Have you ever heard of SpaceX’s Starbase yet?
What is it? What does the name stand for and what will it become in the future?
What does SpaceX need an entire Starship city for?
Let’s find out!
My name is Felix, and I am your host for today’s episode of What about it!?
And as always, there’s been a lot going on in the space industry lately, so let ’s dive right in!
Starship Updates
There’s a question I’ve heard often in recent weeks and I want to take the time now to give an answer to it.
The question is “What is SpaceX’s Starbase?”.
It’s a name that’s been floating around for a while now and there are many theories as to what’s behind it.
So, today we’re going to take a look at what the name actually stands for and why it deserves its own name in the first place.
As always, Mauricio from RGV Aerial Photography has been up and flying above the SpaceX south Texas Starship construction site again,
taking some of the most beautiful pictures to date of what can already be called a mega project when it comes to rocket construction.
SpaceX has a few difficult tasks to accomplish in the near-term future.
Fully develop a working Starship with fast turnaround times, full reusability and on top of that perfect reliability for upcoming crewed flights.
And after that, the task list doesn’t get much easier.
After building the 100% reliable Starship, a rocket concept that’s never been done like this before,
Elon Musk and his team at SpaceX want to do something even crazier.
They want to build hundreds of Starships in quick succession.
Let’s take for example the Delta II rocket to put things into perspective.
ULA’s workhorse from 1988 to 2018 the Delta II was launched 155 times and deployed more than 220 payloads in its 30 years of service.
These numbers make it a high-volume production for a traditional expendable rocket.
As a fun fact, the original plan before the Delta II in the early 1980’s was to do every payload delivery with the back then brand-new Space Shuttle.
After the Challenger catastrophe in 1986 though it became clear that a second option would be needed, and the Delta II was born to fill the spot.
SpaceX’s vision for Starships is just slightly bigger though.
Building 1000 Starships to create a self-sustaining city on Mars is our mission, Elon Musk stated on December 30th of last year once again.
That is a scale which has never been there before in the rocket business.
And it’s even crazier if we consider the size of a Starship.
120 meters tall. 9-meter diameter.
100 + tons to low Earth orbit.
The design goal for Starships is to do 3 flights per day.
So, 1000 flights per year with a single Starship.
Musk added that this would yield one megaton to orbit per year for every 10 Starships.
And if you think that the numbers can’t get any crazier, Musk keeps surprising with his statements.
Building 100 Starships per year gets to 1000 in 10 years or 100 megatons of payload per year or maybe around 100.000 people per Earth-Mars orbital sync.
Those are numbers that normally aren’t associated with spaceflight or rockets.
Megatons of payload. 100.000s of people traveling to another planet.
That’s new. There just isn’t anything to compare it to and that’s why all those comparisons you’ll find on the internet look so out of place and kind of funny.
This for example is Tony Bela’s latest work.
It’s depicting an Orion capsule docking with a Lunar Starship.
Both from the Artemis program.
But they… I mean… It just doesn’t look like it’s made for the same task.
The Orion capsule looks like a docking adapter or a forward thruster array or a tiny service module of some sort.
Don’t be confused though. The Orion capsule will be a fully self-sustained vehicle,
capable of human spaceflight to the Moon with all it needs and takes similar to the Apollo capsules from the late 60’s.
Bigger than an Apollo capsule, but slightly smaller than a Starship.
Then, on March 2nd, Elon Musk tweeted this.
Creating the city of Starbase, Texas.
And there’s only one reason why he would have said this.
SpaceX wants to build a city. With everything there’s to it.
Schools, doctors, recreational areas, housing.
The whole deal. A little enclave for those who build Starships.
Possibly with hundreds, maybe even thousands of people living and working there.
And SpaceX has already started the construction a while ago.
They still have some time until they have to have it finished but work is already underway.
What you’re looking at here is Boca Chica Village and it’s slowly changing.
Roads are being added, terrain is being graded and prepared for new buildings.
Weems Street, the old entrance into Boca Chica Village,
is being extended further south and has received a major upgrade to a proper and nice-looking road.
Over time all the properties you can see in this picture are going to be houses owned and operated by SpaceX.
And this is, where the confusion comes in.
Starbase is not being built to support this.
This is the current SpaceX Starship production site, capable of producing Starship prototypes on a constant basis.
We’re right now at the peak of all this.
SpaceX is churning out prototype after prototype and launching them on a monthly basis.
More and more prototypes, faster and faster development.
Sometimes even so fast that it seems like SpaceX would be wasting them like with the very confusing SN11 launch.
Make no mistake though. This is going to come to an end and we’re not far from it anymore.
SpaceX is about to transition into the next phase of Starship development.
The party is about to end!
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This is, where Starbase comes into play.
If you think that what we’re seeing here right now is a lot of action, you might be slightly wrong.
This is nothing yet. This is a lonely prototype sitting on the Test pad, waiting for its second flight.
Starship SN15. It’s glorious to see them fly, but imagine the same Starship flying thrice a day.
To be able to accomplish a high production rate of 100 Starships per year,
which would mean a bit more than 8 Starships per month and hundreds upon hundreds of launches at the same time,
SpaceX will need a city to support the efforts.
That’s Starbase.
Almost all of what you’re seeing here will be taken down in a few months from now if everything works out.
As soon as SpaceX nears the final version of it’s Starship prototype,
these tents will go away and make room for the first ever built Starship Gigafactory.
Large footprint buildings will be erected instead of tents.
