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