Starship Test Flight 12: Triumphs and Trials, Blue Origin’s Fiery Setback, and Earth’s...

[00:00:00] This is Space Time Series 29 Episode 66, full broadcast on the 3rd of June 2026. Coming up on Space Time, Starship undertakes its Torth test flight but with mixed results, Blue Origin's New Glenn suffers a massive explosion at Cape Canaveral, and how planet Earth recycles the continents. All that and more coming up on Space Time. Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary.

[00:00:44] The largest and most powerful rocket ever built, SpaceX's Super Heavy Starship, has undertaken its 12th test flight with mixed results. The launch from SpaceX's Boca Chica Starbase on the Texas Gulf Coast suffered a number of problems during the flight, resulting in the FAA grounding future flights until the cause of these problems has been determined and a potential fix adopted.

[00:01:06] But problems were expected on this mission, as it was the first launch of the new Version 3 variant of the 124.4-metre-tall mega rocket, which in many ways has undergone a complete design overhaul. It was also the first flight from Starbase's new second launch pad. The upgraded rocket design is 2 metres taller than the last variant and carries an extra 500 tonnes of propellant.

[00:01:30] Also, version 3 is powered by a more powerful upgraded Raptor engine, known as the Raptor V3. The booster stage, known as the Super Heavy, features extra shielding around the 33 rocket engines in order to compensate for the higher pressures coming from the V3 Raptors. At the other end of the booster, the hot staging ring has now been integrated into the vehicle instead of being a separate structure.

[00:01:53] Hot staging involves the upper Starship stage beginning to fire its engines before separating from the Super Heavy booster stage. And instead of the previous four grid fins for aerodynamic control, the new Version 3 booster uses just three grid fins, but they're each much larger. And the changes don't end there. The upper Starship stage has also been modified, with the addition of four in-flight propellant transfer ports, which will allow for refuelling while in orbit.

[00:02:21] That'll be necessary for missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Because it's so different, the Version 3 rocket also uses new ground equipment, hence the need for a second launch pad at Starbase. But that's where the first of the issues on Test Flight 12 developed. Mission managers say the hydraulic pin locking part of the launch tower mechanism wasn't retracting correctly, resulting in a series of delays at T-40 seconds, ultimately leading to the launch being scrubbed for a day.

[00:02:49] But when it did finally blast off, we got to see the booster's new engine startup sequence. Instead of the slow sequential engine startup used on previous boosters, the new Version 3 can ignite much quicker, consequently launch quicker. The more powerful Raptor V3 engines also allow the rocket to reach max Q sooner. As it lifted off into the clear blue Texan skies, things appear to be going smoothly.

[00:03:14] Nice 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, ignition. Pitching down range. Mr. Raptor, cheaper pressure nominal. All right, we are T-plus 30 seconds into flight. See you, 33 out of 33 Raptor 3 engines on booster V3 ascending over the Gulf now.

[00:03:43] Coming up on maximum aerodynamic pressure. Booster in-ship, avionics power, telemetry nominal. Systems looking good. We're just passing through the period of maximum dynamic pressure. A little over a minute into flight now. Starship Flight 12 arc out over the Gulf. The next major thing coming up is going to be hot staging. Booster props. That's a reminder. We do what's our version of MECO. Most engines cut off, so we're going to shut down all but five of the Raptor engines on the booster.

[00:04:13] And then after that happens, we're going to ignite the six engines on ship while it is still attached. We have clamps that hold the two together. Those are going to retract inside of that hot stage ring, kind of protect them. However, shortly before stage separation, one of the Super Heavy booster's 33 engines suddenly failed. Now, that in itself shouldn't have been a problem as the onboard systems are designed to compensate for such an eventuality.

[00:04:40] However, then after the booster separated during hot staging and commenced its flip-back maneuver to return to Earth, there was another Raptor V3 engine issue which cut out multiple engines which were needed for the boost-back burn and controlled descent. We had one of the engines go out still flying on 32 of the Raptor engines. But again, once we get the hot staging, those six engines on the ship are going to ignite. We're going to do it in a little bit different of a sequence on version 3.

