SpaceX has moved Starship S40 back to the Starbase production site after a successful single-engine static fire, and a new photo shows the prototype parked beside Gigabay, the enormous assembly building now rising above the older Megabay halls. The picture is a neat snapshot of where SpaceX Starship stands right now: still very much a test program, but increasingly supported by factory infrastructure built for industrial-scale output, not one-off rocket drama.
The image also underlines the gap between ambition and cadence. Elon Musk has said Gigabay is intended to be one of the world’s largest structures and built to support the assembly of 1,000 Starship vehicles a year, a figure that looks audacious against the fact that just five Starship rockets launched in 2025. That mismatch is the real story here: SpaceX is building like a company expecting massive throughput, while its flight rate is still crawling.
Starship S40 after the Massey’s Test Site firing
The latest step for S40 came at Massey’s Test Site in Starbase, where SpaceX briefly lit one engine in a static fire test. That kind of check is routine for a vehicle preparing for flight, but it still matters because SpaceX has a habit of treating ground tests as the fastest route to finding out what breaks before a launch does.
According to the post circulating on X, the prototype is now back at the production area for further preparation ahead of Flight 13. For SpaceX, that means the machine is moving through the familiar rhythm of build, test, inspect, repeat – a process that has become almost as important as the launches themselves.
Gigabay is bigger than the old Starbase buildings
Gigabay has already reached the seventh level, putting it above the existing Megabay assembly halls. That visual scale is useful because it shows how SpaceX is reorganizing Starbase around volume, not just spectacle. If the company is serious about anything close to Musk’s annual target, it needs factory space that looks more like an automotive plant than a spaceport.
- S40 completed a brief single-engine static fire.
- The prototype has returned to the Starbase production site.
- Gigabay is now on the seventh level and taller than Megabay.
- Musk has said the building is meant to support 1,000 Starship vehicles a year.
What Flight 13 needs from SpaceX now
The next question is whether the hardware pipeline can catch up with the construction boom around it. SpaceX has already shown it can iterate quickly, but the move from a few prototypes and a handful of launches to something resembling mass production is a different beast entirely. Gigabay suggests the company wants Starship to stop looking like an experiment and start behaving like a fleet.
If Flight 13 goes well, it will strengthen the case for that approach. If not, Gigabay may end up as the most expensive promise in South Texas – a giant building waiting for a launch cadence that still has to prove it can exist.