Video: Angry Astronaut Looks at the Environmental Obstacles SpaceX Faces Getting Starbase Approved
Editor’s Note: Not a bad analysis. He points out the questionable wisdom of launching the largest, most powerful rocket ever built from a base placed in the middle of a wildlife preserve with a number of endangered or threatened species.
However, he’s off in terms of some of his criticism. The FAA approval for 12 Falcon 9/Heavy launches annually included the right to test experimental vehicles at the site. Elon took that provision and drove Boosterzilla through it while abandoning plans for any Falcon 9 or Heavy launches from Boca Chica. Should the FAA has foreseen that? Maybe. Or just eliminated the provision for testing experimental vehicles?
As use of the facility changed, the FAA kept approving upgrades and expansion of the site even as the use completely changed. The agency finally chose an environmental assessment (EA) that SpaceX is writing over a much more rigorous and time consuming environmental impact statement (EIS). An EIS was done for the original approval; conservancy groups have been argument for another one given the significant changes in SpaceX’s plans. The wisdom of FAA’s decision to go with the less rigorous EA will likely end up being debated in court, delaying the project further.
FAA has dual mandate when it comes to commercial space: promote the industry while at the same time regulating it. The investigation into the SpaceShipTwo crash exposed that FAA was under political pressure to keep commercial space programs moving. Not just SpaceShipTwo but across the board. FAA knew the failure analysis for pilot error was deficient, but issued a waiver to allow the flight test program to continue. It was 15 months later that pilot error destroyed the ship.
So, I highly doubt that FAA’s delay had anything to do with accommodating SpaceX’s schedule, which is probably also delayed. An EA takes time to complete. The original Dec. 31 estimate was simply unrealistic. There were 18,000 comments to respond to in writing. FWS has serious concerns about endangered species that need to be addressed.
121 responses to “Video: Angry Astronaut Looks at the Environmental Obstacles SpaceX Faces Getting Starbase Approved”
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There have been individuals and institutions trying to slow down or stop Tesla and SpaceX since their very inceptions. I don’t see any significant differences here.
There is in that they had a self-interest in stopping or discrediting SpaceX while these environmentalists by contrast are simply the opponents of industrial progress, regrading industry as evil. The most radical of them, the Deep Green Resistance even hate other more moderate environmentalists who advocate “sustainable” solutions. It is why it is time to redo the NEPA so it serves the purpose it was originally intended to serve and will no longer be used as a legal weapon by these groups.
The one question here is simply what is the danger to third parties if a Super Heavy goes RUD during launch, something that is just basic engineering analysis, not public opinion.
Most of the endangered/threaten species are either at the northern limits of their range, being common in Mexico and Central America but “endangered” in the United States, or strays from their core habitat areas further north in South Padre National Sea Shore. It was only turned into a wildlife refuge as no other agency wanted the land there.
And I should note here that I have been interested for decades in preserving nature from actual harm, like that done by all the wind turbines that Mojave Air and Spaceport supports that grind up birds migrating over the pass into the Central Valley. Talk about an activity that needs a new EIS…
Yes. I was a member of the Nature Conservancy, paying monthly donations, for many years before I retired. I have a deep and long standing interest in helping to protect this beautiful planet and the critters who inhabit it. Preserving the Wild West, of which Texas is a part, is my personal passion.
Yes, that is why it is false to make this about wildlife. The area in which they are working in Boca Chica was already heavily damaged by the presence of humans. One of the advantages of spaceports in general is that creating a safety buffer zone where humans are not allowed provides a sanctuary for the wildlife, protected from the presence of hunters, tourists and others.
I worked for years as a security officer at a test site in New Mexico while in college and it was amazing to see all the wildlife that came out after the workers left for the day.
The wildlife at Boca Chica don’t wait until end-of-shift to appear. Not that they could anyway as Starbase runs nearly 24/7/365. Instead, the wildlife – birds, crabs, etc. – perch and crawl all over the place, sometimes right next to workers building out the spaceport. One suspects that fast food french fries are now a significant part of their diets.
I wonder if all of those french fries will make SpaceX’s launch site as popular as the Brownsville landfill is for birdwatchers by attracting rare birds to it… Really the FAA needs to give SpaceX brownie points for actually enriching the habitat for endangered wildlife at Boca Chica. ?
https://news.google.com/new…
and the latest list of rare birds at the dump.
https://ebird.org/hotspot/L…
And manatees love warm water from plants…
Depending on your perspective, the work SpaceX is doing is to preserve an endangered species – humans.
