17 ms·

SpaceX reveals the grand extent of its starport plans in South Texas

106 points by fireball_blaze 6y ago

Cu3PO42 6y ago
u/RGVaerial on r/SpaceXLounge has overlayed these plans onto an aerial photo [1]. It looks a lot smaller than one might expect. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/lzf9z7/proposed_expansion_of_spacexs_boca_launch_site/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/lzf9z7/propos...
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  If you add the massive Starship+SuperHeavy in for scale, it looks even smaller. https://twitter.com/Caspar_Stanley/status/1368348628708950018 https://twitter.com/Caspar_Stanley/status/136834862870895001...
  - Gravityloss 6y ago
    Hmm can they stack and fuel and launch multiple in parallel if the pads are so close?
    - Tuna-Fish 6y ago
      I would say no, but I also was very skeptical about them launching and landing SN9 with SN10 just a stone's throw away, so what do I know.
      - Gravityloss 6y ago
        At Kennedy Space Center, LC39A and LC39B are about 3 km (2 miles) apart. So if one Saturn V blew up, the other pad wouldn't be destroyed. I don't know what would happen if another one was on the pad.
        Gravityloss 6y ago
        To me it looks like the pads are only a few hundred meters apart. It seems like an explosion on one pad could easily damage a rocket on another one. So I don't think this can be a high flight rate facility.
    - baking 6y ago
      I think everything is a backup with the possible exception of the landing pads. You may need to land the Starship before the booster has been cleared from the other landing pad. In fact, the second landing pad is one of the new items in this iteration. Basically, I think they want to keep up the testing cadence without having to delay things due to maintenance. They say in one of the applications that there will be no more than about 10-12 orbital launches from Boca Chica per year.
  - handol 6y ago
    It looks like those cylinders are representing the launch towers, a few meters taller than the stacked Starship sitting on the launch mount.
lgats 6y ago
SpaceX just trademarked Starbase https://uspto.report/TM/90556104 https://uspto.report/TM/90556104 STARBASE™ trademark registration is intended to cover the categories of launch services, namely, launching the payloads of others into space.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  As mentioned at the bottom of the article it’s super cool he’s trying to rename the entire area into a city. Additional source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/musk-floats-starbase-name-change-for-texas-rocket-launch-town https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/musk-floa...
mabbo 6y ago
And why not? At the rate SpaceX is moving at, they may have the world's largest orbital launch system by the end of the year. That's not even "Elon-time" anymore, it's totally within reason that they could have their first orbital Starship launch this year. When Starship becomes commercially viable, things are going to change fast for the space industry. And that little Starbase in Boca Chica is going to be a busy place. (And in the meantime, we get to watch all the explody tests, which is excellent entertainment!)
- ncallaway 6y ago
  To be fair, "Elon time" for the first orbital Starship launch was 2020. Shotwell was saying that she would bet yes on an orbital Starship in 2021. I think "Shotwell" time is generally much closer to 1:1 time than Elon time. But I agree, Starship has a fairly plausible path to being orbital by the end of the year.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    I'm generally inclined to give people a break on missing 2020 deadlines.
    - ncallaway 6y ago
      Sure, but Starship wasn't going to be orbital in 2020 even without the pandemic. It was a wildly unrealistic estimate to begin with that characterizes "Elon time" as a concept. Starship development has been blindly fast, and even still is a maybe on getting to orbit this year. I just don't think the pandemic pushed their timeline back significantly. I could be wrong, but that's my take from the outside looking in
      - bpodgursky 6y ago
        To be pedantic, it actually seems pretty likely the first stage could have reached LEO. There were no issues at all on ascent, and it has the fuel capacity. At one point Elon was talking about possibly testing this. But they decided not to do this, because their first priority was to get it to land, and they don't envision LEO launches using only the first stage. That will be in conjunction with the much larger second stage.
altcognito 6y ago
There's no indication that they are building any sort of structure to "catch" the first stage booster at the landing site. edit: It was pointed out that the integration tower to the very bottom is a likely candidate. This seems right as the proposed launch layout is slightly larger given the larger size of the booster.
- bdamm 6y ago
  There is the "Integration Tower" structure at the south side next to the new orbital launch pad. If the plan is to catch and re-fly then that would make sense.
  - altcognito 6y ago
    Oh excellent, thank you very much, that looks like it. I don't know why I was thinking there would be a "landing circle" there. Exciting, this is probably the next most fascinating development to watch other than the orbital piece. Everything else is exciting to watch as well, it's just that in terms of "things that are completely novel", these two things (catching the booster, starship coming back from orbital launch), are at the top of my list. I can't wait to see the first stage go off with its full complement of engines as well. That's going to be straight up incredible.
  - baking 6y ago
    I think the first structure designed to catch boosters will be away from the launch mounts. The primary advantage of catching is eliminating the mass of the legs. Quick relaunch capability is just a bonus and primarily useful at offshore launch sites.
    - bdamm 6y ago
      It's possible they would build the "integration tower" first, perfect the catch, and only then build the launch mount.
- svachalek 6y ago
  Why would they? It lands under thrust like the Falcons, with two major differences: 1. it goes back to its launch area rather than merely going down as the Falcons do (why the Falcons need to land on a ship) 2. it's too heavy to get enough air resistance by falling vertically like the Falcons, so it does this amazing belly flop with a "flip and burn" at the last moment
ericmay 6y ago
