[dotancohen]

SpaceX famously has almost no outsourcing. And Ford built his empire on vertical integration, all the way down to the mining the ore.

Neither are airplane manufacturers, but they represent companies on either side of the complex machine spectrum compared to airplanes.

[netsharc]

Ford was last century though, can you do that in this century?

I wonder how far "no outsourcing" goes. Do they make their own nuts and bolts? Even if they do, the metal must've come from a supplier (unless they also have mines). Do they make their own screens, and chips, for the flight controls? Not being cynical/sarcastic, just curious.

[dotancohen]

Nuts and bolts are considered COTS items: Commodity Off The Shelf. They are not particular to e.g. the Falcon 9 or Starship. The word Commodity is important here - changing suppliers is relatively simple and there are standards that can be adhered to (but need to be checked, remember CSR-7).

Things like screens and chips are less of a commodity than are aerospace-grade bolts, but if I'm not mistaken many of these components are shared with another Musk company that designs and manufactures automobiles - so they have commodity of scale and a long track record, plus many realworld users to uncover bugs. It might not be the exact same component, but much is shared. One prominent example that was stated explicitly recently was the actuator motors for the Starship flaps - right out of a Tesla.