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SpaceX’s first private Mars conference is focusing on the ‘how’ of living on the red planet

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Earlier this week, SpaceX kicked off an under-the-radar conference focused on the technological and strategic requirements for building and sustaining a permanent human presence on Mars.

Likely the first of many more to come over the next few years, guests of SpaceX’s 2018 Mars Workshop include several dozen attendees (50-100) and a few dozen government agencies, academic institutions, and companies.

Likely for a number of political and practical reasons, SpaceX’s first Mars Workshop has been kept very quiet, likely including NDAs for attendees, media embargoes, and more. In this case, the extremely preliminary nature of the discussions and the attendance of a wide array of NASA representatives made excessive publicity somewhat undesirable. NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and #JourneyToMars media program – themselves motivated primarily by political forces and NASA’s own ‘contractors’ (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Aerojet-Rocketdyne, etc.) – could quite reasonably feel threatened by the highly-publicized attendance of NASA officials at a SpaceX Mars Workshop.

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A Crew BFS (Big F____ Spaceship) pictured landing on Mars. (SpaceX)

What to bring to Mars

Whether SpaceX’s first BFR launches to Mars happen in 2022 or 2030, it will remain true that every single kilogram of cargo included on those foundational missions will need to be laser-focused on autonomously creating and sustaining significant infrastructure on another planet. As it turns out, Earthbound humans are currently quite good at doing the Earthly equivalent, albeit with much less automation than SpaceX will need to replicate it on Mars.

Regardless of the rationale behind the secrecy, it means that non-attendees currently know next to nothing about the event. The most valuable information provided thus far happens to be a list of the groups involved in the workshop. By no means a coincidence, at least four of the groups in attendance are primarily focused on or at least have secondary expertise in mining, drilling, resource extraction, or industrial machinery: Colorado School of Mines, Tesla, Bechtel Corporation (engineering & construction), Caterpillar Inc (heavy machinery design and production), and Schlumberger (oilfield services).

More tangentially, Japan’s space agency (JAXA) is in attendance and is known to have a working with Japanese heavy machinery manufacturer Kajima, kindled for the purpose of designing and building industrial equipment specifically optimized for use beyond Earth.

 

Schlumberger may initially feel like an unsavory addition, but it is simply undeniable that oil and gas extraction companies are the global experts of finding, characterizing, and extracting underground resources in a liquid or gas state. Schlumberger also happens to specialize in groundwater extraction, an absolute necessity for prospecting and extracting meaningful quantities of water from liquid (if they exist on Mars) or ice aquifers (definitely present).

With its first Mars Workshop, SpaceX is clearly setting itself up to be a massive force in the currently obscure fields of interplanetary colonization, habitation, and in-situ resource extraction (ISRU). If SpaceX chooses to double down on these regular conferences with some form of grant awards for exceptional research, the company could rapidly become the primary leader (and beneficiary) of cutting-edge research that will be absolutely necessary for building colonies on Mars and throughout the solar system.

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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

SpaceX’s next project will produce Starships at a level that sounds impossible

1,000 rockets per year is an insane number, especially considering Starship’s sheer size.

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Credit: SpaceX

Elon Musk has revealed bold plans for SpaceX’s newest Starbase facility in Texas, predicting it will become a birthplace for “so many spaceships.” The upcoming “Gigabay,” a massive $250 million production hub in Starbase, Texas, is designed to manufacture up to 1,000 Starship rockets per year.

That’s an insane number of rockets for a single facility, especially considering Starship’s sheer size. 

One of the world’s largest industrial structures

SpaceX’s Gigabay is expected to stand roughly 380 feet tall and enclose 46.5 million cubic feet of interior space, making it one of the largest industrial structures to date. The facility will feature 24 dedicated work cells for assembling and refurbishing Starship and Super Heavy vehicles, complete with heavy-duty cranes capable of lifting up to 400 U.S. tons, as noted in a Times of India report.

Construction crews have already placed four tower cranes on-site, with completion targeted for December 2026. Once operational, the Gigabay is expected to boost SpaceX’s launch cadence dramatically, as it would be able to build up to 1,000 reusable Starships per year, as noted in a report from the Dallas Express. Musk stated that the Gigabay will be “one of the biggest structures in the world” and hinted that it represents a major leap in Starbase’s evolution from test site to full-scale production hub.

