudes.
		And each test shaped the Starship that we see today on the pad a stronger, taller, and more refined vehicle.
		That's right.
		All right.
		Now, let's go out there and meet it.
	Starship is made up of two parts.
	First, on the bottom, the super heavy booster powered by 33 Raptor engines.
	Both super heavy and ship are running on liquid methane and liquid oxygen.
	That second stage, the Starship upper stage, is powered by six of those Raptor engines.
	Three of them are optimized to sea level performance, three for vacuum, so operating while they're in space.
	And here's a quick look under the hood at all of those Raptors.
	On the left, that's a view from underneath the launch mount.
	That's 33 Raptor engines on the first stage on the booster.
	And on the right, that's a view inside of the ship.
	So you're looking down at the top of the booster at six Raptor engines inside the ship.
	Those are what's going to power it to orbit.
	Now, that second stage is also what will one day carry cargo, payloads, people, everything that's going to space.
	It's also going to be responsible for in-space propellant transfer.
	That's where we're going to take two Starships, meet them up in orbit.
	One will be able to transfer propellant to the other.
	That's a really critical capability for Starship to do all of these missions beyond low Earth orbit.
	It also unlocks our ability to send huge amounts of cargo, tremendous amounts of people to destinations far beyond Earth.
	Yeah, the Super Heavy booster is designed to launch, separate, flip, and return to the launch site where it can be caught by the chopsticks on the launch tower.
	Though, as we mentioned earlier, we are not attempting a booster catch today on flight 9.
	Starship re-enters the Earth's atmosphere at the conclusion of its mission, steering itself to a vertical landing or catch.
	And both stages are designed to return to Earth and fly again, making this the first rocket in history that will be fully reusable.
	And then just in between the two vehicles is what's known as the hot stage ring.
	That's a steel structure that really takes the brunt of those ship engines as they ignite, protecting the booster while the ship's still attached to it.
	That enables us to do hot staging.
	It's faster, more efficient, kind of shutting everything down and then reigniting.
	Right now, that hot stage is single use.
	It detaches from the booster as it flies back, but in the future, it's going to be integrated right into the top.
	And then on top of all of that, there's all of the infrastructure that's built up around it to support Starship.
	We call it stage zero.
	That's everything.
	The launch pads, the propellant farm, launch towers, chopsticks that are catching the booster out of the air, stacking the ship, all of that.
	And you may have noticed we have a new addition out there near the pad.
	The orbital launch mount for pad two has officially been installed.
	That's starting to come together.
	Just like pad one, pad two has a launch mount.
	That's where you're going to put super heavy on top.
	We also have a launch tower with arms, a little bit shorter on that one.
	That's going to be used to stack the starship on top, put the booster on top, catch the booster, catch the starship.
	We did put the orbital launch mount on there.
	That's responsible for routing all of the propellant to the booster ahead of flight.
	Underneath it, you've got flame deflectors, the water deluge system to just disperse all of those forces.
	The single piece we just lifted in weighs about 1,060 metric tons, which if you're keeping score at home, that's the same weight as about 10 Millennium Falcons.
	It's heavy.
	That's a lot of Millennium Falcons.
	So many.
	We're also currently in work on Starship's brand new pad at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A.
	And we're hoping to bring that online later this year as well.
	Tons of progress with Starship so far in 2025 and lots of incredible milestones still coming up.
	And we are still on track to lift off tonight at 6.30 p.m. Central Time.
	And right now, it's time to say hi to Chris, who's over there repping the West Coast ops today.
	How's it going, Chris?
	Hey, Jesse and Dan, and welcome everyone to West Coast and Hawthorne, California.
	As you can see behind me, the crowd is gathering outside of our mission control room here in Hawthorne, and the excitement is really palpable as we continue to count down towards Starship's ninth flight test.
	Now, our mission control room here in Hawthorne usually serves as the mission control room for our Falcon and Dragon missions once they launch from Florida and California.
	Now, with Starship, all countdown and mission control operations actually use the same flight control team from the same location of Starbase, which you can see on your screen now.
	But as we develop a vehicle like Starship, we want as many experts watching over its various systems as we can.
	And that's what we use the mission control room here in Hawthorne for during Starship flight tests like today's.
	The folks in mission control, which you see now on your screen, are the responsible engineers for Starship's various systems.
	This includes things like booster systems, stage propellant, our ground stations, flight software, the loads, and the vehicle structures as well.
	And having the support gives the flight teams in Starbase immediate access to our engineers' knowledge, which is really, really important when we're making informed decisions very quickly in a test program like this.
	This setup has been great for Starship flight tests so far, as we've handled things like propellant temperature differences, as well as day of launch winds that can affect the loads placed on Starship structures during launch and particularly during the descent of the super heavy booster back to Earth.
	So having all of these responsible engineers ready to support is crucial during Starship testing where we place hardware in flight conditions quickly to iterate and make the best and most reliable rocket that we can.
	So it's definitely a full house, a growing full house here in Hawthorne for our ninth flight of Starship today.
	Every flight brings us a step closer to a future where Starship is flying multiple times a day and I'm sure you all feel the same way down there in Texas, Dan and Jesse, but I can't wait to see Starships launch today.
	How about you?
	Yeah, can't wait to see it, Chris.
	As you can see, props loading on the vehicles just a little under two miles away from us and we're really excited.
	Looking back real quick, so back in March, Starship's eighth flight test saw us catch the super heavy booster for the third time ever, another big step on that path, the full and rapid reusability.
	Unfortunately, the Starship upper stage did experience what we call a rapid, unscheduled disassembly before it finished its climb to space, which meant we didn't reach all of those additional mission objectives that we had set.
	About five and a half minutes into ship's ascent burn, a hardware failure in one of its sea-level Raptor engines took out that engine, the two remaining sea-level engines, and a Raptor vacuum engine.
	That's four of the six engines that ship has.
	This was a different failure than we saw on Flight 7, and the fixes that we put in place did work as expected.
	So this was a new issue on Flight 8.
	Welcome to Iterative Engineering.
	Losing hardware is a potential outcome of any test program.
	That's why we're always prepared with safety measures in place and also ready to have boots on the ground to assist with anything like debris cleanup.
	We coordinate with all the necessary parties, organizations, administrations for safety in advance and in an ongoing basis during our test campaigns to plan for as many possible outcomes.
	Definitely do want to say thank you though to the people of the Bahamas, the government of the Bahamas, who worked with us so closely since flight eight.
	We took full responsibility for the cleanup and in doing so we had people on the ground in the Bahamas within 12 hours to help with debris recovery.
	So all that said, we're moving forward in our development cycle with safety at the top of mind.
	And we fly again today to get this current iteration of Ship to space and back.
	That's right.
	Putting hardware in a flight environment as frequently as possible.
	So you're seeing how things behave all together in the real world.
	Then you're solving problems as they pop up.
	That's how SpaceX developed their very first rocket, Falcon 1.
	Same philosophy was used to develop Falcon 9.
	Today we're looking to get our first re-entry with the latest iteration of Ship while intentionally stressing the Super Heavy vehicle during its return to get data on its boundaries.
	And by stressing, we mean that we'll be pushing the flight envelope of Super Heavy as we fly at a higher angle of attack during descent towards the Gulf.
	Angle of attack in this case means that Super Heavy is pitched up to maximize drag and slow return.
	Because of this test, we will not be attempting to catch and recover Super Heavy, which again is flying for its second time today.
	So for a brief moment, this booster will hold the title as the Super Heavy flight leader.
	That's right.
	All right.
	A lot still ahead for today.
	Let's get into it real quick with this overview.
	As always, everything starts with a liftoff.
	33 Raptor engines igniting.
	Super Heavy pushing itself and Starship into ascent over the Gulf.
	It's going to continue for about two and a half minutes before we get to hot staging.
	Ship will ignite in its engines.
	Booster will do its boost back burn and begin its flight experiments back for a hard splashdown in the Gulf of America.
	Meanwhile, Ship continues its burn into space.
	And Ship will remain suborbital.
	We will be deploying eight Starlink simulator satellites and then head towards re-entry.
	We'll re-light a Raptor engine as well as test experiments during re-entry such as missing tiles, metallic tiles, loading the vehicle's flaps, and then ship will attempt a flip maneuver.
	And if all goes planned, we'll conclude the test with a soft water splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
	So that's what we have on the menu for flight 9 today.
	Hold on.
	Flight 8's RUD taught us new lessons about Starship hardware, specifically the Raptor engines.
	And as we touched on earlier, the root cause was traced to a hardware failure in one of Starship's three center Raptor engines.
	Yeah, just since that flight, we've done more than 100 long-duration Raptor tests at our facility in McGregor.
	Huge shout out to that team for really putting in the work to better understand what happened.
	As a result, the engines that are on Starship's upper stage on the pad right behind us have a few changes.
	One of the key ones we did was additional preload on some of the joints, essentially some additional torquing, a new nitrogen purge system for the engines themselves, and made some improvements to the propellant drain system.
	After our first ever Super Heavy refurb campaign, we static fired with all 33 Raptor engines.
	This was a chance to see all the hardware operating together.
	And for this flight, our teams had an opportunity to make adjustments or hardware replacements for this first ever reflight of the Super Heavy booster.
	And then it was Ship's turn.
	We took it through several static fires.
