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The 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 mentio
by stefan_ 5y ago
The 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.
- wolverine876 5y agoThank you! Now I'm thinking of course ... Puerto Rico? I don't know how much fresh water there is, or if there's available and suitable land on the east coast. Are Georgia or South Carolina too far north?
- gpm 5y agoHmm, no I don't think Georgia or South Carolina are too far north, I'd be more worried that their coasts look pretty populated - and generally I'd expect that to be doubly the case around river mouths. To put some numbers on the "north"ness. Boca chica is at 26 degrees north, which gives you 416 m/s free velocity (1500 km/h) [1]. The southernmost point of Georgia's coast is at 30 degrees or 401 m/s, the southernmost point of South Carolina's coast is at 32 degrees or 393 m/s. Actually calculating payload to orbit is more work that I don't really want to do, but you can find someone else who put in the work on this stack overflow question [2], just for different latitudes and a different rocket. 28 to 30 degrees is roughly a .3% change in payload capacity in their model. You're definitely not the first to suggest Peurto Rico, but I think you have the same problem of there not being enough empty land [3]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=%28%282+*+pi+*+6378.14+km+%2F+0.99726968+day%29+*+cos%2826+deg%29+*+%281+-+0.0033528%29%29+in+m%2Fs&ei=QkprYZyEC8yMtAap362gCA&ved=0ahUKEwicreHu9c_zAhVMBs0KHalvC4QQ4dUDCA0&uact=5&oq=%28%282+*+pi+*+6378.14+km+%2F+0.99726968+day%29+*+cos%2826+deg%29+*+%281+-+0.0033528%29%29+in+m%2Fs&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAM6BwgAEEcQsANKBAhBGABQhERYr01g6k9oAXACeACAAV2IAdIEkgEBN5gBAKABAcgBCMABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz https://www.google.com/search?q=%28%282+*+pi+*+6378.14+km+%2... [2] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/998/how-much-of-an-advantage-do-equator-proximal-launch-sites-provide https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/998/how-much-of-an... [3] https://www.quora.com/Why-don-t-we-build-a-rocket-launch-site-in-Puerto-Rico-since-it-is-closer-to-the-equator?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-don-t-we-build-a-rocket-launch-sit...
- cma 5y agoIf it is for desalination why aren't they using solar, which wouldn't even need storage in that application.
- ericcumbee 5y agoBecause you also get Methane as a by-product of natural gas production and that is the fuel for starship.
- cma 5y agoMethane is typically the vast majority of the gas, I figured they were burning it for desalination too, but it makes sense if they are burning just the other fraction.
- 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.