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SpaceX begins assembling Starbase’s biggest manufacturing building yet
It might not look like much today but SpaceX has begun assembling what is set to become Starbase’s largest Starship manufacturing facility.
The structure, which has generally come to be known as Starbase’s ‘wide bay,’ was first teased by CEO Elon Musk in July 2021 and will be the fourth permanent assembly ‘bay’ constructed at Starbase – currently SpaceX’s sole dedicated Starship factory. The first, now known simply as the windbreak, is a triangular bay built in 2019 that is mostly unused but occasionally supports work on Starship nose assembly. Next, SpaceX built a larger ‘mid bay’ in the first quarter of 2020, out of which every Starship prototype and test tank since SN3 has been built.
A few months after the midbay was finished, SpaceX began constructing an even larger ‘high bay’ around 81 meters (265 ft) tall and 30 by 25 meters (100 by 80 ft) wide – about twice as tall and with twice the area, in other words. While the midbay was specifically optimized for assembling one or two Starship tank sections at a time, the high bay was designed to be large enough to fully assemble one Super Heavy booster (69m/225ft tall) and stack a Starship tank and nose section (50m/165ft tall) at the same time. The goal of SpaceX’s new ‘wide bay’ may be even loftier still.
Though SpaceX’s pace of Starship and Super Heavy assembly and processing appears to have slowed down significantly in the last few months, the company has still proven with Starships SN4-6, SN8-SN11, and SN15-16 that it can build large numbers of suborbital prototypes at the frankly incredible pace of 1-2 per month. With Super Heavy BN1, BN3, and BN3, SpaceX – to a lesser degree – has also demonstrated respectable booster prototype production, though none have flown and only one has completed any testing.
Nonetheless, as SpaceX works to complete Starship S21 and Super Heavy B5 and prepares to begin assembling S22 and B6 while Ship 20 and Booster 4 still sit – largely untested – at the launch site, Starbase’s existing production capabilities are already starting to outstretch its two main assembly bays. In other words, the purpose of SpaceX’s new ‘wide bay’ is almost certainly to double, triple, or even quadruple Starbase’s maximum vehicle production rate.
The wide bay’s dimensions have yet to be officially confirmed but based on aerial views of its foundation, it will measure roughly 50m (~165′) wide, 35m (~115′) deep, and 90-100m (~300-330′) tall, giving it more than twice as much usable floor space as the high bay. In theory, the high bay has enough space for SpaceX to stack 3-4 four Starship or Super Heavy tank sections at once. With more than twice the floor space, the wide bay should singlehandedly allow SpaceX to assemble 3-4 Super Heavy boosters, 4-8 Starships, or 2-3 boosters and 2-3 Starships at once.
At the absolute minimum, once fully outfitted, that means it could roughly triple the number of boosters or ships Starbase can fully assemble each month. Pictured below, there’s also a small but not insignificant amount of evidence (the small rectangles left of the wide bay foundation, bottom right, in the photo above) that SpaceX is completing additional foundation work that could double the wide bay’s floor space yet again. The second 50x35m structure those foundations seem to outline could be a wider midbay, a few-story ring assembly floor to augment Starbase’s tents, a 50x70m ‘high bay,’ or simply a more permanent space for general offices, workshops, storage, and other miscellaneous uses.
Stay tuned for updates on the massive structure’s construction.
News
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
SpaceX’s Crew-13 Dragon reached the ISS in under eight hours, and NASA confirmed a record.
SpaceX now owns every spot on the list of the five fastest trips a U.S. spacecraft has ever made to the International Space Station, and its newest entry beat the old mark by more than four hours.
Crew Dragon Grace docked to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:05 p.m. ET on October 1, just 7 hours and 55 minutes after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. NASA confirmed the milestone in a space station blog update, writing that the flight “marked the fastest launch‑to‑docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the history of the International Space Station.”
The previous U.S. record also belonged to Dragon. SpaceX’s uncrewed CRS-31 cargo mission reached the station in a little over 12 hours in November 2024. The fastest crewed trip before last week was Crew-11, which took 14 hours and 43 minutes in August 2025, according to Space.com.
A post that Elon Musk reposted on Monday filled out the rest of the ranking. Behind Crew-13, CRS-31 and Crew-11 sit Axiom’s Ax-2 mission at 15 hours and 35 minutes and NASA’s Crew-4 at 15 hours and 44 minutes. All five flew on Dragon.
SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest
Crew-13 carried NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. NASA had projected a docking around 8 p.m. ET, as Teslarati reported the day before launch, and Dragon arrived nearly an hour early. Our launch day coverage noted that the flight was lined up to be the quickest Crew Dragon transit yet.
The speed came from timing more than hardware. SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman said the station “was in an opportune spot in space,” which let Dragon start closing the gap almost immediately after reaching orbit. “This is close to the fastest it could be,” she added. Most Crew Dragon flights still take close to a day, using a series of Draco thruster burns to raise and phase their orbit before arrival.
Dragon’s next job at the station is a departure. NASA said Monday it is targeting 8:05 a.m. ET on Wednesday, October 7, for Crew-12 to undock, setting up a splashdown off the coast of California around 11:34 a.m. on Thursday. Clearing that port makes room for CRS-35, a cargo Dragon carrying the final set of iROSA solar arrays.
Dragon remains NASA’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner stays grounded, and the agency recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification.
Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