	First, we did this short-duration single-engine burn to simulate an in-space reignition of Raptor using those header tanks, those smaller tanks up in the nose cone.
	We also completed a longer duration 60-second burn with all six engines.
	It's where you're really putting the entire propulsion system that's going to be used for the ship's ascent into space through the paces, making sure everything's working together before we go stack it on the pad.
	And in the end, these changes represent the core of our test program.
	And reflying a booster for the first time is a major milestone, especially so early in the flight test program.
	Now, Falcon did it in just over 30 flights.
	And Starship's doing it today on just its ninth flight.
	It's not wild just because of how much faster that is, but just how much bigger Starship is.
	Falcon 9 can lift about 23 metric tons into orbit.
	Starship is designed to lift 200.
	That is so exciting.
	And on top of that, we're also reflying Engine 314 for its third flight, which you might recall is the engine with a pie on the nozzle.
	And there you can see that engine there.
	It is a milestone, most definitely, but we do remain focused on getting to the point where no refurbishment is needed between any of the flights.
	Yeah, that means we want to launch it, bring it back, look at it, reload propellants, go again.
	That is really what's key.
	That is what full and rapid reusability will look like.
	We're coming to you today from Star Factory, our new million square foot manufacturing facility in Starbase, Texas.
	The Super Heavy booster is the first stage of the Starship launch vehicle stack.
	It's the largest boost stage ever developed for any rocket ever.
	Having the largest rocket ever is a very cool engineering feat, but the thing that really makes a difference is the ability to rapidly reuse that rocket to launch many other missions.
	Reflying Booster 14 is an important first milestone in that we have proven that we can recover a vehicle, turn it around, and fly it a second time.
	But it's not a victory lap yet.
	From an operational perspective, an ideal state looks like a vehicle where very few things have to happen on it in order to take back off again.
	So we catch the vehicle, put it back onto launch mount, put a new ship back on top with its payloads, refuel, and take back off.
	And that same booster will come back to launch mount and we do the same thing all over again.
	Falcon is, you know, reusing at a pretty high rate, and we get to go look at them and say, what did you learn?
	What is good?
	What is bad?
	And as we continue to build the Starship process.
	Zero touch refurbishment really looks like a commercial airliner.
	The advantage we have on booster relative to when we developed Falcon 9, for instance, is this was really designed from the outset for rapid reusability.
	We're using all of the flight test learnings from our version 1 and version 2 vehicles in our orbital flight test campaign to inform the design of our version 3 vehicle.
	The next generation vehicle will be the first time that we've really attempted to make rapidly reusable thermal protection on a rocket.
	In the next iteration, we'll be able to add in new innovative materials and regenerative cooling that will enable rapid zero touch refurbishment.
	Rapid reusability, the ability to fly, turn the vehicle around and refly again immediately is really the key goal of the Starship program.
	It is so cool to see our teams working together as Starship is learning from Falcon with reusability and now we're seeing Starship do the same thing today.
	So all eyes on the rocket on the pad getting ready to launch in just about 17 minutes from now.
	That's right.
	Looking at our levels real quick, we're a little bit more than halfway full on fuel and locks on the booster, over 80% full on the ship.
	Still have to fill those header tanks.
	But everything looking good.
	We're not tracking any issues on the range.
	As a reminder, we watch sea states, air, and land around the launch site here and also over in the Indian Ocean where we're going to be doing our re-entry, not tracking any blockers to launch at the moment.
	Weather is gorgeous, has not been a concern all day for launch.
	We've been moving through all of our pre-flight checkouts pretty smoothly so far this morning, getting the ship and the booster ready for prop load, making sure guidance, navigation, and control are aligned.
	Everything's ready to go.
	You can see with the frost coming off, we're getting pretty full.
	We started loading all of the propellants on board both ships about 45 minutes or so before launch.
	They kind of stagger where we start with ship and then move into booster.
	We're going to continue loading these propellants on board until just about three minutes before liftoff.
	We'll close out on the ship first and then on the booster.
	But bottom line, everything's looking great, not tracking any vehicle issues, range issues, weather issues.
	We're looking really good right now for a launch at the top of our window right at 6:30 p.m. Central.
	Yeah, seeing the propellant loading is making this getting more and more exciting.
	Today is going to be a wild ride for Super Heavy.
	We're putting the booster through several tests to expand the envelope on its capabilities and get flight data to make its return and catch more reliable.
	Now, another unique change in today's flight will be the addition of the first ever directional flip of the booster.
	That's right.
	If you've followed previous flights and you kind of wonder to yourself why does the direction of the booster flip seem random, surprise, it's because it was.
	We've got a couple of views from previous flights where you'll see the booster kind of go in different directions, and it was really small differences in the thrust of those ship engines.
	As they started up, they would nudge the booster in an initial direction.
	And so the booster would essentially sense that and then lean into it.
	And it'll react, the engines will gimbal, and then it'll continue the flip.
	That was the easiest option technically, but you do take some performance hits since you're essentially setting aside propellant to accommodate every single direction for a flip.
	Exactly, but if we know which direction we're flipping, then we know how much propellant we will need and can instead use more of the propellant to burn longer during ascent, adding more velocity to the ship and increasing how much payload it can ultimately deliver to space.
	Yeah, so today we're, I got my trusty Super Heavy here.
	We're going to intentionally try to flip straight up.
	So again, as you're separating from the ship, we want to get to here as you're doing that boost back burn.
	The fastest way is to just flip straight up and go into it.
	That's roughly what we did on flight five.
	It's the most direct way to get into that orientation for the boost back burn.
	What you don't want to do is when you flip all the way down like that, we did that on flight seven.
	It takes you in a big loop, uses the most amount of prop, not efficient.
	We're at the point where we want to start kind of tuning it in and getting some extra performance out of the booster.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's called optimization.
	That's right.
	To accomplish this, we made some changes to the hot stage adapter, welding reinforced panels over the vents in the direction that we want the booster to go.
	So when the ship engines ignite, the thrust will push against the blocked vents, which means that the nudge will be in the direction that we planned for.
	And then when we go to the next generation of ship and booster, we plan to control the flip direction by fine-tuning the engine startup sequence on the ship.
	Yeah, that's not the only flight experiment that we have planned for the booster today.
	We're not attempting a catch, so we're going to try and gather additional data that's going to improve performance on future boosters.
	We're also going to try and see how resilient we are to things like losing an engine during the landing burn.
	By sending the booster out to sea, we're able to do these higher-risk tests without risking the launch pad.
	As you might have heard earlier, we're going to be doing what's called a higher angle of attack.
	Basically, instead of coming straight down, we're going to tilt up a little bit.
	That gets you more drag on the booster.
	You're able to use just aerodynamic forces to slow you down.
	The slower you're going at the start of that landing burn, the less propellant you need, because really you're just focused on slowing down as much as humanly possible when you fire that up.
	So by already going a little bit slower, we'll get some benefits to our performance and our reliability on those burns.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And there's definite uncertainty in how well the booster's grid fins and structure will be able to control its flight when we get into higher angles.
	So don't be surprised if it isn't a smooth descent for the booster down to its splashdown point today.
	The most important objective of this portion of the test will be getting actual flight data to help anchor our models.
	Now we're hoping to fly the next generation of Super Heavy boosters at even higher angles of attack.
	So this test today will give us a better idea of what is feasible.
	Now on top of all of this, we're going to see how resilient Super Heavy is to engine failures at the most critical times.
	We're going to intentionally disable one of those three center engines and instead use an engine from the middle ring that's kind of right behind it.
	Those center engines are what we nominally use at the very last part of a landing burn.
	If you're just kind of fine-tuning the booster's path into those waiting chopstick arms, this is going to act as a real-world simulation of a pretty scary situation where engines are not starting at probably the worst possible time, but we're going to do this without risking the pad.
	And then at the very end of the landing burn, we're going to cut one more engine off and go down to only those two center engines.
	The burn is going to end while Super Heavy is still several hundred feet above the Gulf, so we expect it to make a pretty hard splashdown thing.
	So, in all, pretty eventful day for the booster.
	And as many of you may know, water landings are actually uncommon for SpaceX.
	While other launch providers expend all of their boosters after flight, we land and reuse most of ours.
	All of these tests are going to help us improve future generations of Super Heavy until we reach its fundamental design, a fully and rapidly reusable and reliable rocket.
	All right, let's check back in with Chris in Hawthorne.
	How's it going, Chris?
	Hey, Jesse, my colleagues here in Hawthorne definitely agree with you.
	We can't wait to see the Super Heavy perform its second flight and see all of the work from our thousands of engineers and technicians in action today.
	Now, while this reuse milestone is incredibly important for Starship's development, Super Heavy boosters are not the only vehicles that we reuse here at SpaceX.
	We're big on reuse, and our Dragon fleet is another example of that reuse.
	And we actually control those Dragon missions from right here in Hawthorne in the mission control room that we talked about a little bit earlier.
	For Dragon and our human spaceflight program, this month also marks a big milestone for SpaceX, our five-year anniversary of human spaceflight.
	Now, NASA astronauts Bob Banken and Doug Curley got us started back on Demo 2, which was notable for being the first time since the retirement of the shuttle program in 2011 that people launched to orbit from U.S. soil.
