SpaceX Starlink factory

Sal is a voice that rides along as you drive Washington's roads: the road ahead, the pass, the stories of the places you pass.

The business park at Redmond Ridge Corporate Center doesn't look like much from the road. Low buildings, parking lots, the usual arrangement. But SpaceX started satellite development work around Redmond back in 2015. By August of 2018 it had gathered its Seattle-area operations into three buildings at the park, so satellites could be manufactured on site. Starlink is the result. The network has grown to something like ten thousand satellites in low Earth orbit, and the company counts more than twelve million subscribers. Starlink accounts for about 75% of all the active maneuverable satellites in orbit. Forty years of driving a cab, and I never once took a fare to a place like that. Funny where the work ends up. [1]