[00:05:08] Essentially, those three RVAC engines will ignite first. Almost immediately after, just one of those central engines is going to ignite. And that's going to give the booster a bit of a kick, sending it in a known direction, followed shortly after by the other two. Sure, cut off. Separation. There you go. Successful hot staging separation. We are not seeing as many booster engines ignite as we expected for boost-back. But we are seeing six good engines lit on ship. It looks like we just had an early boost-back shutdown.

[00:05:37] Again, a reminder, the booster was planned to essentially head into the Gulf for a splashdown. But it has shut its engines down early on into boost-back. Now, it's possible the other failed engines were damaged by the initial engine failure, possibly due to the higher engine pressures on the new Raptor V3 motors. But making matters worse, one of the booster's grid fins caught part of the engine exhaust from the Starship upper stage. That caused the flip maneuver to be accelerated and out of balance.

[00:06:05] Mission managers were planning to undertake a soft water splashdown in the Gulf of America during this mission, rather than a return to the launch pad as had already been done on several previous occasions. But the booster engine failures meant the descent was much too rapid, resulting in the booster undergoing an unscheduled disassembly. In other words, it blew up as a crash into the sea rather than the soft water landing originally planned. Ship avionics power and clementry nominal. Again, we are not planning on bringing the booster back for this flight as this was the very first time.

[00:06:36] Again, continuing to watch. So, booster did not complete its boost-back burn. We would not see all of the engines ignite. That we expected. Booster continues to make its way back down towards the water. All right, so a little over five and a half minutes in flight. Looks like booster's starting to come in hot. Booster coming back down, making its way into the Gulf. Once again, we were not going to bring the super heavy booster back to the tower.

[00:07:03] We were planning on having it land in the Gulf. And it looks like the booster ended its mission there in the Gulf. We did see at least a couple engines fire up on booster for that landing burn before we lost contact with it. Meanwhile, the Starship upper stage continued its ascent towards orbit. But then suddenly one of the Raptor V3 vacuum engines on the Starship also failed. And we just see one of the RVACs. So we're now running on five engines on ship.

[00:07:32] We do have engine out capabilities, so it's going to continue into its ascent. The remaining two vacuum and three sea level engines were able to compensate and continue the climb to sub orbit. The ship planned to burn its engines for about eight minutes and change. About eight minutes and 11 seconds was our planned timeline for today. That could shift slightly as we do have one engine out running on one fewer RVACs.

[00:07:59] Ship continuing to fire five of the six standing by for call outs, making sure ships on its planned trajectory. Again, we are planning a suborbital trajectory for the ship today. Healthy chamber pressures on five out of six ship Raptor engines. Still flying. Great to see that. Still have five out of six engines there on S39. Yes, we also heard good chamber pressures as well on those engines that are lit. We do have engine out capability.

[00:08:24] We do see that we have one of the RVAC, one of the Raptor vacuum engines, that is currently out. But that's okay. Ship is continuing on. We should have just a little over 20 seconds to go. We'll see if the burn extends a little bit for the engine out. Essentially, you can run your engines a little bit longer or throttle up a little bit more to account for the one engine not being lit. So right now we are standing by for SECO.

[00:08:51] And again, we are continuing to go a little bit longer. Five engines still burning on ship coming up on T plus nine minutes. And starting to see shut down. RVACs have shut down. Sea levels are shut down. Ship orbit insertion. Again, we did run longer as we were engine out. We were flying with five of those six Raptors pretty much the whole time. Ship FTS is safe. All right. Well, we definitely got a ship in space right now. We are awaiting the call out of nominal insertion.