	Now, in those five years, we have launched 17 human spaceflight missions, 11 for NASA, and six commercial missions, including Polaris Dawn, with our first commercial spacewalk in history, and FROM2 earlier this year, which became the first human spaceflight mission ever to explore Earth's polar regions.
	We've flown a total of 66 crew in those five years, and we are expecting that number to grow significantly in the coming years.
	Now, most recently on our FROM2 mission, the crew offered unique glimpses into the orbital spaceflight experience.
	And this was honestly just so cool to see.
	Thank you to our Starlink teams for making everything with the FROM2 crew shared possible.
	This honestly made me feel like I was right there with them in Dragon.
	They were living, they were working, they were relaxing, they were doing their experiments while also having fun, basically just being people and inviting us along for the ride.
	And that was really meaningful.
	Being invited up there really showed how these are just the early days on the road to making life multi-planetary.
	And the vehicle that's going to make all of that happen is Starship.
	And Dan and Jesse, I don't know about you, but that is definitely a future I have wanted since I was a little kid, and I cannot wait to see us make it a reality.
	Yeah, right there with you, Chris.
	It's the fact that we're getting close to that being reality, that the vehicle that's going to go is sitting on the pad right there.
	Like, that's endlessly exciting.
	All of that's going to include sending humans, all of the infrastructure for a permanent presidence on Mars.
	And we're looking ahead to sending the very first Starships to Mars as early as next year.
	Yeah, this will help prove that we can actually get to Mars with a focus on learning as much as possible while demonstrating what will be needed for Mars transit and landing.
	But before we can make life multi-planetary, we have to build the starships that will make this all possible.
	That's right, and that's happening right here, Starbase, Texas, the gateway to Mars.
	This is where we're soon going to be launching up to 25 Starship launches per year from here at Starbase.
	And the place is changing every single day.
	We've grown quite a bit just in the last couple of years.
	It's a couple hundred employees, their families living amongst actual rockets.
	We're in the process of expanding production and integration.
	We've got a target of a thousand starships a year we're going to try to hit.
	And recently, we did become a city of our own.
	We're the first city in Cameron County in 30 years.
	And that's just going to help us scale more quickly, try to build out the best community possible for all the people that are building the future of humanity's place in space.
	Starbase, pretty easily, one of the most inspiring, exciting, unique places to live and work on the planet.
	As usual, shameless plug.
	We're always hiring.
	Come help us build the gateway to Mars.
	Visit spacex.com forward slash careers.
	You can see all of our openings.
	And this is my first time in Starbase.
	And Dan, the Star Factory is a manufacturing engineer's dream.
	To be able to build a factory like this at such a large scale with such a large-scale vehicle is so wild to me.
	And though I'm just visiting, Chris is hanging out right where I call home base.
	So let's check back in with Chris in Hawthorne.
	Thanks, Jesse.
	Yeah, everything here in Hawthorne is looking good.
	The crowd is gathered.
	Really excited to watch the hard work of all of their colleagues come to fruition here for Starship on its ninth flight test.
	Not tracking any issues.
	We are excited to watch Starship do its thing today, make it halfway around the world and test a lot of those critical in-space maneuvers and operations that will be vital for the program's continued operations.
	So Dan and Jesse, we can't wait for liftoff.
	Let's have a good flight today.
	Thanks, Chris.
	Now, if you're just now joining us, where have you been?
	But we're glad that you're joining us now.
	We are at T minus just under six minutes until liftoff of the ninth Starship test flight.
	So far, the range is looking good.
	All the airspace and trajectory area that we are going to be launching through is looking good for our test flight today.
	Weather has been great.
	It was a little rainy and windy this morning, but it cleared up.
	It looks beautiful here in Starbase.
	And propellant loading continues on both stages.
	All right.
	Yeah, it is continuing.
	We're a little over 90% full on our booster.
	We are pretty much full on the main tanks on ship, filling up those header tanks.
	We're going to continue loading prop for about two more minutes.
	Once we're done with that, you've got just under 11 million pounds of liquid propellant spread across those two stages.
	After we get through all of that prop load, our stage zero will get ready.
	The ground systems will go through pushbacks, clearing all of those fluid feed lines back to the propellant farm, getting ready for launch.
	We did just see they did a flap wiggle check.
	So the final flat check on the ship.
	We're doing final alignments of the guidance navigation and control system.
	Our thrust vector control, essentially our steering, checkouts of the flight safety system.
	So everything progressing right now.
	If we do need to hold, that can come at T minus 40 seconds.
	That's a point built into the countdown where we can pause to wait for any final checkouts, pressurizations, anything that we need to complete.
	We can hold there.
	We will only hold there if we're tracking an issue.
	We're not currently tracking anything that will hold us at T minus 40 seconds.
	But if you've seen a Starship launch before, they can happen.
	We can push through them and then launch that day still.
	Exactly.
	But when we do pass through T minus 40 seconds, a number of events will occur in rapid succession.
	The ground spin and ignition systems come up to flight pressure.
	Ship goes to internal power.
	And then after that, the quick disconnect or QD arm lockout is removed in preparation for retraction just shortly after T minus zero.
	And once we pass T minus 40 seconds, we do still have the ability to recycle the count under certain conditions back to T minus 40 seconds and then hold there to assess what happened and see if we can proceed again back down to T0.
	Yeah, there are a couple of things, kind of gates in that timeline that if we pass through that, that and we hit a hold, we'd have to scrub for the day.
	One pretty visual one will be if the water starts flowing for that deflector system that's underneath the launch mount, that happens right at around T minus 10 seconds.
	We're flowing water, we can't turn it off after it starts.
	And if we hit a hold, we're scrubbed for the day.
	We need to refill those water tanks.
	We would also at that point need to refill all of the propellant tanks as 11 million pounds of propellant is a whole lot.
	We can typically do that in about 24 hours, so we can always turn around to try again tomorrow.
	But we are coming up on three minutes away from liftoff.
	We should be hearing that we're closed out of prop load on the ship at this point.
	Booster coming up shortly.
	And wow, the weather just looks amazing there with Starship on the launch pad.
	Just about two minutes and 45 seconds from T0 with a lot of objectives for today.
	The booster, the super heavy booster flying today, will be flying for its second time.
	Last flight was on flight seven and just turned around in two flights, which is pretty incredible.
	I'm super excited to see that booster fly again.
	All right, we did just hear we are going to hold at T minus 40 seconds.
	So we'll pass along some more information once we hear that reason.
	But again, that's not the end of the day.
	We can hold at T minus 40 seconds for quite a few minutes.
	We eventually have to start looking at our temperature of all of our propellant on board.
	That's usually what drives us to if we've held too long, we have to stand down for the day.
	So we are expecting a hold at T minus 40 seconds.
	Sounds like we're going to be doing some additional checkouts on the booster Raptor while we're at that T minus 40 second mark.
	So we will expect to see the clock pause at T minus 40.
	And then again, we've got a couple of minutes.
	They can work through the issues.
	If we're able to clear them, we can still launch today.
	If it's something that we can't, we can always stand down, turn around, recycle, fly again tomorrow.
	Again, that's really important.
	This is what terminal count is exactly for: to be checking the vehicle, monitoring the vehicle systems as it makes its way down to T0.
	And again, this gives us the ability to catch anything and be able to hold, as Dan has been saying, and recycle if we need to, or pause so that we can work through those issues and see if it's something that we need to stand down for.
	And as Dan mentioned, we will be holding at T minus 40 seconds, so in about 20 seconds from now.
	Yeah, so we'll hold there and they'll work through these final checkouts.
	On sounds like just one of those Raptors on the first stage on Super Heavy, which, as you said, we're reflying it for the first time.
	29 of those 33 engines have already been used in a launch, one of which has already launched twice and will go for it.
	It is getting ready for its third time.
	And you just heard our flight director for the day, Joe Slyker, he just shared that we are going to hold at this T minus 40 second mark.
	An eye on one of those Raptor engines on booster and if you're, if you're just now jumping in,
	we are holding still at t-minus 40 seconds watching one engine waiting for temperatures to kind of get to a zone that we want them to on one of the engines on the booster.
	on the super heavy booster, getting ready for its second ever flight.
	We'll just continue to hold.
	Again, we can hang out here for several minutes.
	We held for a while on the first attempt last time and then cleared it.
	And then we triggered a different issue on the ground side.
	But again, this is exactly what it's for.
	This gives us the best chances at success.
	And the clock is rolling.
	There we go.
	All right.
	T minus 30.
	Let's listen in.
	Watch that first flight proven super heavy.
	to get ready to take off from Starbase.
	We did have a hold.
	And it looks like the clock jumped back to T-minus 40 seconds.
	All right.
	So, yep, we jumped out.
	I did not see the deflector go off.
	So hopefully we were right at around that T minus 10 second mark.
	And if we were before that T minus 10 second mark, we do have the ability to recycle, as we mentioned earlier, back to T minus 40 seconds.
	It looked like this time it was a ground side issue.
	We're taking a look at this real quick.
	So again, we're back at T minus 40.
	We're going to hold for a little bit.
	We are still not scrubbed for the day.
	Give them a couple of minutes to work through this.
	Again, we can hang out at T minus 40 for several minutes.
	Eventually we start looking at your bulk temperatures and all of your propellant on board the vehicle.
	We're not actively replenishing the propellant on board Super Heavy and Starship.
