At Starbase, one witnesses the impossible made tangible. What was once a barren sandbar now rises as a fully functioning city, meticulously constructed in barely half a decade. From the earliest MadMax-esque prototypes to the enormous rocket factory and launchpads that now dominate the Texas horizon, the transformation is staggering. Musk speaks not in vague abstractions but in metrics that defy imagination: producing a Starship every two to three weeks, with the ultimate aim of a thousand per year, a cadence that eclipses even the great aeronautical factories of Boeing and Airbus. Here, rockets are not singular marvels but industrial artifacts of a civilization determined to become interplanetary.
Visitors to Starbase can literally drive along public highways and see these titanic vessels close-up—the largest flying objects ever constructed by human hands. Musk emphasizes the scale not as spectacle but as necessity: each Starship exceeds the size of a 747 or A380, and the Starlink satellites supporting them are comparable to full-sized airliners. The ambition is systemic: not just to reach Mars, but to establish self-sustaining life there, creating a civilization resilient against both cosmic and terrestrial catastrophes.
Musk’s vision is not of a single voyage, but of an entire civilization in motion. By mastering rapidly reusable, reliable rockets, Starbase aims to minimize cost per ton to Mars, making the red planet accessible to anyone who wishes to journey. The ingenuity is breathtaking: the super heavy boosters are caught mid-air by tower arms—effectively “giant chopsticks”—allowing them to be refueled and refly within hours. In principle, Starships could launch and return multiple times a day, heralding a new industrial rhythm for space itself.
The engineering extends to orbital refueling, akin to the aerial refueling of airplanes, allowing Starships to rendezvous and transfer fuel in space—a feat never before accomplished. This technology, coupled with the next-generation Raptor 3 engines and a revolutionary, fully reusable orbital heat shield, transforms what was science fiction into engineering fact. Each Starship, Musk asserts, is equipped to ferry hundreds, eventually thousands, of humans, along with all the infrastructure necessary to render Mars self-sufficient.
The scale is almost biblical. Starbase is designed not only to manufacture but to orchestrate a thousand Starships per year, with eventual launch windows sending massive flotillas of ships to Mars every 26 months. Each Martian mission will transport millions of tons of equipment and provisions, ultimately establishing a new city on a new world, where humans can rethink civilization itself. Musk envisions domed habitats, solar farms, robotic pioneers like Optimus, and ultimately a society that could thrive independently of Earth, capable of rescuing or being rescued, ensuring that human civilization endures beyond a single planet.
And yet, amid the staggering scale, Musk evokes wonder, not merely through numbers, but through vision. This is life multilanetary, a literal fulfillment of dreams first imagined by Godwin and Verne. Starbase is no longer a factory; it is the prologue to a story that spans planets. In its megabays and launch towers, one glimpses the audacity of human ambition: a civilization that once looked to the Moon now sets its sights on Mars—and the stars beyond.

When the first Starships leave Earth, they will carry more than mere passengers; they will bear the cumulative ambition of humanity. Musk outlines a rhythm of departure dictated by the cosmic dance of planets: every 26 months, Earth and Mars align to permit the most efficient transit, each Starship entering an elliptical orbit timed to intersect with the red planet. The journey is vast—nearly a thousand times farther than the Moon—and yet, within these voyages, Musk imagines ordinary humans stepping into the extraordinary.
The first unmanned Starship, laden with supplies and the pioneering Optimus robot, will arrive to scout and prepare the Martian surface. It is not simply exploration; it is construction in miniature, terraforming beginnings through autonomous labor. Solar arrays will unfurl, habitats will rise within protective domes, and pathways for water extraction from ice reserves will be surveyed. Musk describes Arcadia, a region chosen with exacting care for its balance of terrain and resources, as the embryo of human society beyond Earth. Here, life multilanetary begins in earnest.
Two years later, contingent upon the success of these preliminary missions, humans will embark. Families, engineers, scientists, dreamers—all will land in the first Martian city, stepping onto a planet that until now existed only in imagination and equations. The city is designed not merely for survival, but for flourishing. Habitats will be interlinked by energy grids, powered by vast solar farms; Starlink satellites orbiting Mars will maintain communication with Earth, compressing the universe to a manageable distance, even if light itself imposes a three-and-a-half to twenty-two-minute delay.
Musk imagines a civilization not constrained by terrestrial precedent. The Martians will decide governance, ethics, urban layout—an opportunity for humanity to recompile civilization itself. Unlike Earth, Mars is a blank page, a place where lessons from millennia of human history can guide new social contracts, informed by both hope and caution. Each launch window will escalate the scale: fleets of Starships, sometimes thousands in orbit, will carry the mass necessary to sustain the city and grow it into a self-reliant society. Musk projects a million tons—or perhaps more—of infrastructure will be required, each Starship a vector of human ingenuity and resilience.
Crucially, Musk’s engineering does not merely facilitate arrival but ensures continuity. Rapidly reusable rockets, orbital refueling, and advanced heat shields are not ornamental—they are the lifelines of an interplanetary society. Each Starship, refueled and ready, transforms Mars from a distant dream into a tangible cradle of civilization, capable of thriving even if Earth were suddenly cut off. The vision is audacious: a city that can grow independently, a society that could rescue or be rescued, safeguarding human culture across the void.
And beyond survival, Musk imagines adventure. Walking under domes, navigating Martian valleys, observing the sun dip across a copper sky—these are not merely aesthetic details but the human experience of a new world. Optimus robots will maintain infrastructure, humans will expand habitats, and eventually, terraforming efforts may render Mars ever more Earthlike. Musk speaks of megaton transfers every launch window, creating a rhythm of civilization that is as industrial as it is existential—a cadence dictated by the cosmos yet orchestrated by human ingenuity.
The vision extends further still: Moon bases, asteroid belt stations, and eventually settlements beyond the Solar System, each step building upon the lessons of Starbase and the first Martian city. Musk frames this not as fantasy but as achievable physics, a roadmap from sandbars in South Texas to cities on a world once thought unreachable. In this vision, humanity becomes a species without a single planetary tether, a civilization whose story spans stars and centuries, where the audacity of imagination meets the precision of engineering.
Starbase, therefore, is not merely a factory. It is a cosmic prologue, the first chapter in a story that begins with rockets, unfolds across planets, and culminates in a multiplanetary civilization. Here, the dreams of Godwin and Verne find their fullest expression—not merely to reach the Moon, but to inhabit worlds beyond, where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and humanity, at last, becomes what it has always longed to be: truly, and irrevocably, interplanetary.