SpaceX Florida's New Major Update 2023...is here!!!

Sad to say, but Starbase is no longer SpaceX's Mars gateway. Instead, any mission to Mars may exclusively depart from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. However, 2022 is only the beginning. This transition will be made official next year, and in today's episode of Great SpaceX, let's take a sneak peek at Starship's new home for 2023. At one time, SpaceX intended to build its Starship rocket at the LA docks. They radically changed the design to use polished 304L stainless steel in place of carbon composite and moved its fabrication to Texas. Then, a strange, rapid prototyping effort saw a shiny, somewhat rough-looking rocket begin to take shape at SpaceX's Boca Chica lot on the Texas coast. That first test article was fitted with fuel and oxidizer tanks and put through a tethered fire of a single Raptor engine. Eventually, a taller version, intended for hop flights and maybe even orbital tests, began to grow from its Texas weed patch. However, while an environmental assessment clears the way for test flights of the giant rockets to orbit from Starbase, Texas may have lost its claim on future historic flights to Mars. Musk has said that SpaceX plans to ultimately move Starship operations to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the company is building a new launch tower and already has all the permits required for orbital launches. The company last year also started moving forward with building out a Starship launch site at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, providing another option to the Starbase development and launch compound. It pushed ahead on construction in Florida while waiting on the FAA to complete an environmental impact review of orbital launches on the 47-acre Starbase compound. In September, Starship's second launch tower officially reached its final height, becoming the second tallest rocket-related structure, excluding lightning towers on the east coast, only beaten by NASA's iconic Vehicle Assembly Building. Starbase Florida is making great progress, but a large amount of work still stands between SpaceX and launch readiness. The works will be completed quickly between now and before the second quarter of 2023. In case you're wondering where this timeline came from, let's take a look back at a rare tweet by Musk about Starship's schedule. Probably Q2 next year with vehicles initially transferred by boat from Port of Brownsville to the Cape. That pretty much settles it, we'll see the Mars-bound rocket launching from Florida. Additionally, SpaceX will complete its second next-generation Starship factory to supply multiple planned Florida launch sites with their own Starships and Super Heavy boosters in 2023. Taking a closer look at this slide, we can determine that the opening for the vehicles to enter and exit High Bay 3 will be on the north side, and the star factory will feature two different roof heights, likely to accommodate nosecone-slash-payload bay stacking. SpaceX has submitted updated plans for the Roberts Road Starship production area. The main factory is now a total of 640,000 square feet or around 60,200 square meters, which is 136,000 square feet or 12,600 square meters larger than in previous plans. This also confirms that there will be each 32,136 square feet or around 3,000 square meters. Once completed, the company will have much more space to build and stack ships and boosters, laying the foundation for the coming Starship mass production. What's notable is with the ambitious goal to conduct up to 100 launches next year, SpaceX is also hoping to increase its productivity by consolidating its space coast resources to a more centralized location. The company is working in cooperation with NASA to expand its operations at Kennedy Space Center. It'll do so by increasing its footprint by up to 100 acres. The proposed expansion would take place at SpaceX's leased property along Roberts Road, the site where the company refurbishes Falcon 9 first stage boosters in Hangar X. SpaceX told NASA that it would use up to an additional 100 acres to develop an office of facilities that would handle the following, vehicle and payload processing, fabrication, storage, manufacturing, shipping and receiving. SpaceX also plans to construct a roughly 1.6 mile connector road that would run from the NASA Parkway to the Roberts Road facility. One of the main reasons for this desired expansion is to make room for work to be done on Starship. Right now, testing of SpaceX's Starship slash Super Heavy rocket is underway in Boca Chica, Texas, the site of the Starbase facility where the first orbital flights of the reusable rocket will take place later this year. But, as Starship becomes operational, there will be less of a need for a vibrant test program at Boca Chica Beach. At that point, as Musk said, the South Texas site will likely be maintained as a hub for research and development. And finally, SpaceX's second launch pad is highly likely to be built at the Cape. Both SpaceX and NASA officials have confirmed that they are moving forward with plans to modify the company's second Florida launch pad to support crew and cargo Dragon missions. When Reuters first reported it back in June, SpaceX began studying the possibility of modifying its Cape Canaveral Space Force Station LC-40 pad for Dragon missions earlier this year after NASA raised concerns about the risks posed by plans to operate its next generation Starship rocket out of the only pad available for Dragon. Regarding the type of improvements that LC-40 will need, nothing is known. But it's more likely that NASA will demand that SpaceX create facilities akin to those at Pad 39A. This would necessitate the construction of a brand new crew access tower, crew access arm, escape system, and astronaut bunker on site. Given that NASA is largely responsible for the need for a backup Dragon launch pad, it's likely that the agency will demand the presence of that backup before permitting SpaceX to launch Starship from Pad 39A. However, SpaceX's ability to complete the LC-40 modification by the second quarter of 2023 is extremely doubtful. Regardless, SpaceX's Florida chapter will be more explosive than ever next year, and it's really worth the wait. Thank you so much for watching, and if you enjoy what my team and I are doing, you can become a patron through our Patreon link in the description below. Otherwise, as always, this is Kevin with GreatSpaceX, and from all of us here at GreatSpaceX, we hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.