Quick question - since it's South Texas and I can see the Gulf of Mexico in the screenshot... isn't that a little close to the water? Not just maybe global warming + sea level rises but storm surge from hurricanes. Or is that not a concern? Anyone with more knowledge on the topic could share?
- sambe 6y ago
  "What is striking about this architectural drawing is its compact nature, largely because SpaceX has limited land to work with at the facility and must include stormwater ponds to mitigate against flooding."
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  Closeness to the water is a requirement so that if a rocket fails it doesn't land on people. And you don't want to launch to the West so that you can take advantage of the Earth's rotation rather than fighting it. (Launch sites on the West coast are for polar orbits which launch either North or South). Given those requirements, there's no location that isn't vulnerable to hurricanes. Boca Chica actually doesn't get many hurricanes compared to Florida or further North on the Texas coast.
  - ericmay 6y ago
    Thanks a lot, Bryan. I know/knew some of those things (like being close to water in general) - I guess I was concerned about how close it appeared to be :)
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > Closeness to the water is a requirement so that if a rocket fails it doesn't land on people. Not if you're Russia/China. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/chinese-rocket-crushes-houses-after-government-warning-to-residents.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/chinese-rocket-crushes-house...
    - nickik 6y ago
      China is moving away from that as well. China did this because of the threat of capitalist invasion but the realize its dumb. Russia is a bit different and they couldn't really move it further east because it would be to far from their industrial centers. They had a hell of a time transporting the Buran system to launch already.
Florence9899 6y ago
Я здесь Голая https://vk.cc/bZoVGs https://vk.cc/bZoVGs
thescriptkiddie 6y ago
It would be cool if they built a full-scale prototype of their proposed methane/oxygen propellant plant near the launch site. It would be harder to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere on Earth than on Mars, but on the other hand solar power is much more abundant here.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Do you really want a fuel plant next to a launch site?
  - zlynx 6y ago
    Why not? The fuel is next to the launch site, before they put it into the rocket. It can be protected from exploding rockets by berms, concrete, etc. It isn't as if an exploding rocket is a shaped charge; the force of an explosion would go up and out and be easily deflected.
    - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
      Assuming nothing landed on top of tanks
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  If they do that, it'll probably be a couple of miles away at the old natural gas well site they own. That's where they're putting an oxygen purification stack.
- baking 6y ago
  I think that plant is just for oxygen and nitrogen (plus the bonus argon for the welders.) Somebody did a calculation that showed that the number of truckloads of methane needed to power the plant was substantially less then the number of truckloads of oxygen that would otherwise be needed.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
ARandomerDude 6y ago
They'll have to pay their engineers pretty well to live down there. Nearby South Padre Island is a decent vacation spot, but not many people want to live on the land that close to the border with Mexico. I know a lot of folks who haven't been to Brownsville will reflexively think that's a racist comment or something, but it isn't. The area is extremely poor with police/border checkpoints everywhere, the land is ugly, the humidity is horrible, and the mosquitoes are worse.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Fly them from somewhere else?
  - chasd00 6y ago
    It's probably all construction crews and heavy machinery operators at Boca Chica. Any engineers, or other high maintenance types, likely fly in for test launches and then fly right back out.
    - snypher 6y ago
      They might be high maintenance but maybe they remember the last engineers that stayed behind at a SpaceX outpost... https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-engineers-island-without-food-mutiny-liftoff-book-2021-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-engineers-isla...
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  South Padre may be 4 miles away as the crow flies, but it's a one hour drive due to the lack of bridges over the Brownsville harbour.
  - deegles 6y ago
    If the spaceport grows enough maybe they would fund a bridge or ferry!
asdff 6y ago
I wonder if Elon settled on Texas due to the local regulatory environment not really caring about the local ecology. The current site is built on a sensitive wetland literally in a state park. No clue how Elon managed that one, but it probably wouldn't have been kosher in a blue state. Local TX officials probably saw how the political capital of bringing 'space jobs' to the middle of nowhere outweighed local flora and fauna who obviously aren't going to be voting in elections.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  I'm sure it's a factor, but they are also situated at the lowest possible latitude in the lower 48 states (it's right on the Mexican border), which is important for orbital launch efficiency.
- the-dude 6y ago
  Like Washington, Oregon, Michigan or NY? Isn't the latitude the most important characteristic?
  - Tuna-Fish 6y ago
    Latitude, and having open ocean to the east. If you want to stay in the lower 48, there really aren't any options other than Florida and Texas, there are no good places left in Florida with sufficient safety areas without having to uproot tens of thousands of people.
- marktangotango 6y ago
  > political capital of bringing 'space jobs' to the middle of nowhere Middle of nowhere is a non charitable as well as non accurate characterization of the area. South Texas and Brownsville are huge in the oil and gas industry. The number and quality of industrial, large structure welders available made the area very intriguing from that perspective alone I wager. In fact the facility as it exists today is actually quite benign; you should visit if you haven't. It's literally right off the road down there. You can almost touch Starhopper through the fence.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

