Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / I spent a year at SpaceX Texas and almost died.

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I spent a year at SpaceX Texas and almost died. · Elon Musk Podcast

0:00
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
0:02
My name is Will Walden, I'm the host of the show.
0:04
I spent about a year at Starbase Texas, and I'm going to share
0:09
some of my experiences with you because it was one of the best
0:13
times of my life. Very fun, very cool people, but
0:17
also some really wild stuff happened.
0:20
And one of the times I almost died.
0:22
So I want to tell you all about this stuff if you're new here.
0:26
Thank you for joining us. If you've been here since day
0:28
one, thank you for sticking around.
0:30
But we have some stuff to talk about and we also have some
0:35
pretty cool stuff to talk about. As far as the rocket goes, I was
0:39
there before they stacked the first Starship.
0:42
I was there when we didn't know what was going on.
0:44
Everything was super exciting and crazy, like nothing was
0:47
happening and then all of a sudden everything was happening.
0:52
It used to be just sand and dirt, and then all of a sudden
0:57
everything started building and we started seeing tents being
1:03
built, that we started seeing launch pads being built, the
1:06
tower being erected. And when I thought that this was
1:12
all going to happen, that I thought the first launched
1:14
Starship was going to happen in September of that year that I
1:16
moved down there, I had to find a way to get down there.
1:20
So I reached out to my community on this channel.
1:23
I said, hey, I want to go down there.
1:24
I want to plan on going down there.
1:25
And what I'm going to do is instead of going down for one
1:28
trip, that's definitely not enough for you.
1:30
Because if you get out for one trip, you get a day, you get
1:33
maybe 2 days of stock footage, B roll and somebody talking into a
1:37
microphone, talking to a few people.
1:39
I didn't want that. If I do something, I'm going to
1:42
go all in. And I started asking the
1:45
community for help because at this point, this channel didn't
1:48
make any money. It still doesn't make a lot of
1:50
money, but at that point I didn't make enough money to do
1:54
the trip myself. So I reached out and I said,
1:56
hey, I'm going to, this is my plan.
1:59
I have an idea and I want to execute this.
2:03
My idea is I had no camera gear. I had nothing.
2:05
I had absolutely nothing. I had the camera like this, but
2:08
a really bad one, like a webcam. And I had a computer that I
2:11
could make videos. But at the time we were just
2:14
coming out of the pandemic and I was excited to go do stuff,
2:19
right? Everybody was.
2:21
So I reached out to the community and I said, hey, I
2:24
need a camera, I need a lens, I need a tripod.
2:27
I just need some very basic setup so I can move to Texas.
2:34
Now mind you with this time, I'm in a place that I love with my
2:39
family, with my dad and my my relatives close by.
2:45
So what I would be doing is leaving everything behind,
2:49
everything that I grew up with, all my friends and family,
2:53
everybody would be 25 hour drive away from me, right?
2:59
Because I'm going to drive down. That's my plan.
3:01
I want to drive down because then I can put all my stuff in
3:04
my car and I can go there. So I had to find an apartment, I
3:07
had to get all the gear. So over months, I think it was
3:11
like 5 months, I talked to the community, people started
3:15
donating, I had to go fund me. People would super chat people
3:18
with super thanks on videos like this.
3:21
And we started building the foundation for me to get to
3:26
Starbase. I got a point click camera.
3:30
It was very basic, but I was using it as my webcam.
3:34
So I got that in that I was using it for my for this show.
3:38
And then I needed a big lens because there's no way you can
3:40
use a 35mm lens or a 50mm lens to shoot something that's half a
3:47
mile away. You just can't do it.
3:49
So the option was like, hey, let's get a big lens, everybody,
3:53
let's come together. And I put in my money too, like
3:55
everything for this channel. And like all the money from this
3:57
channel went directly into funding that as well.
4:00
And other people were helping me fund it too.
