Welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss the critical Crossroads, The
Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neuralink.
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with You. So we don't do anything small
and and you know we have obviously extra links got a
small 8mm or 8mm stacks that are really are part of our what
where we end up when you see a startling mission we end up
sending out thousands of those to build out our constellation
and then you have the size of Dragon.
But really what we've been building over the last 20 years
is starting out with Falcon One, which was just A1 stick building
the Falcon 9 program, continuing to build up capabilities with
the Falcon 9 Heavy program. But as you can see, Starship is
beating them all. It's got two times the thrust of
a Saturn 5. When I was when I was in NASA,
one of the things I I came in right well, at the very the
middle stages of the shuttle program.
But there was a lot of people in the shuttle program that would,
when I would go to shuttle launches, they would say, oh
Kathy, the shuttle launch is nice, but man, I knew the launch
you missed was a Saturn 5. And and now what is really cool
last year is I was able to see a launch that was two times the
thrust of a Saturn 5 just here in the Rio Grande Valley.
Really, really amazing. And this is the game changer I
talked to you, if you can we can figure out how to get twice the
mass up on our missions then it really enables so much more
space exploration. Next slide.
So I'd say, you know at the beginning we talked about the
company starting in 2002. At the very beginning it was
just about how do you build rocket engines.
And then it was about how do you begin to learn about launch
building and launching rockets, which is what happened when
we're working the the initial Falcons.
And then it was about how do you build a medium class launch
vehicle. But as you can see, over the
last 10 years we've been kind of speeding up, and we went from
the Falcon 9 region's first orbit to the first spacecraft,
private commercial spacecraft, going to the International Space
Station in 2012 to beginning what is really a game changer.
We reentry. People used to say if you that
it was impossible to be able to return a first stage.
So going back to the goals of cost effective transportation,
what's the most cost effective method is to not throw away your
hard work, but to be able to return it, reuse it, turn around
and flag it again. So that was another major game
changer that SpaceX did to be able to get its cost of launch
down. We had the Crew Dragon near and
dear to my heart as I was a Commercial Crew Program Manager
for NASA. So the first mission that took
US astronauts back to the ISS on AUS commercial vehicle occurred
in in that May of 2020 time frame or 2021.
And then we had the our first high altitude Starship flight in
May of 2021. And then as you know, we're
beginning to get ready. This April is a little bit of an
old date, but we're actually getting ready at the vehicles
ready now. We're getting ready to do our
stacked test in our wet dresses over the next few weeks.
And then hopefully right after the Memorial Day weekend or
close to it, we'll get our FAA license and be able to get ready
for our next Starship launch. But this is a company that
continues to learn, develop, make things better and grow and
move to the next thing. And it's it's as you can see
there's been a lot of growth over the last 15 years.
So now I'm talking a little bit about Starbase.
So for us, we're very, when you see it now and you see we're
actually in the process of really expanding the capability
of our our little really at this little island at the end of Hwy.
4 and really and building it up for us to be the premier
location for producing all of our starships and being one of
the major launch sites for the star show.
Next slide, obviously what's really, really important is you
can't do this without a lot of people.
This is one of my favorite pictures.
You know, every once in a while you've got to get everybody
together. We had just stacked the vehicle
for a flight in November and we got a bunch of people out.
God took a picture because you had to like sit there and really
appreciate the fact that we had rebuilt the path, got the
vehicle stacked and we're ready to fly again for that second
mission. But all of this needs like a
full production capability. When you're building the tallest
rocket launch in catch shower, you have 500, almost 500 feet.
So if you think about a story is in a in a building that's about
1010 to 12 feet where you're looking at A50 story building,
that's the height of it. I mean when you're standing on
Hwy. 4 looking up at the vehicles, it's a long ways up.
So you need to have towers and facilities to be able to
maneuver the vehicle, be able to work on it and then get it
ready, test it out and ready to fly.
