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Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant
- nimbius 5y agoLooking at the image in the article, the 'fast fire accellerator' looks suspiciously like a traditional waste gas flare common for the past 50 years in petroleum refining. Its common to try and redefine these as the EPA cracks down on them and they are environmentally bad. The last major push in industry was to try calling them a steam flare. Disclosure: I worked a few years in refineries as a mechanical maintenance contractor.
- agar 5y agoIIRC, there is no longer a waste gas flare at SpaceX's facilities. They are doing methane recapture and recondensing.
- mam3 5y agoElon is such a chad <3
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago:)
- stefan_ 5y agoThe context here seems to be that SpaceX is in fact building an old boring fracked well gas plant in federally protected land, but because they cursorily mention rockets and call it a "methane processing thingamajig" instead of what it plain is, the FAA who has no experience doing environmental review but is involved because rockets is all too happy to just nod it through.
- coenhyde 5y agoSome more context. If I understand correctly this gas plant is need to power a desalination plant which is need to produce massive amounts of water which will be used to implement a sound suppression deluge system that is required by the FAA. Salt water will corrode everything and there isn't existing water and gas infrastructure in place to lean on. ie they have to build the stack from scratch.
- phkahler 5y agoOr they want a gas well because super heavy and starship engines burn METHANE for fuel.
- wolverine876 5y agoPerhaps there's a more efficient place to build the facility, perhaps someplace with abundant water so that you don't have to spend all this energy to create it?
- justahuman74 5y agoBecause the rocket is so huge, they need to build it either next to a waterway for barge transport, or right next to the launch pad which has to be on the coast
- wolverine876 5y agoThanks. Next question: Inland waterways are fresh water, and generally they carry the largest volume of water near the coast, so why not build next to a river?
- speedybird 5y agoI guess you're alluding to KSC or Cape Canaveral? As far as I know they pipe their water in from a neighboring town. Do they actually have enough fresh water to support the launch cadence SpaceX is planning for?
- gpm 5y agoI don't think there is. You need water to your east (because you can't fly over people for safety reasons), for a really long way. As in launches from texas have to dodge Florida, Cuba and all the other islands over there. You need very low population density (because rocket launches and landings require large exclusion zones). You need to be in the US, because of export restrictions. You want to be as far south as possible, for efficiency reasons (to get as much kinetic energy from the earths rotation as possible). You are looking at this launch site, attempting to acquire a lot of land on Florida's coast (not really feasible anymore, it's all occupied), or launching from tiny islands/ocean platforms which will have the exact same fresh water issues.
- elif 5y agodid you read the article? they are building a methane refining facility. The author is speculating that it will be capable of refining gas which has been mined by fracking. that's the extent of the story... Please cite your claim of "SpaceX is in fact building an old boring fracked well gas plant"
- speedybird 5y agoHow could it be that SpaceX is answerable only to the FAA and is immune to the EPA? Why is it on the FAA to regulate a well? I think the author of the article should work on including a bit more exposition and a bit less snark (if he actually intents to persuade people, anyway.) Also I'm a bit confused why people are surprised the methane for these rockets will come from a well. Did people really think Elon Musk was going to stick a hose up a cow's ass to collect the methane?
- zionic 5y agoI also don’t see what all the fuss is about here. SpaceX making a well to power the human colonization of mars is a drop in the bucket vs all the other wells in the state.
- smoldesu 5y agoWell, what SpaceX is doing doesn't really matter. I can't just show up to Arkansas and say I'm fracking for oil to cure cancer and get hand-waved through. They're private entities, no matter what they're doing, and they're subject to the same scrutiny that everyone else puts up with.
- lazide 5y agoThat is ideally how it is supposed to work, but there are many examples of regulations being bypassed and other folks being stepped on to get a desired employer or a potentially lucrative investment into a place. It doesn’t sound like it is happening here necessarily, but it does happen pretty frequently.
- ESGHound 5y agoThis is not true at all. Doubly not true when your program is subsidized by Federal dollars and takes place adjacent to protected federal lands. The FAA is subject to NEPA review, and hence any SpaceX activity in this area must go through the same process as every other industrial activity that impacts federal interests.