4:02
So we had this big plan, foundation was set, we're ready
4:06
to go, found an apartment. I was making enough money on my
4:09
videos that I could rent an apartment in Brownsville and
4:13
feel comfortable that I wouldn't get kicked out because I lost
4:17
all my money. People were super generous.
4:19
People were donating 1015 dollars here and there, $20 here
4:24
and there. One person donated thousands of
4:28
dollars over the time that I was there.
4:30
As in they paid my rent and they paid for my food and my gas to
4:34
get to Starbase. And that was a game changer for
4:39
me because if I didn't have that money, there was no way I would
4:43
have been able to do that. It was a great experience and
4:46
the time that I spent there really shaped who I have become
4:50
now. So without those people
4:53
supporting me, I couldn't be where I am now.
4:56
I'd be excited and happy about who I am.
4:59
So I'm going to say thank you to everybody who's done that and
5:01
who's helped out along the way. So if you want to help out now
5:05
you can hit the like button, little plug there.
5:08
But the experience of driving down there was something that
5:13
I'll never forget because this is really like at the very tail
5:18
end of the pandemic. Nobody knew what was going on.
5:21
Mask mandates were still in a thing for like most of the
5:24
country. And I had the drive 25 hours not
5:28
knowing if anybody's sick anywhere or like we don't have
5:32
all the information. Drove across America.
5:34
I've driven across America a bunch of times, but I've never
5:36
driven to Texas on purpose other than to catch a flight or to get
5:40
a Greyhound bus when I was younger.
5:43
So I drove to Texas and it was pretty fun, to be honest with
5:47
you. The first day I was there, but
5:48
it was 10:00 at night. It was 104 degrees.
5:52
So I have my car, I'm unpacking my car in 10:00 at night.
5:57
Still, I'm super tired. I decided to go one last day and
6:01
just drive straight through because I thought it was smart
6:04
to do that and I would get there at 10:00 at night and to start
6:07
unpacking some stuff. And I didn't want to leave
6:09
anything in my car because you know how it is, you don't want
6:11
to get your car broken into and all your stuff stolen.
6:14
So I pulled in got all my stuff ready, unpacked everything into
6:18
my new apartment 10:00 at night drenched in sweat and my shower
6:24
didn't work. So first night there not good.
6:29
Had to call up maintenance in the morning and be like hey by
6:32
the way my shower doesn't work can you come fix it?
6:34
So they fixed it that day and it was cool, but that's how it all
6:37
started. Then that the next day I was at
6:42
Starbase. As early as I could get up, I
6:45
went to Starbase. I was crying on the way there
6:49
because it was such a big change.
6:50
Like I'm an emotional person. I'll tell you that straight up.
6:53
I'm an emotional person. So getting to Starbase, after
6:56
all of this work, I spent probably six to seven months
6:59
working on this, working on getting there, and finally being
7:03
there was such a relief and such a crazy change in my life that I
7:08
just started bawling. And so I saw the Rocket Garden.
7:13
I saw like you turn this corner, like I've drove 20 miles outside
7:17
of Brownsville, where I was living at the time.
7:20
And I got down to Starbase, I saw the Rocket Garden and I
7:24
would just start to weeping like a little baby.
7:27
I did a little, I think I have the short from way back then
7:31
check in the archives of the channel.
7:32
But you can see like how emotional I am about that.
7:36
And it was on after I got there, I didn't know how to use my
7:41
camera that well because by the time we got there, we had
7:44
upgraded my camera from the little camera that I had to a
7:51
cinema camera. So we had a black magic cinema
7:54
camera and I was using it to shoot all the things, right?
7:59
So I had cinema camera at a longer lens.
8:02
It was shooting really well, but I didn't know all the settings
8:06
yet because I've never used it outside in Texas when it's
8:09
really bright outside. So I didn't know any of the
8:11
settings that we're going to make it work.
8:14
And it took a little bit of time.
8:17
I was working on it. I was live streaming too, and we
8:21
figured it out together as a community.