And we're going to talk a little bit too about we are expanding
our village and our other capabilities out there because
if you have over 2100 people there every day, just Spacexers
alone. And then on top of that, all of
the contractors that are working in the pad at Starbase Village
at the production area, you can imagine we have over 3000 people
that are there every day working there that at the end of Hwy. 4,
excellent. I appreciated the mentions of
all the investment that SpaceX has done.
I mean this is obviously been a major investment for the
company. You know we've been putting in
billions into this area to get the facilities ready to be able
to do that. It takes, it's not easy building
at the end of IOA 4 and we've been building our star
factories, our utility structures, our all of our
support buildings for all the moves and everything else, plus
homes, amenities and other things that we need to be able
to support the families that also we're that are staying
close to the production areas. So when you look at the numbers
here, these numbers are growing. We're getting ready to put out
our new economic impact report. It'll be coming out over the
next few weeks. And when you see those, these
numbers are growing and growing as really also the communities
are gaining the benefit of the missions.
You know, it used to be before, you know, obviously when we were
doing the Hopper missions, those were interesting, but there's
nothing like an orbital flight. And so we we've been very happy
that there that people are enjoying these missions and
people are coming out to see them.
This the last mission I was out watching out at South Padre and
it was really great to be there standing with a whole group of
people that were cheering for us to be able to get that mission
going. Next slide I will tell you one
of the things that make our folks really happy is helping
the communities and so want to sell as many jobs is to go bring
her out. How to engage in the community
in a way that helps them but also lets our people really
reach out and have an impact on the community.
They do care and so some of the things that we do are obviously
we do. We went to the to bark, we went
to the dog shelter and painted buildings and watched dogs and a
few people brought dogs home too.
I think it was like a it was very smart in the shelter to
have us come out. If there is one thing Spacexers
like is they like their dogs. But we've also packed lunches at
at centers. We've we're a major sponsor of
the turtle rescue. One of the favorite thing for
our folks is to actually go out and be with the volunteers for
the the Turtle Rescue Mission and and rescue.
It's a major deal. When we actually find turtles
and are able to like bring them on the hovercraft back over to
the rescue facilities, you would have thought that, you know, we
had this cold snap. I can't believe how many people
were out there rescuing turtles and then releasing them, but
that being able to be part of the community, help the
community, it's a big deal for the folks and one of our big
draws. So next slide do it
the. So a lot of things changing
that's also a little bit of our recruiting videos.
That's why you see the coffee and you see food like the dog
park, a dog park for to keep the dogs occupied while their folks
are at work. Because really this is about us
getting the work done. As you can see we there's a ton
of work that needs to happen when you're building the
Rockets. I mean we start out with rolls
of steel on one end of the star factory and it comes out the
other end with boosters. And so you saw the the big high
base, those are high base for us to be able to work on our
boosters and our Starship. And the other thing I we if you
notice the towers, a very different tower than what I grew
up with, but it's another innovation to have what we call
those chopsticks to be able to come in, grab the vehicle, be
able to move it and use it for stacking.
It's another innovation where typically you'd either have to
stack in a in a building and roll out or do like we do at the
Cape, which is you have an Erector that actually pushes up
that would be very, very tough to have that on a large
Starship. So it's another innovation where
we're trying to get to the place where we're able to have these
vehicles come in, be able to to stack them, test them and then
be able to launch because it's that launch cadence that's
really going to allow us to be able to get the amount of
materials that you need to be able to do long term missions in
space. So let me talk a little bit
about straight, get a little sense of Star Basin and that
video. We're actually going to have to
do a new video because we don't have those tents anymore.
We right now have a huge star factory and you'll see it and
and that with just Elon a year ago said, you know what, we need
to get rid of these tents and we this is now going to be a
permanent location for us to be producing and launching
vehicles. So we're going to build a a Giga
Starship factory and so we are in the process of building
1,000,000 square foot factory. We're actually pretty with you
drove down Hwy. 4 right now. You can see we've almost got all
the corners pretty finished up. So it's been a huge endeavor for
us. We're also bringing in and
building. We've been building a office
building so that we can consolidate our folks and office
building and then we'll probably be in the process of building
another highway. We are building a second pad
right now too. So you can imagine that's a lot
of building going along along with us building homes and
everything else. All of this is to get us ready
to be able to start meeting the production and launch rate that
we need to be able to accomplish our missions.