[00:09:20] So we're going to stand by for that. The flaps moving here, actuating the objectives for ship today, not only included the separation that we saw, but we're also planning to deploy 20 Starlink simulator satellites as well as two Dodger Dog satellites. That's what our internal teams refer to as our newer satellites. However, the lack of standard axial flight profile because of the failed vacuum engine led mission

[00:09:47] managers to abort the planned engine restart in orbit test originally scheduled. We actually saw the three gimbling engines kind of gimbal over a little bit to compensate for that offset and thrust. So that was really cool. That's something I know the team's been we've analyzed that since flight one all the way back. So it's something that we've thought about quite a bit and it was kind of cool to see it in action in real life today. One non-rafter thing I noticed also the aft flaps. It's a little weird.

[00:10:13] We have tiles on the leeward side, so not on the side where we're going to see heating. And you might be asking, why are we putting tiles there? I talked to some of our heat shield engineers the other day and the fact that we're seeing all these tiles still on the flap right now is really good because that actually was one of our experiments where we wanted to test different connection methods on the way uphill on ship. So actually ascent. So it looks like most if not all the tiles are still hanging on there. So that's actually a really good data point. We are looking good.

[00:10:41] It does look like we are within bounds of what we analyzed if we were down one of our RVAC engines. So I wouldn't call it nominal orbital insertion, but we're in an on a trajectory that we had analyzed and it's within bounds. So teams continuing to work through it with that engine out. They're working through some steps on the engines. We probably will end up skipping the Raptor relight for today, but it sounds like we should still be on for payload deploy.

[00:11:11] Mission managers did carry out the planned orbital payload release with 22 satellites deployed, 20 dummy versions of the company's Starlink broadband satellites, as well as two actual Starlink satellites equipped with imaging sensors. PEZ dispenser is open. Just a reminder, we've got 22 deployables in the payload bay today, 20 of those Starlink mass simulators and then two are our Dodger dogs.

[00:11:36] So we like to call them internally sitting up their modified V2 Starlink satellites. Those are going to be testing a bunch of components that we're planning to fly on Starlink V3. And we've also got them outfitted with a number of cameras for another tech demo that we're trying out on this flight. We definitely are looking for a way that we can look at Starship's heat shield while it's still in space. You can kind of only see so much from the cameras and the flaps.

[00:12:06] You can't see everything kind of on the underbelly. And one of the only ways you can do that is if you got something else flying near it. So our final two satellites going out the door have a suite of cameras on them that are going to be looking back at the ship. We're going to be in nighttime. They've got some powerful flashlights on them to try and illuminate the ship's heat shield while we fly away from it. One of the things that we upgraded in version 3 kind of gave a little soup up to the PEZ dispensers.

[00:12:36] So those satellites going to move out a little bit quicker than they did on previous Starship flight tests. First two out the door, two more on their way out. All right, four down, 18 to go. This is very much a tech demo. We're going to deploy those. The satellite's going to kind of try and turn everything on, look back at Starship. And the primary reason we're trying to do this is to get some views of the heat shield. Two more out the door. Two more out the door.

[00:13:05] And I think that counts or that comes up to eight total. This Starship version 3 is built to deploy up to 60 of Starlink's more advanced V3 satellites. Everything's V3. Designed to offer 60 terabits per second of downlink capacity per satellite. Now that is 20 times more than each Falcon 9 does today. Incredible. All right, I think that's number 10 going out the door. Yeah, there it goes.

[00:13:33] Just a couple of updates while we continued payload deploy. Did get confirmation we're going to be skipping that relight of the Raptor engine just due to everything that we saw on the way uphill. Those sea level engines, we're going to use them for a landing burn though. They are still capable to be used for that. Reentry was smooth with descent over the Indian Ocean off the Western Australian coast beginning about 50 minutes after launch.

[00:13:58] And there were no major issues as Starship became enveloped in a spectacular superheated plasma bubble just as expected as it entered the upper atmosphere. You'll start to see a light show building up. Plasma starting to build up on the exterior of the vehicle. Now we do not plan to recover the spacecraft today. Reentry is a critical phase of flight and we need information on how the ship systems perform. The data gathering is really the main reason why we're doing these flight tests.