	And so you don't have essentially forever to hang out before things start to warm up.
	And you do want to make sure your temperature is in a really stable range for a healthy startup on Raptor engines.
	So they're going to work through this issue.
	We can continue to hold here for a couple of minutes.
	What's launch without a little extra added excitement?
	All right, so cumulatively, we've held for a little over three minutes between the two holds.
	Again, this is a ground side issue on our tower.
	The techs are looking through the data right now to see if it's something that we can either work through or if it would cause us to have to stand down.
	So we're continuing to hang out with them.
	Holding at T minus 40.
	If you're just joining us, we did initially hold at T minus 40 seconds.
	We continued the count, but recycled before we got to T minus 10 seconds.
	And so we're back at a hold at T minus 40 seconds.
	Waiting for more information.
	The team is checking out to see if we can continue today.
	And we're continuing to hold here at T-minus 40 seconds.
	We've been holding for just about five minutes now as the teams evaluate if we can continue to T0 for flight nine.
	All right, so it sounds like we're coming to a resolution.
	All right, so we are getting to a resolution.
	We're gonna reset everything.
	All right, so we're gonna see the clock.
	It is now rolling.
	There we go.
	We essentially saw an issue with that quick disconnect to the ship.
	There is a chance that automation will kick us out again if we encounter the same issue.
	But for now, the clock is rolling.
	We'll see if we pass around that T-minus 10 second mark.
	We see it arcing right over top of us.
	We see 33 out of 33 Raptor engines lit on Super Heavy as it starts to ascend skyward.
	Coming up on maximum aerodynamic pressure, then only about a minute and a half until we get into hot staging.
	Wow, Dan, that was incredible.
	We could feel the building shaking here.
	Feel the vehicle's power.
	And we're just about a minute away from shutting down those engines on the booster.
	Again, this booster is flying for its second time today.
	All right, so hot staging coming up a little under a minute.
	We're going to see all but the three center engines turn off on the booster.
	So our version of Miko, most engines cut off.
	And then just a few seconds later, hoping to see six engines ignite on ship to push it away.
	All right, hot staging, about 30 seconds.
	And definitely keep an eye on which way the booster flips.
	First-ever directional flipper going for today should flip straight up.
	See those engines powering down?
	Booster engine cutoff.
	Ship ignition stage separation Incredible flip by super heavy booster and you can see those six engines those three engines on the ship ignited Six healthy Raptors running on ship on its way to space peak that engine view boosters doing the boost back.
	Chris, how's it looking over there in Hawthorne?
	Man, it is looking.
	It is looking absolutely incredible here in Hawthorne.
	As we said, six healthy engines on ship.
	We've got 13 out of 13 engines on the booster, now down to those three, which is what we expect in the final moments of the boost back burn.
	Now, as a reminder, we are not recovering the super heavy booster today.
	We are instead going to do and there we had a good shutdown of the boost back burn next up will be the jettison of that hot stage rate avionics, power and telemetry nominal great call out there that everything looking nominal aboard the super heavy vehicle which is returning to earth and we're going to be doing some experiments with it, including a higher angle of attack re-entry, as well as some engine tests as it gets closer to the Gulf.
	We are again, because of these tests, not recovering it.
	We are sending it to the Gulf on purpose to do those tests.
	But again, you see the booster on the left hand side of your screen.
	You see ship with six healthy engines continuing its ascent to its planned suborbital trajectory.
	Everything going very well so far for starship's ninth flight.
	Now, four minutes 15 seconds in great views from inside of the aft engine area of ship.
	There looking at those three sea level and three raptor engines on the right hand side of your screen, the booster doing its locks dump that liquid oxygen dump.
	So because we don't need some of that liquid oxygen propellant in its tanks, we vent that propellant out to lessen the booster's mass as it comes in for its landing.
	Just absolutely gorgeous views watching these two vehicles do their respective things in the skies over Texas here today.
	And Dan, we're approaching the five-minute mark into the flight.
	Super Heavy is descending rapidly.
	What can we expect here in the next few minutes as it does its atmospheric tests?
	Yeah, now as we had talked about, Super Heavy might not have a very smooth ride down.
	We're going to be putting it through this higher angle of attack.
	So we're kind of pitching it up a tiny bit, increasing drag.
	We've done this in wind tunnels.
	We've done this in computer modeling.
	It shows that sometimes the control isn't great, but only one way to really prove it out, and that's to get real-world data.
	So here comes Super Heavy.
	It should be igniting for its landing burn in just about 40 seconds from now.
	And we are going to relight 13 engines.
	Doesn't bring that down to three engines.
	As we talked about earlier, we will be intentionally shutting down.
	We will be shutting down one of those three center engines intentionally to push the limits of the Super Heavy booster.
	And continuing to see six healthy engines on the ship, three sea level and three vacuum engines still ignited as the super heavy booster is making its way back down to earth.
	We can see those grid fins doing some heavy work.
	Ignited for our landing burn and may have ended with that landing burn.
	Does look like we lost telemetry from the booster once we started into that landing burn.
	Did you see confirmation that the booster did demise?
	So the booster's flight ending before it was able to get through landing burn, but again, we are not bringing that back.
	We're expecting it to make a hard splashdown in the Gulf.
	We were getting live data back the entire time through that high angle of attack flight.
	So that was something that was really vital for us to get during this reuse.
	First reflight of booster in the books.
	All right, ship has about two minutes left.
	Yeah, in about two minutes, we expect all six Raptor engines to shut down.
	That will be Seco, basically second engine or second stage engine shutoff.
	And these are some incredible views, Dan, from the aft end of the ship, watching as the engines stay ignited with the Earth in the background.
	As always, the Starship Avionics team, the Techs.
	I think we just heard the booster.
	All right, we got about a minute left into this burn.
	All eyes definitely on ship as we get through the final stages into its ascent.
	We're expecting it to start to cut those engines off in about 45 seconds.
	All right, just about 30 seconds to go.
	We're in terminal guidance in the final stages of this ascent burn.
	We did see shutdown of the Raptor engines.
	We do stagger these, so we do the Raptors first.
	Those three have shut down successfully.
	Sea level's still running.
	It's a ship engine cutoff.
	Ship engine cutoff.
	The three most beautiful words in the English language.
	Great call-out that we had nominal insertion.
	An incredible flight test so far today.
	We re-flew a super heavy booster for the very first time in nine test flights.
	Ship is in its orbital trajectory.
	Again, it's going to remain suborbital for its mission today.
	But it ignited.
	It ignited all six of its engines and made it all the way through Seiko just now.
	What a moment.
	Incredible.
	Cutting in nuts.
	Still lots to come for the rest of this flight.
	Per usual.
	I need to collect myself.
	Hey, Chris, how's it going over there in Hawthorne, man?
	How's everybody doing?
	I think the elation and the excitement and the happiness at what we just saw achieved carried through across all of our sites.
	What an incredible view to see Starship back orbiting the Earth just under 11 minutes into our mission.
	Absolutely exciting to see all of this and super pumped, especially to see all of the team's hard work in action here today.
	As guaranteed, it has been an exciting evening so far for Starship's ninth test flight.
	We lifted off a little bit after 6.30 p.m. after a couple of holds that were triggered at the T minus 40 second mark, but we were able to clear those, one on the Raptor, one on the tower, and we were able to lift off successfully from Starbase.
	33 out of 33 Raptor engines lit on the Super Heavy.
	All six engines lit on ship, bringing it to its planned suborbital trajectory around Earth.
	But as Dan said, we've got a lot still coming up in our flight sequence.
	So coming up at about T plus 18 minutes 26 seconds, we'll have the first deployment of simulated Starlink satellites planned from Starship.
	That will be followed at about T plus 37 minutes and 49 seconds by the relight of a single Raptor sea level engine in space.
	This is going to help us gather data on our ability to do a deorbit burn for future Starship missions that will go orbital.
	And then of course, one of the biggest tests yet to come is the new heat shield modifications to Starship.
	And that'll start with re-entry into Earth's atmosphere at about the T plus 45 minute mark, which should take about 16, 18 minutes to complete.
	And now today's re-entry is going to test that heat shield, like we said.
	Specifically, how Starship will hold up to 100 missing heat shield tiles on its thermal protection system.
	Now, we purposely took those 100 tiles off over very critical areas of the vehicle to be able to safely test on a flight like this suborbital trajectory into the Indian Ocean, what might happen on an operational flight in those areas if we were to lose the primary heat shield tile over Starship.
	So very critical test coming up.
	And then after that, we'll have the final descent where we will again be pushing Starship to its limits.
	We definitely pushed the booster to its limits today to gather data.
	And we're going to be doing the exact same thing on that ship, seeing how the ship handles various flight conditions that we will need it to fly in as we look to one day soon bring ships back to Starbase for catch and reuse.
	Now, while there are payload simulators on Starship for deployment today, as we will see in a few minutes, the primary data and payload, the primary payload for today is the data.
	And today, just like with Starship's previous test flights, that data is coming to us courtesy of our Starlink network.
	In fact, it is from Starlink that you are seeing these wonderful views of ship in space right now.
	So, and I can't wait to see Starlink really provide those epic views and that data transmission during reentry, which is very, very critical to getting that data during reentry.
	So, Dan and Jesse, it's been an exciting day so far.
	There's more to come as we get ready for Starship's first ever payload deploy.
