Slashdot Mirror
SpaceX Is Studying Site For 'Commercial Cape Canaveral' Near Brownsville, Texas
New submitter RealTime writes "SpaceX filed a notice with the FAA (PDF) that it is preparing an environmental impact study in consideration of a site in Texas for use as a commercial spaceport. 'The site in question is in the southern tip of the state of Texas, just outside Brownsville in Cameron County, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, over which SpaceX's launches would fly.' The proposed site would handle up to 12 commercial launches per year. 'There's plenty of red tape associated with Kennedy Space Center, and the center is often reserved for large blocks of time by other launchers. If SpaceX had its own pad, it wouldn't have to share.'"
While Elon Musk is certainly one to stay in the limelight more than some of the other rocket builders, it seems like Jeff Bezos either was looking at or purchased land in the general region of Texas. Yes, I know Bezos has his test facility in west Texas, which is also licensed by the FAA-AST as a spaceport, so perhaps I'm mistaken.
If it wasn't Bezos, it seems like it was another group of commercial rocket developers. Benson Space Company perhaps?
Regardless, I would have to agree that some place other than KSC is going to be needed if SpaceX has anything close to the launch rates that Elon Musk is promising. While SpaceX doesn't need to compete against Shuttle launches any more, there still are all of the D.O.D. payloads that usually get higher priority over commercial flights. KSC can be a rather busy place from time to time.
I think this article misses the point. It has nothing to do with launch schedules at the Cape or politics. This has everything to do with recovering the first stage. Look at a map. He has to launch and recover in U.S. territory in order to to comply with U.S. arms export regulations. If this is true, pickup of the first stage in Florida is not much of an option. But Puerto Rico is perfectly position for a powered landing of the first stage when doing an equatorial launch from the Brownsville Texas area.
I predict the next announcement will be a landing site in Puerto Rico for recovery of the first stage. My question is, does he even need permission to land in Puerto Rico? Can't he just get permission to land at an airfield? We aren't talking about a launch, just a powered landing. I'm sure there would be regulatory hurdles, but nothing like that needed to build a launch site.
There's the obvious low latitude (for the US) advantage to this location, but I see other advantages. Texas is relatively centrally located in the US, especially compared to Florida. This, and if they need any internationally sourced parts, their stated choice of location is relatively close to Houston, and Houston has plenty of infrastructure in place for getting stuff moved off of ships and onto rail. Houston already has a big shipping port.
For latitude, Florida always seemed like a great option, but for shipping parts and materials, it seemed like a very inefficient choice.
In fact, it is many of the neo-cons that are hard at work at opposing private space. That includes the likes of Hutcinson(R-TX), Croyn(R-TX), Shelby(R), Wolfe(R), Hatch(R), Coffman(R), etc.. The new round of republicans are torn on this, but the older neo-cons within the republican party are working hard to kill off private space. The reason is that neo-cons currently control the pubs, but also many of them are from areas that represent Boeing, ULA, ATK, L-Mart, Grummun, etc. In fact, it was the republican controlled house that gutted private space funding, but the dem controlled senate restored part of it. The dems wanted it all restored, but the senate pubs (esp. those above) fought against it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.