[00:14:25] If ship manages to make it all the way through reentry, we'll collect valuable data on the spacecraft flying through the Earth's atmosphere at these hypersonic speeds, which is basically more than five times the speed of sound. Now we do anticipate that it might be a little bit of a spicy reentry, so we'll see how far we get. It's reentering at or around orbital velocity roughly eight kilometers per second. For those of us that think in other units, roughly five miles per second.

[00:14:54] At those speeds, the spacecraft is moving through the atmosphere and it creates that plasma field forming around the vehicle. Now we should hear some call outs as the ship makes its way back to Earth. When we hear entry max heating and entry max Q, that means the ship has made it through the maximum heating and aerodynamic loads that it will experience as it returns. So if we make it through those, we're doing pretty well. Yeah.

[00:15:20] We're at 23 and a half thousand kilometers per hour speed. That's just a crazy number to think about. But as we keep progressing the mission, we are going to hear a call out when the ship is transonic and then subsonic. So transonic refers to the period of flight where the velocities of airflow surrounding and flowing past the vehicle are concurrently below at and above the speed of sound.

[00:15:49] Kind of in that Mach 0.8 to 1.2 range. And for reference, commercial jets have a range of cruising speeds, but mostly fly around Mach 0.74 to Mach 0.85. And after we hear the call out that Starship is transonic, we should hear the call out when Starship is subsonic. This refers to speeds that are much less than the speed of sound. So at this point in the flight, ship's velocity will be slowing down.

[00:16:15] Now, during this phase of the mission, the spacecraft's control surfaces, actuators and heat shields all performed as well as expected. We are going to attempt a landing burn. We'll see how they perform when we get there. We are going to be stressing the ship on the way in. We're going to intentionally do a maneuver where we're going to kind of pitch the nose up and deploy those aft, those bottom flaps to really put a lot of pressure on them. So we'll see how it does through that maneuver.

[00:16:42] And then we'll be doing kind of a final banking turn before we get to a landing burn. Of course, thinking long term here, Starship is designed to land on Mars where there are no runways or other humans to help out. That's why we're going with the propulsive landing instead of a more traditional means like parachutes. The Starship underwent a series of test maneuvers designed to stress various parts of the vehicle in order to test their structural limits. During the final descent, the vehicle also executed a novel banking maneuver for its landing burn.

[00:17:12] That was meant to mimic the trajectory and orientation needed for a launch tower catch on a return to star base. We kind of kicked the nose up to fully deploy those aft flaps to really get a good test of the structural strength of that part of the ship. We did that on one previous flight test on version two. We're going to try and do that today. Since we did skip the in-space burn, we're carrying a little bit of extra propellant in our header tanks up in the nose.

[00:17:40] And so that's going to put a little bit of extra stress on those forward flaps as we come in. So we will see if they're able to hold through through that reentry. Engine chill has started. So essentially what that means is we are prepping the landing engines by getting them down to temperature ahead of that landing burn. Yeah, and as we're going down through the atmosphere here, we are at about Mach 16.1.

[00:18:09] So still extremely fast, although we have scrubbed off substantial amount of our speed already. Altitude at a little less than 60 kilometers. All right. We're about eight minutes away from our targeted landing in splashdown time. Again, this is when the ship's going to start really getting put through the rain. Ship is approaching the end of the peak heating region. The highest temperature the Starship's going to see during its reentry.

[00:18:33] The forward flap on Starship helping to steer the ship down for its precise landing in the Indian Ocean. We've still got a couple maneuvers lined up where we're going to be really stressing the flaps on the ship. Ship has passed through the peak heating region. External temperatures are coming down. Wow. That is incredible news. As Dan mentioned, we were expecting this reentry to be super spicy,

[00:18:57] but excellent news that we're now past that period of peak heating and that now the external temperatures are starting to decrease. Those heat shield tiles on the belly of the ship really doing a ton of work to burn off all of that inertia that the vehicle had prior to reentering the atmosphere. We're starting to pick up a couple more G's here, so we're definitely entering the thicker part of the atmosphere where we're scrubbing off all that energy.