	What can we expect next here in the next few minutes?
	Thanks, Chris.
	Just going to reiterate, thank you to the Starlink team for these incredible views today.
	In a few minutes, Starship will deploy eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to our next generation Starlink satellites.
	The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship, meaning they will passively re-enter the atmosphere just like Starship.
	With tests like these, we can see how Starship's payload deploy systems work in flight while ensuring that this simulator satellites pose no safety risk to people on Earth or for other satellites in orbit.
	Now, this also ensures that any parts of these simulator Starlink satellites that do survive re-entry splash down harmlessly in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
	And then, before we get there, though, we're going to have to open up that payload deploy door.
	So, we've only ever done that one time before.
	Pretty sure it was flight three.
	Someone on the internet, please check me.
	But that was the only time we ever opened it.
	And we've had Starlink simulators on the last two flights, but we just haven't gotten to this moment yet where we're able to open up the payload door and start deploying these.
	It's going to be pretty cool.
	We've got them stacked inside of the Starship payload bay, and we'll have potentially a couple of views.
	You saw one camera pop up.
	There we go.
	Look inside of the payload bay of Starship.
	You can see them stacked down in the middle of your view.
	There's kind of four on either side, so they're sandwiched on top of each other, stack of four right behind each other.
	And then we're gonna pop the door open.
	It's on the right side of your screen, so we'll see that open up and then start firing those Starlink simulators out into space.
	We are expecting the payload door to open in a little over a minute from now.
	And then once that payload door is open, about a couple minutes later is when we will start dispensing those Starlink simulators.
	So should be able to see them kind of firing out from right there.
	So really cool.
	And eventually, these are going to carry dozens of the next generation of Starlink satellite into space.
	And those are going to enable some truly insane things in terms of speeds from space and what we're able to do.
	Starlink's been really great for Starship, obviously.
	Getting live video back is really cool, but just the amount of high-speed telemetry, everything we're able to get back is insane.
	And for a development program, that's kind of everything.
	We're in excess of 130 or 160.
	My numbers are fuzzy right now, just like my brain is.
	Well, in excess of 100 megabits per second of downlink, and a lot of that gets eaten up by video.
	We've got dozens of cameras across Starship.
	We added several more for this flight.
	You saw a couple of those as we have essentially 360 degrees.
	Open the pod bay door Hal.
	Now we are expecting the payload door to open any moment now.
	So we're watching out for that.
	Again, you're looking at the inside of Starship as its suborbital.
	Well, we heard the door open was in progress.
	It was unable to actuate all the way open, so they are going to close it back up.
	Hal told me no.
	He said, I'm sorry, Dan.
	Can't do that.
	Looks like we won't get the door open today.
	But that's okay.
	This is obviously a test we want to be able to do before we're deploying full-on Starlinks.
	But the real focus for this, now that we are in space, is getting to that re-entry.
	is the most critical phase of Starship that we still have to prove out all right well Well, so it does look like we're not going to be able to deploy Starlinks today, but we should have pretty frequent views from Starship.
	They might cut in and out every once in a while, but should be pretty regular.
	We are in darkness right now, so might be a lot of black.
	But the cool part is when we get to re-entry, it's going to be daytime.
	Yes, and we did that on purpose so that we can get some live daytime views as ship is returning back to Earth.
	All right, so we are going to take a break, enjoy these views as we get them, enjoy the tunes.
	We'll be back in a couple of minutes when we get ready to relight one of those Raptor engines on orbit.
	you soon.
	You're watching coverage of the SpaceX Starship launch.
	Short holding pattern here coming up, though, re-entry and landing for the vehicle.
	Starship launched out of Starbase in Texas.
	It's a little bit after 7:30 p.m. Eastern.
	You're watching live coverage of this SpaceX simulcast here on C-SPAN.
	All right, if you're just tuning in, we are about 30 minutes into today's flight test, and the ship is on its suborbital trajectory.
	As you can see in some of the views and from some of the telemetry, we are in a little bit of a spin.
	We did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside of Starship, which a lot of those are used for your attitude control.
	And so at this point, we've essentially lost our attitude control with Starship.
	We are still on a path toward re-entry.
	We are suborbital, so no matter what, we are going to enter.
	However, this lowers the chances for it to be a controlled re-entry.
	So if you think back to flight three, when we had something similar happen, just the end symptom of a loss of attitude control, we were in a roll by the time we hit reentry.
	So we are going to re-enter.
	We should hopefully still have views.
	The Starlink satellites are pretty robust to still maintaining contact.
	We've got four of those terminals on the vehicle, and they're pretty robust to maintaining contact, even when we are in a spin, essentially.
	So we should hopefully continue to keep live views.
	It's going to still be dark until we get a little bit closer to entry as we are a little bit coming up on Africa.
	I believe we do swing just to the south of that continent.
	And by the time we start heading out over the Indian Ocean, we'll start heading into a sunrise.
	So not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today, where we were hoping to do the PES deploy and relight an engine and then really importantly get into that control entry to really put the heat shield through the ringer.
	Nonetheless, Starship marching forward towards that re-entry over the Indian Ocean.
	We'll continue to hang with it and give you any updates as things continue to change.
	We're bringing you live coverage of the SpaceX Starship launch, the group in a holding pattern as we wait for the broadcast of the re-entry for the vehicle.
	The launch taking place at the headquarters of SpaceX in Texas called Starbase.
	This is the ninth test flight of the Starship.
	According to SpaceX, the goal of the vehicle is to be fully reusable.
	Flight tests.
	You're seeing some flat movement here on the ship.
	If you've been following along, we have essentially lost attitude control on the ship at this point.
	It is suborbital, so it's still headed to the exact same trajectory as before.
	We were not able to get that payload door open and deploy those nose cones.
	We've been dealing with some leaks on the ship.
	This is also what led to that loss of attitude control.
	So at this point, we are kind of in a spin, and we are also going to be skipping that Raptor relight.
	If you've followed through the history of Starship, something similar happened, different cause, but same symptom back on flight three, where we weren't able to maintain attitude control in orbit.
	And so we're going to skip the relight of that Raptor engine while we're in space.
	We are going to still proceed with entry, but as we are not able to control the attitude of the ship, as we get into entry, it will enter in whatever orientation it is in at the time, which does not bode well for the ship's heat shield as we're not going to be essentially aligned the way that we want to do for re-entry.
	So it is definitely coming down.
	It is definitely heading to the Indian Ocean, but our chances of making it all the way down are pretty slim.
	So we'll still get as much data as we can.
	We're still getting live telemetry, live views from Starlink the entire time.
	And we'll continue to stick with the ship as it continues on.
	We are about 10 minutes away or so until we start getting into entry.
	And the light will start to pick up as we cross the Indian Ocean.
	We'll start to see a little bit more daylight.
	And we'll, as always, as long as we maintain that calm link, get some plasma on the way in and start to bring the starship back through the Earth's atmosphere.
	So that coming up in about 10 minutes or so.
	So we'll check back in with everybody in a little bit.
	We're bringing you live coverage of the SpaceX Starship launch here on C-SPAN, the group in a holding pattern as we wait for the broadcast of the re-entry for the vehicle.
	This launch taking place at the headquarters of SpaceX in Texas called Starbase.
	This is the ninth test flight of the Starship.
	According to SpaceX, the goal of the vehicle is to be a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth's orbit, then the moon, and eventually Mars.
	watching live coverage on C-SPAN.
	All right, so we are 42 minutes in change into today's flight test.
	You're seeing the light show start as Starship is getting closer to its re-entry.
	If you're just tuning in, we were able to successfully make it to orbit.
	Run into a couple of issues as we've coasted to our entry point over the Indian Ocean.
	At this point, we had lost attitude control of the ship and entered into a spin.
	The team made the call to do what's called passivate the vehicle.
	So we're essentially venting all of the remaining propellant overboard, and it's going to make an uncontrolled re-entry.
	Important to note, this is a contingency that is planned for, and we clear the zones in the Indian Ocean where these entries could take place.
	So we're not going to come down exactly where we would have had nothing happened, but we do clear a tremendous amount of space out in the Indian Ocean in the event that we run into this.
	You always, we understand that there are always risks, essentially, with these flight tests, with the hardware, but we don't really accept any compromise when it comes to protecting people.
	And it is one thing to note is we will actually still re-enter in our planned airspace zone, which is good.
	That is exactly what we planned for.
	You know, we do plan for if something does go a little bit off-nominal, that we have enough airspace cleared out for situations just like this.
	Yeah, re-entry is still just that really critical phase that we need to try and gather as much data, as much information as possible.
	Is a fully reusable heat shield has never been flown before, history of spaceflight.
	And that's something that Starship still has to crack.
	And so we had a whole range of experiments on this one at this point.
	And we just started to lose some of our cameras.
	So it's very possible that we'll start to lose contact with Starship a lot sooner than we would have if it was a nominal re-entry.
	So we are expecting it to break up essentially on its re-entry over the Indian Ocean.
	So not able to do a lot of our on-orbit objectives today, but just the fact that we, you know, got it into space was just, that was just a really big moment for a lot of the team.
	Yeah, and another thing to note is that Super Heavy did fly for its second flight today.
	It first flew on flight seven, and it made it all the way to our shutdown of all the engines and stage separation, getting ship into its suborbital trajectory today.
