dearMoon Mission
In 2018 when Elon Musk and Yusaku Maezawa announced the first mission for Starship Maezawa was paying for the whole week-long trip around the moon and was taking a bunch of artists with him. As time has gone on though he has changed his initial plans. Now out of the 10-12 crew members that he is paying for he has decided to bring 8 members of the general public along with him! How amazing is that?! This is the dream of Elon coming to fruition with regular people going to space! While Starship is not operational yet (and has some pretty crazy crashes recently) the goal is still to launch Starship in 2023 quicker than most people think!
Anyone is able to apply and right now you can put your name on the list of applicants on the website for the dearMoon mission here! The pre-registration does end on March 14th and the individuals are expected to be picked by the end of May! Good luck to anyone that wants to apply!
Starlink Factory
SpaceX also made some huge news yesterday in regards to Starlink the satellite constellation to provide internet access to the world. Last year Tesla announced that they were building their next gigafactory in Austin, Texas and now SpaceX is building a Starlink satellite manufacturing plant in Austin too! Elon has been very outspoken against how SpaceX and Tesla have been treated in California and how Texas has embraced the companies. This further movement of resources I think really shows that California has really damaged their relationship with him. You have seen fewer and fewer rocket launches from California, canceled plans for Starship and the Port of LA, Tesla's clash with shut down orders among other flare-ups between the state and Elon.
Currently, Starlink satellites are produced in a Washington facility but it is only producing 120 satellites a month. With updated satellites needing to be built it makes sense that they need to expand operations. Sadly it would appear to me that Washington is falling victim to what has gone on with California as Musk has even moved to Texas from Califonia and it appears he wants his projects closer to him.