8:24
So most of the days were pretty normal.
8:27
You'd see tanker trucks come down.
8:30
You'd see anything from like a backhoe or a front end loader or
8:37
a dump truck or some sort of garbage truck or something.
8:41
Go from Starbase out towards Brownsville.
8:45
That was pretty normal. And they would ship some
8:47
components. There'd be some steel every once
8:50
in a while. You'd see like an engine,
8:53
possibly like a Raptor engine and you're like, what is this
8:57
thing? But more importantly than the
8:59
rocket that we all love the rocket and we all, we've all
9:02
seen the rocket a bunch of times.
9:04
More importantly, the people are what made my experience.
9:09
They're amazing. My community here on this
9:12
channel has been wonderful and they're completely different
9:16
than the people that you see on the ground at Starbase.
9:19
Some of you, I've seen a few of you when I was there, there were
9:23
a couple people that DM Ed me and were like, hey, do you want
9:26
to hang out and get a Taco or whatever?
9:29
And I always felt weird about that in a way that was like,
9:36
that's a cool idea. And I did it a couple times and
9:38
it was really fun. But I did get some weird vibes
9:41
from people. So I had to decline from that.
9:44
It was pretty crazy. There was some weird vibes from
9:46
some people that I did not feel comfortable with.
9:49
So that's a that's one of the weird stories is that I got Adm
9:52
from somebody. I was going to dig it up and
9:54
it's just too far back. But the idea was that I didn't
9:57
want to like put anybody in blast.
9:58
So it was like they said, hey, do you want to go get a Taco in
10:03
a Taco place with super sketchy? I heard rumors about it, super
10:07
sketchy. So I was like, yeah, probably
10:09
not a good idea. And most days at Star Base were
10:14
really hot. And what you don't realize about
10:16
Starbase is that not only is that hot, but it's extremely
10:20
windy there. It's right on the Gulf.
10:23
And there's nothing to stop any wind coming from the Gulf or
10:28
coming from anywhere, to be honest with you.
10:30
The wind would kick up anywhere and the whole ground is sand.
10:34
So you're standing on the side of Hwy. 4, it's 100° outside,
10:37
you're baking in the sun, you have your camera gear, you're
10:41
live streaming, you're talking, you're documenting what's going
10:43
on. But then you get like a giant
10:47
rush of sand in your eyes, in your mouth.
10:50
You're talking with a mouthful of sand.
10:53
It's brutal out there. And that's why channels like
10:57
NASA Space Flight have robots that film there.
11:00
Because people that film there, they get destroyed and you can't
11:03
stay there for 10 hours and film that stuff.
11:06
You'll just be dead. Some people do it, but I
11:08
couldn't do it. So there were a few times that
11:11
are memorable because the wild stuff that happened.
11:16
One of the times I have a video on the channel, I think it was
11:20
called Star Based Karen or something like that.
11:23
There was a lady that just wasn't nice at all, like a
11:29
horrible person and I'm not going to sugar coat it anymore,
11:31
but she was a horrible person. I used to think in the way of
11:35
maybe she's just having a bad day, but I don't think that's
11:38
true. I think she was just a horrible
11:39
person and she was just a scumbag.
11:42
Not to be mean or anything but she was just a shitty person.
11:46
So basically she was parked on the side of Hwy. 4 in front of
11:49
the manufacturing area of Starbase and I parked behind her
11:53
like I normally do. I park in that spot every day,
11:56
take out my gear, take out my big fat heavy tripod, put my big
12:01
ass camera on it, start pointing my camera at things and just do
12:04
10 minutes of B roll every day. So I could go home and I could
12:08
shoot a video of me talking about Starbase and I was only
12:12
going to be there for 10 or 15 minutes right.
12:14
So she's in this van. I pull it behind her and
12:18
immediately she comes out of her van and tells me to leave.
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And I'm like, oh, I'll be gone in 10 minutes.
