The Real Reason SpaceX Is Building A Starship Gigafactory!

Last video: The Real Reason SpaceX Developed The Starship!
https://youtu.be/nPUsYjiLG_Y

►The Tesla Space Merch Store Is Live! Shop our first release while quantities last: https://shop.theteslaspace.com/
► Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theteslaspace
► Join Our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/zfMNSnuRQN
► Subscribe to our other channel, The Space Race: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeMcDx6-rOq_RlKSPehk2tQ
► Subscribe to The Tesla Space newsletter: https://www.theteslaspace.com
► Use my referral link to purchase a Tesla product and get up to $1,300 off and other exclusive benefits. https://ts.la/trevor61038

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJjAIBWeY022ZNj_Cp_6wAw?sub_confirmation=1

Welcome to the Tesla Space, where we share the latest news, rumors, and insights into all things Tesla, Space X, Elon Musk, and the future! We'll be showing you all of the new details around the Tesla Model 3 2023, Tesla Model Y 2023, along with the Tesla Cybertruck when it finally arrives, it's already ordered!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/TheTeslaSpace
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeslaSpace

Business Email: tesla@ellify.com

#Tesla #TheTeslaSpace #Elon

Elon Musk is building a giant Starship rocket factory at the SpaceX testing facility of Starbase, Texas.

This first-of-its-kind operation will mass-produce the Starship and Super Heavy at a pace that has never before even been dreamt of in the aerospace industry.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell has already set the ambitious goal of building 1 rocket every day.

In order to accomplish this, SpaceX is going to need to leverage highly efficient advanced manufacturing techniques, much like the kind of process that has been developed at Tesla over the past 3 years with their Gigafactories.

So we are expecting to see a lot of crossover between the 2 Musk-owned companies.

And that leaves us with the question, what would the SpaceX Starship equivalent of a Tesla Gigafactory look like?

The ambition here to build 1 Starship rocket every day is pretty extreme, wildly unprecedented, unfathomable even, but the same would have been said a decade ago about Elon Musk's claim that Tesla would build 1 million electric cars in a year.

Now the company has done exactly that and much more, They'll probably build 2 million cars this year alone.

And this isn't even just Elon Musk talking.

We know that he's prone to saying crazy things, but when we are talking about Gwynne Shotwell, the SpaceX president is known for her practical approach and ability to nail down multi-billion dollar government contracts.

Earlier this year, Shotwell told reporters, quote, why can't we build a rocket every day?

That's what we are focusing on with Starship, is attacking every part of the production process to be able to build lots of these machines.

And this is just not the kind of language that you would ever hear from the head of any legacy aerospace company.

The closest comparable rocket to Starship is NASA's Space Launch System.

The SLS design requires components from Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Aerojet Rocketdyne, all of which are manufactured at different points around the United States and then moved cross-country to be assembled together in Florida.

The best that they can muster from the SLS is 1 rocket per year at a cost of around 4 billion dollars per launch.

And now SpaceX is flexing that they could build a bigger, better rocket every day of the week?

Something that Elon will often speak about at Tesla is the difference between building a prototype and mass producing a final product.

The process of designing and building prototypes is relatively easy compared to how preposterously difficult it is to manufacture that product at scale.

Take the Cybertruck as a perfect example.

Tesla designed and built the first Cybertruck 4 years ago.

It's taken them this long to figure out how they can get the product and all of its components to a place where it can be effectively mass produced at an acceptable cost and high volume.

SpaceX is currently in a very similar place with the Starship.

They've built quite a few prototypes so far, most of them have either exploded or been scrapped and recycled before they even got the chance to explode.

1 Starship and Super Heavy stack even made a valiant attempt to reach outer space, but unfortunately and unsurprisingly, it also exploded.

No 2 Starships or super heavy boosters have ever been built the same.

Each 1 is either an evolution or an experiment.

With every fireball, SpaceX gets 1 step closer to figuring out how Starship wants to be built.

This phase of the development process demands maximum freedom with manufacturing.

That's why SpaceX is still making their Starships by hand for the most part, using makeshift tents and doing a lot of their work out in the open for everyone to see, because the way things are done today will not be the way they are done tomorrow.

They need to be able to clean the slate at any moment.

This is why SpaceX is just now beginning to work on their first real Starship factory and production line.

The time is going to come relatively soon, where Starship is flying to space and coming back down again safely and reliably.

Only then will we know that the Starship design is finally ready for mass production.

To get an idea of what is going to happen inside a Starship factory, we can look at the construction process that SpaceX has been using so far.

SpaceX has constructed a series of vertical assembly buildings at Starbase, the low bay, the mid bay, the high bay, and the mega bay.

Although the low bay has just recently been demolished and a second mega bay has already begun construction, so that's a clear sign of progress being made.

