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Two-Year Delay for SpaceX's Private Spaceport (blastingnews.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the Texas-tech dept.

MarkWhittington writes: About a year and a half ago, with then Texas Governor Rick Perry and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in attendance, ground was broken on the first private spaceport designed to launch rockets vertically near Brownsville, Texas. At the time, SpaceX announced that it expected to launch a rocket a month, either a Falcon 9 or a Falcon Heavy in the skies over South Texas starting in 2016. But then, the Texas spaceport story fell off the face of the Earth, as it were. Fortunately, the Valley Morning Star has an explanation as to why things are taking so long.

7 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. click bait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    for those of us wondering why its delayed

    "310,000 cubic yards of soil will have been brought in...The purpose is to raise and stabilize the area before actual construction of the launch pad and associated buildings begins"

    1. Re:click bait by dbIII · · Score: 3, Informative

      Makes sense.
      I've seen a runway site sitting under huge amounts of dirt to compress it for a year or two.

  2. Soil surcharging by Iamthecheese · · Score: 5, Informative

    For the lazy and if I may pick the low-hanging fruit, here and here are some articles about soil surcharging. It's actually an interesting technique. They mitigate risk of shear related failure by stiffening the ground.

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    1. Re:Soil surcharging by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 3, Informative

      Guessing they didn't do the geotechnical survey until the groundbreaking, but value engineering might also be at work. Until they hit a critical mass of launches it might be cheaper to use other facilities. So, decide to surcharge the soil for a couple years rather than piling and using thicker slabs, save lots of money.

  3. Re:basically... by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Informative

    They pay their taxes on fuel like anyone else....Those roads are paid for at the pump.

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  4. Re:subsidy driven business by jeti · · Score: 5, Informative

    ITAR regulations won't allow a US company to have the rockets built outside the US or to transport them to a launch site in another country. It's technology with military applications.

  5. Re:They never perform to schedule by Rei · · Score: 1, Informative

    And NASA is famous for performing on schedule by comparison?

    Perhaps you meant to write "the whole space industry is notorious for underperforming on schedule".

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