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I just got to do this for work. And she's I don't care who you
12:27
are, like just leave, get out of here.
12:30
I have friends coming and when my friends come, it's not going
12:34
to be good for you. She's red in the face, she's
12:37
sweaty. I'm like clenching her fish.
12:38
She's pissed off and she goes back to her car and I'm just
12:43
like, what just happened? I don't even understand what
12:48
just happened. So I'm like up on this hill
12:50
covered in ants, by the way, like fire ants covered in fire
12:55
ants in this. And I'm just like, OK, I guess
12:58
this is cool. I'm going to shoot this for a
13:00
couple minutes because she can't tell me what to do.
13:03
The side of Hwy. 4 is a public area and you can pull off and do
13:06
whatever you want. SpaceX doesn't care if you film
13:09
wherever you want to film. So I'm there for a couple
13:13
minutes, she runs out of her van with her phone in her hand and
13:17
she's this asshole of his car yelling at me as I'm like trying
13:21
to live stream for a couple minutes, give some people some
13:24
behind the scenes stuff. And she was not having it.
13:28
She was yelling and screaming and just a horrible mess of a
13:32
person screaming at me telling me that she's going to call the
13:35
cops on me and she was going to he'd be arrested.
13:39
And I was like go for it dude. But I was like, look, I'm going
13:42
to do you a favor. I'm going to pack up my gear.
13:45
I'm going to move two car lengths back because she said
13:48
she had some friends coming. So I was like I'm going to move
13:50
two car lengths back. Also, they can park behind me.
13:52
It's not like they can't park behind me dude.
13:55
So there was plenty of spots behind me, like 20 spots behind
13:58
me, at least 20 spots because Hwy. 4 goes on for miles.
14:01
So it's probably 100 spots behind me.
14:05
So I was like, look, she's having a bad day.
14:08
Not a big deal. I'm going to pack up my gear,
14:12
I'm going to move back a few spots, got to pull my car back,
14:14
and then I'm going to get to do my stuff.
14:17
And that didn't work out too well because once I set up
14:20
again, she was right there again.
14:23
She was in my face yelling at me, screaming at me, talking on
14:26
her phone about whatever, like calling somebody, which I don't
14:29
think she actually called somebody.
14:30
I think she's full of shit. And I think she was talking to
14:33
nobody, screaming like red face telling them that I'm a piece of
14:37
shit because I didn't move my car.
14:39
And I was like, what are you doing?
14:41
So I was like, hey, I went to her window.
14:43
I was like, hey, if if you want me to lose, I will.
14:46
But I got to do this thing real quick.
14:48
I'll be like 10 minutes and I'm like this.
14:50
She was in her car with her window rolled up.
14:51
I was like, I'll be 10 minutes and I'll be out of your hair.
14:54
I just got to do this for work. So she's yelling at me,
14:57
screaming at me. And the I got some footage and I
15:01
got what I needed and then I was ready to leave.
15:05
But by the time I was done, another car, it pulled up in
15:10
between my car and her car, a wonderful couple from the
15:14
northeast. I think they're from Maine or
15:15
something, but they were down there bird watching.
15:19
I warned them about her and said, hey, watch out.
15:21
This lady is a little bit wacko and you should move forward.
15:25
You should move out of here so she doesn't get mad at you.
15:28
And then right as I was saying that, the lady in the van did AU
15:31
turn and took off, didn't screw tires or anything, nothing
15:34
dramatic like that. But if she just took off.
15:37
So those are the kind of people you would meet every once in a
15:39
while at Starbase. There was another incident where
15:44
I was, and I don't like to call people out by name or by by
15:49
association, but there was another team of people that was
15:53
there. They're filming.
15:55
I parked behind them and I said, hey, what's up?
15:58
My name is Will I do this channel?
16:00
Nice to meet you. I'm going to set camera here.
16:01
And they didn't have anything set up yet.
