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Space

SpaceX Hopes to Eventually Build One Starship Per Day at Its Texas 'Starfactory' (space.com) 305

SpaceX's successful launch (and reentry) of Starship was just the beginning, reports Space.com: SpaceX now aims to build on the progress with its Starship program as continues work on Starfactory, a new manufacturing facility under construction at the company's Starbase site in South Texas... "When you step into this factory, it is truly inspirational. My heart jumps out of my chest," Kate Tice, manager of SpaceX Quality Systems Engineering, said [during SpaceX's livestream of the Starship flight test]. "Now this will enable us to increase our production rate significantly as we build toward our long-term goal of producing one Ship per day and coming off the production line soon, Starship Version Two."

This new version of Starship is designed to be more easy to mass produce, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on social media.

Space.com argues that the long-term expansion comes as SpaceX "looks to use Starship to eventually make humanity interplanetary."
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SpaceX Hopes to Eventually Build One Starship Per Day at Its Texas 'Starfactory'

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  • by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Monday June 10, 2024 @06:42AM (#64537083) Homepage

    Say what you will about Elon Musk, but SpaceX is the only company that is doing things comparable to what science fiction writers envisioned decades ago. Producing new rocket designs and technology at a massive scale and fast pace. At the same time, Boeing has been struggling for 10 years to get some valves right on a capsule and others have been struggling to get anything up to what is generally considered "space" (except the Chinese I guess who are steadily progressing).

    • by byronivs ( 1626319 ) on Monday June 10, 2024 @07:27AM (#64537165) Journal

      Boeing has been struggling

      I think you're being supremely generous here. Unless you mean struggling like an addict. The addiction in this case being public money.

      • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

        I think you're being supremely generous here. Unless you mean struggling like an addict. The addiction in this case being public money.

        I mean, that's the problem. They were set up for gobbling up public money with the old cost+ contracts, so 10 years to get a valve working was great business. But they are on a fixed contract now, so that project is no longer profitable, something they've never faced before and it shows...

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      SpaceX certainly deserves a lot of credit, but it's not magic. There are competitors too, last week a Chinese private company launched 3 satellite carrying rockets to orbit successfully, all from ships not far off the coast. This is good, competition is good, as are many varying designs and options.

      That said, one Starship a day? What is the market for that?

    • Say what you will about Elon Musk, but SpaceX is the only company that is doing things comparable to what science fiction writers envisioned decades ago.

      In space perhaps but there are lots of technology companies making products that were science fiction only a few decades ago: smart phones, video calls, tablets, watches that make phone calls, "AI" etc. It's easy to forget that given how ubiquitous such devices have now become but 30 years ago these were all science fiction, just look at Star Trek the Next Generation: we now have tablets very similar to the ones on the show and you can even get a functional bluetooth star trek communicator badge [fametek.com]!

      Musk ma

      • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

        Yeah, I did mean just space-related science fiction.
        But I disagree with your take that there are companies that make smart phones that were science fiction a few decades ago.
        When phones are concerned, we are way, way, beyond science fiction. It's like most of the collective effort of humanity went there. We even lost basic things like commercial supersonic flights, but our phones can do things and look beyond anything imagined even as late as the 80s :D

  • Elon makes some awesome PR noise to keep his business being talked about but his record of getting even close to fulfilling his PR plans is about zero. It has to be intentional. No one that successful could be so wrong so often otherwise.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I think it is quite possible that Elon is not actually that smart, but got really lucky with advisers and listened to them often enough. So far, that is. There are other examples of nil-wits that made it big. His "management" of Twitter speaks volumes as to his actual skills. "Never attribute to maliciousness which is adequately explained by stupidity."

    • by careysub ( 976506 ) on Monday June 10, 2024 @08:38AM (#64537381)

      Elon makes some awesome PR noise to keep his business being talked about but his record of getting even close to fulfilling his PR plans is about zero. It has to be intentional. No one that successful could be so wrong so often otherwise.

      Absolutely. It is clearly a deliberate strategy that accounts for the vast majority of his wealth. This wealth - in the form of Tesla stock - exploded in mid 2020 when the valuation of Tesla by the market went far beyond a level that any plausible assessment of the company's real economic prospects could sustain with a PE Ratio of 1120 [macrotrends.net], now down to a still grossly overvalued but less insane value of 45. That overvaluation bubble of Tesla, driven by the hype Musk engineered, translated directly into money in his pocket.

  • Or rather Musk is. What else is new?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Eunomion ( 8640039 )
      Right, he "hallucinated" the recent Starship flight. Like he's "hallucinating" SpaceX's 12-figure valuation. Maybe don't project so much, kid.
  • Great! (Score:4, Informative)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Monday June 10, 2024 @09:10AM (#64537487)

    Boeing builds a half one per decade.

  • Luckily for us, a serious attempt by SpaceX to produce a rocket this large every day would bankrupt them in short order. Luckily for them, they aren't being serious. Unluckily for everyone, there's nobody out there being serious about this stuff.
    • I don't think you understand how manufacturing works. The unit cost of producing one of something every day is lower than producing five a year.
  • You can't have an Interplanetary Civilization without logistics. The vision of having this many spacecraft is mind-blowing, sci-fi fantasy but it's visionary, which industries in the US have lacked for decades.

  • If it's leaving the ground I'd really much prefer that they take their time building it and focus on quality and safety of the finished vehicle rather than focus on cranking them out fast.
  • No one person, one company should be trusted with a platform to deliver a nuclear warhead.
  • What's with "Starship" and "Starliner"? These things are going to a star? Did "astro"nauts go to the stars? Hyperbole on steroids. Maybe the result of too much moonshine.

Things are not as simple as they seems at first. - Edward Thorp

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