I’m all for avoiding needless destruction of the environment etc. But that does not seem likely to be the case here. One also needs to consider the wider unseen cost of NOT permitting an activity.
The simple fact is Space X is still doing a lot of development on the Starship and SH boosters. Those have not calmed down yet. While I agree the environmental review might be a schedule limiting item, it’s not the only schedule setting issue. The vehicles are not ready yet. New parts are still going on, and parts are still falling off under test. My bet is they’ll both be resolved within one or two months of each other.
Yes, it appears that the old Raptor 1 engines are being replaced with the new Raptor 2. Their performance in the static fires has looked good.
But the program looks much more advanced than it was even 3 months ago. I’m confident a launch attempt or two will happen this year.
Elon Musk is on a quest to save humanity, so he keeps pushing everything forward, no matter what barriers there are…
There are real technical problems they’re solving. Elon’s charisma won’t solve a technical problem. Attention by skilled experts does. And the process has to play out.
Attention by experts plus the availability of money and the freedom to attack the problem by going at it “hands on” rather than writing reports on it.
When the French engineers were building the Panama Canal they would stop work for a year or two whenever there was a landslide in the Culebra Cut to “study” they problem. When the Americans took the project over and they had a landslide the chief engineer, an old veteran of building the Great Northern Railway, just looked at the mess a moment, pulled his cigar out of his mouth and waived it in front of him and stated, “dig it out, dig it all out so there’s nothing left to slide”. Then he went to his office and ordered two dozen of the largest steam shovels available for immediate delivery and the problem was solved.
Yes. But, in addition to said charisma, Elon is also the engineering shot-caller on Starship and the conductor of the technical “orchestra” of other gifted engineers who combine to push this project forward. The process will play out and do so as quickly as possible, but not more quickly.
save humanity lol
Not everyone is seeking to maximize their personal profits as the old school economists believed. It’s why both Complexity and Behavior Economics are replacing it.
So sorry to see the comic book thinking that’s driving American decline spread so wide. Hero worship is a human trait we are born with, but it should always be put into context and held at bay. Musk is revolutionary, but in spite of that there’s only so much he can do. Those limits have presented themselves to you since this all started, and yet you worship him. I’m always surprised when I meet people who proclaim that the government should not be revered, turn on a dime and revere a person. It’s the strangest thing to see.
What is driving American decline is the American Left. “Comic book” would be far too complimentary a description for the belief system of the cult of those possessed by what Elon has recently taken to calling the “Woke mind virus.” Mindless hero worship – or at least a good public simulacrum of same – is something far more closely associated with leftist politics than its opposite anyway.
The only people humans are born to worship are parents – and that doesn’t always last. Only the incurably childish and those whose parents have failed them tend to actually worship others. The rest of us develop a certain useful cynicism anent our fellow creatures.
You mistake admiration and respect for “worship” because, for whatever reason, you seem to have gotten it into your head somehow that there can be no such thing as an exceptional individual. Musk bugs you because he is a living, breathing refutation of what seems a key part of your worldview.
Perhaps you might usefully cultivate a bit of that nuance and sophistication that leftists are perpetually congratulating one another about having a monopoly on when, truth be told, they are more simple-minded and Manichaean than all but the most pathetic of their opposite numbers.
In the face of what has become of the GOP under Trump the Novo-GOP and the American right is run by a failed property developer with orange hair and the comment section of The Branch Davidians on Reddit. Look at yourselves and the joke you’ve become. You people remind me of the European anti nuclear movement from the 80’s. Have you even noticed that your kind has become a bunch of unwashed long haired hippies with guns?
It is interesting, and very sad, to see the two different world views that have emerged from cable news polarizing the political debate over the last several decades. It is a classic example of how “group think” causes a shift towards the extreme end of spectrum. But increasing those in the middle are getting fed up with both sides.
yes one is of complete fantasy and no connection to reality and the other at least has a hold on it
And which is which is entirely dependent on which side of the divide you are on. ?
the side that is lying is creating its own reality
And again, it depends on which side of the divide you fall on.
That is the problem with polarization, the unshakable belief it is the other side that is wrong. Instead of common ground both sides look for more things to disagree on.
no. you are trying desperately to equate trump world made up of fiction and lies with normal politics.
You have to use the “T-word” to demonize those trying to find common ground, don’t you? That illustrates my point on how folks are more interested in looking for things to disagree on rather than for things to agree on.
That to me is the heart of the problem. Many people trying to win the argument instead of solving the problems. I’ve given up on a few people that refuse to understand that basic difference. On both extremes btw. There are some with differing viewpoints that I can respect. It is unfortunate that there are several that are unreachable and contribute to the problem. Insults do not equate to reasoned argument.