- Qworg 5y agoThe EPA doesn't have a dog in this fight - the feds don't have much of a role at all, unless it is on federal lands of a particular class that would trigger special protections (ie National Park). Piping gas across state lines can involve the feds, or if they impign on a wetland or waterway. There's no interstate commerce to trigger any substantial federal involvement that I can see. Texas was an inspired choice - California would have been a knife fight regulatorily.
- gpm 5y ago> Texas was an inspired choice - California would have been a knife fight regulatorily. California is also just on the wrong coast. You almost always want to launch eastward so you get the free rotational velocity from the earth to help you reach orbit, for the same reason you want to be as close to the equator as possible, and you can't (regulatory/safety wise) have a flight path over land. From within mainland US the only reasonable options are Texas and Florida. The exceptions to this are polar orbits (for which the rotation of earth just doesn't help) and the rare military spy satellite that wants a retrograde orbit for ... reasons. The US/SpaceX does launch out of california for those orbits, but it's a small fraction of launches.
- bserge 5y agoNot being able to fly over land seems ridiculous. Planes fly over land, right? Sounds like the same shit as nuclear power plant regulations. As a civilization or even a species, we'll "safety" our way into extinction.
- plorg 5y agoThey are also skirting a full environmental review by getting it initially approved as a fuel processing plant only and then getting incremental additions approved under a process with less oversight. So while the plan was always to have a pipeline and in addition to the NG plant, it was initially permitted only for the NG part (under the deceptive description as "rocket fuel") and to process relatively clean NG, and the additional expansions are each deemed to be of "small" relative impact compared to the initial project, until you have a much more environmentally destructive facility that would never be approved if proposed wholesale.
- plorg 5y agoReplying to myself because I misremembered some of the particulars: The Environmental Impact Assesment was initially done for the rocket launch facility in 2014. All improvements and changes have been conducted as small or incremental changes, which require an amendment to the assessment, rather than a new assessment, a process with much less oversight. The fuel facility is being approved through the amendment process even though it represents a substantial change, and it has thus far excluded study of additional parts of the facility that will be required for it to function as presented.
- ed 5y agoAdditional context > Musk’s SpaceX aims to use a site in South Texas to launch rockets to carry people and cargo to the moon and Mars. To do that, the company intends to drill gas wells to make its own fuel and electricity, according a Federal Aviation Administration document seen by Bloomberg. > The SpaceX site in Texas will be supplied by at least five nearby gas wells, along with two gas-fired power plants, according to the FAA document. Purified gas from the wells will be pumped into refrigeration equipment that turns it into liquid methane, the document shows. The methane can be combined with liquid oxygen and other compounds to make rocket fuel. https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/spacex_texas_plans_face_public_scrutiny-01-feb-2021-164490-article/ https://www.rigzone.com/news/wire/spacex_texas_plans_face_pu...
- brabel 5y agoIf anyone had any doubt about whether Elon really had the environment in mind when he founded Tesla, I think now you've got your answer. In fact, most people driving electric cars likely wouldn't think twice about building a fracked well if they knew they could make millions from that... if they really cared about the environment, they wouldn't even drive around.
- DisjointedHunt 5y agoHow much carbon does one year of fires in California produce? For all the regulations on reducing usage, the wise politicians enabled conditions through neglect of forest care and trimming to allow fires so large, the plume could be seen from space and darkened skies as far north as Seattle. The point here is, what is good for the climate isn’t the purview of these simplistic views of climate science. Drilling a well doesn’t automatically kill everything Mother Nature created or anything. . . The economic shift that Tesla single handful brought about to get all of traditional auto to move to electric cannot be overstated. So stop using “The Environment” as a battering ram that only your point of view protects. It is wrong.
- ahmedalsudani 5y agoFiled under non sequitur.
- Ericson2314 5y agoGuess solar isn't so good at industrial scale, eh? They should go build some fission reactors instead.
- Jweb_Guru 5y agoYeah wow you sure showed those people trying to power rockets with solar power.
- MayeulC 5y agoI mean you can produce methane trough CO2 capture and a lot of solar power. That's basically what musk said was the goal on mars, so they could develop that tech as well. Or space-based solar. If anyone has the capability, it's spacex.
