Elon Musk said in an interview with TED two days ago that the goal of Mars colonization will require 1,000 reusable starships to launch millions of tons of cargo in order to create the first self-sustaining city by 2050. "SpaceX aims to build starships at a monthly rate by the end of 2022, we've built an assembly line production system for starships, and we're building a lot of starships and super boosters." Musk said, "Initially about one is built every two months, and then, hopefully, by the end of the year, one is built every month." ”
Musk said, "It's very important to have high productivity because it allows engineers to quickly test one prototype after it fails, and I want to turn the rocket into an assembly line product, which means high productivity, and high productivity can solve a lot of problems." If you have high productivity, you have a high iteration rate. For almost any technique, progress is a function of how many iterations you have and how much progress you make between each iteration, and if your productivity is high, then you have a lot of iterations, and you can go from one iteration to the next. ”
Musk said, "The assembly line of the Starship Factory will eventually be able to build a starship every 72 hours, launching a fleet of about 100 starships into orbit every two years to deliver passengers and cargo to Mars." The orbits of Earth and Mars are closest approximately every 26 months, and this duration is shorter, about 6 to 8 months. ”
Meanwhile, engineers continue to work 24 hours a day at the starship site. The company is building both starships and super-heavy boosters and conducting ground tests at launch sites. They have conducted several test flights since 2019, and Musk said in this interview: "We will have orbital launch attempts in a few months." So we'll start integrating the engine into the booster in about a week or two (parentheses add, not a week or two, as soon as Musk says this, the next day, a V2 Raptor arrives at the starship site, and today a number of Raptors arrive at the starship site to prepare for assembly, and a few photos are dynamically added in a moment). ”
"The launch facility itself is ready, so we are now awaiting regulatory approval and I think we can have an orbital launch attempt in a few months, there is no guarantee of success, but the excitement is certainly, just like the first successful launch of the Falcon rocket, I remember that day." Musk said in an interview.
