[greedo]

The facilities at Starbase are far more than prototyping facilities. If that were the case, they wouldn't have needed a Megabay and be almost completely finished building a second. They would have just stood pat with the High Bay etc. Same with the new buildings replacing the temporary tents. Starbase will be cranking out LOTS of boosters and Starships.

[dotnet00]

When I say prototyping facilities, I mean as prototyping for the other factories. As Musk has previously said, since they want to mass produce Starships and boosters, the challenge is to design "the machine that builds the machine". That's why I mentioned changes to production being tested and optimized there rather than changes to the vehicles specifically.

[greedo]

Has Musk, Shotwell or anyone at SpaceX ever said that this was the case? I haven't seen any sign of this at all. And again, if Starbase was just for prototyping workflows, there's no need for two Megabays.

[dotnet00]

I could've sworn that Musk mentioned that Starbase would be mainly relegated to prototyping after the FAA limited them to 5 launches/year out of there. I think it was in the presentation where they announced the plans to work with T-Mobile? I'll see if I can dig it up later.