u/RGVaerial on r/SpaceXLounge has overlayed these plans onto an aerial photo [1]. It looks a lot smaller than one might expect. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/lzf9z7/proposed_expansion_of_spacexs_boca_launch_site/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/lzf9z7/propos...

bryanlarsen 6y ago
If you add the massive Starship+SuperHeavy in for scale, it looks even smaller. https://twitter.com/Caspar_Stanley/status/1368348628708950018 https://twitter.com/Caspar_Stanley/status/136834862870895001...
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  Hmm can they stack and fuel and launch multiple in parallel if the pads are so close?
  - Tuna-Fish 6y ago
    I would say no, but I also was very skeptical about them launching and landing SN9 with SN10 just a stone's throw away, so what do I know.
    - Gravityloss 6y ago
      At Kennedy Space Center, LC39A and LC39B are about 3 km (2 miles) apart. So if one Saturn V blew up, the other pad wouldn't be destroyed. I don't know what would happen if another one was on the pad.
      - Gravityloss 6y ago
        To me it looks like the pads are only a few hundred meters apart. It seems like an explosion on one pad could easily damage a rocket on another one. So I don't think this can be a high flight rate facility.
  - baking 6y ago
    I think everything is a backup with the possible exception of the landing pads. You may need to land the Starship before the booster has been cleared from the other landing pad. In fact, the second landing pad is one of the new items in this iteration. Basically, I think they want to keep up the testing cadence without having to delay things due to maintenance. They say in one of the applications that there will be no more than about 10-12 orbital launches from Boca Chica per year.
- handol 6y ago
  It looks like those cylinders are representing the launch towers, a few meters taller than the stacked Starship sitting on the launch mount.

lgats 6y ago

SpaceX just trademarked Starbase https://uspto.report/TM/90556104 https://uspto.report/TM/90556104 STARBASE™ trademark registration is intended to cover the categories of launch services, namely, launching the payloads of others into space.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
texasbigdata 6y ago
As mentioned at the bottom of the article it’s super cool he’s trying to rename the entire area into a city. Additional source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/musk-floats-starbase-name-change-for-texas-rocket-launch-town https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/musk-floa...