So Starship is the largest, most powerful rocket in history.
It's not just a little bit more powerful.
Like I said before, it's two times as powerful as the Saturn
5, you know, 400 feet tall. And actually moving that up,
we're actually extending it up with the pad and everything
else. It's almost 500 feet.
So just standing at the bottom and looking up at it, it's
pretty frickin amazing, designed to be reusable.
We've talked before about the first stage, you know, on the
importance of returning that we would.
We're looking at bringing back and reusing the boosters and the
star shifts. And so we're still figuring this
out. You know, we're a big test.
You know, fly, really monitor and learn from each flight,
obviously making sure that each mission is conducted in a way
that is safe for the people and the general public that's out
there. But it's OK for us to maybe not
meet all the mission objectives because that's the best way for
us to learn. And so, you know, as we've been
working through this, we've been using first the upper missions
as the suborbital missions to be able to learn and then take that
learning into our orbital missions.
And each of our orbital missions we've taken a little bit farther
based on the learning that we have that we gained from the
last mission. And so we call these our orbital
test flights. If you notice, they're not just
weird. We haven't jumped into the
mission yet because we're still testing and we are learning on
every flight as we're testing continuing to you know the first
flag we got through the initial booster piece.
The second piece which we added the hot staging capability,
which is really a capability that had not been done by any
U.S. company before where you actually start your second
stage, the the Starship part of the of the vehicle before you
start the engines on there before you separate and and so
to ensure that you're able to help with the separation of the
two vehicles. That all worked on our flight
last November. And then the key thing out of
this last March was and all we're talking about this in a
few more missions is US really getting to those, those orbital
flight test projectors. This is all people go, why are
you doing this? So one of the reasons why we're
doing this is because we are aiming towards being able to
land and be the Lander for a human, for a NASA crew member on
the moon. And for us to be able to do
that, we have to be able to have multiple missions.
Tanker missions where we are being able to conduct and fill a
tanker that's in orbit around the Earth and then fly a
Starship up to the tanker, have it be fueled.
And then that tanker, that will be the fuel that then will take
that Starship and fuel that Starship to be able to get to
the moon, be able to rendezvous with a Orion spacecraft, and
then be able to then land those crew members on the moon.
All this is going to take us a lot of learning for us to be
able to get these next steps, but we're continuing to buy down
and prove out that capability as we work through our test
missions going forward. So there's some of those
confirmations that we the.
So it was what's been a lot of fun for me coming in from NASA
is people it's the learning in these test flights that's so
critical. And what's great about SpaceX is
they're able to go say, Oh yeah, that yeah, that was kind of a
big blow up. But guess what, we learned all
these things here. That really is what enables us
to make that progress faster. So it it it's a very different
concept. Companies typically view that
having some people visible like that is viewed as a failure.
But we actually learned a ton from this, and it's what's
enabled us to not just be able to fly once every like three
years, four years like we've been able to make successive
engineering progress by being able to safely and.
And for us, it's not a failure because we learned a bunch, but
safely have the vehicle gracefully fail in a way that
still keeps people safe. But then we can make sure that
we're learning from every vehicle.
It's really, really hard to make sure a spacecrafts going to
absolutely work when you're trying to build something that's
never been done before, right. And so us being able to learn
and enroll that learning back into very quickly is what's
really enabled us to kind of push the envelope on a lot of
these things very quickly. So let me just run through the
last few tests. I already kind of stuffed on or
talked about each of these briefly before, but I wanted to
give you kind of a contest before you saw that video.
So we had our first integrated flight test a little over a year
ago and it really established that the fact that Starship,
that the booster was working and that and and verified the thrust
and that we were able to show how the engines and the
interaction of the engines were working together.
We had the second flight test in November.