- Jweb_Guru 5y agoMusk says a lot of dumb things. I'm about as far as a Musk fan as you can be. But acting like rockets are going to be powered by clean energy in the foreseeable future is just wishful thinking.
- rpmisms 5y ago> But acting like rockets are going to be powered by clean energy in the foreseeable future is just wishful thinking. So were practical electric cars 20 years ago.
- nsonha 5y agoit was already practical? The 20 years was just for the economics to work it out. If you want to make that comparison watch how long commercial clean energy air travel will take. Then we can make prediction about rockets, which, mind you, escape freaking Earth's gravity
- dragontamer 5y ago
- spamizbad 5y agoPeople are being critical of SpaceX for this, but it makes perfect sense for their business model. As climate change disrupts life on earth there will be greater demand for SpaceX's and Tesla's products and services. It is only rational Elon Musk would seek to accelerate climate change - it would be foolish of him to try and stop it. Every ton of carbon in the atmosphere will eventually become money in his pocket.
- inglor_cz 5y agoA back of the napkin calculation shows that launching 1000 Starships a year is still a rounding error in humanity's carbon footprint. If Elon wants to measurably accelerate climate change, he's doing it all wrong. So, in all likelihood, he doesn't.
- whatever1 5y agoI like how we are hiking the fuel prices for the peasants to reduce CO2 emmissions while we give free passes to billionaires to extract and burn fossils for tourism purposes.
- gradys 5y agoAre we doing that? Was some new gas tax passed in the US?
- whatever1 5y agoLast time I checked in Europe 80% of the gas price was taxes. Last time that I checked in the US up to 30% of the fuel price was paid for RINS, aka renewable energy certificates. So yes we do pay for sustainability. Unlike the billionaire explorers.
- inglor_cz 5y agoSpace research and development is a huge part of sustainability. It is literally our only chance to move some polluting industries off Earth, at least long term. (I do not expect to see it happening in my lifetime.) Reusable rockets are a huge progress in space research. People long thought them outright impossible or impractical. And aside from SpaceX, no one has them yet. ESA's model of throwing away the entire Ariane at each launch is the very opposite of sustainable. It is an expensive waste of money propped up by French military interests. (Not that the ULA, the Russians or the Chinese do something different.)
- rpmisms 5y ago> And aside from SpaceX, no one has them yet. I agree with you generally, but Rocket Lab in NZ is also reusing rockets.
- agar 5y ago> burn fossils for tourism purposes Like airplanes? Like cruise ships? Would it somehow be better if SpaceX just bought natural gas on the open market, reducing available supply and thereby potentially increasing price through market forces? Are you suggesting we tax carbon so SpaceX has to pay tax on the fuel they extract that could go towards clean energy investments? I'm not sure of the point you're making.
- _3u10 5y agoIsn’t capturing and then flaring methane the environmentally responsible thing to do?
- ceejayoz 5y agoThat'll depend on where the methane is captured from. A landfill, or reclaimed from cow shit? Sure. An underground well, where it could've been left alone? Not necessarily.
- wolverine876 5y agoIt's more responsible not to use natural gas, including by reducing energy usage. It's also more responsible to respect the rules made democratically by your fellow citizens then to try to cheat them.
- aazaa 5y agoThe article shows many tables without ever quoting sources. In the previous article in the series, the author claims: > ... I’m a “forensic environmental data specialist” (I invented the term just now). I use the troves of free to the public data located in regulatory submittals and permits to extract useful information. ... Great. If free to the public, where are the links? Clicking on those table images just links to the images themselves. The article itself is stream-of-consciousness writing with little effort to organize or edit down the useless brain droppings from this author. I bring this up because if the author wants to be taken seriously, style matters, as do bend-over-backwards efforts to document claims. Especially claims against large organizations with deep pockets. Even for regular HN readers, it helps to be able to verify for oneself claims made of a quantitative nature.
- RobLach 5y agoThe sheets are linked in previous parts of the series, as well as the data. For example: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xO-OsDaQBnaCDGqHAtbzEiZetO1oXhVmTJKoi4_IT4U/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xO-OsDaQBnaCDGqHAtbz...
