00:02this is the star factory at over 1 million square feet it is the biggest and most advanced rocket
00:11manufacturing plant in the world it's also the location where SpaceX is building their starship
00:19and they are building a lot of them with just one star factory SpaceX can build up to 365
00:26starships per year that's one rocket every single day to accomplish this they need a factory unlike
00:35anything you've seen before and inside the star factory we will find a giant automated machine
00:42that is building rockets for the future of human space exploration it all begins with raw materials
00:50it's crazy to think that the majority of an epic starship rocket starts out looking like this just
00:56a big roll of stainless steel the metal is about four millimeters thick and each sheet is 1.8 meters
01:03wide SpaceX uses their own custom blend for this stainless steel which they've developed to handle
01:09the unique demands of a reusable rocket of course it needs to be strong but that strength needs to
01:15be maintained from super low temperature conditions when the rocket takes off loaded with cryogenic fuel
01:20all the way to super hot conditions when it comes screaming back through the atmosphere spacex steel
01:26is actually strongest when it's cold at the time when the rocket is under the heaviest load the metal
01:32also needs to be corrosion resistant because these reusable rockets need to last for a very long time and
01:38they'll spend most of that time hanging out in the salty sea air but at the same time this particular
01:44alloy
01:45needs to be easy for the star factory to work with meaning it can be bent into shape and welded
01:50together
01:50without any complications this is the first real step in the manufacturing process an automated machine
01:57that cuts sheets of metal from the rolls and welds them into rings then the rings are stacked into segments
02:04of three or five and everything is welded together by a robot arm that circles around the stack
02:09and completes the job in one quick fluid motion there was a time where every starship was hand welded
02:16from top to bottom but as spacex moves towards mass production they are automating every part of the
02:21process that they can now human welders are still responsible for attaching small parts that demand
02:27precision and adaptability but all of the larger jobs have been handed off to machines now for the curved
02:34bits of the rocket like the nose cone and the fuel tanks the steel needs to be bent into shape
02:40before
02:40it can be welded together for this spacex uses a process called hydroforming it's basically using
02:46a very high pressure liquid to push the sheet of metal into a mold