I was lucky enough to be able to be here at the time, all 39.
It's amazing. It was an amazing thing for us
because the booster actually worked perfectly.
And so we were, we were able to launch and separate with the hot
staging we had. We were able to get the Starship
vehicle to an altitude we are. We like the engines and then be
able to terminate the both the the Starship and the booster
vehicles. That was for us an amazing
flight. Just being able to do that hot,
first time ever hot staging all 33 engines worked.
The relight of the Starship, all being able to see the the
systems, all working on the major parts of the propulsion of
the vehicle was huge for us. The other thing that was was a
big deal when we had, you know, when you saw the pad, that pad
design is also a very unique pad design.
Normally pads have huge flame trenches in them and one of the
things that Elon had really wanted to prove was to see if we
could do a clean pad interface. Well we ended up finding out on
the first mission that didn't work really well, so we had to
re engineer, add a water diverter system to and then that
helps protect the concrete surface of the pad.
And we ended up finding out that that worked beautifully on the
November mission. I was able to go out and walk
the pad right after the mission and we it it it looked
beautiful. The reason we want to do that is
because it's another place where if we don't need to refurbish
flame trenches, we don't need to be refurbishing the pad after
every launch. It lets us be able to get the
next vehicle up and be able to launch it quickly.
So it's another place where Elon's really pushing us to be
able to get into this flight cadence that we need to be able
to do our missions. This accomplishment help hold
for. Stage 4 Stage 2
That's. It.
The so where you could see the red,
wherever you're seeing like that red glow around, that's that
video footage that I was telling you that was just like amazing
to me. Because we always, when we had
the crew capsules coming in, the part of the mission that always
makes my heart stop is there's a blackout period where you don't
have calm during that phase and you lose contact with the crew
members and you always are like holding your breath until you
get to the other end. And so to be able to have calm
through that period as as were working re entry to me, it would
mean that maybe I wouldn't have to.
I'd always feel like I held my breath for like 3 minutes.
So I'm looking forward to the Starship Re entries because
it'll when we eventually few more years, but eventually we'd
be like people after we really gained the reliability data we
need to have for the star shows. But it's going to be awesome
because we won't have those big blackout periods with the with
the Starman com. So that was the video of our
third integrated test that we had in March.
You know, like I'd already talked about, we were able to
add reliability upgrades. We're always learning and
updating the vehicles as we're flying.
Once again, it's really nice. You can always see when all the
booster or when all the engines are working, it's a nice 33 all
lit up at the back end and able to see how things are working.
The other nice thing when you watch a video and you see it
taken off the pad, there's always this concentric when the
engines all work together and and they're really working
efficiently you can kind of see the flame kind of come together
and push up and that's that's when you have a really nice
integrated propulsion burn. So as a as an old propulsion
engineer I that that's always one of my favorite parts of
seeing the that booster piece. So as you guys are looking at
future flight test missions, really appreciate how those
engines work together. We made it through boost back.
If you notice that you saw a little bit of the videos that
was coming in and we really began to see how we can work the
GNC learning, how does the the booster operate coming back.
So we got some initial data on and and we're rolling in changes
to our GNC design for this next mission see if we can get it a
little bit farther And then first time that we ever started
working through the Starship reentry phases.
And so and I've talked about the live video over and over because
I that's the first time ever everybody that saw that today,
that's the first time that we've anybody in the world's been able
to see footage like that. So more to come nowhere right
now the vehicle's ready. If you go out to the pad now
we've got a a Starship and a booster sitting there.
We're getting ready to do our integrated wet dress.
We call it our wet dress to make sure that we can flow off
propellants everything you know, you want to make sure you've got
all the kinks out. We've tested both of these
sections already, but now we are going to do an integrated test
and we'll be looking at doing that in the next week.
You know these are test flights. But it has been so much fun to
me like we talked about at the beginning.
For me to be able to experience with the team all their
dedication hard work as we continue to learn and take each
and and be able to build out each of the phases that we need
to to be able to conduct their long term lunar.