I would like to think that I am humble enough to go for facts and resolutions instead of an illusory “win”. I am aware that my success or not in that is not for me to judge, but rather in the decisions of my correspondents here.
I agree.
It is very disturbing on how those on the extreme left feel that by magically invoking the “T-word” they are able to justify censorship, re-education, erasing of history, forcing folks out of their job and other actions one associates more with the old Soviet Union than America. Similarly you see those on the extreme right justifying shunning, calls for prison, casting out and demonizing folks by invoking the “H-word” or calling them a RINO, behavior more typical in today’s communist China than America.
It is time for both left and right wing extremists to just stop it and start looking for common ground.
But the more time that passes and the more the leftist liars and censors are exposed and bypassed, the more it becomes apparent that Trump wasn’t lying about anything of importance while the left have been doing so about virtually everything. Polling increasingly reflects this. It’s why Biden’s and Harris’s approval numbers are so far in the toilet.
that may be your viewpoint but the more time that passes the more its clear trump was lying enormously. he stands for nearly everything I think is wrong with the US. Rondald reagan was about the same place in his first term. see what happens
Trying to create its own reality. The Left’s efforts to do so are showing more cracks by the day.
Yes. But it isn’t your side that has the hold on reality.
actually it is. the far right is in la la land. just making it up as they go
The scary part is that you’re completely serious.
The American Left, of course, is a comparative paragon of virtue – or virtue-signalling, anyway, so long as one ignores the senile and crooked Struldbrug at the top, his idiot cackling hyena sidekick and all the career parasites and liars like Warren and Schumer and the malignant and ignorant children of The Squad and the neo-Brownshirts of BLM and Antifa.
I never said that. I’m just saying the unwashed log haired tattooed dirtbags have worked their way into the GOP and taken it over.
There are certainly long-haired and tattooed people on the Right, but even more are on the Left including all the actual dirtbags (“I see by your uniform that you’re a non-conformist.”). If this is your quaint way of saying the GOP is now run by QAnon and the alt-right, you’re quite wrong.
It very much is. The Republican party moved past me in the late 90’s, if it keeps going the way it is, it will move past you too.
Musk is among the space “groupies” an evangelist preaching the gospel of “space settlement” which is something that they want to hear…and an entire community has sprung up with…and that community is for the most part non critical. the mars thing is a charade
It’s a shame to see so many smart people act like members of the 700th club.
in a way the folks who do the adoring act for musk are like the 700 club. Its not ingrained in the American public anymore…but to a small percentage of people there is an act of faith that the west has reborn itself in space…and Musk is either Lewis or Clark…when you get right down to it almost none of this group are ready to be pioneers…but they want to think that. and Musk rocks that legend that they have of themselves.
What I see however is quite different. there is no chance that Mars or anyplace else is settled without an economic reason to do it…and Musk economic reason is Starlink. I now understand why he stopped SN flight testing…he thinks he can build fairly quickly an expendable second stage…but he needs to get that booster to working. thats the key to tossing up the massive number of gen 2 satellites he needs tossed up…
I would not be surprised if there is not an expendable second stage design already “in work”.
You know, I’m guilty of thinking the West can renew itself in space. I’m guilty. I’m just cognizant that it took 100’s of years of state sponsored corporations and the extreme profits of slavery and theft to make it all work and take hold. I’m under no illusions I’ll pioneer Mars or the Moon. However, I did participate in pioneering the learning of the true extent and nature of what constitutes a solar system. I think it will be argued that Musk jump started a major phase change in space launch and maybe even the human presence in space. But even if he does all that, the task is daunting and not the place for spectators. These fan boys should be asking themselves what they can do NOW in the world that Musk is helping bring into being. I’m doing just that myself.
Musk as a historical analog is a collection of ship architects from the past who combined a set of changes into the Caravel with Latin sails. Lewis and Clark went where many men had been before. What they did was document the land in a language the United States was able to understand. The US was poised and capable of going West. We’re still in the same state Portuguese ship yards were in 1450.
Use your expertise to see how to mass produce a basic telescope that could placed in orbit by Starship. One that could be paid for by selling the time to professional and even serious amateurs. Basically just scale up this business model to telescopes in space or on the Moon.
https://www.insightobservat…
I have yet to see a SpaceX supporter claim to worship Musk. Can you provide a published example please?
