Visiting Gateway to Mars!

Booster 9

During my family's Christmas trip down to Texas to see our cousins, my mom, dad, and I got the chance to take the long road trip down from San Antonio Texas, to Boca Chica (now Starbase, Texas).

This trip was one I had been wanted to take for a while because I had watched the high altitude test flights from the early days of the Starship program and at the time they were preparing for their second test flight. In fact we had to make sure the road was going to be open as booster 11 was

on the pad for a static fire test.

Luck turned out to be in our favor because they ended up preforming the test which meant we could start our 8hr car ride down. By the time we got down to Starbase it was around 10 pm, and I very vividly remember seeing the Launch Tower in the distance from South Padre Island. Once we got to our hotel I split a very tasty brisket quesadilla with my dad, I remember not being able to sleeping that night because of how excited I was to see everything up close the next day.

Once the next morning finally came, I was so excited get out on the road and take the 45 minute drive to Starbase. Once we got past the patrol stop we could really start to see everything. I remember the first thing I noticed was just the insane size of everything there. The first thing I saw while driving down the road was the rocket garden. There was one booster and two ships that we saw there!

Our first stop was by the two mega bays and the Starfactory that was being constructed at the time. We then drove down to the launch site and the first thing I saw was the a "Gateway to Mars" sign in front and behind it was ship 25 on a test stand preparing for their second flight test. However this wasn't the only vehicle

Ship 25

out at the launch site, Booster 9 was on the orbital launch mount after it had just completed it's static fire the previous day.

It was truly amazing to witness all of this from such a close distance, (we were about 40 yards from the orbital launch mount). We also saw a few tanker trunks come in and start to refill the tank from, the venting was extremely loud and we could also see the ice that was on the outside of the pipes. This trip was one of the coolest experiences of my life so far and I'm so glad I was able to take the trip down to see everything.

Starhopper