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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reveals Starship factory upgrade plans

Elon Musk says SpaceX is about to start building a third - and much larger - Starship assembly bay. (NASASpaceflight - bocachicagal)

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5 years ago

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CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX is about to begin the construction of “a much larger high bay” adjacent to the existing structure, an 82m (~270 ft) tall building used to complete assembly of Starship and Super Heavy boosters.

According to Musk, the newest addition to SpaceX’s arsenal of Starship production facilities will be located “just north” of an existing high bay, which measures approximately 30m by 25m (100′ x 80′). Most importantly, Boca Chica’s high bay is tall enough for SpaceX to use a bridge crane to stack 50m (165′) Starships and ~70m (~230′) Super Heavy boosters – far more efficient and protected than using wheeled or tracked cranes to assemble rockets out in the open.

High bay construction, September 2020. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)

Construction of the existing high bay began in May 2020 and was more or less complete by the start of 2021. The structure was truly finished in April 2021 with the installation of a heavy-duty bridge crane, though work continues to this day on what CEO Elon Musk has described as a bar and viewing area to be located at the top of the bay.

Musk’s assertion that the new facility will be “much larger” can be interpreted a number of ways. There’s a distant possibility that SpaceX will build a true NASA-style Vehicle Assembly Building like the colossal VAB used to fully assembled Saturn V and the Space Shuttle at Kennedy Space Center. For Starship, that would require a structure at least ~130m (~430 ft) tall – more than 50% taller than the current ‘high bay’.

Note the large swath of mostly empty space below the two assembly bays.
NASA’s VAB versus SpaceX’s Boca Chica ‘high bay’. (NASA/Reddit)

More likely, Musk means that SpaceX will effectively be building a second similarly tall high bay but with far more usable floor space. The existing structure is large enough to fit four or far different Starship or Super Heavy ‘stacks’ at once, though SpaceX’s current setup appears to allow two or three vehicle sections to be stacked and worked on simultaneously. In his July 25th tweet, Musk implicitly noted that SpaceX does have a significant amount of mostly unused space that could be perfect for another assembly building directly north of the high and mid bays.

Generally speaking, SpaceX has a plot of land around 170m (~560′) by 190m (~620′) that’s currently half-used as a Starship scrapyard and overflow lot, but most of the space is empty. Even if SpaceX only turned half of that land into a sort of vertical Starship assembly line, it would still boost high bay floor space by at least a factor of five or six – and possibly 8-10x. With that much extra space enclosed in a permanent structure, it’s likely that this new facility could mark a new evolution in SpaceX’s ever-changing Starship factory.

Update: Elon Musk says that SpaceX’s second Starship ‘high bay’ will be “a little taller” than the first but have a “much bigger base” and multiple “gantry” (bridge?) cranes that will run the full length of the building.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner

Elon Musk sat beside Trump as AI leaders signed a voluntary White House safety accord.

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2 hours ago

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September 29, 2026

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Elon Musk had the seat right next to President Donald Trump on Tuesday as the White House hosted the leaders of America’s biggest artificial intelligence companies for a lunch that ended with a voluntary industry accord on AI safety.

A seating chart Trump posted on Truth Social placed Musk at the president’s left in the East Room, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on his right, according to an Associated Press reporter. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also attended, along with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

After the lunch, Trump told reporters outside the West Wing that the executives had signed “The White House Accord on Superintelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities.” Johnson described it as a voluntary statement of principles built on “robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review,” while Zuckerberg said company boards would independently review reports from outside auditors. Trump called the document “morally binding,” said he would name a new AI czar within days, and signed an executive order formally renaming artificial intelligence “super intelligence,” CNBC reported.

Musk was not in the room for Tesla alone. Since SpaceX absorbed xAI, he runs the company behind Grok and one of the largest AI training operations anywhere. On September 25, he said another 220,000 Nvidia GB300 chips would come online at Colossus 2 within a week, with more expected in November and December.

SpaceX confirms third massive compute deal at Colossus data center

 

Musk also used the trip to restate his energy ambitions. “SpaceX is aiming together with Tesla to do 200 gigawatts of solar production per year,” he said at an event in Washington. It is the same combined target he laid out that feeds directly into Terafab, the Tesla and SpaceX chip venture that will need enormous amounts of power.