Almost nobody admits to worshiping a person. However the Musk crowd is like the American GOP base. There’s a set of story lines they want to believe, and give love and admiration to people who give them an excuse to believe those fictional story lines are real. In the case of Musk, it’s the belief that space travel is easy and that the payoff from mining the cosmic sugarloaf mntn is just around the corner, and that the governments of the world have been deliberately denying the cosmic sugarloaf mntn on purpose. This is why so many SpaceX and Elon fans act like North Koreans admiring their great leader.
The much more sane approach to admiring SpaceX is to admire their working systems, and acknowledge that those operational systems only open up the working of other difficult problems that need to be worked. With no guarantee of success. Not only that, a sane fan of SpaceX takes note of how many projected promises of the effects of working systems did not come true. That should make folks take some pause and reassess past assumptions and ask themselves what it will mean for the future.
I am unclear what you are trying to say. Musk could be a Mars “fanatic” but my guess more and more is that he is a sort of Mars con man. A well meaning one. but really the “mars” thing is to get him the following he adores and that is very non critical…while all the while pursing pretty high profits…and power
there is very little “mars” in Starship now…and Musk is doing little or nothing in terms of actual prepatory work for going to Mars
take the design of this thing. its very heavy ground dependent. nothing about either stage of this design speaks landing on Mars, taking off, returning to earth and landing on the earth. Nothing
Examine his lunar starship proposal and more and more its starting to look like he conned NASA. its a use it once and toss thing.
Musk reality is quite different from his aspirations
Elon Musk comes from the software industry where they attack problems using the iteration approach. Look at all the problems he had with Falcon 1, but he kept at it and now the Falcon 9 version 5.0 and Falcon Heavy have succeeded. This is only Starship 1.0…
If anyone is being a conman it’s Boeing with its cost plus SLS contract to convert the existing reusable Space Shuttle into an old style expendable rocket.
no. how a problem is attacked is not relative to the notion of if the goal is a real one.
SLS is what it is because the goal is not to fly to the Moon or really do anything. it is to build a vehicle that funnels money to the regions of the country that were on the money funnel during the shuttle program. thats its only purpose. if it does it thats success.
and really Boeing nor anyone else including the NASA administrator claims otherwise, because he was one of the people who designed the program to do that.
Musk will build a lot of STarship versions this decade. but none of them right now are designed as anything resembling what is needed for a Mars effort, he knows that (and actually hints at that) but then just to keep the fans fanning he goes on about “In five years”. in five years when there are no starships anywhere near Mars, not a single one of the fan folks will tell because they will be drinking the latest kool aide to keep excited.
And to be fair, thats OK…none of the fan foilks are really planning on going to Mars either. its the perfect world its their video game. its a sort of live Kerbel space program…but its not a Mars program
In none of his success has a single one of them been aimed at Mars. that is why Red Dragon, a part of the Kerbel space program…was shelved quickly 🙂
And more importantly, none of his fans are paying for it with their money. They are just watching the show and cheering him on.
By contrast the public is paying for the con job NASA/Boeing/Lockheed have been doing for years claiming the SLS/Orion will get humans to the Moon and beyond. Tens of billions of tax payer dollars that could have been used on more productive endeavors.
Well.
a great deal of American government and politics today is a con job. this has been the path for the last 40 years where constantly reality took a back seat to actual performance… put enough flags out on the podium and one can sell anything …and this includes REagan (who I admire today)
particularly in space and humans flying in it
as best I can tell very little of the PR claims that SLS/Orion will get Humans as a group back to the Moon. “sustained presence” is a phrase carefully chosen because it has worked so well on the space station.
Policy makers in the US and other places know there is not enough money to put human “colonies” in space or on the Moon or Mars and no support to do it
Musk is not much different. He is just playing with investor money and the fan folks adoration but that is why he doesnt want to follow the EPA rules…when he could it would just cost him some money …he has a lot
Yes, you do chose your phrases carefully when you are trying to mislead the taxpayers.
As far as anyone on the outside knows, including you, Elon Musk is following the rules, which is why he is waiting on the FAA.
then he should not have any problems. Both parties have been chosing their words very carefully until Trump when he just started lying without any limit.
Or so you say, anyway.
NASA 8-24-18
At NASA, Bolden has overseen the safe transition from 30 years of space shuttle missions to a new era of exploration focused on full utilization of the International Space Station and space and aeronautics technology development. He has led the agency in developing a Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft that will carry astronauts to deep space destinations, such as an asteroid and Mars.
Musk’s plans are made of the same Swiss cheese NASA’s plans have. It’s just that he has a better grasp of the initial transport needed to do the job. NASA has a better grasp of the day to day needs of living off Earth.
Musk is following the rules.
