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The coolest part? They will scale it up to have hundreads of platforms, clustered fairly close likely, so they'll be able to continuously launch 1,000 Starships
by loceng 6y ago
The coolest part? They will scale it up to have hundreads of platforms, clustered fairly close likely, so they'll be able to continuously launch 1,000 Starships as Elon's stated goal.
- jacquesm 6y agoThey will eh?
- loceng 6y agoMaybe not, I got excited when imagining it. The ocean is the easiest place to be away from people, and then you're not wasting land. P.S. Wasn't me that downvoted you, I don't downvote anything.
- jacquesm 6y agoNo problem, couldn't care less about the downvotes. Yes, it is an impressive thing to imagine. But the scale you are talking about is not something that I expect to see in a very long time, if ever. The degree of international cooperation that would require just isn't on the books in the present climate, and Musk has a habit of throwing grand visions with unspecified or wildly optimistic time-tables out there. He's our generation's Howard Hughes, genius but flawed. That doesn't mean he isn't moving the needle forward in a very meaningful way but at the same time I don't believe every word he says.
- loceng 6y agoNaw, the moment SpaceX starts capturing astroids or mining on Mars there's a whole new world, literally, worth of economic value unlocked. There are other defensive strategic reasons to have many launch pads as well. They're creating a manufacturing line for Starships to be able to "mass" produce them. Elon gets exponentials, and he'll build whatever technology or follow whatever strategy he figures out that's needed to make what he's doing self-sustaining. There's plenty of opportunity to tap and revenue streams, profits, he can direct towards SpaceX if needed.
- stuaxo 6y agoImagine the pollution around there. It'll just be full of smoke and smog, with the light and sound from the rockets as they launch.
- loceng 6y agoMaybe they will have to space them out a fair amount then to help reduce that, allowing the area current to Hell, maybe they can build a catch system surrounding the launch pad and vacuum in to capture the pollution. You just need big or many motors - probably could use Tesla's motors? Maybe what they can capture at the level of the landing pad is moot though...
- pixl97 6y agoEh, the Starship rocket doesn't really make smog itself. High levels of liquid nitrogen may if it interacts with organics from sea spray. With all that said, oceans tend to be pretty windy around 90% of the time so things that cause air to be still on land are much more rare in most parts of the ocean.
- totalZero 6y agoLaunch is going to be one of the most inefficient parts of the burn, both due to the required impulse and also due to the thermal state change of the engines. I wouldn't be so quick to hand-wave this away.
- mpweiher 6y agoOne of the reasons for moving to methane is that it burns clean, dramatically reducing soot, and thus smoke. AFAIK, this is primarily so you can reuse the engine without major cleaning/refurbishment, but it should also significantly reduce pollution. Noise, on the other hand... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- baking 6y agoAlso, you can make methane on mars.
- 6y ago