- mark212 5y agoI agree with you. This is poorly written, random snark. It seems sort of plausible but it’s like looking at a pile of Lego and thinking “Yeah, maybe you could make a Millennium Falcon from this I think?”
- heavyset_go 5y agoESGHound is the source that broke this story[1] about SpaceX that was featured on TechCrunch last week, and this submission stems from that investigation. You might not like their style of writing, but it would be foolish to dismiss it because it offends your taste. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/08/the-mystery-of-elon-musks-missing-gas/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/08/the-mystery-of-elon-musks-...
- rspeed 5y ago
- ESGHound 5y agoHi, Author here. FAA's document is subject to NEPA and table 2.1 in the PEA considers the gas plant and power plant to be in scope. FAA is the overseeing agency for this action so it doesn't matter that it's not in "FAA's domain" FERC and DOE do these types of NEPA approvals all the time and include full EPA participation. SpaceX and FAA didn't consult with EPA and that was likely intentional. This is essentially an unprecedented action under NEPA. Feel free to shoot emails or ask questions. Finally getting lots of attention here.
- smcl 5y agoI loved the TrashFuture ep you were on :D
- davidgerard 5y agoJust pinged ESGHound that his post had made the HN front page, and now he knows where the new readers flaming him on Twitter were coming in from https://twitter.com/ESGhound/status/1449471403225337856 https://twitter.com/ESGhound/status/1449471403225337856
- heavyset_go 5y agoAs an aside, it's nice to see that you're on HN, David!
- GDC7 5y agoSomehow people will find a way to spin this as a positive thing and a rightful thing that lord Musk is doing for the future of humanity™. But Zuck is the devil for giving you the option (but not the obligation) to watch pics of other people's vacations. You know you study the game, you think you understand, you look at the logic which should be the strong point of HN and reddit type crowd...but in the end it always ends exactly where all the other "lesser" social phenomenons end up: it's all about that "OMG he's so emotional and like deeply cares about it, I can see it in his eyes and his voice" teenage girls, always looked down upon, understand their feelings better than most adult men.
- ShamelessC 5y ago...what?
- ESGHound 5y agoHeres a tl;dr from Reddit. I'm very tired as this is a big deal and no, I don't have a cohesive narrative throughout the series. I was trying to get as much information out there during the very short 30-day window for public comment. I believe public comment is super important for these types of projects. I have over a decade of experience in this specific field, and have worked as a regulator, for non-profits, and as an employee of big oil and gas. Please go easy on me SpaceX and FAA snuck a bunch of oil and gas infrastructure including a gas plant, a LNG a 250 MW power plant into an "insignificant/minor change" NEPA environmental review document that was supposed to just be for bigger rockets. It has tons of basic errors, missing data, and even though NEPA is a public disclosure law, no one is talking about the oil stuff at all Also implied, but explicitly not noted in the document are a 1. Pipeline that needs to be constructed and 2. the huge amount of newly drilled oil and gas wells in a region of Texas that currently has no production to speak of. Oh and all of this is on a federally protected wildlife reserve. And it's super illegal and unprecedented and brings about all sorts of uncomfortable questions about regulatory capture
- dumbfoundded 5y agoThank you for your insightful research. What can individuals do? Is there a place to leave public comments?
- wolverine876 5y ago> I believe public comment is super important for these types of projects. Something I've always wondered: How is it that public comments have power? What stops officials from mostly ignoring them or misconstruing them? And if the comments do have power, what stops vested interests from hijacking them?
- dumbfoundded 5y agoI'm not sure about these types of projects but public commenting for the FDA proposed regulations regarding hemp was actually really helpful for the industry.
