I've got some special guests crashing the webcast today. Joining me now in Star Factory, Elon Musk, chief engineer at SpaceX. Bill Riley, our VP of Starship Engineering. Thanks for being here, guys. I know we got a rocket about to get off the bat, but you know, let's start people off like high level, like why are we here? What the hell are we doing here?
Well, I don't know about everybody, but I'm here to try to build into the future that I imagined and dreamed of as a child where starships with people are out among the stars exploring the universe.
So the why of Starship is that we want to be a multi-planet species to extend consciousness beyond Earth, both to ensure the long-term survival of life and to have an exciting future. A future where we are a spacefaring civilization is infinitely more exciting than one where we are not.
We're doing it all in a pretty unique location. The pads behind us, we have a rocket on the tower and another tower. We're sitting inside Star Factory. I think we moved Starship here in early 2019 and have seen it evolve from a double-wide trailer and a tent where we built Star Hopper to now two towers and a million-square-foot factory. This is the most advanced rocket manufacturing facility ever built, essentially alien-level technology. It was built on a sandbar near the beach, and you can come visit—it's on a public highway and beach. I think it's pretty cool that it's...
Just not right. Just not right now.
Just not when we're launching because there's some safety issues, but...
The rocket is often just sitting on the pad without propellant, and you can just come here and visit. It's very easy.
Yeah, I think it's a really special place. Yesterday the ship went down the road behind us and families on their Sunday stroll were greeted by Starship. From the beginning, Starship was designed to be mass-produced at scale. It's not about building one Starship; it's about sustained, rapid production. We're aiming for thousands of ships per year to build a self-sustaining city on Mars. The critical fork in destiny is when Mars can survive without resupply from Earth, which requires building an entire base of industry there. It will take at least a million tons to the surface of Mars. This ensures the long-term survival of life and is the stepping stone to other star systems and encountering alien civilizations, though they may have died out. Our civilization is only a blip in Earth's history.
Yeah. Flash in the pan so far.
Well, we're getting some cool shots of the rocket on the pad. It's hard to get a sense of scale, but we caught someone working on it. In this image, Dan, you can see the person at the bottom of the ship. As we zoom out, you see the full two-tone silver and black ship and the booster. Starship is real, big, and really big. We have flight 10 on the pad and many more behind it.
Yeah, I posted a video of part of the factory. So the reason half the ship is black and half silver is that the bottom half has a heat shield. The core is stainless steel. Steel is used instead of aluminum because it can withstand the heating during ascent and re-entry without needing paint, which is challenging due to cryogenic cycles.
And so we've talked about its scale. It takes a lot of energy to move it, and that's where Raptor comes in—the most advanced engine on the planet.
No, that's a lightsaber and a half. You'd get vaporized in an instant if you stood in front of it. Burnt to crisp in less than a second.
To create a fully reusable orbital rocket, you have to advance every part. The engines need to be better than any before, the structures better. We need a fully reusable heat shield that can fly immediately, unlike the Space Shuttle's heat shield which required months of refurbishment. The ship and booster will be caught by tower arms, placed back on the launch stand rapidly. The booster could return in minutes and be ready for next flight in less than an hour by catching it with the tower instead of using landing legs, which adds mass and delays reusability.
I think of it like a jet at a gate: people get off, new ones get on, and it leaves. You don't want to land on a different airfield and tow it over. It's operationally simpler and faster.
Yeah, we've had success with the booster—three for three on catch attempts, and we've reflown one. Now we're working on ship reusability. We've had great re-entries and are seeking data on the fully reusable heat shield, which has never been done before.
There are thousands of engineering challenges, but the single biggest is the reusable orbital heat shield. We're confident we can make one, but it will require many flights and iterations to find weak points in tile design, gaps, and underlying material. The only way to know is to fly repeatedly and examine the ship upon landing. We've achieved soft landings but shed tiles, so we need to do it without shedding tiles.
We can't shuck the heat shield.
