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SpaceX might not catch its Starship rocket with the tower arms on the next flight, shared Starbase general manager Kathy Leudders during a closed community talk given in Port Isabel, Texas, earlier today. Leuders oversees SpaceX's production and testing facilities in Texas, which are responsible for the Starship tests and rocket production. When asked whether SpaceX would catch its rocket with the tower, Leuders shared that while SpaceX will eventually do so, the catch attempt might not occur on the upcoming flight 5.
SpaceX Has Invested $3 Billion In Starbase Texas Facilities & Earmarked Another $400 Million For Starfactory and Associated Plans
The SpaceX executive started her talk by sharing her firm's investments in the Brownsville, Texas, area. According to her, SpaceX has invested over $3 billion to develop its launch and production site. With the pace of Starship tests picking up, Leuders' earlier talks have also highlighted her firm's plans to set up a new factory in the area to make its rockets.
SpaceX chief Elon Musk has speculated that this new facility, dubbed Starfactory, might be able to make thousands of rockets. According to Leuders, SpaceX has earmarked an additional $400 million in funds for Starfactory and associated offices. She added that SpaceX's presence in the region has enabled the state and local government to generate more than $800 million in taxes.
SpaceX has also spent more than $90 million to acquire goods and services from local suppliers in the Rio Grande Valley, according to data shared in Leuders' presentation. It has more than 3,400 contractors and full time employees at the facility, and estimates from the firm also suggest that Starbase has helped generate more than twenty thousand additional jobs in the area.
Her first set of comments for SpaceX's plans to catch Starship with the tower came during the presentation when Leuders shared that her firm is gradually increasing the technological risks of its tests. According to her:
Our idea of success is to be able to continue to further demonstrate and learn from the mission and make the next mission go even more further as we're continuing to learn. At one stage, at our final stage, we would like to be able to target and be able to return the vehicles to the pad. But we want to make sure we're doing these demonstrations in safe locations before we go do that, right. We're. . .we're. . . we're. . . this is actually the smartest way to develop, is to do this this way, to make sure that, um, you're buying down the risk in safe places so that you're not going to potentially cause infrastructure issues on your demonstration missions.
Close to the end of the presentation, when asked if SpaceX was planning to catch the rocket as it was coming down to the pad, she responded "we will indeed catch it with the chopsticks. I'm not sure it's going to be this next mission but we'll be building the trajectories to be able to." She added that the chopsticks are "multi use" as they stack and catch the vehicle along with doing "a whole lotta things for us."
While SpaceX's plans to catch the booster with the chopsticks or the tower catch arms have been more clear, its plans for the second stage, Starship, aren't. The second stage is the world's first second stage that is designed to be fully reusable, and SpaceX's plans for its recovery should become clearer as the Starship program progresses.
Starship presentation Live in Port Isabel https://t.co/BUvajA4Zvd
— Will COMPULYZΞ (@compulyze) June 27, 2024