- mark212 5y agoWhat I can’t seem to find the answer to in this very long and stream-of-consciousness style series of posts is why the author thinks the FAA is the only relevant federal agency. They complain constantly about violating NEPA and accuse the FAA of just waiving this through … but there’s no way someone can operate a point-source emitter (e.g., large 250mw power station, let alone the natural gas processing facility) without getting a permit from the relevant air quality regulator. Might be the EPA but I’m guessing it’ll be TCEQ; most states, especially the large ones, have their own state agencies and so long as the standard exceeds what the federal minimums are, then they issue the permits. This is the scheme set up by the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. (I practice in California and we have two separate state agencies, one for air and one for water. It seems like Texas Comm’n on Enviro Quality does both per their website.) The EPA doesn’t get involved in permit issuing and the state agencies even have authority over other federal agencies’ operations and issue permits to them. So if the FAA is asleep at the switch, who really cares? There’s a whole second governmental regulator out there and a host of environmental non-profits and local governments with standing to sue if they think that regulator has made a decision they don’t like. It’s like complaining that the plumbing inspector hasn’t given proper consideration to the minimum set-backs and architectural character of the neighborhood and signs off on the new toilets and showers for a house renovation. Like, who cares? You can’t move in without getting the final permit from the City and even if you did get that permit, the neighbors can sue and stop construction if they think the City made the wrong decision. What am I missing? Why is this author so obviously emotionally distraught?
- XorNot 5y agoHaving read the whole blog post series I agree. I can't figure out what the issue actually is meant to be here: the strongest argument is that the emissions SpaceX will have from the Starbase site itself will be higher then are being reported because the assumptions about the facility they're building are not accurate. This might be significant, although it's certainly an argument I have a hard time worrying about in Texas, for this one facility, unless it would actually have a deleterious local impact (or be unmitigateable) - but it is a reasonable point of concern and a good use of public comment - though as noted in the series, the NEPA process is more about documentation then prevention. SpaceX can it seems, just update the numbers now and say "yeah so anyway it'll be that". Where I'm much less clear is the argument about the gas wells or the gas pipeline - which are presented separately but seem to be necessarily together in order to link them as an issue associated with the Starbase site's operations itself, and I'm really not able to connect the dots here: it's implicitly obvious that Starbase is going to use some quantity of hydrocarbons to operate, but I'm not clear - once the site itself is accounted for - why its a problem that the pipeline and wells they'll necessarily build not being initially included matter? Is the NEPA process somehow going to grant approval to construct fracking wells that will not be on the Starbase site, or approval for the pipeline construction? The pipeline argument in particular seems to be the weakest because if the existing decommissioned pipeline (who's run length I imagine SpaceX intend to use) was denied, based on the map coloring as presented in the post there's very obviously another path which doesn't cross any shaded regions...through which another pipeline already runs. If it does that seems like a problem, but I'm having a tough time figuring out how the FAA approving rocket launches would in any jurisidiction translate automatically into "and so we also are totally approved for this subsidiary company's fracked natural gas well many miles away and a pipeline". There seems to be a weird implicit assumption that the FAA approving what it has would somehow approve it with every other agency - which, can it? Does it? As things stand "we're going to build a 250MW gas power plant" maybe shouldn't happen on the site seems to be my takeaway, but since they haven't built it yet and since it's existence doesn't seem to of major impact beyond land-clearing and emissions, surely whether it could be built is one question compared to whether SpaceX can get approval to do everything else they'd need to run it? At the moment they've launched zero rockets, but it seems like they'll be able to launch some without any of this and everything else is a question for the future - and surely the point of other regulatory processes particularly if it's not happening on the site itself?
- SergeAx 5y agoOn today's Lucy launch stream a huge torch was visible nearby. First stage was kerosene-powered, second was using hydrogen. I wonder if this torch is to burn hydrogen byproducts?
- rspeed 5y agoThe torch would, most likely, be for emergency methane venting. They had previously used a torch for burning gaseous methane during de-tanking, but have since switched to a condenser to cool it back to a liquid. There would essentially be no reason not to continue that practice, particularly when they'll have a nearly unlimited supply of liquid nitrogen.
- SergeAx 5y agoI was writing about Lucy launch, which used Atlas V rocket.
- nsonha 5y agowhat's the alternative? transporting the gas from elsewhere? Rockets don't run on electricity
- xyzzy21 5y agoWell, given that the SpaceX rocket engine runs on methane and a lot of it, it makes sense that they'd need a cheap and plentiful source of that methane (aka natural gas). The cheapest way to get it now is by fracking - the infrastructure exists and is cheaper than technologies (and reserves) used 50 years ago.