53. Starship

In 2018–2019, Elon Musk was not sat­is­fied with just SpaceX’s suc­cess with its Fal­con rock­ets; his vision was to enable human life on Mars, an ambi­tion the Fal­con 9 and Fal­con Heavy could not ful­fill. Thus, he embarked on devel­op­ing a more for­mi­da­ble, reusable rock­et named ini­tial­ly as the BFR (Big F**king Rock­et), which was lat­er renamed to “Star­ship.” This rock­et, tow­er­ing at 390 feet with a two-stage sys­tem, promised to deliv­er more than a hun­dred tons of pay­load into orbit and even­tu­al­ly trans­port a hun­dred pas­sen­gers to Mars. Despite the intense demands at Tes­la, Musk ded­i­cat­ed time to con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing the aes­thet­ics and func­tion­al­i­ties required for a nine-month jour­ney to Mars in the Star­ship.

Musk’s inter­est in mate­ri­als led him to appre­ci­ate stain­less steel for its resilience and afford­abil­i­ty com­pared to oth­er mate­ri­als like car­bon fiber, which was ini­tial­ly con­sid­ered for Star­ship. Chal­lenges with car­bon fiber, includ­ing its sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to wrin­kling and high costs, pushed Musk towards stain­less steel, a mate­r­i­al his­tor­i­cal­ly used in ear­ly Atlas rock­ets and planned for the Cybertruck. His team, led by engi­neer Bill Riley, faced skep­ti­cism but even­tu­al­ly proved that stain­less steel was advan­ta­geous due to its strength at low tem­per­a­tures and its cost-effi­cien­cy in man­u­fac­ture.

The inno­va­tion did­n’t stop at mate­r­i­al selec­tion. Musk’s approach was hands-on and prac­ti­cal, favor­ing direct input from work­ers on the ground over the­o­ret­i­cal exper­tise. This approach led to the devel­op­ment of a thin­ner, yet reli­able, stain­less steel struc­ture for Star­ship, chal­leng­ing con­ven­tion­al expec­ta­tions and lead­ing to the suc­cess­ful assem­bly of a pro­to­type known as Starhop­per.

Musk’s aggres­sive project man­age­ment style includ­ed con­tro­ver­sial deci­sions, like the moment he con­sid­ered halt­ing the Fal­con Heavy pro­gram to focus resources on Star­ship. How­ev­er, Gwynne Shotwell, a top exec­u­tive at SpaceX, con­vinced him oth­er­wise, show­cas­ing the ten­sion and high stakes involved in SpaceX’s ambi­tious projects.

Ulti­mate­ly, Musk chose Boca Chi­ca, Texas, for Star­ship’s devel­op­ment, trans­form­ing the qui­et locale into a bustling hub of inno­va­tion named “Star­base.” The site fea­tured man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties and ameni­ties for the team, under­lined by Musk’s belief in the crit­i­cal impor­tance of their mis­sion for human­i­ty’s future in space. This chap­ter from SpaceX’s his­to­ry illus­trates Musk’s unre­lent­ing dri­ve to push the bound­aries of space explo­ration, marked by his will­ing­ness to rethink con­ven­tion­al wis­dom and embrace bold engi­neer­ing and man­age­ment prac­tices.