Slashdot Mirror
Two-Year Delay for SpaceX's Private Spaceport (blastingnews.com)
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.
Elon hasn't delivered.
I'm shocked... At for stupid Slashdot has gotten.
your ignorant prejudice do not amount to facts; on highways in particular, and where there is presence and absence of corruption(vague term anyway, even subsidies are form of corruption) in general, among others,
specific location was mere speculation on my part anyway, point was locating in usa was not the market driven. btw if not central/south america, there is africa , former ussr central asia, etc, there is already esa's (somewhat subsidy driven) french guiana space center.
"building rocket engines is incredibly difficult ... takes years of experience for engineers"
are you saying only old government agencies can do it?
if so called private space companies in usa can do it, so can others elsewhere. if market driven, they can hire same engineers as usa ones, if necessary.
It really is private and market driven. Contracts are determined by price and efficiency. Do you think the world exists in some sort of vacuum? You an economics major or something? There's a little something you should look into called "risk" and another called "political stability". Both of these are huge, huge factors in pricing. Namely, being priced out of the market. Want to open a factory in a cheap area that's not stable? There's an excellent chance the locals will look at you like a lion looks at a sick gazelle. You can put numbers on these factors and they'll tell you to build somewhere cheaper, i.e. less risky. Texas is an excellent place to do business, they don't look at companies as the enemy - which is not the case in many states in America.
if it is "really is private and market driven"as you say , why not let companies decide on "huge, huge factors in pricing" unassisted by government ? why not let foreigners have legal right to fight for same business? why not let foreign spaceports right to launch for usa based businesses?
then if your prejudices about "risks", "political stability", local hungry "lions", etc are correct about all the eligible cheap areas outside usa, they will stay inside usa (even texas).
why does usa( and texas ) hide behind laws that cramp private companies and market ? answer that! politics? corruption? answer!
in usa, decisions in this business are made for political reasons and are government subsidy driven.
when those protections coddling the inefficient businesses, like spacex, are down and removed, you can make your case. but currently your argument can be made only by an ignorant person.
btw all can see what happened to most usa companies where those protections are not available. lol