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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.

5 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"

  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.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    1. Re:Soil surcharging by Rei · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Or situations changed. Perhaps upfront they were planning to spend more by reinforcing with concrete pylons, and discovered this cheaper situation after the fact. Or perhaps they found they were getting better economics operating out of Florida than they expected and the Texas site became a lower priority. Or a whole host of other things.

      --
      "Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh) ... "coccoon can do."
  3. Re:subsidy driven business by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The world DOES exist in some sort of vacuum.

  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.