$200,000 streaming rigs and millions of views: inside the cottage industry popping up around SpaceX

For a few hours one recent Saturday, Jack Beyer stood on the roof of his Land Rover, watching as SpaceX employees toiled under a 160-foot-tall silver rocket prototype that towered like an otherworldly visitor over the otherwise barren landscape.

Beyer, a Los Angeles-based photographer and contributor to the space news site NASASpaceflight.com, had by that point been staying at a South Texas hotel for a month, watching and waiting and filming as SpaceX prepared to launch the prototype — an early iteration of Starship, the spaceship that company founder Elon Musk envisions will one day land the first humans on Mars — on a doomed test flight. On this particular day, Beyer had his camera up on his car roof, pointed at engineers and construction workers as they tinkered with the rocket or prepared to pour concrete to expand the vast launch site.