"So I think the probability of the next flight working — or getting to orbit — is much higher than the last one," Musk said on Saturday with Vance while discussing SpaceX's Starship.

"Maybe it's like 60%; it depends on how well we do at stage separation," Musk noted. Recall, ahead of Starship's maiden flight on April 20, the world's richest man placed '50-50 odds' of it reaching orbit. After a half-dozen engines shut down or never started and the rocket never separated from its first stage, SpaceX activated a self-destruct system to blow it apart.

For the next flight, which could be only months away and would need to be cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration, Musk said the stage separation system had been modified:

"We made sort of a late-breaking change that's really quite significant to the way that stage separation works," Musk said, describing the switch to hot staging.