	It did ignite its 13 engines, but it did demise at that point.
	We did plan to fly it back down to Earth at a higher angle of attack, and we do expect it to stress the vehicle a lot more than what we've seen previously.
	So, it's not unexpected that we did lose the booster before we got to the actual landing.
	Yeah, so we're gonna continue to hang out and see if we get any updates on ship.
	It does look like we might be getting some video back soon.
	There we go.
	So, this is a view essentially on the top part of Starship.
	You're looking up at the payload bay and towards the nose cone.
	So, views are going to be a little bit scarce potentially, as again, we are in essentially a tumble.
	We had lost that attitude control.
	So, Starlink, when it's able to connect, able to feed this down.
	We are at the phase where we would expect entry to start within the next minute or so.
	So, we are entering uncontrolled, but again, we're entering into an airspace and a sea space that is cleared and monitored in advance of launch and before we get to this phase.
	And with the views that we are able to see, you are seeing a lot of that plasma build up during re-entry.
	We do expect the vehicle to see about 1,400 degrees Celsius, and there you can see the flap feeling that temperature there, a little bit melting away.
	But as we expected with the spinning of the vehicle, we are no longer controlling the attitude of the vehicle.
	So, this is now at this point in the test flight.
	It is expected to see it begin to demise a little bit on its way back down to Earth.
	Yeah, and so we'll stick with it for as long as we're kind of getting any reach back from the ship as it starts to make this re-entry.
	But, yeah, so it's re-entering actively right now.
	And again, we did do what's called passivation.
	So, you essentially vent all of your excess propellant overboard before you hit the atmosphere.
	That's a safety measure we can take on the ship while you still have contact with it.
	So, that was done.
	It's now coming down in the predetermined hazard area that was cleared ahead of flight.
	Not controlled, so we're not going to get all of that re-entry data that we're still really looking forward to.
	This is kind of a new generation of ship.
	It has different flaps, improved heat shield, a whole lot of things that we're really trying to really put through the ringer.
	As there's a whole lot we still need to learn before we get to kind of the next step that we're hoping for, which is going to be that ship going orbital and eventually coming back here for a catch.
	So, getting through one of these fully is going to be really important.
	It's not going to be today, but we are just going to stick with the ship, see what else we can learn as it makes its way through the atmosphere and brings an end to the ninth flight test.
	So we'll stick with it.
	If you're just now joining us, we did have an on-time liftoff from Starbase, Texas at 6.30 p.m. Central Time of the Flight 9 vehicle.
	We did have some incredibly stressing objectives today.
	The Super Heavy booster flew for its second flight.
	It first flew on Flight 9 and made its way to take ship all the way up to stage separation, doing its first second flight ever, which is pretty incredible.
	We did lose the booster on the way back down as we did fly it back down at a higher angle of attack.
	So as expected, we did have it demise on the way back down.
	Yeah, we were able to get all the way to that landing burn, though.
	So we made it through that higher angle of attack.
	So a lot of great data that's going to help us improve those future booster flights.
	Yeah, we did do the directional flip and it worked.
	It was actually a great view that we saw.
	And then ship continued six healthy Raptor engines in the beginning of its flight, making it all the way to Seco and coasting for quite a while.
	We made it to the expected time that we would open up the payload door.
	Unfortunately, the door did not open as we expected it to, so we did not deploy the eight Starlink satellites.
	Yeah, we ran into a couple of issues once ship got there, but I can tell you it was a pretty crazy moment for a lot of the people that were standing here for ship to make it there.
	It's been a couple of flights, but it was really exciting to see.
	Ran into some issues on orbit.
	We weren't able to deploy the Starlinks.
	We eventually lost attitude control, dealing with some propellant links inside of the ship, and we did lose attitude control.
	And just to confirm, we did lose contact with the ship officially a couple of minutes ago.
	So that brings an end to the ninth flight test.
	So still a lot of work to do, but really big moment.
	Chris, how's everybody doing over there in Hawthorne?
	What survives, man?
	Yeah, you know, I mean, it's a test program, and that's what we're here to do.
	We're here to learn.
	And that was definitely the vibe in the atmosphere here at Hawthorne.
	Would have been great to see Ship get all the way through its objectives today, but with all of that data that came down through the Starlink system, we're definitely going to learn and we're definitely going to fix that and push forward.
	Also, great to see the responsible engineers here in mission control talking with the flight control teams in Starbase.
	We talked about how it's great having that expert knowledge on console to be able to go to at a moment's notice.
	And that really helped us make the right decisions in orbit today when we decided to passivate the vehicle.
	So we will be here looking forward to flight 10 and some success on future flights.
	All right.
	Well, obviously congratulations to everybody that poured so much time, effort into getting this ship, this rocket off the pad.
	The last two months have been an absolute gauntlet for a lot of people.
	And we're continuing to learn more about this ship, about this rocket.
	We are trying to do something that is impossibly hard.
	And it's not always going to, you're not going to reach it in a straight line.
	We've said there's going to be bumps, there's going to be turns, but seeing that ship in space today was a hell of a moment for us.
	So congratulations to every single person who put time, effort, sweat, anything into that rocket.
	Yeah, this is exactly the SpaceX way.
	We're going to learn, iterate, and iterate over and over again until we figure it out.
	So thank you to everybody for tuning in.
	Thank you for the fine people of Cameron County, including the residents of the newest city of Starbase, as well as the Coast Guard, Federal Aviation Administration, Government of Mexico, as well as the Australian Space Agency.
	All right.
	Now, this is not the end.
	We're going to have a whole bunch of cool liftoff stuff.
	So be sure to follow us on X at SpaceX for more.
	And we will see you back here for Flight 10.
	Thanks for tuning in.
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	In a nation divided, a rare moment of unity.
	This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins.
	In a town where partisan fighting prevails, one table, two leaders, one goal, to find common ground.
	This fall, ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN.
	Former Congressman Chris Gibson is back at our desk, a Republican from New York since leaving Congress in 2017.
	He's written three books.
	The latest is The Spirit of Philadelphia: A Call to Recover the Founding Principles.
	And Congressman Gibson, take us back about 238 years or so.
	Explain what you mean by the spirit of Philadelphia.
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, we're in a tough time right now.
		And I just enjoyed your last segment.
		I understand how divided the country is, the consequences of these policies, both half the country supporting them, half the country opposing them.
		You know, it's interesting.
		I wanted to take a look at, you know, what happened.
		I mean, a lot of Americans are wondering out there, how did we get to this place?
		And so I went back to the beginning of our country.
		And I would say to encourage the viewers here right now, I believe that they were actually facing tougher circumstances when they arrived in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention in this way.
		They had a very difficult problem because they knew that the Articles of Confederation were failing.
		They were failing.
		We were at the time free and independent states, free and independent states.
		The closest analogy would be like the EU, because we were a confederation.
		And we had states that were obviously coining money, states that were putting tariffs on other states, states that were being lured into trading agreements with other countries.
		And we had insurrection.
		We had the Shays Rebellion and we had others.
		And so they knew that what they had done with the Articles didn't hit the mark.
		And so they had this problem and why I think it's different.
		They actually had to adjust our governmental structure to actually give it more power.
		But at the same time, they were very ensconced and concerned about overshooting the target.
		So they had to at once, and Madison talks about this in the Federalist Papers, you know, they had to create this government that could essentially do its part of the social contract, but then also have it control itself.
		And so what they did was genius, but I believe they actually got it right.
		And the way they did it is, because they had tried.
		The thing that the viewers, I want them to appreciate is these were practical people.
		They tried to solve the problem several times and failed every single time, including the last one at Annapolis in 1786.
		And they didn't throw their hands up.
		They said, we're going to meet in Philadelphia.
		And what they did between Annapolis and Philadelphia is they studied extensively.
		They reviewed everything they could get their hands on.
		Jefferson made a difference.
		He was actually in Europe.
		He sent a truckload of books to Madison.
		And they read about Greece.
		They read about Rome and other attempts to get a republic right.
		And ultimately, what they ended up with, they created, I call the spirit of Philadelphia.
		It was actually unexpected.
		What they wanted to do was fix the governmental design.
		They wanted to, they were supposed to be there to fix the articles.
		Articles required a unanimous consent of the states to change it.
		They could never reach unanimous consent.
		They knew that that threshold was too high.
		They needed a governmental structure that could breathe.
		And they wanted the bar to be very high to bring change, but they needed it to be possible.
		And this is the Constitution that they bring forward.
		And arguably the most, you know, argumentative part about the Constitution was it required three courts, three fourths of the states to ratify it to go into effect.
		That was facially unconstitutional to the Articles of Confederation.
		And really they weren't challenged on that point.
		So the spirit of Philadelphia, yes, they worked, they brought forward this new document.
		It was different.
		It was decidedly philosophically different.
		Perhaps we'll get into that today.
		But the spirit of Philadelphia was the breakthrough.
		First of all, it took two weeks to get enough delegates there to even get a quorum going.
		And then they ended up in the same old arguments.
		It looked like for the first month, five weeks, it looked like it was going to be yet another failed attempt.
unidentified		And we should note that they first met on May 25th of 1787.
		Here we are almost anniversary.
		Yeah, I know.
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		And then we're getting ready next year, of course, to celebrate 250 years of the Declaration.
		This is an important moment.