The showing between Musk and Trump has come a long way, since the two had the very public split in mid 2025 after Musk opposed the “Big Beautiful Bill” and left DOGE. They reconciled at Charlie Kirk’s memorial that September, and Trump later called their relationship “good”. Since then, Musk has joined Trump’s China delegation in May and attended last week’s White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

For Tesla, that access to government official could pay dividends. As Teslarati noted in January, federal autonomy rules, NHTSA oversight and a single national standard for driverless vehicles all run through an administration Musk can more easily reach directly as Tesla works to scale Robotaxi and Cybercab beyond Texas.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded

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15 hours ago

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September 29, 2026

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Credit: @BLKMDL3/Twitter

Ahead of its highly anticipated unveiling, Tesla’s upcoming Roadster received a new patent that aims to keep it grounded while enabling white-knuckle speeds.

The patent, which was granted on September 29, is titled “Electric Car Fan,” bluntly stating its design but not its purpose, which is further detailed in the text of the application. Interestingly, it comes two weeks before the Roadster event, which was delayed due to unfavorable weather on Thursday, which could cause issues, as Tesla revealed the event must be held outdoors.

The purpose is to solve a problem that is relatively unique to high-performance electric cars. Instant motor torque is useless if the tires cannot plant that force, and conventional wings and underbody tunnels generate downforce only when air is already rushing past the car. At launch, in slow corners, and under hard braking from modest speed, passive aerodynamic additions contribute essentially very little to downforce.

Tesla’s filing says that its fans can produce the downforce needed, independent of vehicle velocity, then ease off so the same hardware does not pile on drag at highway speeds, an issue that can come from excessive body modifications.

The hardware outlined in the patent is a ducted-fan package that is placed into the rear of the vehicle. An underbody inlet between the rear wheels feeds a duct that rises to a wide outlet in the diffuser. In that outlet are four axial fans, which are divided by vertical strakes. They will pull air from under the floor and press the chassis onto the pavement.

The language in the patent claims it can cut drag rather than add to it while simultaneously increasing downforce.

Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges

The fans run from the high-voltage battery and a vehicle control system, so output can be modulated rather than left on as a fixed penalty.

There are additional strengths that can come from this design, like extra tire load at low speed, which can contribute to even more face-melting acceleration rates, decrease stopping distance, and sharper turn-in before a wing has air to work with. Adjustable fan speed lets the car add grip only when needed, so it can be catered to the force of a turn or acceleration.

These designs were previously used, and banned, in some competitive settings. The Brabham BT46B was banned in F1 competition for using a similar fan design and being labeled as too effective.

Tesla still lists the Roadster as having a sub-two-second 0-60 MPH time and a 250-plus-MPH top speed, and there are expectations for a SpaceX cold-gas thruster package that could not only increase acceleration but potentially cause the vehicle to hover.

It is important to note that a patent is not a production part, and packaging four fans in a rear diffuser, managing noise, and potential debris are all things Tesla must consider. With that being said, the patent being granted shows Tesla is designing the Roadster to go fast, but it is also attempting to use unique strategies to combat any issues it might have at those speeds.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong

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17 hours ago

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September 29, 2026

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Credit: @thaichiminh1907/X

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) showrooms have been picked clean ahead of the end of the third quarter of the year, as demand looks to be strong and delivery estimates for new vehicles are pushed into late 2026 and early 2027.

Tesla appears to have sold out of many of its Model 3 and Model Y trim levels in the United States, as only the Model Y RWD and Model Y All-Wheel-Drive are available for delivery before the end of the year.

Additionally, many showrooms are either completely empty or void of all but just one demo unit within the buildings themselves in an effort to bolster what could be one of Tesla’s best quarters in vehicle deliveries in recent memory.

Additionally, when I spoke to the guys at Tesla Mechanicsburg two weeks ago, when I returned the Model Y L, their third hauler of the week had just arrived, and every vehicle on it, along with every vehicle in their delivery lot, was accounted for and had a name attached to it for delivery.

Tesla saw a 25 percent increase in deliveries in Q2 compared to the same quarter the year before. The vast majority of the 480,126 units it delivered, 467,762 vehicles to be exact, were the Model 3 and Model Y.

In Q3 2025, Tesla delivered 497,099 vehicles, once again a figure that was dominated by the company’s two mass-market vehicles. Analysts have unusually wide predictions for this quarter, likely because so many firms missed the Q2 delivery figure by such a substantial margin; Wall Street predicted 408,000 cars, while Tesla delivered 480,000.

Goldman Sachs has Tesla slotted for 435,000 deliveries in Q3, while JPMorgan said it anticipates 482,000. The median guess is about 449,000 deliveries for Q3.

Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.

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