mabbo 6y ago

And why not? At the rate SpaceX is moving at, they may have the world's largest orbital launch system by the end of the year. That's not even "Elon-time" anymore, it's totally within reason that they could have their first orbital Starship launch this year. When Starship becomes commercially viable, things are going to change fast for the space industry. And that little Starbase in Boca Chica is going to be a busy place. (And in the meantime, we get to watch all the explody tests, which is excellent entertainment!)

ncallaway 6y ago
To be fair, "Elon time" for the first orbital Starship launch was 2020. Shotwell was saying that she would bet yes on an orbital Starship in 2021. I think "Shotwell" time is generally much closer to 1:1 time than Elon time. But I agree, Starship has a fairly plausible path to being orbital by the end of the year.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  I'm generally inclined to give people a break on missing 2020 deadlines.
  - ncallaway 6y ago
    Sure, but Starship wasn't going to be orbital in 2020 even without the pandemic. It was a wildly unrealistic estimate to begin with that characterizes "Elon time" as a concept. Starship development has been blindly fast, and even still is a maybe on getting to orbit this year. I just don't think the pandemic pushed their timeline back significantly. I could be wrong, but that's my take from the outside looking in
    - bpodgursky 6y ago
      To be pedantic, it actually seems pretty likely the first stage could have reached LEO. There were no issues at all on ascent, and it has the fuel capacity. At one point Elon was talking about possibly testing this. But they decided not to do this, because their first priority was to get it to land, and they don't envision LEO launches using only the first stage. That will be in conjunction with the much larger second stage.

altcognito 6y ago

There's no indication that they are building any sort of structure to "catch" the first stage booster at the landing site. edit: It was pointed out that the integration tower to the very bottom is a likely candidate. This seems right as the proposed launch layout is slightly larger given the larger size of the booster.

bdamm 6y ago
There is the "Integration Tower" structure at the south side next to the new orbital launch pad. If the plan is to catch and re-fly then that would make sense.
- altcognito 6y ago
  Oh excellent, thank you very much, that looks like it. I don't know why I was thinking there would be a "landing circle" there. Exciting, this is probably the next most fascinating development to watch other than the orbital piece. Everything else is exciting to watch as well, it's just that in terms of "things that are completely novel", these two things (catching the booster, starship coming back from orbital launch), are at the top of my list. I can't wait to see the first stage go off with its full complement of engines as well. That's going to be straight up incredible.
- baking 6y ago
  I think the first structure designed to catch boosters will be away from the launch mounts. The primary advantage of catching is eliminating the mass of the legs. Quick relaunch capability is just a bonus and primarily useful at offshore launch sites.
  - bdamm 6y ago
    It's possible they would build the "integration tower" first, perfect the catch, and only then build the launch mount.
svachalek 6y ago
Why would they? It lands under thrust like the Falcons, with two major differences: 1. it goes back to its launch area rather than merely going down as the Falcons do (why the Falcons need to land on a ship) 2. it's too heavy to get enough air resistance by falling vertically like the Falcons, so it does this amazing belly flop with a "flip and burn" at the last moment

ericmay 6y ago

Quick question - since it's South Texas and I can see the Gulf of Mexico in the screenshot... isn't that a little close to the water? Not just maybe global warming + sea level rises but storm surge from hurricanes. Or is that not a concern? Anyone with more knowledge on the topic could share?

sambe 6y ago
"What is striking about this architectural drawing is its compact nature, largely because SpaceX has limited land to work with at the facility and must include stormwater ponds to mitigate against flooding."
bryanlarsen 6y ago
Closeness to the water is a requirement so that if a rocket fails it doesn't land on people. And you don't want to launch to the West so that you can take advantage of the Earth's rotation rather than fighting it. (Launch sites on the West coast are for polar orbits which launch either North or South). Given those requirements, there's no location that isn't vulnerable to hurricanes. Boca Chica actually doesn't get many hurricanes compared to Florida or further North on the Texas coast.
- ericmay 6y ago
  Thanks a lot, Bryan. I know/knew some of those things (like being close to water in general) - I guess I was concerned about how close it appeared to be :)
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > Closeness to the water is a requirement so that if a rocket fails it doesn't land on people. Not if you're Russia/China. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/chinese-rocket-crushes-houses-after-government-warning-to-residents.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/chinese-rocket-crushes-house...
  - nickik 6y ago
    China is moving away from that as well. China did this because of the threat of capitalist invasion but the realize its dumb. Russia is a bit different and they couldn't really move it further east because it would be to far from their industrial centers. They had a hell of a time transporting the Buran system to launch already.

