Inside SpaceX's Starship Factory (Starbase)

the starship should have a round top but elon musk told his engineers to make it more pointy this is because elon had watched the dictator it is too round on the top it needs to be pointy telling joe rogan that everyone thought it'd be funnier if they made the rocket more pointy so they did and saying that yes it is arguably slightly worse for aerodynamics but it looks good and could elon musk be practicing and learning how to build a city on mars by building his own city here on earth as the star-based city in texas will have the spacex village for housing employees and the launch site and factory for the starship starship will be the largest flying object ever made and will have a flight schedule goal of three flights per day manufacturing lines are being designed to build two starships per week each one costing five million dollars elon musk has said that for every new rocket that is built each iteration allows spacex and their engineers to learn faster resulting in more advanced space tech but creating a factory and production line to mass produce the starship is not easy elon said that when it comes to building a rocket creating a production line is a thousand times harder than designing the rocket itself this is because you cannot have highly trained mit engineers making each piece in a factory to mass produce you need to create machines that can build the rocket which is a lot more complicated than designing the rocket itself luckily elon musk has had a lot of practice with this over at tesla saying that when it comes to cars it is 10 000 times harder to create a car production line than designing the car itself when starting the starship factory elon and spacex did not wait around for a large factory to be built before building the rockets they started building outdoors then the starship production line got an upgrade by having tents these specialized tents used shipping containers as a base this is another process that elon musk and his team learned from their work at tesla when the production of the model 3 car was overflowing elon said that a multi-million dollar new building was not possible saying that if conventional thinking makes your mission impossible then unconventional thinking is necessary find a way or make a way so they built a giant tent in the tesla parking lot in two weeks this was done by a company called spring structures and elon musk hired spring structures again to do the same in texas for starship spacex have now also built tall windbreaker structures where the steel barrels are stacked up and welded together this is all being done on land in texas where spacex continues to buy more now owning over 40 hectares since the starship is so large it would cost spacex a lot to transport it from the factory to the launch site that is why they built their production and launch sites so close together less than two kilometers 1.2 miles away from each other and owning their launch site also saves them a lot of money too also helping to save money the starship base has its own solar farm covering over 2.6 hectares which was installed by tesla's solar city boca chica texas was chosen for the starship base because it is near the shoreline making it safer to launch rockets and it is also near the equator which gives a rocket a boost during launch the starship base has been named by elon musk as the starship production complex or the gateway to mars it is now being called star based texas and it could soon become its own city right now the star base is where the production facility and the launch site for the starship are located but a spacex village could soon be built here too with houses and rooms for employees along with recreational facilities this will allow elon musk to practice and learn how to build a city for when he later starts a colony on mars he tweeted saying creating the city of starbase texas from vents to mars and hence the stars so what goes on inside the starship factory elon musk wants a linear flow through the tents and windbreakers similar to tesla where the rocket parts come in one end and move through each station until they end up at the high bay for final assembly there are ground fabrication and propulsion buildings a bay and a tent for building the separate nose cone multiple welding tents a tooling tent and the tall windbreaker structures there is also a campground and a village of existing houses nearby elon musk and spacex have been building their starships vertically will they continue to do it this way as there are a number of benefits and drawbacks to building the starship upright normally when putting in the payload the cargo inside of the rocket this is done horizontally since it is easier and safer but for a rocket to be strong enough to lay on its side it needs to be reinforced making it heavier and more complicated to build and then there are added costs involved in tilting the rocket into its vertical launch position the way starship is being built upright means that the rocket and payload can be built just for the vertical forces it faces when launched this means that the payload and rocket can be made lighter and since spacex has put the production line and launch pad close together the starship can be transported vertically the drawback of this vertical construction system is that you need to build high up workers need to have everything they need up high and bulky cranes are required to lift the steel barrels all of this adds to the safety hazards starships are made of three millimeter thick pieces of stainless steel that are bent and then welded to make barrels that are two meters high and nine meters in diameter these barrels are then stacked up on top of each other and welded into place 17 barrels and a nose cone are needed to make a starship and as always elon musk challenges his team to build faster and better so the engineers designed their own machine called the knuckle seamer the prototype was built in one of the tents the knuckle seamer is an automated welding machine it welds together the internal domes that house the fuel and oxygen on the starship this giant zipper automated welding machine takes welding time from six to eight days down to a single day the starship team have also built an automated shielding x-ray machine that inspects the welds before a human team would show up and have to shut down the work area before x-raying this would take a full day with the new x-ray machine this now takes a few hours in four weeks the automated x-ray machine went from being an idea in the engineer's minds to being built and tested spacex are also streamlining the building of starship's heat shield nasa's space shuttle had over 24 000 different heat shield tiles and it took one worker a week to fit 1.8 of them to the rocket to be able to mass produce the starship spacex have designed their rockets to use a single shape and size heat shield tile and robots are being used to install them with the prototype test launches spacex is seeing which is the best way to connect the tiles to the rocket pins are being welded onto the starship body where the heat shield tiles are placed by robotic arms to then be welded another way that elon musk has sped things up is by doubling the starship building team in one weekend from 250 to 500 people elon held a meeting and told spacex employees to bring their friends to come and work on the starship with the one condition that they would be responsible for the work of the new employees 12 hours after the meeting they had already started hiring when it comes to working shifts elon brought what he had learned from tesla to the assembly line at starship the starship factory is able to operate at full speed 24 hours a day seven days a week to make sure the workers don't burn out there are three 12-hour day shifts followed by a four-day weekend then there is a four-day 12-hour shift with a three-day weekend once the starships have been built they could then fly themselves over to their floating launch platform which would also be good practice for elon musk's city to city transport plans or they could be transported by boat spacex are building their own floating launch platforms they are retrofitting two oil drilling rigs which they have bought each one named after martian moons it is here on the floating platforms where the starships will launch to deliver satellites into orbit deliver cargo to the international space station and go to the moon and then launch on its maiden grand venture to mars on the next episode of the grand venture society we take a look at tesla vs uber and the battle of the robo taxis hit the subscribe and thumbs up buttons to not miss a video

Channel: VentureX - Future Tech

Views: 570,294

Rating: 4.8547125 out of 5

Keywords: SpaceX, Elon Musk, Starship, Boca Chica, Starbase, Pointy, NASA, Construction, Tour, Update

Id: H6HN9l3c3AM

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021