These structures are used to assemble the rocket stages by stacking prefabricated ring sections and welding them together.

Elon Musk has said the reason that SpaceX has kept making these buildings wider over time is to provide more workstations within each bay.

This way, more ships and boosters can be assembled simultaneously.

The process for assembling rockets inside these bays has started to become much more automated as time goes on.

Manual hand welding has been replaced by robotic arms and SpaceX has begun incorporating giant turntable machines that allow them to spin the rocket around while work is being done.

So a worker or machine never has to move from 1 side of the rocket to the other, the turntable will simply bring the far side to them.

So you can think of these tall buildings kind of like general assembly areas, while the more intricate manufacturing happens in the lower areas.

In the beginning phase of Starbase, SpaceX technicians worked out of 3 long tents acting as their main production lines.

There are a couple of smaller peripheral tents where fabrication work is done as well, but all of these tents are set to be replaced as the permanent factory structure continues to expand.

Even the 3 main production tents that have been a fixture of Starbase since the beginning are currently in the process of being removed from the site as manufacturing transitions over to the Star Factory.

Making rockets in tents may seem like a bit of a joke, but this is pretty similar to how Tesla learned to build their Model 3 and Model Y.

Instead of trying to conform to the existing factory space that they had, Tesla set up giant tents in the parking lot and started figuring it out from scratch.

This is how they were able to integrate brand new manufacturing techniques like their gigapress casting machine.

These are way too gigantic to just drop into an existing factory floor, so Tesla set their first gigapress up under a tent at Fremont and started using it to build cars.

Once they knew that it worked for their purpose, then they could design their new Giga Factories to be built around the Giga Press machines.

The manufacturing process starts when SpaceX receives their raw materials.

They get giant rolls of 304L stainless steel that are then cut to length, formed into rings, and welded.

These become the straight sides of the ship and booster.

For the curved bits like the nose cone and the interior domes that form the tops and bottoms of fuel tanks SpaceX receives panels of stamped and stretch formed stainless steel that they weld together The 3 main tents are basically divided between producing the top, middle, and bottom sections of the starship.

1 tent is filled with raptor engines, and is dedicated to the lower thrust section of the ship and booster.

The middle tent is home to the ring sections and domes that make up the body and fuel tanks of the starship.

Each section is between 3 and 5 rings of steel welded together.

The tent is so small that the sleeving of the ring segments over top of the domes is usually just done outside in the open air.

Each section is then prepared for its specific role with a range of cutouts, plumbing and reinforcements.

Finished sections for the upper stage ship are also fitted with thermal insulation and heat shield tiles here in the tent.

The third tent is then dedicated to producing nose cones.

These are made from long pieces of stretch-formed stainless steel that are welded together along vertical lines.

The nose section is also fitted with its heat shield before rolling out.

So this process allows SpaceX to manufacture the key segments of the ship and booster simultaneously on the ground, and then they are all brought together at the megabays for final assembly.

The segments are stacked, welded, and then given finishing touches like the wings and actuators.

The Star Factory began to take shape a few months ago as SpaceX laid the foundation for a permanent structure in line with their 3 primary tents.

As that first phase of the Star Factory reached completion, work was already underway to clear out the space directly behind the tent row by demolishing their low bay and propulsion building.

This has now become the foundation for Star Factory Phase 2, which is going to expand all the way from the inside edge of the production area out to the main road.

So, what we're looking at right now for the Star Factory building is a kind of L shape, with the longest edge measuring about 800 feet.

That's combined with a 60 foot tall roofline.

So that's obviously going to make the manufacturing process much easier by having 1 continuous production floor instead of 3 separate tents, giving SpaceX somewhere between 2 and 3 times more covered floor space.

It also gives them significantly more vertical space.

Because the tents are pyramid shaped, they only reach their full height down the middle, and they're pretty low towards the edges.

In theory, that means SpaceX could make each segment a little taller, and therefore have fewer sections that need to be stacked in the assembly bay.

Then the final Star Factory layout will expand to be more or less square in shape, so around 800 feet by 800 feet.

That works out to probably around 5 times more total production space than what the company had available when they first started building starships.

As the 3 primary tents are cleared out, we'll likely see the foundation laid for the third and final phase of Star Factory construction.

So this is how SpaceX eventually gets to a point where they are producing 1 Starship every day.

By having such a massive production space, they can be working on several new rockets all at the same time, building out these prefabricated segments, then the final assembly process is as easy as stacking them up and installing some finishing touches before shipping them off down to the launch site.

And this massive production volume is going to be what SpaceX will need for Starship to live up to Elon's grand vision.

Not only will Starship replace all of the existing SpaceX fleet, the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon Capsule, in addition to becoming the primary muscle of NASA's Artemis moon landing program.