A key step toward Mars and beyond

Starship is SpaceX’s heavy-lift rocket system, and it remains a key part of Elon Musk’s vision of a multiplanetary future. The vehicle can carry 100–150 tonnes to low Earth orbit and up to 250 tonnes in expendable mode. With several successful flights to date, including a perfect 11th test flight, the Starship program continues to refine its reusable launch system ahead of crewed lunar missions under NASA’s Artemis initiative.

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Starship is unlike any other spacecraft that has been produced in the past. As per Elon Musk, Starship is a “planet-colonizer” class rocket, as the magnitude of such a task “makes other space transport task trivial.” Considering Starship’s capabilities, it could indeed become the spacecraft that makes a Moon or Mars base feasible. 

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Cybertruck

Tesla Cybertruck fleet takes over at SpaceX’s Starbase

Interestingly, the Cybertruck uses the same exterior, a stainless steel alloy, as SpaceX rockets. This synergy between the two companies and their very different products shows a very unified mentality between Musk companies.

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Credit: @derek1ee | X

Tesla Cybertrucks have taken over at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas, as hundreds of the all-electric pickup trucks were spotted late last week rounding out a massive fleet of vehicles.

The Cybertruck fleet is geared toward replacing gas vehicles that are used at Starbase for everyday operations. The only surprise about this is that it was not done sooner:

Deliveries have been going on for a few weeks, as Cybertrucks have made their way across the state of Texas from Austin to Starbase so they could be included in SpaceX’s fleet of vehicles at the facility.

Interestingly, the Cybertruck uses the same exterior, a stainless steel alloy, as SpaceX rockets. This synergy between the two companies and their very different products shows a very unified mentality between Musk companies.

However, there are some other perspectives to consider as SpaceX is utilizing such a massive fleet of Cybertrucks. Some media outlets (unsurprisingly) are seeing this as a move of weakness by both Tesla and SpaceX, as the aerospace company is, in a sense, “bailing out” lagging sales for the all-electric pickup.

It’s no secret that Tesla has struggled with the Cybertruck this year, and deliveries have been underwhelming in the sense that the company was anticipating between 1 million and 2 million orders for the vehicle before it was widely produced.

A lot of things changed with the Cybertruck between its 2019 unveiling and 2023 initial deliveries, most notably, price.

The price of the Cybertruck swelled significantly and priced out many of those who had pre-ordered it. Some have weighed the option of whether this purchase was a way to get rid of sitting inventory.

However, it seems more logical to consider the fact that SpaceX was likely always going to transition to Teslas for its fleet, especially at Starship, at some point.

It doesn’t seem out of the question that one Musk company would utilize another Musk company’s products, especially considering the Cybertruck has been teased as the vehicle that would be present on Mars.

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SpaceX successfully launches 100th Starlink mission of 2025

With 100 Starlink missions completed for 2025, space enthusiasts have noted that SpaceX has successfully launched 2,554 Starlink satellites so far this year.

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(Credit: Starlink)

SpaceX achieved its 100th Starlink mission of the year on Friday, October 31, marking another milestone for 2025. 

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink broadband satellites successfully lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 4:41 p.m. ET, carrying another 28 Starlink satellites to Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

Falcon 9 booster’s 29th flight

Roughly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage touched down on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean. This marked the booster’s 29th flight, which is approaching SpaceX’s reuse record of 31 missions.

This latest mission adds to SpaceX’s impressive 138 Falcon 9 launches in 2025, 99 of which were dedicated to Starlink, according to Space.com. The company’s focus on reusing boosters has enabled this breakneck pace, with multiple launches each week supporting both Starlink’s expansion and external customers.

Starlink’s network continues massive global expansion

Starlink remains the largest active satellite constellation in history, with more than 10,000 satellites launched, nearly 8,800 of which are currently active. SpaceX recently achieved Starlink’s 10,000-satellite milestone. With 100 Starlink missions completed for 2025, space enthusiasts have noted that SpaceX has successfully launched 2,554 Starlink satellites so far this year.

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Starlink, which provides high-speed, low-latency internet connectivity even to the world’s most remote areas, has been proven to be life-changing technology for people across the globe. The service is currently operational in about 150 countries, and it currently has over 5 million subscribers worldwide. From this number, 2.7 million joined over the past year.

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