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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.
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"
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.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Even Elon Musk is having to wait until the dust (more specifically 310,000 cubic yards of soil) to settle...if I was the Texas DoT, I'd also be charging SpaceX for all the additional maintenance needed on S.H. 4.
The world DOES exist in some sort of vacuum.
Basically someone forgot that the soil needed to be much more stable than its default state. So they need to put a huge amount of weight on it to get it to settle, and then remove it and build the heavy stuff on top.
That's it.
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.
Err, minus the fact that all of Europe's space-bound payloads launch from French Guyana on the north-eastern coast of South America? Just north of the mouth of the Amazon? Both from europe-mfg Ariane 5 and Russian-mfg Progress launch from there, at least one launch a month. My buddy owns a boat down there and nearly caused them to scrub a launch as he had sailed in to their exclusion zone.
Fuel costs have NOTHING to do with launches, fuel costs make up a tiny, tiny fraction of the total cost of a launch -- about $350,000 per launch out of a $60-200 million dollar launch.
The problem of rocket technology is solved, both SpaceX, Blue Origin and NASA are all 3D printing (laser sintering) rocket engines now and have over a year of flight heritage
moox. for a new generation.
Most people wouldn't consider 1,500 miles to be "just north", which is the distance from Kourou to the mouth of the Amazon.
And Ariane costs $10k/kg. This is who you want SpaceX to mimic?
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
Uh, because American government should make decisions that benefit Americans? Just like the Venezuelan government need only made decisions that benefit their people, and the Bolivian government need not take the interests of international corporations into account before taking actions that benefit their own people. I really don't get what is so controversial about helping your own side. The entire world does it. That's pretty much the entire point of a government, if they don't represent their own people then they're not legitimate and shouldn't exist.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
However, lower fuel costs are the main driver of the sea-based landing pads.
No. The sea-based landing pads are used for missions where the rocket doesn't have enough delta-V to get back to the launch site. I.e. landing downrange at sea enables them to launch heavier payloads.
I'm guessing that the delay at the Mars Crossing launch site is because SpaceX has its hands full on rocket upgrades and doing satellite launches to start realizing some money from their backlog, and the new launch site just isn't their highest priority as long as they are having no problems with launching from the Cape and Vandenberg.
In the long run, having their own site will give them independence from scheduling issues at the Cape and probably allow a faster launch cadence. In the short term, though, the Cape seems to be serving their needs.
In Maine, a few years ago, a revolutionary new bridge construction technique debuted;
- Truck in dirt to build the abutment ramps.
- Let them settle for a year or two. Instead of compacting,
- Begin building the foundations etc...
It looks wasteful, but it's efficient from a cost standpoint.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's called "construction", did someone expect a spaceport to spring fully formed in the coastal swamps simply because SpaceX purchased the land?
SpaceX seems to be focusing on the other two portions of the venn diagram of the launch industry, "cheap" and "right". Other space launch companies have focused on the "right" and "on time" portions for decades while completely ignoring the "cheap" portion of it. Given the choice I imagine most satellite manufactures would happily (as evidenced by SpaceX's current launch backlog) wait for a launch rather than pay in excess of 4 times as much for an on time launch. They're still ironing out some kinks, and they do need competitors to keep them honest, but no one who has been paying attention can say with a straight face that they haven't been a force for advancement (both in cost & technology) in the launch industry.
The world DOES exist in some sort of vacuum.
That's abhorrent.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
walmart isn't a private company. Is it owned by the government? No. Does it survives only via government largess? No.
As far as I can tell Walmart scaled pretty damn well.
Unlike many businesses, they rely on the government to provide a good chunk of of their employees' benefits packages.
There are private space companies, and there are private space companies. Take two examples:
ULA - United Launch Alliance - a merger of the rocket divisions of Lockheed Martin and Boeing that occurred to reduce competition in the US government launch market. Their launches are primarily to the US government and are based on "Cost-Plus" contracts, where ULA receives the "cost" to launch a rocket, plus a guaranteed profit margin. The "cost" is decided implicitly by ULA, through their design and staffing decisions (i.e. more complicated designs and more managers mean more money from the government). They have been receiving one billion dollars a year merely to maintain launch "readiness" without even launching any rockets. Their launch costs are the most expensive in the world.
SpaceX - a company founded by Elon Musk primarily from his own profits from selling Paypal. SpaceX developed their rockets from their own money. During the 2008 crash, SpaceX nearly went under, but was saved by a fixed cost contract to NASA to carry cargo to the International Space Station. Since then, most of their launches are for satellites for companies outside the US. They are the world's least expensive launch option, and that is without re-using their rockets. They are on track to be the world's premier launch service provider.
Which of these two companies fits the stereotype of government funded sloth?
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)