I don’t disagree, but that does not mean you get to bypass considering the impact on the locals.
The government didn’t consider the impact on the locals when they created WSMR, the Cape or VAFB. They just cleared them out. Same with Kit Peak. At least Elon Musk offered them a lot of money to leave.
The main impact on the locals is that a lot more of them have jobs than formerly. To the Left, of course, this is a major tragedy.
Anyone who listened to the comment call in they had knows you’re just overgeneralizing and making up a self serving narrative. Eagleson just admit it, you don’t think there should be an EPA or environmental reviews. What you’re really pushing for is the freedom of any person or persons of means to foul the environment of anyone who can’t mount an effective defense as an individual.
No. The Clean Air and Water Acts have demonstrated that top-down, command-style environmental protection can actually work, though I think the EPA has long since entered diminishing returns territory. And I do not think regulators should be able to impose arbitrary time delays on projects in order to “study” their alleged environmental impacts. Ideologically-motivated groups have used such reviews as instruments of lawfare and/or extortion. Big firms have done likewise to newer and smaller competitors.
I actually consider your stance reasonable. And if we were both Congressmen of different parties, I’d be happy to deal with you having taken that stance. I don’t totally disagree at all, and can see your points. They’re legit.
Pass the Kool-Aid please.
yes. AS I tell my kids (and it worked I guess my 27 year old grew up ok) some kool aid in life is essential. a dream chaser LOL project for me is the retractable ERCOUPE. there is actually one but the guy wants to much money to sell it…so I have been and do kick around how to build one myself. I try and collect parts “so when I have the time” they are around…and have done some fairly serious engineering work on how to do it…including two complete designs down to the component level that on CAD work 🙂
but aside from some issues that I see with Starship that are starting to mimic the shuttle.
What I like least about Musk is that he has done a good job disassociating economics with the notion of people living in space.
and that is just not a functional position.
As you’ve pointed out many times…there currently is no economic justification for human space travel. But Elon’s position, that it would be a good idea to attempt to spread humanity beyond this one planet, is…I believe…a very justifiable one.
that is justifiable but hard to justify. it will be centuries before an off world colony could survive without Earths industrial base. and without any product that this off world colony can do that interfaces with earths economy. the effort is non affordable. Musk and the gagn act as if Starlink is going to pay for all this. it wont
I don’t know if he can make it happen. He doesn’t know if he can make it happen. But I absolutely love watching the show and sipping the Kool-Aid.
As long as you know it’s Kool-Aid, you’re fine. 🙂
At least he has the money to spend on it, free of the Pork Barrel politics that guides NASA spending.
BTW, economically none of the English settlements in North America, which were all funded corporations, made sense, and yet here we are.
The great advantage of a economy is that dreamers are allowed to invest in their dreams without having to justifying it to the government. Most will fail, but the ones that succeed…
“Centuries?” A few decades at most. It didn’t take North America centuries to become independent of the European industrial base.
because there was serious trade between them
The trade was in relatively high-value commodities that couldn’t be sourced in Europe or North America, respectively. Tobacco, cotton and sugar didn’t grow well in Europe and so were exported from N.A. Potatoes, though, grew just fine in Europe and so were not an item of international commerce. There will be no significant agricultural trade between Earth and Mars. As with Europe and North America, industrial exports from Earth to Mars will be short-term until an industrial base is established on Mars. The main long-term export from Earth to Mars will be investment capital. The main export of Mars to Earth will be capital appreciation. Both are non-corporeal and require no physical transport.
Which only developed after they found goods worth trading which was after they established the settlements.
“Elon Musk comes from the software industry where they attack problems using the iteration approach.“
The problem is, hardware and software are two very different things. Got a problem with thousands of copies of a software program? Release a patch and voila, all fixed. Got a basic problem with 50 starships? Send them to the scrapyard and start over. This is the fundamental difference between hardware and software. It’s also a difference I don’t think Musk fully gets, which leads him to say things like he will be able to turn around F9s in 24 hours, or, having failed to do that, SS/SH in an hour… None of which will ever happen.
Perhaps, but look at all the Raptor engines he has scrapped, or blown up, to get to Raptor 2.0. When he is finished it will be as reliable as the Merlin is.
That’s exactly my point. Hardware errors are far more expensive than software errors. And for his aspirational one hour turn around of SH/SS, the Raptor will need to be a heck of a lot better than Merlin.
I think this realization is partly the cause of his recent panic about getting Raptor production scaled up. He’s starting to do the math and realize he’s going to need far more Raptors than he originally anticipated.
Most likely. But then he is building a production line in McGregor just for that purpose. After all, a Thousand Starships will need thousands of Raptors.?
