On Tuesday local time, Elon Musk hosted U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and other Pentagon officials at SpaceX's Starbase in Texas, delivering a brief speech where he introduced Starbase and SpaceX's ambitious goals for space exploration.
The following is the full text of Musk's speech: Hello everyone, welcome to Starbase, Texas. Legally, this is actually a city.
Thanks to the hard work of the SpaceX team, we built this from nothing, and it is now a massive rocket manufacturing system. For those who are curious, we are actually on a public highway, so you can come visit, drive along this road, and see the epic hardware.
This is the first time a rocket development program has been conducted openly on a public highway, so everyone can see the exciting research we are conducting today.
We are greatly honored to host U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and several senior leaders from the Pentagon. Their visit is a privilege for us. We just toured the factory, and I believe this fully illustrates the importance of mass production to American strength.
So, let me briefly explain SpaceX's purpose: we want to make Star Trek a reality, to make Starfleet Academy a reality. So it won't always be science fiction; one day science fiction will become scientific fact... We will have starships traveling through space... Giant starships! Carrying humans to other planets, to the Moon, and eventually beyond our solar system to other galaxies, where we might encounter aliens! Or discover long-extinct alien civilizations, I don't know, but we are eager to explore, to witness the mysteries of the universe firsthand, to have epic future starships carrying many astronauts to unknown places we have never set foot in. That is our goal! Haha, I suppose that's roughly the image the public envisions when they think of the Space Force!
Here, let me introduce U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
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