Elon Musk Wants To Build a New Starship Every 72 Hours

Ars Technica's senior space editor visited SpaceX's South Texas Launch Site for a long profile of Elon Musk (who was wearing an "Occupy Mars" t-shirt). Just two weeks ago Musk had called an all-hands meeting at 1 a.m. which led to a massive hiring spree of 252 people, doubling the site's workforce, within the next 48 hours. "Most of the new hires, even those who had inked contracts at midnight, were told to report for work the next morning..." SpaceX is designing its factory here to build a Starship every 72 hours... Musk has brought lessons learned from Tesla's assembly line so workers do not burn out. They will work three 12-hour days and then have a four-day weekend. Then they'll work four 12-hour shifts with a three-day weekend. Thus, with four shifts, the Boca Chica site can operate at full capacity 24 hours a day, seven days a week. SpaceX is throwing in hot meals every three to four hours, for free... "A high production rate solves many ills," he said. "If you have a high production rate, you have a high iteration rate. For pretty much any technology whatsoever, the progress is a function of how many iterations do you have, and how much progress do you make between each iteration. If you have a high production rate then you have many iterations. You can make progress from one to the next...." Other engineers have built an in-house, shielded machine to X-ray the welds... These machines existed only in the minds of engineers four weeks ago. The tent they've installed them in for testing was built less than three weeks ago. Musk has always had a knack for hiring brilliant young engineers, and those in the Boca Chica tents were mostly in their 20s, busting their tails for the boss. Willingly. Why? Because Musk empowers them to go fast, do cool things, and, very soon, to see their machines fly... "I'll probably be long dead before Mars becomes self-sustaining, but I'd like to at least be around to see a bunch of ships land on Mars," Musk said. It's a 4,000 word article, but the last paragraph really captures the mood. "The place feels the way a U.S. Navy shipyard must have felt in the weeks after Pearl Harbor -- insanely busy but also purposeful. These kids and swarms of recently hired technicians are fighting against impossible odds every day, and they're determined to win. Don't tell them it can't be done. "They're not having any of that in Muskville."

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