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Sourcery · 3 min · Oct 31, 2026
Starcloud plans to build toward 100 satellites a week
Philip Johnston
Starcloud is expanding across three buildings with about 100,000 square feet for manufacturing.
In this episode
Full episode- 31:37Orbital data centers get cheaper below $500 per kilo2 min
- 33:42Chip failures could make or break orbital data center economics4 min
- 2:53Starcloud repaired a broken vibration table in one weekend4 min
- 26:35Falcon 9's phaseout leaves a launch gap before Starship scales4 min
- 1:02:57Starcloud plans to build toward 100 satellites a week3 min
- 40:45SpaceX sets a roughly 40 Hz floor for satellite resonance6 min
“we'll be up to a hundred a week from what we've got here so 10 a day or more than 10 a day”
Philip Johnstonat 1:04:02 · Sourcery
Takeaways
- The planned manufacturing campus spans about 100,000 square feet.
- The stated production target is about 100 satellites per week.
- Starcloud wants a production line modeled on auto manufacturing.
About this segment
Starcloud is expanding across three buildings with about 100,000 square feet for manufacturing. Philip Johnston says the facilities could support 100 satellites a week, toward the company's larger constellation plan.
Co-Founder & CEO, Starcloud
Building Starcloud’s space-based data centers to scale AI compute beyond terrestrial constraints.
Molly O'Shea, Host · Founder, Sourcery
Ex-Upfront Ventures investor; has interviewed Alex Karp and Palmer Luckey.
From “Nvidia GPUs in Orbit: Inside Starcloud’s $2B Factory”, Oct 31, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 1:03:07
right so we're just leaving so the main facility we're now going over here yeah we're gonna go to you're buying up the entire we're building a bit of a campus here. This is definitely the place where you need to be to build AI satellites, basically. SI satellites. So we've got now this middle section that we have now. This will come online in November and then we have access to the third one in February next year. And so this enables us to scale manufacturing for StarCloud 3. And the reason we need so much space, one of the reasons is you have 100 meter, well it's 400 foot deployables on StarCloud 3 that we need to test test the mechanisms on but also to manufacture something like 88,000 you know we're going to need a way bigger facility. I just think Fred's going to trip, I'm so sorry.
- 1:04:01
To manufacture 88,000 we're going to need a whole bunch more space so how many do you think you'll be able to produce a day so we'll be up to a hundred a week from what we've got here so 10 a day or more than 10 a day after you so this is one of the three spaces and so we've got about a hundred thousand square foot that we can fit out for manufacturing so we're going to remove this wall and we'll remove that wall and then that enables us to this is huge oh my god yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be quite a sight to behold when this is up and running you should throw a halloween party in here with this yeah we're gonna do a we'll do an opening party sometime soon so you're very much welcome i know you're on the road all the time so you never know where i land Who knows? Maybe it wouldn't be in three weeks.
- 1:04:57
I know. Okay, so in here, it's going to look much different than the previous facility. It will look pretty similar, actually, to the previous facility. It will look the same? Except with a manufacturing line, like a proper... In the end state, we want it to be like an auto manufacturing line. So, when you see a Tesla factory, you see cars going down the line, it will be exactly like that. Except with Star Club 3 chassis going down the line, with various things being added.
- 1:05:23
how do okay so this is crazy question how does star cloud 3 get to starship uh we load them on the back of a truck and then drive them down the motorway that's it that's it yeah it's very similar to the way um at the moment just down the road from here is where the full starlink facility is so they literally load all those on the back of a truck and then drive them across the country to Florida. Damn. Yeah. Okay. Wow. All right. So one thing we haven't talked about yet is StarCloud