[00:19:26] Ship is at peak dynamic pressure. And we're now at peak pressure. Ship flap load test has started. Looks like it's holding. Again, the intent of that was to put just a lot of extra stress on those aft flaps. We are expecting the forward ones too to see a little bit of extra stress as we've got more propellant in our header tank. So the area right at the very nose of the ship. Ship flap load test is complete. And we're through that test. There we go. And we just did that test at Mach 7 just for reference there.

[00:19:55] So we are still going incredibly fast. We've got the ship is starting the RTLS banking maneuver. Essentially what that is, is when we come back to Starbase or when we plan to come back to Starbase, the trajectory is designed so we'll essentially swing out over the gulf and do a swoop maneuver to then come back to the towers for catch. And so we are doing that exact same maneuver as we head towards our targeted splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

[00:20:24] Yeah, and that call out there that we heard, RTLS, stands for return to launch site. So definitely a pretty cool thing we're demoing here on the ship. As in the future we are going to be trying to bring the ship back to the launch site, which is going to be absolutely insane. Dynamic pressure is coming down. All right, we heard there dynamic pressure coming down. And I'd say we're in a pretty good bank right now. Yeah, executing the power slide. We're about 90 seconds away from our anticipated landing burn.

[00:20:53] Starship is subsonic and is on target. We are on target for this precise landing in the Indian Ocean. This will once again be a soft splashdown. So we're sub 15 kilometers executing what we call the belly flip maneuver, the aft flap making minor corrections. Starship is turning for final approach to landing site. There we go. Minor corrections and a full turn. It then reignited two of its engines for a final landing burn. Coming up real soon.

[00:21:21] Again, going for a landing burn, trying to light two of these Raptor sea level engines. Passing. Landing burn startup. Landing burn startup. Two engines lit. Successful flip. Buoy cam. Starship is on it. Test flight 13 hardware is now being prepared for possible launch maybe as soon as July, depending on FAA approval.

[00:21:46] NASA is relying on a version of Starship called the HLS or Human Landing System as one of two manned lunar landers to dock with the Artemis Orion capsule in lunar orbit and transport humans down to the lunar surface. The agency has also contracted Blue Origin's blue moon lunar lander spacecraft to undertake the same mission. And it's indicated a willingness to fly with whichever land is ready when it's time for the Artemis 4 mission to fly in late 2028.

[00:22:13] Artemis 4 will return humans to the lunar surface, landing near the moon's south pole. But before that adventure, both Starship and Blue Moon will need to undertake low Earth orbit missions in mid to late next year in conjunction with the Artemis 3 mission to test the two lunar landers abilities to maneuver, rendezvous and dock with the Orion spacecraft in orbit.

[00:22:34] Artemis 3 will follow on from April's Artemis 2 mission, which saw four astronauts aboard an Orion spacecraft complete a successful 10-day mission around the moon and back. But as we're about to tell you, things for the Artemis program aren't quite on track. This is Space Time. Still to come, a massive rocket explosion at Cape Canaveral and how the planet Earth recycles its continents. All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:23:17] Blue Origin's latest New Glenn rocket has exploded in a spectacular ball of flame and fire during a static hot fire test at the Cape Canaveral Space Force base in Florida. The dramatic blast at Launch Complex 36 occurred during the standard pre-flight test program ahead of the NG-4 mission, which was slated for June the 4th. The test is designed to check out the launch vehicle's main engines with the booster still anchored to the launch pad.

[00:23:43] But instead of a successful test and shutdown, the 98-metre-tall New Glenn rocket suddenly exploded in a series of blasts, quickly erupting a massive billowing bright orange fireball sending towering plumes of flame and smoke lighting up the night sky. This was easily the biggest explosion ever seen at Cape Canaveral. The blast destroyed the launch pad and much of the surrounding infrastructure, which could take up to a year to rebuild.