But Starship is also the backbone of Elon's mission to establish a self-sustaining city on the planet Mars.

The Star Factory is critical to making all of that become a reality.

Don't forget to give this video a thumbs up today if you liked it, that is so important for getting our content out to more people.

If you enjoy the content then you'd probably also enjoy our weekly newsletter, so sign up with the link down below at theteslaspace.com.

A huge thank you to all of our Patreon supporters who are listed on the screen now.

You help us make the best content we can and we really appreciate it.


Speaker 0: Elon Musk is building a giant Starship rocket factory at the SpaceX testing facility of Starbase, Texas. This first-of-its-kind operation will mass-produce the Starship and Super Heavy at a pace that has never before even been dreamt of in the aerospace industry. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell has already set the ambitious goal of building 1 rocket every day. In order to accomplish this, SpaceX is going to need to leverage highly efficient advanced manufacturing techniques, much like the kind of process that has been developed at Tesla over the past 3 years with their Gigafactories. So we are expecting to see a lot of crossover between the 2 Musk-owned companies.

And that leaves us with the question, what would the SpaceX Starship equivalent of a Tesla Gigafactory look like? The ambition here to build 1 Starship rocket every day is pretty extreme, wildly unprecedented, unfathomable even, but the same would have been said a decade ago about Elon Musk's claim that Tesla would build 1 million electric cars in a year. Now the company has done exactly that and much more, They'll probably build 2 million cars this year alone. And this isn't even just Elon Musk talking. We know that he's prone to saying crazy things, but when we are talking about Gwynne Shotwell, the SpaceX president is known for her practical approach and ability to nail down multi-billion dollar government contracts.

Earlier this year, Shotwell told reporters, quote, why can't we build a rocket every day? That's what we are focusing on with Starship, is attacking every part of the production process to be able to build lots of these machines. And this is just not the kind of language that you would ever hear from the head of any legacy aerospace company. Let's just try and get some perspective. The closest comparable rocket to Starship is NASA's Space Launch System.

The SLS design requires components from Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Aerojet Rocketdyne, all of which are manufactured at different points around the United States and then moved cross-country to be assembled together in Florida. The best that they can muster from the SLS is 1 rocket per year at a cost of around 4 billion dollars per launch. And now SpaceX is flexing that they could build a bigger, better rocket every day of the week? How could that even be possible? Something that Elon will often speak about at Tesla is the difference between building a prototype and mass producing a final product.

The process of designing and building prototypes is relatively easy compared to how preposterously difficult it is to manufacture that product at scale. Take the Cybertruck as a perfect example. Tesla designed and built the first Cybertruck 4 years ago. It's taken them this long to figure out how they can get the product and all of its components to a place where it can be effectively mass produced at an acceptable cost and high volume. SpaceX is currently in a very similar place with the Starship.

They've built quite a few prototypes so far, most of them have either exploded or been scrapped and recycled before they even got the chance to explode. 1 Starship and Super Heavy stack even made a valiant attempt to reach outer space, but unfortunately and unsurprisingly, it also exploded. This is a good thing. This is called iterative design. No 2 Starships or super heavy boosters have ever been built the same.

Each 1 is either an evolution or an experiment. With every fireball, SpaceX gets 1 step closer to figuring out how Starship wants to be built. This phase of the development process demands maximum freedom with manufacturing. That's why SpaceX is still making their Starships by hand for the most part, using makeshift tents and doing a lot of their work out in the open for everyone to see, because the way things are done today will not be the way they are done tomorrow. They need to be able to clean the slate at any moment.

This is why SpaceX is just now beginning to work on their first real Starship factory and production line. The time is going to come relatively soon, where Starship is flying to space and coming back down again safely and reliably. Only then will we know that the Starship design is finally ready for mass production. To get an idea of what is going to happen inside a Starship factory, we can look at the construction process that SpaceX has been using so far. SpaceX has constructed a series of vertical assembly buildings at Starbase, the low bay, the mid bay, the high bay, and the mega bay.

Although the low bay has just recently been demolished and a second mega bay has already begun construction, so that's a clear sign of progress being made. These structures are used to assemble the rocket stages by stacking prefabricated ring sections and welding them together. Elon Musk has said the reason that SpaceX has kept making these buildings wider over time is to provide more workstations within each bay. This way, more ships and boosters can be assembled simultaneously. The process for assembling rockets inside these bays has started to become much more automated as time goes on.