		We're at an inflection point for our country.
		And that's why, you know, your last segment had people who support the Trump education policies, those that oppose it.
		I'm trying to actually reach all of those viewers.
unidentified		The book, again, The Spirit of Philadelphia, A Call to Recover the Founding Principles is the subtitle.
		That subtitle, the word recover, meaning we've lost founding principles.
		When did we lose the founding principles?
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, a little over 100 years ago, these were conscious choices, by the way.
		We started moving away from it.
		To make the last point on the spirit of Philadelphia, what was unexpected is they expected to tinker.
		They were practical people.
		But what ended up happening is that Connecticut compromise between large states and small states, when they finally got over that hurdle, all of a sudden the world looked different.
		Once they agreed to come with a bicameral legislative body, all of a sudden this issue over how to deal with the executive seemed solvable, which they couldn't reach consensus on.
		Now they did.
		And this, what I argue is this was the spirit.
		I mean, the viewers out there, many of them may have served in the military, been in good companies, you know, private companies that do.
		There's something about us as a species.
		When we come together and we meld, we work hard.
		Sometimes we compromise.
		We come together.
		We create something bigger than ourselves.
		That's what we did.
		That spirit of Philadelphia, you know, that's what came as an unexpected gift of the Connecticut Compromise.
		What happened to us is, you know, in the 19th century, first of all, the Civil War, okay?
		You know, the philosophy that we chose, which, you know, I argue is common sense realism, you know, essentially focused on two factors.
		In fact, it focused on human nature.
		Who are we individually?
		Who are we as society?
		And then given that, what should we do with power?
		How should we array power?
		And they chose some conscious choices here.
		They knew they had to have enough in the government to be able to effectuate its side of the social contract.
		But what they decided is all of them, that is to say, as a collective body, there were a few naysayers, Patrick Henry, there were some folks that were opposing this, the anti-federalists.
		But what they said is, look, given what we know about human nature, which it's conflicted, humans are neither all good nor all bad.
		We're conflicted.
		Sometimes we're amazing, we're selfless, at other times we're very aggressive and self-serving.
		And they said the best thing we can do is decentralize power to the extent we can, and then we need to separate power and we need to keep it transparent and checked.
		And we believed, the founders, that this is the best way that a republic can last.
		And so, you know, we come forward with that.
		And how did it go?
		Well, generally, well, with one major exception.
unidentified		The Civil War.
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		So the Civil War.
		But what I want to say is that the system worked as designed.
		People say, well, why is it that they had trouble solving the issue of slavery?
		Well, it's a flawed assumption.
		They actually thought they had put it on a path towards extinction.
		I mean, you look at Federalist 42.
		Madison says this.
		He basically says that what we did was, he doesn't use the word genius, but this is incredible.
		We figured it out.
		When we ban the international slave trade, it's going to die out and we're going to be able to move forward as a people.
		And so when that didn't happen, what did the system do?
		Well, it did a lot.
		It launched us into the industrial age, put us on a path to becoming a global superpower.
		But whenever we hit conflict, political conflict, what happened is the system works towards compromise.
		So what did we see?
		We saw the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
		We saw the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
		We had a series of legislative actions that were, the system worked, it produced a product.
unidentified		So this system that you say, you argue was working, what happened to it about 100 years ago?
unidentified		What changed in the political philosophy of this country?
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		So immediately what happens is because we had a flawed assumption with regard to a first order moral question, the question of slavery, is we were not able to peacefully resolve it.
		Lincoln, we fight this war over this, over states' rights and over slavery.
		And then in his second inaugural address, Lincoln says, we're going to bind up the wounds of the nation with malice towards none.
		He had a vision.
		He had a plan to actually bring us back under common sense realism, having resolved the first order moral question.
		Of course, he was murdered.
		We never fully recovered.
		We had so many casualties of that war.
		Among those was our founding philosophy that really worked so well for us.
		So what happened?
		Well, by the 19th century, new ideas are in the ether in the world, including in Europe, German idealism.
		And among those that were very enamored with it was Woodrow Wilson.
		He was one of the first in our country to get a doctorate, a PhD from Johns Hopkins in what they were calling political science at the time.
		But in his dissertation, Wilson argues the founders got it exactly wrong.
		He said, there's no point.
		We don't have to do this.
		We don't have to decentralize.
		We don't have to separate power.
		What we really should do is come forward with centralization and allow us to move towards ideal circumstances.
		Not optimal, but ideal.
		And this is what's in his dissertation.
		So when he becomes college president, he's working on Hegel, I call it Hegelian ideas.
		It's German idealism.
		But then when he's president, what you see is, well, the war.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		What is German idealism?
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		So, I mean, there's so much.
		It's a very dense topic.
		But what it means for us here, and particularly what we're talking about today, is the idea that the state, the state broadly defined, can perfect man.
		In fact, Hegel says, although he would really push back if he were here today saying it was taken out of context, but he said the state is what man has created.
		The state is the march of God in the world.
		Okay, now from where he was standing, he didn't have everything that we've gone through in the last 200 years.
		But people leaned, I mean, Nietzsche leans on this.
		And then, of course, we know what happens in the 20th century, not only with Nietzsche, but with Hegel.
		But there's this movement towards greater bureaucracy, centralization.
		And so Wilson's among those believers.
		And what you see during the First World War, I mean, we have price controls.
		We have the espionage and sedition acts.
		If you speak out against the war, I mean, there was a whole number of initiatives, including the creation of bureaucracy to control.
		And, you know, there's an undertow.
		After he leaves in the 20s, we move back.
		Logical positivism I talk about in the book about that reaction to it.
		But ultimately, what happens over the last 100 plus years, regardless of party, even though there's some pushback, you know, here and there, Reagan, of course, has a different vision.
		But the thing to remember about Nixon, President Nixon, is the fact that he basically said we're all Keynesians now.
		And he created the EPA.
		So what I'm saying is there was largely a consensus that was inimical to the founding principles.
		That doesn't mean they couldn't do it.
		The founders themselves said the system needs to be malleable.
		But this book is ultimately about ideas and their consequences.
unidentified		That was a quick march through about 240 years of Americanism.
		There's a lot in the book.
		It's in this book, The Spirit of Philadelphia.
		I want to invite viewers to call in and join the conversation as well.
		Phone lines, as usual, with former Congressman Chris Gibson, Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		Independents, 202748-8002.
		With the philosophy that we just went through, with the history.
		What are the suggestions that you make at the end of this book?
		What can we do to do the verb there, to recover the founding principles?
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		Well, the first thing is to recognize the moment we're in.
		I mean, I just explained the beginning, and it wasn't nefarious, by the way.
		I mean, Wilson really believed in what he was doing.
		He believed that was what was best for our country.
		But I mean, today there are those who really criticize President Trump.
		They say he's centralizing so much power.
		He is transforming the political landscape.
		He is a highly consequential president.
		And in that regard, and it's important to note that history just didn't start in 2015 or 16 or 17.
		I mean, he is actually leaning in and moving to the front of the formation of something that started long ago.
		And so where are we today?
		Well, I mean, I understood, the book explains how we get President Trump and the phenomenon of this populist moment that we're in.
		It is widespread disaffection, alienation, disappointment with institutions and their leaders.
		So now the choices, look at the choices in 2024, philosophically now.
		There's certainly ideology and platform, of course.
		We'll probably get into some of that.
		But philosophically, you had a choice between progressivism, which is a form of idealism, which believes in centralizing power as a principle, as a principle regarding power.
		Remember what I said about the founders?
		They were looking at human nature.
		And given that, what do we do about power?
		Progressives, they actually see humans as good and want to centralize power because you can achieve idealistic outcomes.
		The populists actually don't have a strong position on power from a principle perspective.
		It depends.
		Like, if power is being accumulated to President Obama, that's not a good thing because he could be working against the folk community.
		The thing about populism is it's very focused on the community.
		And they want to know what government's being used for.
		If government's being used to be helpful to the folk community, that's a good thing.
		So, you know, and Walter Russell Meade, I lean heavily on his research as regard to populism, but the thing about the Trump movement is that, I mean, you had Americans who were just totally turned off by what was going on.
		They looked at him and said, maybe we just need to give the power to him and he'll fix all this.
		So your choices were progressivism on one hand and populism on the other.
		And what I'm arguing here is, look, to all the viewers, and you had viewers on both sides of Trump on this last segment.
		I'm saying I'm trying to reach everyone.
		I'm saying, let's take a step back and let's take a look at history and philosophy and the consequences of the choices that we've made.
		And I could find no example in history where a nation, a people in a nation, centralized power, especially into one person, and it ever worked out well.
		Could happen, but if it does, it'll be the first time in human history.
		That's power.
		And then you look at the product.
		I mean, these deficits right now, we can't sustain them.
		There are all kinds of historical examples.
		The Roman Empire, Great Britain, frankly.
		I mean, if you spend beyond your means and keep doing it, you cannot survive in that political state.
		So I'm telling you, the founders, look, they understood that too.
		So, I mean, so that's probably enough for now.
		Let's hear from some of the callers.
		But I'm glad I had a chance to sketch this.
		And I would love to, at some point, even get into education because the founders, Jefferson and Adams disagreed about a lot.
		What they agreed upon was, first of all, common sense realism.
		They were on the same page with regard to human nature and what it meant for power.