And really Elon's whole vision of making us an interplanetary
species and being able to eventually go to Mars.
So one day I'm not sure when somebody I was gonna doing a
speech and they were like tell me when we're gonna go to Mars.
And it's like we got a lot of learning to do before we go to
Mars. But I do know, I do know that
one day out of the Rio Grande Valley, there will be the
Starship going to Mars. Thank you.
You got some questions, but I'm not sure who's going to pull out
to see it or I could take questions, however.
Go ahead. What do y'all have set up for
lightning protection because that is so high?
Yeah, we do. We have towers, but we also have
our on site. We have two on site meter all of
this too. But you always have to have
lightning towers, yeah, to be able to do that.
So we do watch the weather we like we have folks that are
always constantly watching the weather because not only that
but if you know we're we're by a big body of water.
We've got pads we've got outside areas we've got the hangar,
we're always moving people around.
So it's also just from an overall safety perspective that
we're we we have a bunch of tall structures on a very, very flat
area. So we gotta make sure we got
lighting protection on actually all of our buildings.
Are you guys planning on buying any more beach in Poca Chico?
We are pretty much limited by that the beach area, I mean
because of the Texas Parks area that's there we there, there are
small areas but they're they're not really great to be building
on. One of the great things if you
look at all the big major ranges that are out there, they are in
the middle of wildlife regions because guess what if you didn't
have a wildlife region you probably won't have a bunch of
open land. So it is definitely a there's
only a limited amount of commercial land that's there,
but it is nice to be in the wildlife reserve because it
would not be good for us if people are building you know
complexes around there. So first commercial spaceport.
So one of the challenges we have typically space boards are
federally mandated and so we have to obviously be working
with the federal government, state, Cameron County and for us
to be able to as as a commercial orbital space board figure out
how do you coexist with all the other activities that need to
happen and keep people safe. Can you talk a little bit about
Booster 11 testing just recently and the other starships that you
have in mind? Seems like Starship 30 and 31
are being tested at the same time, prepping for the next
flight and when the next flight. Yeah.
So we the, I mean the vehicles are out, the vehicles that we're
going to be flying for our next mission are out on the pad
getting ready, waiting for a wet dress.
We were testing our next round of of vehicles, next round of *
shifts and we had a test anomaly that we're assessing right now
and understanding what does that mean.
We're kind of holding off on our wet dress because one of the
things you do, you know, we're always working on vehicles, but
when there's a problem on a vehicle that's in the blow, you
want to make sure that you can separate the cause of that
problem from your flight vehicle.
And So what the teams are doing right now is really going and
saying, is it the same design exactly?
Is there some other reason for us to have separation to make
sure that we're not going into a flight test with there being an
issue? I think right now they're
working through that and we'll probably have the vehicle
cleared. We're still working on licensing
with FA. They're going through a few less
crossing their T's, dotting their IS.
We're hoping to have the license by the end of May, early June
time frame and we're we're going to be ready like like always
we're going to have the vehicle stacked and the first day we get
that license we're going to fly on one of your last slides.
You've talked about it, the noise dampening and I.
Have a friend that lives close. To the tag and they said that
they didn't notice the rocket had even launched.
Is that because of that? Well, I think we said a
different it it we we are managing things, but I also
think like One Direction makes a big difference.
You know I noticed you know Lyssol and I kind of monitor
like the interaction. And one of the things we're
really working on is how do how do we make sure that the area
that maybe isn't used to orbital launches understands kind of
what's a feasible environment and what's not a feasible
environment. You know with rockets launching
and going up you get the the loud it's it's noise, but it's
it's a it's that it's a vibration of the air kind of
moving out. It's not in the ground.
So one of the things we have to educate people on is this is not
gonna hurt your foundation. It's not gonna hurt.
You know it's not your. We're not we're not doing
something in the ground which is kind of going to be permeating.
It's actually moving, you know through the air and you're
getting vibrations through the air what does impact it a lot.
