SpaceX is performing the final work on the first ever orbital Starship.
It took them 3 months. How fast will the mass production of Starships and Super Heavy boosters be?
Let’s find out!
My name is Felix, and I am your host for today's episode of What about it!?
And today, we'll dive into the first orbital Starship.
Its payload capability right away for the first orbital flight and most importantly how fast the coming Star Factory will produce Starships and
super heavy boosters! So, let’s dive right in!
Starship Updates
Before we get into SpaceX, orbital Starship 24, the coming Starfactory and the Mega bay and the rate of future Starship mass production,
I want to give a little shout out to you.
Yes, you right there, watching this channel right now.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart and from the whole team.
This channel was started on May 27th of 2019.
This is episode 217, not counting any of our live streams.
In total I did 282 uploads in just under 3 years and an era is coming to its end.
We’re leaving Germany and we’re heading to Florida.
One week and we’ll be on the plane.
All thanks to you. All thanks to so much help, support, likes and incredible discussions we all had here on YouTube and on Twitter.
After I recorded this, I’ll start packing up the house in which all of this began.
It’s crazy to say the least, but we’re looking forward to so many new things.
There won’t be an episode until the first week of May, but that one will come directly from Starbase, Texas.
And that’s the best evidence for why we’re doing this.
WAI is moving to the source. For the first time in the history of What about it, we’ll be able to cover events,
give insight views and uncover the plans of the big players in the space industry directly from where it all happens.
Sorry for this super long intro.
Now, let’s do this one last time from Germany!
As its tradition, we’ll start off with SpaceX and oh boy, they’ve been busy again.
Booster 8 stacking is progressing rapidly.
As you can see here on Nasa Spaceflight’s latest footage,
the Lox tank section including the common dome got stacked onto aft section 4. Since the whole methane tank is already assembled,
this doesn’t leave much stacking work left to be done.
Booster 7 and 8 visually are identically looking so far.
There is not much difference. So, the question if Booster 7 or 8 will send the first orbital Starship, likely Ship 24, to space is hard to answer.
I’ve stated the question before and right now the only indicator I could see, simply is the speed at which SpaceX is stacking booster 8.
Why are they doing this so quickly and are there enough Raptor 2 engines for two Super Heavy boosters?
Honestly, that’s unlikely. There are Engines arriving, but I doubt that there are 66 Raptor 2 engines on site at Starbase.
So, maybe SpaceX is just using Booster 7 as a test candidate and booster 8 will fly?
As always, I’ll keep a look out for more information for you!
The next question surrounding the orbital flight would definitely be if it will deliver payload.
This is ship 24’s payload bay.
I talked about it before.
This is what that payload section is capable of doing.
It’s for Starlink satellite deployment and it’s a very unique approach to say the least and completely different from what SpaceX does with Starlink sats right now.
If SpaceX installs a payload dispenser into ship 24, would they use it on their first orbital Starship flight?
It would be risky and costly, if they lose the payload because something went wrong on that first flight.
It would only make sense, if SpaceX was incredibly confident in the Starship reaching orbit.
After all, a reentry comes after the payload separation so it doesn’t have to be taken into account for a payload delivery.
There’s no doubt anymore that SpaceX will want to at least send the payload dispenser up.
It recently got an outer door and it’s been stacked onto it.
As said on an earlier episode, the downcomer is already installed inside the tank section and ship 24 is now only missing the common dome section.
After that the internals get worked on and the outside needs finishing.
This process usually takes around “two weeks”, pun intended.
Joke aside, though, SpaceX is very close to finishing ship 24 and booster 8.
My bet right now is on Ship 24 and booster 8 as the combination for the orbital flight and not booster 7. What do you think?
What’s your dream team for that orbital flight?
As always, tell me in the comments!
As said in the beginning, I’ll be at Starbase for the third time now in the first week of May.
Both Ship 24 and Booster 8 might already be at the launch site by then, which shows SpaceX’s progress speed.
Pretty impressive. Now, let’s talk Starfactory and SpaceX’s new Mega Bay.
After all they will be the core elements for SpaceX to transition from prototyping to mass production and they might give us some first numbers
to estimate the rate of mass production.
It’s all about scale. Musk said it many times.
It’s one thing to build a prototype.
It’s a totally different thing to mass produce it.
You have to build the machine that builds the machine.
TijnM just released a stunning new 3-minute-long animation of a crewed Starship flight to Mars.
Even though this might still be a bit into the future, the animation makes you dream.
Fantastic job, Tijn M. Well worth watching.
A link is in the description. To turn this dream into reality, SpaceX will need to mass produce Starships.
Not only, because they’ll likely need many hundred ships, but also to drive down costs.
The more often you produce something with the same machine, the less expensive it will be.
This rule applies to almost anything manufactured today.
Mass production is very important but also very hard to achieve.
Now, SpaceX has started laying the foundation for the coming Starship mass production.