[00:24:09] The event ignited a thousand tons of liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellant. It was so massive it showed up on weather radars and was heard 50 kilometres away in Orlando. Estimates suggest it was the equivalent of a one-kiloton nuclear bomb. Blue Origin boss Jeff Bezos says no one was injured in the blast and all personnel have now been accounted for.

[00:24:32] New Glenn had only recently been returned to flight status by the Federal Aviation Administration following a failure during its last launch in April when mission managers were forced to implement corrective measures after one of the upper stage BE-3U engines didn't achieve full thrust due to a propellant leak and hydraulic valve failure. That resulted in the mission payload, the Bluebird 7 communications satellite, being placed into the wrong orbit.

[00:24:56] And this latest launch would have been bigger, the heaviest payload ever carried by New Glenn, with some 48 satellites Amazon's low Earth orbit internet service broadband. Now NASA has been watching these latest developments closely and they're worried. See as we mentioned earlier, Blue Origin is one of the companies contracted by the agency to transport vehicles and equipment to the moon as part of the Artemis program.

[00:25:20] It was to launch the first of three payloads this year, kicking off work on America's $20 billion moon base. How quickly the cause of this explosion can be determined and how quickly any necessary design changes are made, not to mention the time it's going to take to rebuild the launch pad, will all be heavy on NASA's mind. New Glenn made its maiden flight in 2025. It's named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth,

[00:25:47] and is much bigger and more powerful than Blue Origin's New Shepard rockets, which are used for space tourism flights out of Texas. New Shepard's named after Alan Shepard, who was the first American to reach space. This is space time. Still to come, how planet Earth recycles the continents. And later in the science report, a new study shows that dentists have been drilling into people's teeth for almost 60,000 years. All that and more still to come on Space Time.

[00:26:30] A new study claims Earth's crust and mantle have been mixing together for billions of years, continuously reworking the planet's continents deep beneath the surface. The findings reported in the journal Nature show that Earth's continental crust can be dragged deep underground during continental collisions, and later rise again through relamination. The new study focuses on what happens when two continental plates collide before major mountain ranges such as the Himalayas and Alps.

[00:26:57] While geologists have long known that continental collisions build mountains and deform the crust, the new research shows that portions of continental crust can also be dragged deep down inside the Earth during subduction, before rising again and mixing with mantle rocks. The study's lead author Daniel Gomez-Frutas from the University of Portsmouth says the results show that continental collisions do far more than just lift mountains.

[00:27:21] They also create deep hybrid zones where crust and mantle materials blend together, producing magmas that fundamentally build the continents. This process, known as relamination, creates a hybrid crust-mantel source that can later generate post-collisional magmas, plutonic rocks that appear millions of years after continental collisions took place. Plutonic rocks are a type of igneous rock that forms when magmas cool and solidify deep beneath the Earth's surface.

[00:27:49] The authors used a combination of computer simulations and laboratory melting experiments to show that magmas produced by this hybrid source closely match the chemical composition of post-collisional igneous rocks found across the planet. The findings may also help solve a long-standing geological puzzle, why many post-collisional plutonic rocks resemble ancient rocks known as sanucatoids, which formed during the Achaean Aeon 3 billion years ago.

[00:28:15] The origin of modern-day plate tectonics is an ongoing matter of controversy for many in the scientific community. According to the authors, this similarity suggests that crust-mantel hybridization has been a fundamental process for billions of years, potentially pinpointing the earlier stages of plate tectonics on Earth. It implies that complex plate tectonic interactions involving continental subduction and crust-mantel mixing may have been active much earlier in Earth's history than previously understood.

[00:28:46] This is Space Time. And time out of tech. Another brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with a science report. A new study shows that dentists have been drilling teeth to treat cavities for almost 60,000 years.

[00:29:15] The findings reported in the journal PLAS One followed the discovery of a tooth in a Russian cave, suggesting that Neanderthals had the know-how to identify tooth infection and the motor skills to drill out the damage. The single molar tooth they discovered had a deep hole in its centre with the same shape and pattern that researchers were able to recreate by drilling into a modern tooth with a stone tool that was similar to the tools found in the cave. Needless to say, the procedure would have hurt.

