13 thoughts on “A Tour Of Starbase”

  1. $100,000 per ton payload landed on Mars surface.
    It seems it matters whether 8 months or 6 months.
    But in either case, it seems very cheap.
    But also, we talking about +10 years from now.

    If/when launches next month, lots of things are change
    after the test launch.
    I didn’t know about starlink launches, and I guess it’s mostly testing if or how they can deployed. And other launches also test they can be deployed. And I guess testing deploying more per each starship launch.

    1. Well, they need to have some sort of a payload to do their testing, may as well launch Starlink satellites. That’s the same reason he launched his car on Falcon Heavy. They could just launch a concrete block, but this way they get dual use.

  2. It is good to see that these Starbase walkabouts with Tim and Elon are becoming annual, or more frequent, events. Massive amounts of extremely interesting information on offer. I look forward to the rest of this year’s installments.

    The next one, in particular, is supposed to be about “Stage 0.” That has been the source of most of the delays in getting to a place where orbital testing can commence. I expect it to be even more informative than this first installment.

    Splendid to see how aggressive is the engineering optimization of these vehicles. Improvements are being made faster than they can be realized in bent metal. That’s a very nice problem to have.

  3. It’s pretty safe to say that Tim Dodd has more influence on Starship design than any person not working for SpaceX.

    1. He ingratiated himself by demonstrating an understanding of what they are doing at a technical level that even nerdy nerd space nerds typically don’t have.

      I’ve seen Musk’s face a million times, it isn’t interesting, but did you catch how his employees watch him?

      I could be wrong but I think Musk’s leadership style transcends suckups drawn to money.

      1. In the first interview some random welder walked up to Musk, hugged him, and said “we’re gonna build it!”

        If you’ve got a welding job, you’ve got a job. But if you’re welding for SpaceX, you’re doing something important.

      2. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve heard of who say Musk is the smartest person they have ever met and most say it’s by a wide margin.

        1. He is really good about speaking to the level of his audience and changing the level of detail fluidly.

  4. It’s interesting they’re going with a pressurized fairing, and starting with the “Pez dispenser.” I wondered how they were going to make the Pac-Man door work. They probably wonder too.

  5. These videos just keep getting better and better. Thanks to Elon for working with Tom Dodd on these! I think the two of them are in some kind of space mind sync. It shows.

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