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Texas & Florida Vie For Private Lunar Company Golden Spike's HQ
MarkWhittington writes "The Denver Post reported on July 12, 2013 that Texas and Florida, already embroiled in a fight over which state will be the venue for SpaceX's commercial space port, are now vying to be the site of the headquarters of a company that, while smaller, has much loftier ambitions. Golden Spike, the Boulder, Colorado based company that proposes to start commercial space flights to the moon with paying customers, is being courted by Texas and Florida to leave Colorado and to relocate its headquarters in either state."
I'm sure Cape Kennedy will be up for auction shortly.
(Truly, truly wish I could laugh at the absurdity.)
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Does that sentence really characterise what is going on?
I wouldn't be surprised if the Texas National Guard was massing troops on the Florida border even as we speak.
No left turn unstoned.
"a company that, while smaller, has much loftier ambitions"? Do you really consider lunar tourism a loftier ambition than Martian colonisation?
well I'm sure both companies have ambitions to go to andromeda given a long enough timeframe....
golden spike doesn't seem to have much going for it except a board of investors though. they could just as well end up buying the trips from spacex...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'd go with Florida - they don't seem to share Texas's uber-macho cowboy thing. No-one ever put a 'don't mess with Florida' bumper sticker on their car.
What sane legislator would seriously want to associate themselves with the hucksters at Golden Spike?
They've as much chance of getting you to the moon and back as the YMCA.
Look at the linked site, it's mostly full of invitations to contribute cash and otherwise "contribute"...
On the overall cost and technology, it's suspiciously thin, apart from saying it can pretty much be done with available, commercial technology. Kind of. Yeah right.
I'd love to go to the moon, but I don't have a spare 20 billion lying around, (the rough cost of each previous moon landing).
My guess is few people do.
It's not coincidental that Texas and Florida are the home of some of the worst land speculator rip-offs in history.
But I'm sure we'll see a lot of cheerleading around here. From the same people who want to tell us that solar and wind power are just too "out there" to be considered.
Please line up for your deeds to Actual Moon Real Estate!! and HOTELS IN SPACE!1!!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Try this one out for size. You need employees. You need customers to visit your company. Now do you think that the Treasure Coast of Florida just might attract people like a magnet whereas Texas, with its difficult climate and barbaric legal system, will attract next to no one at all. And it doesn't hurt one bit that from the Cape to Disney is a minor drive.
But they're doing their best to keep up, what with their "shoot a black guy - get a coupon" laws and all.
Remember, once you get about a mile off the East Coast, Florida becomes Alabama right quick. You'll see more Confederate flags than there are spots on an Ocala stripper's butt.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If this is not a legitimate company, i.e. innovates and produces products that must be marketed, then they will probably get some corrupt tax deal by bribing the appropriate officials. Few livable wage paying jobs will be created, the taxpayer will be screwed once again, and several high ranking conservative officials will get new vacation homes.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I never understood the practical reasons for locating mission control in Houston. Seems to me it was a purely political play by Johnson. Wouldn't you want to be as close to the equator as possible to maximize the benefits of the earth's rotation? Wouldn't that mean Key West? And why wouldn't you consider Puerto Rico?
On a strictly physics basis Hawaii would be the best State. Closer to the equator to get maximum boost from the spin of the earth, and you can get some altitude if you use one of the mountains. Less hurricanes too.
golden spike doesn't seem to have much going for it except a board of investors though. they could just as well end up buying the trips from spacex...
But they have a scrolling marketing blurb on their web site asking for help from interested nations. Let's hope some country with disposable income stumbles onto their site and decides to donate their whole tax return!
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
And neither Texas nor Florida have something that makes Colorado the best US state for space travel activities.
Ezekiel 23:20
On a strictly physics basis Hawaii would be the best State.
True. But on any other basis it would be a terrible choice. There is no industrial infrastructure, a shallow labor pool, and a sky high cost of living. Nearly everything would need to be shipped from the mainland, adding delay and cost.
you can get some altitude if you use one of the mountains.
Velocity is important. Altitude is not. To escape earth orbit, you need to be going eleven kilometers (seven miles) per second. A few thousand feet of altitude is going to make almost no difference.
You'd have to be crazy to leave Boulder as long as Ball is still based there--not to mention Lockheed Martin's rocket-building headquarters, Raytheon, and Sierra Nevada. Florida and Texas wish they had the manufacturing base to handle commercial launch. At best the company would expand into Florida or Texas just for logistical reasons.
The obvious rebuttal is that Houston is in Texas not in Colorado. That's by far the largest industrial center of the three states. If SpaceX really does operate a viable launch site in Brownsville, Texes, that would seal the deal as far as I'm concerned. Of course, these people are probably shopping for perks not viable locations so I doubt these considerations matter that much.
A landlocked state further from the equator? A smaller industrial base? Smaller population?
Your other arguments are valid, but the mountain launch does actually have merits. It's the same reason Colorado itself is a less-terrible launch site than you might think (Denver cuts a nice mile off the hardest portion of the launch, though the inclination is still a pain).
I'm guessing you're not *that* familiar with space launches... the higher you launch from, the closer you are to space. The number you quoted is based on instantaneous velocity at the Earth's surface, with no additional thrust (and no drag from air). If you're already at the gravitation midpoint where the attraction from earth equals that from the moon, the velocity needed to reach the moon approaches positive zero.
It's true that the few thousand feet (or a bit more, once you factor in equatorial bulge) from launching off an equatorial mountain doesn't substantially reduce the effect of Earth's gravity - we're already a few thousand miles from Earth's center of gravity - but it's that much less distance you have to carry the fully loaded (fuel is heavy!) spacecraft up through. Also, you really can't ignore drag; starting where the atmosphere is already thinner helps (and it thins rapidly).
Oh, and to put it in terms of escape velocity, the velocity needed to reach two kilometers (not a terribly impressive mountain) from the surface is approximately 200m/s. That's a couple percent saving in launch fuel, or that much more cargo you can carry. At the start of the launch, a bit less distance is a big deal.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
A landlocked state further from the equator? A smaller industrial base? Smaller population?
You forgot good diplomatic relations with the Tok'ra.
Ezekiel 23:20