		And they also believed that we would never survive if our citizens were not educated, informed, and engaged.
		Educated, they're all three different.
		Educated, informed, and engaged.
		And so that means classical education, a broad temperament, or a temperament that's influenced by a broad education.
unidentified		Chris Gibson is our guest an author in his time since leaving the Congress from 2017 on three books, the latest, The Spirit of Philadelphia.
		He's also served as professor at Williams College, the president of Siena College, before your time in Congress, served in the military, and taking your phone calls here on the Washington Journal this morning.
		And there are plenty for you.
		Peter's up first here in Washington, D.C. and Independent.
		Peter, good morning.
		Hi, good morning.
		I have a quick question for Congressman Gibson.
		Across a number of issue areas in your book, you argue for limits on the executive branch and in favor of a return to the constitutionally prescribed role of both the federal legislature and state-level government.
		Absolutely.
		Is this approach to government still viable when modern politics is so fast-moving and policy points feel policy issues feel so acute?
		For a quick example, I have deep sympathy with your expressed views on the War Powers Act.
		But realistically, how effectively could our 535 congressmen and senators reach consensus in a true moment of national crisis?
		And Peter, you've already read the book?
		Yes, I have.
		Yes, sir.
		I'm a big fan of Congressman Gibson's.
		I've followed his career for quite some time.
		Do you work on Capitol Hill, Peter?
		No, I do not.
		I work for a foreign policy think tank based out of New York, the Foreign Policy Association.
		Peter, thanks for the call.
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		I want to say I know this young man, and he's got an incredible future ahead of him.
		He's a nice balance of he's very serious in his work, but he doesn't take himself seriously.
		And as you can tell, the way he just constructed that question, I mean, that is, in essence, one of the preeminent questions for all this.
		And my answer would be yes.
		But I also acknowledge.
		I mean, I was at a conference out at Stanford about two months ago, and I had a very thoughtful colleague of mine from Hillsdale College.
		And he's from Hillsdale.
		He asked the same question.
		He wondered, can we, in this information age, and I say, I believe it true.
		I don't know it to be true, but my read of history, I believe it can.
		These principles that the founders had actually, it's amazing how much they grappled with.
		How much they had read Gibbon that was recently published.
		That's the decline of the Roman Empire.
		The first volumes come out in 1776, last volume in 1788.
		They had read all about the Delian League, the Achaean League.
		They read about the Greek republics.
		And these were principles that they believed stood the test of time about us, about who we are, and about the reality.
		I mean, that's why I call it the realism.
		And that actually comes from the Scottish Enlightenment.
		But more specifically to the point, what we're intending to do here is recognize the fact that the founders said that we're going to have three co-equal branches.
		They did put pride of place to the people's representatives.
		The first, Article I, the Constitution is the legislature, the legislative body.
		But they knew that we needed a magistrate, we needed a leader, they understood that, but they also expected the other branches to check each other throughout.
		I believe today, in 2025, we can still do this, but what we have to do as a people, and I've got a chapter on this, it's called We the People, Notes for Us, We the People.
		And it's a recognition that we own some of this too.
		We have to look at our expectations.
		A great country in a good country too, and there's a difference.
		But what we need to do is really hold our representatives to account, hold them to account, and then in issues where we cannot reach consensus at the national level, we need to push that back down.
		We need to push that back down to the states until such time that we can have persuasion enough to do legislation at the national level.
		These principles will work if we use them again.
unidentified		On We the People, this is page 125 of your book.
		You're right.
		The founders understood that this form of government that they were creating would not work without an educated, informed, and engaged electorate.
		Channeling Monescue, the founders recognized that this required the widespread promotion of broad liberal education aimed at cultivating virtuous citizens capable of critical thinking, cultivated in this way citizens would then safeguard their freedoms and act as active voters would serve as a check against fanciful government proposals and actions.
john mcardle ▲ ● ▼		Are we that people that they envisioned?
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think there's so much disaffection right now.
		And of course, as humans, we're also emotional.
		So this is intensely personal to us.
		And I think it makes it very difficult for us.
		But this is part of what a conflicted human nature is.
		I mean, how many times I'll say in my own life, you know, I have a reaction, an emotional reaction to something, and I ask myself, is that really the right thing to do at this moment?
		Or should I think that through?
		Maybe delay the decision if I can until I can really think it through.
		And I think as a people, we have to recognize that we're out of balance.
		And balance is a big part of this book.
		But when I say out of balance, what do I mean by that?
		So, and there's an extensive section in the book on this.
		But, you know, where we are right now is, regardless of party, by the way, we are now, rather than have a balance between the individual and the obligations we have to others, we are all for the former.
		We're for the individual, mostly for the former.
		Whereas I don't want to live in a country that doesn't find the individual of the highest value.
		I mean, we definitely, that's one of our things we're most proud of, is that we value individuals and our rights.
		But our social contract had rights, had responsibilities balanced with rights.
		And rather than having primacy of individual obligation to others, what the founders envisioned was a balance.
		Absolutely, the celebration of the human soul, the individual, but the obligations we have towards others.
		That's just on individuals and obligations to others.
		We're out of balance.
		We're also out of balance between the now and the future.
		Okay?
		I mean, the founders envision both.
		We only live in the now.
		The now is important, but do we really, if you think about the American dream, what is the American dream?
		It's two things, basically.
		It's that you have the right to self-determine.
		You are in control of your destiny, your potential.
		But what else is the American dream?
		It's the idea that I want my family to be in a stronger position than I was when I was growing up.
		We've always believed that.
		And that's why, you know, throughout the years, when you talked about when this changed, look, the election of 1896 was highly contested.
		There's, I mean, McKinley, William Jennings Bryan, how they, but neither candidate said, I got an idea.
unidentified		We're going to spend a trillion dollars or two trillion dollars more than what we bring in.
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		Nobody would have ever done that.
		It was beyond the pale because they knew if they did that, that was going to adversely affect their children and their grandchildren and future generations.
		This is that balance between the now and the future.
		And finally, one more thing on balance is we're out of balance between the material and the spiritual.
		And that's why, you know, I talk in the book about the angsting, the angsting that's, I mean, widespread angsting.
		I mean, Jonathan Haight writes a book called The Anxiety Generation.
		We're seeing the anxious generation and, you know, just how much young people today are suffering from anxiety and depressions.
		This has happened over time.
		It's a lot of factors.
		Haight's book's great.
		I cite it.
		But the point is, is that we are, yes, we're material.
		Of course, we have a physical dimension.
		We have an intellect, but we also have a spirit.
		And if you don't nurture the spirit, we're going to end up where we are at this moment.
		It's about getting the blend right between the physical, the intellectual, and the spiritual.
		And being out of balance in all three of those things is where we are today.
		And, you know, it's interesting because when you talk to people who are either for or against Trump, they believe that, first of all, some who are against him are surprised that what's happening now in relation to 2017, but they believe they have nothing in common with progressives.
		And my read of history is, actually, what they agree upon, both people who are against Trump and for him, is they believe we should centralize power for different reasons.
		But the people who are supporting Trump right now, he's the only one who can fix it.
		You know, we should give him absolute power.
		And the people who are against Trump just don't want him to have that power, but generally believe in the principle.
		You know, if somebody like President Obama had that power, they would be fine with it.
		And that's the moment we're in because I think we need to take a step back and take a look at history and philosophy and say, what are the consequences of choices and where are we today?
unidentified		Bob's waiting in Texas, Republican line.
		Bob, you're on with former Congressman Chris Gibson.
		Yes, I consider today a gift from God, and I thank Congressman Gibson for his enthusiasm and his book and his questions.
		On getting back to principles and to education, I know that the first sentence of U.S. law of 1776, they only had two principles with which they declared and won independence from England.
		And those were the laws of nature, that's understood to be creation, and the laws of nature's God, the Bible.
		Now, Sir William Blackstone, who wrote his first volume 11 years before the Declaration, and he was the most quoted man by our founders, and his most quoted quote was, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.
		So we've got to get back to the first sentence of Earth law and get back to creation and the Bible.
		And any laws that contradict those are no law at all.
		So just one example here in Texas, we had over 9,000 bills that were submitted in this session.
		And I will guarantee you that 99% of them violate Blackstone's precepts that no human laws should contradict creation in the Bible.
		Well, Bob, let me take that point, Congressman Gibson.
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so a few things on this is one, look, again, this is a book about history and philosophy, the intersection of history, philosophy, and then the consequences for public policy.
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		And unfortunately, today, a lot of the conversation about religion and faith is not historically based because, you know, there are those that say the founders explicitly formed a secular nation and therefore they didn't want God.
unidentified		Separation of churches.
unidentified		Yeah.
chris gibson ▲ ● ▼		So that's a misconception.
		Now, absolutely.
		They did not want.
		I mean, the issue, the challenge is, maybe some of the viewers, perhaps Bob, has watched The Chosen.
		And, you know, one of the challenges you see in that rendition is which part of the Bible?
		I mean, clearly we're living now the New Testament when we're watching The Chosen.
		But the point is that the Old Testament was really about judgment.
		And it was, some would say, harsh, but it was about living in a certain way.
		Jesus comes and says, I'm here for the sinners, and I'm looking to bring mercy.
		And actually, he has conflict with the Pharisees over this thing.
		I really strongly recommend this series, The Chosen.

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