Manual hand welding has been replaced by robotic arms and SpaceX has begun incorporating giant turntable machines that allow them to spin the rocket around while work is being done. So a worker or machine never has to move from 1 side of the rocket to the other, the turntable will simply bring the far side to them. So you can think of these tall buildings kind of like general assembly areas, while the more intricate manufacturing happens in the lower areas. In the beginning phase of Starbase, SpaceX technicians worked out of 3 long tents acting as their main production lines. There are a couple of smaller peripheral tents where fabrication work is done as well, but all of these tents are set to be replaced as the permanent factory structure continues to expand.

Even the 3 main production tents that have been a fixture of Starbase since the beginning are currently in the process of being removed from the site as manufacturing transitions over to the Star Factory. Making rockets in tents may seem like a bit of a joke, but this is pretty similar to how Tesla learned to build their Model 3 and Model Y. Instead of trying to conform to the existing factory space that they had, Tesla set up giant tents in the parking lot and started figuring it out from scratch. This is how they were able to integrate brand new manufacturing techniques like their gigapress casting machine. These are way too gigantic to just drop into an existing factory floor, so Tesla set their first gigapress up under a tent at Fremont and started using it to build cars.

Once they knew that it worked for their purpose, then they could design their new Giga Factories to be built around the Giga Press machines. The manufacturing process starts when SpaceX receives their raw materials. They get giant rolls of 304L stainless steel that are then cut to length, formed into rings, and welded. These become the straight sides of the ship and booster. For the curved bits like the nose cone and the interior domes that form the tops and bottoms of fuel tanks SpaceX receives panels of stamped and stretch formed stainless steel that they weld together The 3 main tents are basically divided between producing the top, middle, and bottom sections of the starship.

1 tent is filled with raptor engines, and is dedicated to the lower thrust section of the ship and booster. The middle tent is home to the ring sections and domes that make up the body and fuel tanks of the starship. Each section is between 3 and 5 rings of steel welded together. The tent is so small that the sleeving of the ring segments over top of the domes is usually just done outside in the open air. Each section is then prepared for its specific role with a range of cutouts, plumbing and reinforcements.

Finished sections for the upper stage ship are also fitted with thermal insulation and heat shield tiles here in the tent. The third tent is then dedicated to producing nose cones. These are made from long pieces of stretch-formed stainless steel that are welded together along vertical lines. The nose section is also fitted with its heat shield before rolling out. So this process allows SpaceX to manufacture the key segments of the ship and booster simultaneously on the ground, and then they are all brought together at the megabays for final assembly.

The segments are stacked, welded, and then given finishing touches like the wings and actuators. The Star Factory began to take shape a few months ago as SpaceX laid the foundation for a permanent structure in line with their 3 primary tents. As that first phase of the Star Factory reached completion, work was already underway to clear out the space directly behind the tent row by demolishing their low bay and propulsion building. This has now become the foundation for Star Factory Phase 2, which is going to expand all the way from the inside edge of the production area out to the main road. So, what we're looking at right now for the Star Factory building is a kind of L shape, with the longest edge measuring about 800 feet.

That's combined with a 60 foot tall roofline. So that's obviously going to make the manufacturing process much easier by having 1 continuous production floor instead of 3 separate tents, giving SpaceX somewhere between 2 and 3 times more covered floor space. It also gives them significantly more vertical space. Because the tents are pyramid shaped, they only reach their full height down the middle, and they're pretty low towards the edges. In theory, that means SpaceX could make each segment a little taller, and therefore have fewer sections that need to be stacked in the assembly bay.

Then the final Star Factory layout will expand to be more or less square in shape, so around 800 feet by 800 feet. That works out to probably around 5 times more total production space than what the company had available when they first started building starships. As the 3 primary tents are cleared out, we'll likely see the foundation laid for the third and final phase of Star Factory construction. So this is how SpaceX eventually gets to a point where they are producing 1 Starship every day. By having such a massive production space, they can be working on several new rockets all at the same time, building out these prefabricated segments, then the final assembly process is as easy as stacking them up and installing some finishing touches before shipping them off down to the launch site.

And this massive production volume is going to be what SpaceX will need for Starship to live up to Elon's grand vision. Not only will Starship replace all of the existing SpaceX fleet, the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon Capsule, in addition to becoming the primary muscle of NASA's Artemis moon landing program. But Starship is also the backbone of Elon's mission to establish a self-sustaining city on the planet Mars. The Star Factory is critical to making all of that become a reality. Don't forget to give this video a thumbs up today if you liked it, that is so important for getting our content out to more people.

If you enjoy the content then you'd probably also enjoy our weekly newsletter, so sign up with the link down below at theteslaspace.com. A huge thank you to all of our Patreon supporters who are listed on the screen now. You help us make the best content we can and we really appreciate it. Thanks for watching and we'll see you...

See all The Tesla Space transcripts on Youtube

The Real Reason SpaceX Is Building A Starship Gigafactory! (Starfactory)