Be nice to have the contract to haul the scrap away…
the biggest problem I think Musk has worked himself into (and you make excellent points) …is that he has started building pretty massive ground infrastructure…with no clue that the basic parts that the infrastructure is suppose to handle. work. plus I think his dry mass is high. some people at NASA tell me it might be even as high as 130 tons.
Dry mass is a moving target. The earliest Starship prototypes were alleged to weight close to 200 tonnes.
I would suspect that they are still closer to that then 100. this is why they need more ISP
They don’t need more Isp, they need more refinement.
Expense is all relative. Right now, Raptor has a production cost in the mid-six-figures. Musk wants to get that down to the low-six-figures. Either is two orders of magnitude or more cheaper than most previous large liquid propellant rocket engines. Messing up even a few hundred Raptors in tests would still cost only a fraction of what NASA pays for a single SLS. Musk will certainly need a lot of Raptors, but not because they won’t be very reusable.
There is, fortunately, a continuum of responses available to fix a late-discovered bug in 50 Starhips between sending out a software patch and sending them all to the boneyard. The auto industry – with which Musk also has some passing familiarity – does recalls and repairs, for example. But the point of all the lossy early testing is to find and fix problems as early as possible. That paid off with F9 and will pay off even more with Starship.
As no one is paying Musk to go to Mars, nor is anyone even proposing to, it’s hard to see exactly what the basis of the putative “con” would be. But that’s the sort of flagrantly missing “detail” that we have come to see as typical of many of your ideas.
That Musk has acquired both a fan following and a legion of detractors was inevitable given the steadily growing scale of his various operations. Neither was a goal. Musk contentedly labored in obscurity, at least anent the general public, for many years and seems never to have pursued reknown for its own sake. Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian or even Donald Trump he is not.
Similarly, it’s hard to make an objective case for Musk pursuing “power.” His involvement with politics has always been pretty minimal for someone of his wealth and disruptive-of-the-status-quo activities. His concerns about “power” seem mainly focused on fending off people who actually have it and wish him ill.
You seem to blow hot and cold on SpaceX profitability in unpredictable fashion. Most of the time, you accuse the company of losing money – except when it is, apparently, convenient to a different narrative, as here, to accuse it of excessively profiting.
Everything Musk is doing at Starbase, and increasing amounts of what he is doing at KSC and several other places, supports his Mars ambitions. Super Heavy is certainly heavily ground-dependent. But SH is never going to Mars or even to Earth orbit.
Initial Starship models, with no landing legs, are also designed to operate with ground-based infrastructure for landings. But both the most-produced and most-flown model of Starship is likely to be the simplest overall – the tanker. These will operate between Earth’s surface and LEO and won’t even have cargo doors.
Starships that have to land on alien worlds will have legs and other purpose-specific fitments. The basic Starship design is quite amenable to such niche-specific customizations.
The HLS lander version of Starship will definitely be capable of reuse. At worst, it may sometimes be a use-once-then-repurpose device, but that won’t be it’s typical – or designed – use case.
I would be fascinated to see your case laid out for HLS being a “con” of NASA. Fascinated, but not expectant. You like to drop these little rhetorical turdballs and then never elaborate.
Musk reality is the same as everyone else’s. But it is quite different from the goofy fantasies that gestate between your ears.
I am pretty careful and consistent how I talk about Musk. nothing has changed since my last op ed. Musk will get something useful with Starship but whatever it is it will be aimed at Starlink…not going to Mars or P2P or anything else. now what that is..ie what vehicle emerges.is open for debate.
He is going through a “lot” of assumptions now. that he caan run his unproven engine harder and it still be reliable and reusable…there is a lot of ground infrastructure that is being built with really little validation…
as for HLS. the reality is that as it now seems to be “set up” its not reusable as a lander. see how it works out 🙂
As usual, you miss seeing a great deal and misinterpret most of the rest. I would be fascinated to know, for example, why you have suddenly decided the SpaceX HLS lander is not reusable.
after it comes back up from the lunar surface and goes to the gateway. its out of fuel. it cannot reenter so the first engine failure is the end of it for anything
Unsupported assumption 1: No refueling capability at the gateway.
Unsupported assumption 2: No ability to switch out a failed engine on the Moon.
lol there is neither of these. in Musk world you waive your hands and they exist but in the real world…no
Neither is available at the moment…
do you see any reasonable set of circumstances that makes either of them available in the next five years? or the next five after we go back to the Moon?
