Starlink Predicts Huge Growth for Printed Circuit Board Production in Texas | PCMag

A SpaceX facility in Texas is producing so much Starlink equipment that it will soon be the largest factory for printed circuit boards in the US, according to President Gwynne Shotwell.

She made the comment to the Texas House of Representatives earlier this week while discussing SpaceX's new facility in Bastrop, Texas, which opened in December.

"Bastrop will be the largest printed circuit board manufacturing facility in the entire United States," Shotwell said. "And I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to beat Southeast Asia in efficiency of producing those printed circuit boards."

The statement is notable, considering many US companies outsource their electronics manufacturing to contractors in Asia. In contrast, SpaceX decided to keep its Starlink production in-house; the company has a major presence in California, Washington, and Texas.

SpaceX’s facility in Bastrop, which spans nearly 1 million square feet, produced its 1 millionth Starlink dish earlier this month. The facility is set to grow even more as the company continues to add more satellites to the Starlink network, according to Shotwell.

"We hope to launch roughly a hundred missions to put more Starlink satellites in orbit to allow us to connect even more rural Texans and other folks living in rural communities across the globe,” she said during the hearing, which partly focused on Texas regulations and investment in the space industry.

In Texas, SpaceX has over 100,000 customers using Starlink. But the company expects it has more room to grow. “It’s my understanding that there are 800,000 yet to be connected,” she said. Globally, SpaceX now has more than 4 million users, Shotwell added. This means the company added 1 million new users in about four months, underscoring the accelerating growth of the satellite internet service.

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I've been working as a journalist for over 15 years—I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017.

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