On Feb. 18, a YouTube account called NASASpaceflight exposed an aerial video showing that Musk's SpaceX company may be secretly building a second starship base and is beginning to take shape.
Recalling the media report a few days ago that the release of the EIA results of the starship launch was blocked, and was again postponed by NASA (FAA) to March 28, Musk had said that there was a plan B, that is, to rebuild a launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center.
The video was filmed on Roberts Road, north of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center, a plot that had long belonged to SpaceX and had previously begun development of starships alongside the starship base in Boca Chica. Maybe at that time, Musk was alone and lost, and he felt that it was really unpleasant for no one to compete with him, so he engaged in two groups of people and horses internally to compete for the development of starships.
Kennedy Space Center's base built some facilities and built some components, and finally stopped completely in 2019 to focus on starship development in Boca Chica. Since then, it has been used as a maintenance and refurbishment facility for the Falcon 9 rocket, and the structure on the left side of the picture below has been completed.
Just when no one paid attention to this base, careful netizens found through aerial photography that construction had quietly begun here and began to build some facilities similar to the Boca Chika starship base.
The 12 huge cement pier foundations have been poured, which are exactly copies of similar facilities in Boca Chica, which will be the towers where the starships will launch and land.
Then a huge circular structure is being built, which Musk calls the base of the rocket's 0th stage, and when the Falcon superweight booster is launched and recovered, it will be hoisted onto it and stacked on top of it.
In addition, Schwartz Road is also being widened and will probably be used for the transport of starships.
At the same time, Bezos Blue Origin's base is also under construction there, and it has begun to take shape, and it seems that the two are finally going to compete under NASA's eyes.
In fact, the base of the starship is far more than these two, Musk has also purchased two oil platforms, which are being transformed into maritime mobile bases for the launch and landing of starships.
While the most exciting future for sci-fi fans is the starship's Mars base and lunar base, the starship will still build a large number of bases on Earth, which is what Musk calls point-to-point super-high-speed traffic, reaching other places on Earth in thirty or forty minutes.
Since this kind of travel is essentially the same as taking a civil aviation airliner such as Boeing and Airbus, it only needs to go around in space and refuel after returning to earth to fly again, so it may be necessary to build a starship airport similar to the current civil aviation airport in the place where it needs to be reached - at least there must be facilities for rapid refueling, so it is conceivable that in the future, after the starship is as popular as the airliner, there will be many starship bases on the earth.
In this sense, the second starship base that Musk is secretly building seems to be very commonplace, and everyone can visit it casually, take aerial photos at will, and it is understandable that there is no secrecy.
However, we can also see that Musk SpaceX is indeed very aggressive in planning and management, just like the Falcon 9 rocket, when the future starship is developed for initial finalization, it may be the time for mass production, while producing, using, and improving. Even the starship base is like this, the first launch of the starship has not yet taken place, and the construction of the second base has begun.
Everything is time, time is everything, and that's probably the biggest reason for Musk's success.