It depends on if the cost is more than simply launching another mass-produced Starship HLS. In that case it is more profitable to do the latter until LOX production on the Moon shifts the cost tradeoff allowing the HLS to accumulate in orbit as raw materials for salvage by future lunar communities.
In short, it’s a question of economics, not technology, and the numbers are not available to do the analysis.
That said, given that much more down mass will be needed than up mass it may pay to create a small launch vehicle using the Kestrel that could simply return the astronauts to the gate way, leaving the HLS as a source of steel on the lunar surface.
Yes, in both cases. Propellant depot ships are already part of the plan. Engine change-outs on Earth are done with lift trucks and scissor lifts. Do you seriously doubt SpaceX-Tesla’s ability to engineer lunar-capable equivalents? How do you not see any of this?
The HLS architecture includes propellant depot ships. Many of these will be on station in LEO, but they can also be sent elsewhere, particularly to cis-lunar space. That seems to be part of SpaceX’s long-term conops plan.
it is clearly maturing. the issue is “is the basic concept sound” and that issue is on so many levels. and that has nothing to do with the environment. Having said that I support what the FAA is doing…ie their job
Booster 4 and Ship 20 will fly with Raptor 1s. Booster 5 and Ship 21 will likely also be so-equipped and fly if the 4-20 test combo doesn’t get as far as or yield as much data as SpaceX would like, thus necessitating a do-over. If 4-20 is “successful enough,” though, B5 and S21 probably get scrapped or perhaps used only for local Chopstick catch tests. In that case, B7, with 33 Raptor 2s, would be the first prototype of what regular-production Super Heavies will be with S24 being likewise for the stretched, 9-Raptor 2 version of Starship.
The initial orbital test will probably take place in 1H 2022, but probably not in 1Q 2022. After that, things could ramp up very quickly.
In the interim, there still seems to be much work yet TBD on the orbital GSE infrastructure. Finishing that up may well take until the end of Feb. anyway. The orbital GSE has taken significantly longer than I thought it would. I think the real engineering issues on the current critical path are all GSE-related rather than vehicle-related.
Gotta wonder about the heatshield tiles too, though
Yes, that is really the next big challenge after Starship reaches orbit.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see two families of Starship emerge. One optimized as a shuttle to orbit, and perhaps eventually to serve Mars. The other stripped of the extra weight of heat shielding, fins and atmospheric optimized Raptors that is only used in Space or on airless objects like the Moon.
That’s already the plan.
Yes, the HLS is the start of it.
I don’t think the tiles are going to be as problematical as some seem to think. The initial problems seem to be getting rapidly worked out on the ground.
Perhaps a minor point, but Angry Astronaut’s contention [that it is the FAA’s fault for approving SpaceX’s original Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for conducting a few FH launches a year because the FAA should have known Starbase was coming] is misguided. The EIS was evaluated based on SpaceX’s stated plans for use of the land. Imagine if you planned to put up a mini-mall, did the required studies (at a significant burden), submitted your EIS and then had it rejected because the lead government agency believed you might in the future change it into the largest mall in the world. The largest mall in the world wasn’t your planned use, that’s not what you had your studies conducted for, and you would be outraged — as well you should.
I’m the biggest SpaceX fan around, but they submitted an environmental impact statement for a private spaceport designed to conduct a few Falcon Heavy launches a year and then they changed their plan for it to be a Starship testing ground (with attendant explosions) and a Starbase complex for conducting a high volume of Starship/SH launches. My first thought back when SpaceX changed their plans for Boca Chica was that their new plan was not covered by the original environmental impact statement. If they had hired me to do a risk analysis, I would have strongly advised SpaceX to either expand the activities of the site incrementally (which is, for better or worse, SOP for development of environmentally sensitive areas) or to start preparing a new EIS. It was SpaceX’s choice, not a fault of the FAA’s, that they went directly ahead with a major expansion of activities without proactively handling a review of the environmental impact thereof — a review required by law well known to even the general public.
All that said, I expect the site to be approved for development as a launch site for Starship/SH, perhaps with some appropriate mitigations. That the alternative would be to launch from Florida in the middle of… a wildlife refuge is significant evidence that the two uses can be compatible
For those who might misunderstand my post, I’m specifically commenting on Angry Astronaut’s video that is the subject of this article. Angry Astronaut’s contention is that, due to their inappropriate approval of SpaceX’s EIS for development of a private spaceport at Boca Chica, it is the FAA’s fault that SpaceX has done all this development that is incompatible with the surrounding wildlife refuge and that SpaceX will likely have to move Starship launches to Cape Canaveral.