Even more space will be cleared, covering the entire available land.
And thousands of workers will be living, eating and building at SpaceX’s Starbase.
That’s the next step we’re about to see in Boca Chica.
The transition from prototyping the Starship to prototyping the factory that will build hundreds of them.
And even if it might sound strange, this can be an even more difficult task.
Remember Elon’s statement? Production is hard, prototypes are easy.
Musk knows, what he’s talking about and he has a lot of respect for the upcoming task.
Building a prototype and mass production are two completely different things.
If you want to mass produce a piece of hardware or in the case of what you’re seeing here, an electric car,
the machine that builds the car is infinitely more complex than the car itself.
So, if building a Starship prototype is hard in your opinion, imagine you’d have to build all the machines that would mass produce the prototype.
A bit more than 8 per month with all the nuts and bolts.
Kilometers of cable, engines, pressure tested tanks, avionics and in the end even life support, crew cabins,
storage space and all that’s needed to sustain the life of a large crew in transit to and on the surface of another planet.
That’s what Elon means with “production is hard”.
And on top of that SpaceX will need to be able to support a large amount of launches.
In fact, Starships won’t take long to surpass the total amount of rockets ever launched into space if SpaceX’s plan works out.
On one side, SpaceX is working hard preparing the orbital launch site for the upcoming task of doing the last step of prototype development.
Orbital flights, reentry, landings, reusability, and fast launch cadence.
No easy tasks to accomplish, but SpaceX has an advantage here.
Where building and launching a Starship prototype for first flights was something completely new for SpaceX,
as the prototypes needed to be constructed in a different and much cheaper way than Falcon 9 rockets,
landing and recovering something from orbit are tasks SpaceX has done before with Falcon 9 and the Dragon Capsules.
The skydive flap approach seems to be working fine.
No Starship has had problems with it, so we can likely put a checkmark on that.
In fact, if we look at all the tests done since Starship number 9 it becomes apparent, how routinely SpaceX is testing prototypes by now.
After the successful SN15 flight, SpaceX is now most likely preparing it for a second flight.
A first for a prototype Starship but a must for the final Product.
I am already looking forward to seeing that next yellow line on the SN15 progress bar, indicating a hopefully successful second flight.
My estimate right now is that we will see more testing here within the next two weeks.
Weather has been the limiting factor recently with lots of rain.
Next up on the difficult task list are reentry and landing orbital Starships and boosters safely and ready for an insanely fast turnaround.
Where on the last episode there were only pieces of the Liebherr Power Boom setup, today I can present you with an almost finished Frankencrane.
The color scheme might trigger your OCD, but the crane will be capable of achieving the next step in the construction.
To lift these on top of each other until the launch tower reaches a height of more than 140 meters.
We’re talking hundreds of tons per segment.
It’s not clear yet as to when SpaceX wants to start stacking the segments,
but it shouldn’t be long anymore until we can finally see the largest structure in Boca Chica yet grow into the sky.
The schedule is tight and if SpaceX really wants to do an orbital launch by July 1st, they’ll have to hurry.
Luckily, it’s not a hard deadline and even if the date slips into September, October or November, SpaceX will still very much be on track.
The second launch site of interest of course is one of SpaceX’s two Sea launch platforms.
The plan here is to have fully equipped launch platforms out at sea to be able to launch Starships more often with less impact on local residents.
And work continues. Mostly under deck, but signs are visible on the deck, if we take a closer look.
This is a side-by-side comparison of the same sight and with the same angle taken on March 11th, so more than two months ago, and on May 17th.
At first sight both look very similar, but if we take a closer look, the differences become obvious.
Parts are being moved. Pipes are being removed and piled up on deck.
In late February Musk tweeted that one of the two platforms being repurposed right now might be in limited operation by the end of the year.
The question is just, which one it will be.
Deimos at Brownsville harbor and very close to Boca Chica already or Phobos, located at Pascagoula Mississippi?
Seth Peterson, a community member, was able to send me a few new pictures of Phobos.
These were taken on May 13th and show the latest progress done in Pascagoula.
And it very much looks like Phobos is in the lead when it comes to visible work done.
As can be seen here, the large girder tower or Derrick has almost completely been removed by now and the heli pad is half gone too.
Lots of work is happening here already and the oil rigs deck buildings or substructure is under heavy construction.
It’s still completely unknown as to what this will look like in the end.
Will SpaceX get rid of most of the Substructure and replace it with own buildings?
Will they keep most of it and repurpose the already existing structures?
Time will tell and the occasional Elon Tweet might shed some light on it as well.
The last remaining puzzle piece to get this final Prototype phase on the road is the orbital fuel farm at the south Texas launch site.
It’s necessary to fuel a full stack Starship and Super Heavy right before an orbital launch and it’s making fast progress.
Work is almost done here, even if it might look different.
Don’t be confused by all the dirt around the structures.
That’s the last and quickest step.
The last tank foundations are being built right now and after that, the remaining GSE tanks can be stacked on top.
A few more details will be added, everything will be closed up and then comes testing.
After that it’s ready for that first orbital flight.
And all of this still just is mid-term planning.
In the end it will include a Starship Giga Factory, thousands of people living and working here.
More than 8 new Starships per month and constant progress.
Right now, we’re just looking at the beginning of the end of the prototyping phase.
Starbase is still to come, and it will be a sight to behold.
Today’s Episode included works from RGV Aerial Photography, Tony Bela, Seth Peterson, Cosmic Perspective and BocaCharts!
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