16:04
I knew who they were and there were some words said, get out of
16:09
here. This is pretty much, this is our
16:11
turf. What the fuck are you doing?
16:13
What's slitting throughout? I was like, I don't know what
16:16
you're talking about, dude. So I kept setting up my shit.
16:18
So they kept setting up my camera and my tripod and the
16:20
dude set up his stuff right beside me.
16:23
It's pretty funny, but that was how it was, dude.
16:26
There were people that were like, this is my spot.
16:28
How dare you come into my area. I was like, bro, what are you
16:31
talking about? Get off my get off my back.
16:34
I'm going to do it anyway. I don't care who you are.
16:35
But the fact that they had that sort of attitude, I was like,
16:41
bro, I wish I would have filmed it.
16:43
That would have been sick. But I didn't have my camera or
16:45
my phone on me to film them doing that.
16:48
But they basically told me to get out of there, This is their
16:50
turf or some bad stuff's going to happen.
16:52
Now. It's like, what?
16:54
What are you talking about, dude?
16:56
It's like, you're just a dude. I know who you are, but you're
16:58
still nobody. I don't care.
17:00
So they had an attitude, like a real bad attitude.
17:03
So I was like, all right, whatever, dude.
17:04
So I just sat there for an hour, did my job, and then I was like,
17:07
all right, see you guys later. And I took off.
17:10
So you can probably make some guesses of who those are and let
17:12
me know in the comments who you think they are.
17:14
I'm not going to tell you who it is, but make some guesses.
17:17
If you made it this far into the video, you deserve to have your
17:21
voice heard. There's also one more that I'll
17:24
share with you, which is the one where I almost died.
17:28
It was about 9:00 at night and I think I was now about 7:00 at
17:34
night. There's still a little bit of
17:35
sun out. Seven or 8:00 at night.
17:38
I was filming. I just got there like 20 minutes
17:41
or half an hour before. Then I was filming some B roll
17:43
for the channel and this guy came up to me, sketchy looking,
17:47
really skinny guy. Like probably it looks like a
17:50
guy that hasn't eaten in a long time or his doesn't really eat
17:54
that much or just has like super high metabolism.
17:56
Skeletal is how I would say his body was very skeletal.
18:00
It came up to me and he was like, hey man, what do you is
18:03
the eyes? Look at those eyes.
18:05
He came up to me and he's hey man, what are you doing?
18:08
I was like, oh, I'm just shooting some footage of the
18:10
ship here. Oh yeah.
18:12
What kind of cameras? And I was like, oh, this little
18:17
black magic 4K or 6K pro or whatever.
18:20
What it kept like there was a pro and I was like, at that
18:23
point I was like, oh, there's something wrong with this guy.
18:25
There's something off. What's this guy doing?
18:30
So I started talking to him, started recording a little bit.
18:35
I have the footage somewhere. I was going to dig it out, but
18:37
it was like really deep. And I would have taken me like a
18:41
month to figure out where that stuff was.
18:43
But basically, the guy kept getting closer and closer to me.
18:47
And I was filming and he was asking me questions about when
18:50
do you think this is going to launch?
18:52
Is this going to Mars? Do you think you put people on
18:55
it? Because I want to go on it.
18:56
And I was like, oh, yeah, dude. Just trying to be like, really
18:58
cool with him as much as I could just to make sure that I was
19:02
keeping complete contact with this person because if we tried
19:05
anything, I'd know how to react. I was at a point where filling
19:12
your gut and you're like, you ever been in that situation
19:15
where you're like, this doesn't feel right.
19:17
I got to get out of here. This is scary.
19:19
This is not going to go well for me if I stay here.
19:23
So he said something that was really telling about his
19:28
intentions, which was, hey, how much does your camera cost?
