Elon Musk to build enormous Texas ‘gigabay' to store 1,000 Starships
The Tesla billionaire and world's richest man laid out his vision for 'making life multiplanetary' in an update at SpaceX's Starbase in Texas.
Speaking to staff last night, Mr Musk said the company planned to build a 'gigabay', which he said would be 'a truly enormous structure'.
He said the building, designed for 1,000 Starships per year, would be 'by some measures the biggest structure in the world'.
The first so-called gigabay would be built in Texas, with a further facility in Florida as SpaceX seeks to launch multiple rockets per day in order to reach and colonise Mars.
Mr Musk has said humans must colonise the Red Planet to avoid potential extinction risks, such as nuclear war or an asteroid strike, and that the colony would need to become self-sustaining.
He said: 'Having two strong, self-sustaining planets will be critical for the long-term survival of civilisation.'
The billionaire further claimed the company's Super Heavy booster rockets would one day be able to fly missions 'every hour, maybe every two hours give a bit of extra time'. The Super Heavy boosters are the first stage of the Starship rocket. They are designed to be reusable, falling back to Earth after launching.
He added SpaceX would ultimately need to launch 1,000 to 2,000 rockets to Mars in every two-year window to carry the cargo needed to set up a colony.
Mr Musk is known for his bold claims and ambitious timelines, including his vision of sending humans to Mars by 2029. He said its first mission could include landing an Optimus robot on Mars.
On Tuesday night, Mr Musk's company undertook a ninth test flight of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket. The test saw the first re-use of its Super Heavy booster, recycling a rocket body that had previously returned to Earth and been caught by a pair of 'chopsticks' on its landing tower.
However, the Starship second stage went into a spin as it returned to Earth, breaking up over the Indian Ocean.
Mr Musk has promised to launch another Starship test mission within a few weeks.
Nasa is planning to use SpaceX's megarocket for a manned mission to the Moon as soon as 2027, returning humans to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.
On Thursday, Mr Musk revealed new designs for SpaceX's Starship, which he said would be 'taller' and have a redesigned separation mechanism.
He said future generations of its Starship would be 465ft tall and have twice the payload capacity of the Saturn V rocket that conducted the original Moon missions.
The billionaire added that his ambition was that 'anyone who wants to move to Mars can do so', which he said would be the 'best adventure that anyone could possibly do'.
He added there was a '50/50' chance SpaceX would launch an uncrewed Starship mission at the end of 2026, when Mars is at the closest point in its orbit to Earth.
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