Florence9899 6y ago

Я здесь Голая https://vk.cc/bZoVGs https://vk.cc/bZoVGs

thescriptkiddie 6y ago

It would be cool if they built a full-scale prototype of their proposed methane/oxygen propellant plant near the launch site. It would be harder to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere on Earth than on Mars, but on the other hand solar power is much more abundant here.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Do you really want a fuel plant next to a launch site?
- zlynx 6y ago
  Why not? The fuel is next to the launch site, before they put it into the rocket. It can be protected from exploding rockets by berms, concrete, etc. It isn't as if an exploding rocket is a shaped charge; the force of an explosion would go up and out and be easily deflected.
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    Assuming nothing landed on top of tanks
bryanlarsen 6y ago
If they do that, it'll probably be a couple of miles away at the old natural gas well site they own. That's where they're putting an oxygen purification stack.
baking 6y ago
I think that plant is just for oxygen and nitrogen (plus the bonus argon for the welders.) Somebody did a calculation that showed that the number of truckloads of methane needed to power the plant was substantially less then the number of truckloads of oxygen that would otherwise be needed.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago

ARandomerDude 6y ago

They'll have to pay their engineers pretty well to live down there. Nearby South Padre Island is a decent vacation spot, but not many people want to live on the land that close to the border with Mexico. I know a lot of folks who haven't been to Brownsville will reflexively think that's a racist comment or something, but it isn't. The area is extremely poor with police/border checkpoints everywhere, the land is ugly, the humidity is horrible, and the mosquitoes are worse.

908B64B197 6y ago
Fly them from somewhere else?
- chasd00 6y ago
  It's probably all construction crews and heavy machinery operators at Boca Chica. Any engineers, or other high maintenance types, likely fly in for test launches and then fly right back out.
  - snypher 6y ago
    They might be high maintenance but maybe they remember the last engineers that stayed behind at a SpaceX outpost... https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-engineers-island-without-food-mutiny-liftoff-book-2021-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-rocket-engineers-isla...
bryanlarsen 6y ago
South Padre may be 4 miles away as the crow flies, but it's a one hour drive due to the lack of bridges over the Brownsville harbour.
- deegles 6y ago
  If the spaceport grows enough maybe they would fund a bridge or ferry!

asdff 6y ago

I wonder if Elon settled on Texas due to the local regulatory environment not really caring about the local ecology. The current site is built on a sensitive wetland literally in a state park. No clue how Elon managed that one, but it probably wouldn't have been kosher in a blue state. Local TX officials probably saw how the political capital of bringing 'space jobs' to the middle of nowhere outweighed local flora and fauna who obviously aren't going to be voting in elections.

bpodgursky 6y ago
I'm sure it's a factor, but they are also situated at the lowest possible latitude in the lower 48 states (it's right on the Mexican border), which is important for orbital launch efficiency.
the-dude 6y ago
Like Washington, Oregon, Michigan or NY? Isn't the latitude the most important characteristic?
- Tuna-Fish 6y ago
  Latitude, and having open ocean to the east. If you want to stay in the lower 48, there really aren't any options other than Florida and Texas, there are no good places left in Florida with sufficient safety areas without having to uproot tens of thousands of people.
marktangotango 6y ago
> political capital of bringing 'space jobs' to the middle of nowhere Middle of nowhere is a non charitable as well as non accurate characterization of the area. South Texas and Brownsville are huge in the oil and gas industry. The number and quality of industrial, large structure welders available made the area very intriguing from that perspective alone I wager. In fact the facility as it exists today is actually quite benign; you should visit if you haven't. It's literally right off the road down there. You can almost touch Starhopper through the fence.
inglor_cz 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]