My own evaluation is that if things are not curently going as smoothly as they might be, it is due to SpaceX’s ignoring well-know requirements, but that nevertheless, ultimately, the Texas site will be approved (with some mitigations and limitations) for Starship testing and launch operations. And all the while, it should be born in mind that these environmental assessments typically take considerable time — there hasn’t even necessarily been any unusual delay yet. Frustrating for us fans, yes, but not unusual
Yes, I don’t see any environmental showstoppers, but I still have not seen any reports of the safety risk of a rocket larger than a Saturn V launching from there. I have always seen that as the key issue of flying any rocket from that site.
I know folks here have an irrational fear of overland rocket flight, but Elon Musk would have been better off going to Spaceport America to develop Starship/Super Heavy. The debris risk from launch is mostly to the first hundred miles or so which would be over WSMR, an landscape littered with the debris of tens of thousands of rocket launches.
Nutty idea. The point of choosing Boca Chica was that a production and a launch complex could be built cheek-by-jowl and smoothly transition from development/test to operations. That would have been far harder at Spaceport America because operations, and even most testing, would require overland flight and because, being in the inland back-of-beyond, bringing in all of the steel, concrete, heavy equipment and staff would have been far more expensive in Middle-of-Nowhere, NM.
Except that a railroad runs through it. When the task force was looking at industrial options it was determined it would be very simple to build a cryogenics plant there thanks to the railroad and the major power line that runs through the area. And at the time there was still a steel mill in El Paso, although it is closed now.
Even if logistics were feasible, the requirement for significant overland flight paths during iffy testing as well as later operations would make Spaceport America problematical.
Angry scored a pretty good interview with the Dreamchaser folks. the big news is that SNC is going to develop dreamchaser crewed even on its own nickle.
Shouldn’t be hard as that was the original vision that the late Jim Benson had for it.
Using the term “Shouldn’t be hard” in reference to space travel may be a bit of a stretch.
True, look at all the work needed to turn the cargo Dragon into a crew Dragon. But it was something that was intended from the start.
Good to hear. I’d been wondering about that for awhile. If Sierra Space can develop a long-duration “escape pod” version of Dream Chaser Crew I think they could have a potentially quite large market pretty much to themselves.
I am actually fairly pleased with how the world of human spaceflight is transitioning on. and this is one of those. Look I am biased. I know the owners reasonably well and if I wanted to work in a space development situation (I dont) SNC is one of the two places I would be. and I could be at either.
SNC is developing a pretty solid vehicle with a fairly wide range of potential customers in a wide variety of applications. I tend to believe that where the human space economy is going (such as it is going) is in their direction. IE there are going to be low earth orbit space stations that are either going to kick start the space economy or will not…and eventually what I see is lunar exploration becoming a station to station thing as the gateway unfolds.
I know you and others think its starship and it may well be…but I suspect (and this is my own thing) that STarship is going to take the rest of this decade to get to something usable for humans with a pretty healthy loss rate in the process. thats Musk way of doing things and it works for him
but I suspect the nearer term economy development is more centered around lessor steps like this. anyway I wish them good fortune. RGO
I agree.
As for Dream Chaser…I want an HL-42 sized craft atop Falcon Heavy.
I doubt you will see it on FH…maybe BO big rocket
the US military is very interested in Dream Chaser. getting hints that its the attached module that they are really plused up over
Disagree, as usual, anent the probable pace of Starship development.
But I agree that manned spaceflight is moving in a favorable direction. During the remainder of this decade we will likely see several commercial LEO manned space station projects come to fruition. Four are already underway and others seem sure to follow.
Starship could allow multiple such stations to share even the much lower costs of crew transport Starship will allow by being, in essence, “stops” on a “bus line.” Relatively frequent Starship crew rotation missions at low ticket prices with multiple stops per mission would significantly improve the degree to which all the business cases for new LEO destinations close.
But cheap and routine crew transport is not compatible with having the transport vehicle hanging around for months or years on-end to act as a lifeboat. And a single Starship can’t do this for multiple small stations anyway. This is a quite separate mission and should, ideally, not be an all-eggs-in-one-basket proposition for larger stations.
A Dream Chaser Crew vehicle designed to be left on-station for long periods as a lifeboat would nicely complement Starship’s crew transport economics. Cargo Starships could even take such Dream Chasers up in the first place, which would also improve their economics. As larger manned stations are constructed, the market for more and more such Dream Chasers would grow. Sierra Space is well-situated to pretty much own this soon-to-be-developing market and establish a major first-mover advantage.
That’s a really nice vision you’ve got there.
Yes it is. And I think it has a decent probability of coming to pass.