And we we do a lot of monitoring in fact we have monitoring on
the old White House, we have monitoring in South Padre, we
have monitoring all around because per our SP licensing we
have to show that we're able to keep within our licensing
requirements for impacts. And so far everything is within
those those limits. In fact, we fight in a little
bit conservative in certain areas, which is makes sense
because when you haven't flown, you add more margin to your
calculations, but wind direction changes a lot.
I I lived in Florida outside Kennedy Space Center, some
launches you wouldn't even know they went up and some launches
depending on the wind direction, it would be like rapping in the
windows, right. So I do think there was a
difference in wind direction between the second launch where
we heard a lot of people from Brownsville were like man, that
was loud. And then the third launch,
everybody was like that wasn't very loud, you know, So I I I
think wind direction does help, but we also have to stay within
limits on wind direction. Like there's all these
conditions that we work with the with the FAA on that drive bus,
like our launch conditions that we have to stay within.
Yeah, being one of the most innovative companies in our
region and offering the most exciting opportunities here for
our community and students. Do you foresee a time when tours
for the public may be available again or perhaps the visitor
center? Yes.
So I think you know right now like I talked about we've just
got a ton of construction going on.
I mean we are we're we're we're struggling with how do we have
walk paths for our employees. Like we have all these like
we're always having to rework our walk path.
So right now we've kind of held off on doing tours just because
I, you know, I'm everyday working to keep people safe on
site and just with all the construction going on, just
don't want a bunch of people that don't have to be exposed to
that on site. But we one of our licensing
requirements is actually to give tours to students and
educational areas and be able to have people benefit from STEM
interaction. So we are when we get the
million square foot factory down, when we're kind of have
don't have cement trucks going down Hwy. 4 and working through
it. When we get the road a little
bit better. I mean, we're working very hard
with Tech Stop because I don't know if you guys have been on
Hwy. 4, but I'm pretty horrified sometimes that we've got the
people, my our all these employees, our children and
their school buses going down that road.
So when we get those conditions better than absolutely we're
going to be working towards that.
I do think we're going to have another educational day in
October and we're hoping that things will be a little bit less
crazy then and looking forward to having a large group of
children out again. We did just sponsor in April 2,
supported the big beach cleanup, which is also kind of fun and we
always have a free lunch that everybody can go get up by the
restaurant and kind of enjoy the area for that too.
So we're trying to figure out other ways to get it done with
that, but yet not adding to any additional exposure for people
like a timeline. For Star Factory, just like
20252026, it's always. We've got to go back here.
So no, I think we're shooting for a star factory.
We're in the last phase right now for it to be done by the end
of the year. Yeah, Brownsville seems to be.
The tip of the sphere for developmental launches and even
Elon was quoted last month saying something like that was
two towers for Florida for the operational side.
The last thing that you said here, where we fly tomorrow,
here is encouragement and you. See that happening?
For will we be always the testing facility for we need to
talk to Florida and then they well.
Well, all I, we need two launch areas to be able to meet our
manifest for us to be able to do that.
So just a single landing requires 15 tanker launches, OK.
So you can so and they need to be done within a certain period
of time and so one of the reasons why this is gonna be our
our workforce area and but we will also need the Florida phase
two to be able to do the the number and the sequencing of the
missions. But if you're really colonizing
Mars, you need a craft photo missions to be able to do that.
And so I actually feel like they're we're trying to figure
out how to do the mix and but we really want to keep this ability
to be able to make changes and test and be able to roll those
changes into a vehicle and and have that be out of our star
based facility with crude launches.
You may not be able to have all of the changes and the structure
may be a little bit, but but for some of our tanker missions and
everything else, we really want to be gaining that efficiency,
right. And so we're still working
through this, but I think what's really cool is that we know
Starbase is going to be the home of Starship.
Yeah, sorry. OK.
So I have. I have.
A22 part question What are some of the challenges or attractions
facing the facility and employees when it comes over the
housing and quality of life projects may attract culture,
current future future employees in the area and how that may or
may not affect the operations. Well, I I think one of the main
challenges that I talked to you already is just getting the
infrastructure, if you realize all the infrastructure that's
need just getting down Hwy. 4, right?