The Starfactory. Photographed here by Mauricio from RGV, whom I discussed these very pictures with on Saturday in his weekly review stream,
it shows the foundation being laid out and first columns and roof elements already on site.
As you can see, I’ve talked about this a few times now.
These are pictures from RGV at various stages of the construction and from various episodes.
And they show the estimated size of the Factory once finished.
It’ll be massive. And it will give SpaceX much more space to build the machine that builds Starships in return.
Raw materials in on one side and finished Starship sections out on the other.
And after that? Our favorite step.
Stacking! And where there are many sections being finished in rapid succession, there needs to be lots of space for stacking.
Which brings us to these little buildings.
High Bay and Mega Bay. Sole purpose?
Receive as many Starship and Booster segments as possible and stack them as fast as possible to assemble SpaceX’s Starships and Super Heavy Boosters for upcoming missions.
This picture from inside the high bay is a good example for mass production upgrades even inside the bays.
See this little white arm. It’s a robotic welder and it’s recently been installed.
It’s used to weld freshly stacked sections together.
Faster, cheaper and more precise.
But how fast exactly are we talking?
How many Starships will SpaceX be able to produce at the same time?
We can now get a rough number thanks to Lolomatico 3D and 2 Legit 2 quit 3D,
two very talented but not yet widely known 3D artists in the SpaceX and spaceflight community.
They sent me some exclusive renders for today’s show.
This render for example. It’s SpaceX’s Stargate building, just to give you an idea of how large we’re talking,
and the high and mega bay side by side as they are right now.
Just keep in mind, that the Stargate building, used as office Space, already is reasonably large.
And since the larger and newer mega bay now is almost finished, we can start estimating and that’s what we’ll do.
After all, numbers are what enables us to predict SpaceX’s future plans so much better.
Everything is to scale here, thanks to Lolomatico 3D and 2 legit to quit 3D.
Even though the high bay was once celebrated by the Starship community as a monumental building it does pose a problem.
Starships are monumental as well.
And even though the high bay is a monster of a building, it only has room to comfortably work on two Starships or boosters.
Two is not that much for the future scale Elon Musk wants to achieve and the Starfactory will likely be capable of a much greater output of segments.
So here comes Mega Bay. Let’s see, what the thing is capable of?
How fast will the Starfactory need to be to utilize its full capacity?
So, this is the Mega Bay from below and from an angle, not even Elon Musk himself could give us.
It’s the current state of the building with the half-finished roof, but that doesn’t bother us for what we’re about to do.
Switching to the straight upward view makes the trick possible.
How many Starships and boosters will SpaceX be able to fit in?
Seven. Well, at least by available space.
The question is, though, if the SpaceX crew would still be able to work in there, if they’d cramp 7 boosters or Starships inside.
So, this is just a theoretical test.
Seven, if it’s just storage space and no work needs to be done.
Then, how about 6? Already looks better.
This way, they’d likely be able to perform work on the ships and boosters.
Still very cramped, though. What if they want to take a booster from the second row out?
Yeah, take out at least two boosters to get one finished one out?
Likely not. So, six is still too much.
Then how about this. Four ships or boosters.
Two on each side. Enough space to work and to move them around through the middle corridor.
This likely is it. The new mega bay will likely give SpaceX room for an additional 4 spots to stack ships and boosters.
Together with Highbay and Midbay this would leave SpaceX with a total of 6 full stacking spots and two to work on smaller stacks inside the
mid bay. Doesn’t sound like much?
Wait for it.
From this we can roughly extrapolate, how quick Starbase will be at max capacity after the Starfactory is finished,
and if SpaceX doesn't build more bays.
The stacking of a Starship from start to finish right now takes around 3 months.
Let’s say, SpaceX optimizes this down to 2 months within the next year, which seems to be on the lower end of what could be possible.
We’d arrive at a maximum of around 7 Starships or boosters every two months.
This would get us to a Starship every 8 days or almost every week.
Doable? If SpaceX manages to crank out 6 Raptor 2 engines at their McGregor Raptor factory per week?
Yes. Now here comes the greatest number.
No joke. That would mean roughly 42 Starships per year from Starbase.
Seriously, Elon? The coincidences are kind of obvious by now.
Of course, these numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt.
They’re really rough estimates, but they give us a first clue as to what the Starfactory will in theory be capable of.
42 Starships in one year would mean 420 in ten.
That’s a little less than half of What Musk wants to achieve,
but it still is a ridiculously large number and SpaceX currently is building a second Starship factory at Kennedy Space Center.
It’s an eye opener for what SpaceX actually wants to achieve.
42 reusable Starships and boosters per year would by far be the highest production value of any rocket in the history of Spaceflight and that’s
SpaceX’s plan. This is it. Camera off until our move to Florida is done and until I do my Episode directly from Starbase in the first week of
May. Again, thank you so much for all your support we received here in Germany.
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