[00:29:42] The authors say it's the first time such behaviour has been demonstrated outside Homo sapiens and it pushes back the date for the earliest use of this type of behaviour by more than 40,000 years. A new study has warned that even moderate increases in average temperatures heightens the likelihood of koala deaths. The findings are reported in the journal Biology Letters based on an analysis of some 12,000 koala rescues in New South Wales between the year 2000 and 2022.

[00:30:11] The authors found koala death increased once average temperatures exceeded 27 degrees Celsius. At exposure above 30 degrees Celsius increased the odds of death by up to three and a half times compared with individuals exposed to just 25 degrees Celsius. A new study warns that one in six kids who have access to the internet are now experiencing some form of online sexual exploitation or abuse.

[00:30:37] The findings reported in the journal Nature looked at a survey of nearly 12,000 children aged between 12 and 17 in 12 countries across Asia and Africa and say that over the areas surveyed these numbers are equivalent to more than 10 million kids worldwide experiencing this abuse. Now this included receiving unwanted sexual images, being pressured into sexual conversations, having private images shared without their consent or being blackmailed online.

[00:31:03] The authors found that children didn't disclose more than half of the incidents. And when they did, they tended to only tell their friends rather than their parents, the cops or kids' health lines. Rokid have now released their new smart glasses in Australia. With the details we're joined by Technology Editor Alex Zahar of Reut from TechAdvice.Life. They've got three models. One is a model that has no screen. It's just audio.

[00:31:29] The second one, you actually have a green screen like the old-fashioned late 1970s or 1980s green screens where you can look through the glasses and you can see this information appearing in front of your eyes. So you can use it as a teleprompter. You can chat with ChatGPT or Gemini. You can look at text that's in a different language and have it translated to English.

[00:31:52] You can actually have someone speaking to you in a different language and it's then translated into English or into French or some other language for you. I had somebody at the launch that I was at speaking to me in Chinese and I saw it translated to French. And you can also have as a pair of Bluetooth headphones so the sound comes out of the arms that go over your ears. You're supposed to also be able to use it as a turn-by-turn mat and you can slide your finger on the right arm to go through the different menus.

[00:32:19] You can say, hey, Rocket, and it will then listen to you and you can ask the questions which goes through to the AI. And it's only 49 grams so it looks like a normal pair of glasses but it has a camera that can take photographs and you have to look really closely to actually see it has a little camera there. So these are the sort of glasses that are going to become a lot more commonplace. They also had a third model which is spatial glasses where you put it on and you actually see an Android interface where you can have different apps and I brought up the browser.

[00:32:45] And, you know, I could see ITY that I write for and I could see the website there and it had a little puck in my hand. This is the third spatial glasses separate from the ones that had the green screen. And this is all full color and the little puck that's connected via a cable looks like an original 2007 iPhone. It's quite uncanny how it looks like that. And you can swivel your thumb around to control the pointer and you can use two fingers on the puck to then scroll up and down on web pages.

[00:33:11] So they had three different pairs of glasses but the one that they're really promoting is the one that is the AI slash AR glasses. Now, there are $1,099 to purchase. So, you know, it's not cheap but it's not super expensive either. You do need to pair it with your iPhone or your Android. And it's got about eight hours of battery life. Obviously, it's less if you're using it for English transcription where you get subtitles. It's the beginning of this change to when instead of us having to hold the device in our hands and look at that, we actually have it as a heads-up display.

[00:33:40] I mean, there's real utility to these glasses. Obviously, over time, they're going to get more advanced and better. And we do have glasses from Google and also the ones from Meta, which is Facebook, that have a color display. But we're seeing basically the beginnings of these devices becoming useful and they're only going to get cheaper in the future and have more features and have more battery life. That's Alex Zaharov-Royd from TechAdvice.Life. And this is Space Time.

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