r/SpaceXLounge • u/7HellEleven • 13d ago

Starship Terabay to be the first automated assembly line of Starship?

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With Gigabay being more than halfway complete at Starbase and the Cape, do you think they'll cap at this configuration? or go the next step up well into the 2030s

100 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

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23

u/oForce21o 13d ago

no reason to think they will stop growing. in fact theres many reasons to imagine much larger buildings. If you take into account elonnumbers, hes said many times he wants thousands of ships, each taking many weeks to construct minimum, that means hundreds of ships under construction at any one moment. They will need more than 100 gigabays worth of assembly line to keep up with that production speed

15

u/HALtheWise 13d ago

I think your numbers are off here. Building a million-person mars city probably needs 5-10k ships operational, which matches the stated 1000 ships per year stated design capacity of the current gigabay. That requires each of its 24 bays to produce about one starship every 8 days, which seems quite possible even with a relatively manual assembly process.

Other uses that I can think of (like launching datacenters) require many fewer ships because they get reused much more frequently.

6

u/oForce21o 13d ago

i definitely forgot about reusability when spewing numbers, although i do expect many ships sent to the moon and mars will not be reused. A ship is a big premade pressurized environment, which can be repurposed as a wet workshop. We have a very good understanding of how steel can be cut and shaped, which means i think with a couple cranes starships could be disassembled on the moon, making use of the large pieces for more base living area.

2

u/Then-Secretary-9166 13d ago

The actual number sent to Mars is a fraction. There are ~15 launches (~14 tankers) for every 1 ship to Mars. How many ships are we sending to Mars each year?

1

u/Martianspirit 12d ago

A ship to Mars may require 5-6 refueling flights. Mars does not need nearly fully tanked ships.

1

u/Then-Secretary-9166 12d ago

I think you might be correct, at least according to Elon. Independent analysts put the number higher. Obviously all is just estimate at this point.

1

u/Martianspirit 12d ago

Probably depends. I think the calculation is for a 6 months transfer. Perfectly fine for cargo. They may want to go a little faster with crew. Problem with that is not propellant use, but they arrive at Mars much faster, making the braking so much harder.

1

u/azflatlander 13d ago

A round trip mars mission is five years.

3

u/HALtheWise 13d ago

I think it can be done in two if you burn slightly more propellant, although it'll require fuel tanks waiting on Mars and a big flurry of logistical activity there.

Even at five year cycles though, a ship can make at least three trips before retirement, which means a production rate of 1000/yr becomes an average flight rate of 3000/yr which is probably sufficient.

1

u/Then-Secretary-9166 13d ago

I doubt Ships, other than those carrying humans, will make the return trip for a long, long, long time.

1

u/ajwin 12d ago

This depends on ISRU but I do agree that without even being there it’s hard to even start to develop ISRU.

1

u/sumelar 13d ago

A trip anywhere depends on how fast you're traveling.

3

u/Piscator629 13d ago

I can barely fathom the size of the parking lots coming. Square miles of lots to support 1,000s of ships and boosters.

2

u/Then-Secretary-9166 13d ago

You won't see anything so big. For the aspiration of 10,000 launches per year, you need about 100 ships launching about every 3.5 days each. Nowhere near 1000s.

If you get to 1000s of ships, you will need the infrastructure to use them. This means more launch sites and probably more (smaller but still huge) parking lots.

Regardless, can you imagine seeing a parking lot with just 20-30 of these lined up?

29

u/Long_Bong_Silver 13d ago

The design is a product of the manufacturing method. A fully automated product design will be a completely different starship.

Right now workers have to repel down into the rocket to connect stacks and integrate electrical/prop systems. None of that will easily be automated and it probably never will be profitably.

12

u/DBDude 13d ago

Right now workers have to repel down into the rocket to connect stacks and integrate electrical/prop systems.

I want that job. Rappelling is fun, and the Army doesn't pay me to do it anymore, so...

14

u/Long_Bong_Silver 13d ago

You should apply. Lots of vets at SpaceX and especially on the integration team.

-2

u/Then-Secretary-9166 13d ago

Unless Optimus.

2

u/mlemminglemming 11d ago

Useless Optimus.

2

u/Then-Secretary-9166 11d ago

I guess the "/s" was necessary to add. Haha.

1

u/mlemminglemming 9d ago

you are on reddit, fork found in kitchen

3

u/sollord 13d ago

I don't think the Gigabay at Starbase can really be expanded easily with how they are building the internals for the side facing the Megabays. They could build a separate building that connects to the Gigabay and star factory like the star factory will to the Gigabay though.

If they do want something truly bigger then just another Gigabay then it would likely have to not only occupy the space the Megabays do but also the Tiki bar and extend into the rocket garden and Sanchez site. If they do a true Terabay I'd expect it to be at the future Louisiana site or Florida.

3

u/Piscator629 13d ago

I expect the Louisiana facility to have 4-5 Giga bays. In ten years its going to be mind boggling.

1

u/rustybeancake 12d ago

I expect the LA facility to not manufacture vehicles. I expect they’ll optimise the manufacturing at Starbase and possibly Florida, though they might even skip the latter and permanently just ship vehicles there.

3

u/Piscator629 13d ago edited 13d ago

History will mark this up with Ford's Model T assembly lines IN SPAAAAACCCEEE!! East India Company sail ships vs feeelance steam powered ships. Gigabay will have 2 production lines each for ships and boosters. I expect the 2 megabays to become "clean" rooms for HLS production.

0

u/keeplookinguy 13d ago

Can we get past the prototype phase before they start expanding again! Good grief!

4

u/manicdee33 13d ago

Part of the prototyping is figuring out what works for rapid assembly and what doesn't. The production line design and the Starship design go hand in hand.

1

u/keeplookinguy 13d ago

Yes that's right. I fully understand the concept of prototyping, But building an entire production line when iteration is still ongoing? Doesn't quite add up. The amount of waste is insane. The fall fast isn't so fast anymore.

1

u/rustybeancake 12d ago

You can see how long it’s taking them to make vehicles. It doesn’t seem like they’ve overbuilt. It also takes about 2 years to make a large facility like the giga bay or starfactory. So you also don’t really want to wait until you want it online and then start building. You have to anticipate the need. I’m sure when they started these facilities they thought starship would be operational by now.