I'm John Bachelor. I welcome my colleague of many years, Bob Zimmerman,

takes us immediately to the expectation of Starship Super Heavy at Boca Chica.

Bob, you report this as the 12th orbital test.

You have an update.

Good evening to you.

Good evening, John.

Well, I link to an update.

A very nice story at NASASpaceflight.com,

outlining what SpaceX has been doing to prepare for this 12th orbit

launch.

Elon Musk has said a few weeks ago that we should expect it in early April.

And everything actually that they're doing says that's what's going to happen.

What SpaceX is doing is the kind of stuff that actually NASA should have been doing with

SLS over the last three years after its first unmanned test flight.

They put super heavy booster that they're going to fly on the launch pad, and they did extensive fueling tests to make sure that they can tank the rocket reliably without any leaks or problems.

And they did this multiple times.

And they're doing this because this is a new launch pad that's never been used.

They took out their old pad and they built a new one.

And at the same time, this is the version three of Starship Super Heavy.

And so they want to test everything and make sure they're also using the Raptor 3 engines

for the first time.

This is an upgrade of the Raptor engines that makes it more powerful than any engine ever made,

...