I mean there's really understanding when you think
about the the the number of new companies that the forecast
coming into it at Brownsville and then the fact that we have
you know over 3000 people coming down Hwy. 4 and you look at the
infrastructure that's there. The there's a very critical need
for just being able to look at how flow and how just basic
supplies are flowing through that east side of Brownsville
there. And with supplies also coming in
from the port. So you know it's it's tough to
be able to sit down and say how do you plan for a major economic
growth area on this east side of town that really hasn't seen
that and but it's right now it's a critical phase for us
especially ABS. We're also clearing up for the
port to be gaining a lot of that Houston port traffic to and
obviously we're working these baseless are working with next
decade the port and other people on like what are the
infrastructure projects that we need investment from the state
and federal level to be able to support in that area.
But also getting everybody else to be thinking about even a a
small thing like timing of the lights.
I know the city of Brownsville has been working how to time the
lights to be able to handle traffic flow.
There's also just a basic issue of how do we get people to
invest in hotels, restaurants, infrastructure on that east side
of town too to be able to and that we have to continue to work
with them with local providers on does.
Is there a business case for that on that side?
But if you look at just the amount like this, what we lose
and people driving through Brownsville, most of the hotels
are off 69 being able to come down and and be able to have
access to Starbase, You know we're always like how do you get
people on site even quicker and that's also another area like
how do we be able to create infrastructure there that can
support the business community that's not going on that site
now. So a lot of individuals that.
Are here are business owners themselves?
How can they learn about potential opportunities that
might exist with the SpaceX? So I think that the big thing is
to obviously money sells here because if that there's
questions or things that you have, please reach out to her.
We are looking at different kinds of open houses that may be
helpful for different suppliers, you know, she works with or
Nicholas Ramirez or is our local supply folks.
We're always looking for new contractors, new capabilities
that may be there to be able to put on different projects that
we have, but also let us know too how we can be helping out.
One of the things that Michel and I've been working on is how
to get people out into the community.
I appreciated when the mayor was talking about how far how many
of our folks live here. One of the reasons I'm here is
because we have a large population of folks that are
living in this area. And so one of the big goals that
we've been having is how do we get people that are newly here
out in the community at different restaurants, at
different activities, at different local family community
areas to be able to get them familiar too with the the
attractions and activities that are out here.
So if you've got things that you think would be a cool, you know,
activity for us to do, we've done Taco tours, wine tours,
beer tours, We got an El Paso Ranch event coming up with
obviously the Gladys Porter Zoos like an annual family event for
us. We've you know rented out the
water at the Sturtevant Water park after.
I mean there's. So we do want to figure out ways
to be able to get our folks also invested in the community,
because once we know, once they start putting their roots down,
then that's how we keep our best talent.
Do you have any plans to? Put in a tunnel of a bridge, a
ferry system or anything to connect Boca Chica back to like
100. We have looked at ways.
I mean right now what we invested in is a hovercraft
system that takes our employees back and forth.
But that is a well we looked at the cost of it.
It's a huge infrastructure cost. It's probably you know over 150,
close to $200 million. So we, we haven't invested in
that yet. I mean right now like I said,
we've been investing in getting the factory going, getting the
additional had built, which is also you know all of those are
huge investments for us. And then working on how do we
start building up and partnering with the state and federal
levels on these infrastructure pieces that we need to be able
to have in place for us to be able to conduct business long
term at the end of Hwy. 4. Thanks again for having me.
I really, really appreciate your time and thank you again for the
warm up. Or you step down.
I'd like to invite our mayor as well as an ABC Board president
have yet to be on to join me up on the stage.
Got a small token of appreciation, happy that
presented to her on behalf of the ADC as well as the City of
Pilots Little Bird Mullet that was very fond of chocolates, so
we made sure. Basket.
For her Harlem. Keeper Suites.
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Hey, thank you so much for. Listening today, I really do
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