19:32
I want to get one. And I was like, ah, that's all
19:36
you can really do. I was like, I'm going to start
19:38
putting it away. So I took my camera after he
19:41
asked him, took my camera, took the lens off, put the cap on the
19:46
camera so that mirrored and messed up, put the lens caps on
19:49
the lens, put it in my backpack real quick, like as fast as
19:52
humanly possible ninja style. Threw it in the car so it didn't
19:57
break. And I was like later dude.
20:00
And I pieced out as fast as possible.
20:02
I got my car, I pieced out. Now what I didn't tell you is
20:06
after he asked me how much money it cost, his hand went down like
20:11
this. And then it went up a little bit
20:16
and then his hand gripped like this in his pocket.
20:20
I could see it all. I was watching him as I was
20:22
taking my camera apart, grabbing something in his pocket.
20:27
And I was like, he's either going to A pull a gun on me or B
20:32
stabbed me or hold me up and mug me.
20:35
SpaceX, their security is in the little Hut and they're not
20:40
really paying attention that much.
20:42
They're just more worried about what's going on inside of Star
20:45
Base than what's going on the road.
20:47
And yeah, there are cops that patrol every three hours or
20:51
something down there, but you never really see them.
20:55
So especially late at night, not at that point you don't.
20:59
So I had to get out of there as soon as possible.
21:01
This dude was going to who's going to stab me 100% that his
21:05
attention was either to like kill me and take my stuff and
21:07
sell it, or he was going to hold me up, mug me and then beat me
21:12
up and try to take my gear. So I first thing that I did was
21:16
like I pieced out of there as soon as possible.
21:19
He was telling me about like how he was sleeping on the beach for
21:22
four days and he came from far away.
21:26
He came from like Chicago or something, which is probably
21:30
true. He probably did come from like
21:31
Chicago or something, but I don't know what he's doing there
21:34
and I don't know this guy. So what am I supposed to do?
21:37
Didn't trust him. So like the smartest thing I
21:39
could have done is get out of there.
21:40
I don't care if I hurt the kids feelings.
21:42
I don't care. Not the bee jerk, but like I'd
21:45
he's sketchy and he's like right up in my face super sketchy.
21:49
So I'm like I'm out of there bro.
21:51
So if that was you when you're watching this, I'm sorry but you
21:54
scared the shit out of me. So I apologize for being rude to
21:58
you if I was, but you scared me man, and you look like you were
22:03
going to take me down South. Those are the like the few
22:06
stories that I had that were bad, like scary ones.
22:09
But for the most part, it was pretty cool.
22:12
I was on the side of Hwy. 4. I got to see some history.
22:16
If Elon and SpaceX actually send people to Mars.
22:20
I was part of that in the very beginning.
22:23
So I remember I have all the footage and someday I'll release
22:27
it all on this channel. I have to document it and
22:31
reconfigure it and it's on this big hard drive that's like
22:35
really slow. So I have to move it into the
22:38
each file is 20 gigs or something.
22:40
So I was like, man, I got to move this footage from this
22:45
drive and put it all into a documentation or documentary
22:49
style and stitch it all together for whatever it is.
22:53
All the days. That's what I want to do
22:54
someday. So I think it's important to do
22:57
that and I will eventually do that, but it's going to be a lot
22:59
of work and that's going to be a long video.
23:02
It'll be basically a year's worth of video condensed into
23:08
bite sized chunks, but it's going to be a big file
23:10
basically. That's about it for today,
23:12
everybody. If you liked what you heard here
23:15
and if you've watched other videos of mine and you haven't
23:17
yet subscribed, I want to urge you to hit the subscription
23:21
button and hit the thumbs up button and also leave a comment
23:25
down below. What do you think of Starbase?
23:27
Would you go there? Would you hang out?
23:29
Would you spend a year of your life there?
23:32
It's really fun. It's worth it.
23:34
If you have the chance to go to Starbase, I would 100% tell you
23:37
to do it because it's once in a lifetime opportunity to do
23:40
something like that. So thanks again everybody for
23:44
taking the time out of your day to spend it here with me and I
23:47
will see you in the next one.