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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
SpaceX hasn’t given details about its motivation for this seemingly complex and expensive undertaking, other than a reply tweet in which Musk said the launches and landings had to be “far enough away so as not to bother heavily populated areas.” The company’s plan to eventually carry out up to three launches and landings per day would certainly necessitate putting some serious distance between the launch site and people; most of us could only handle about one sonic boom a month, if that.
A wide no-fly zone and road closures go into effect on launch days. And if Starships do eventually shuttle people around Earth or beyond on a daily basis, the takeoff and landing points would need to be conveniently located; going a few miles offshore is likely better in this regard than finding a huge empty swathe of land in, say, New Mexico or Nevada.
Rather than building the launchpads from scratch, it’s possible SpaceX would refurbish existing oil rigs; the bigger rigs are about the size of two football fields, and there are plenty of them in the Gulf of Mexico, though only a couple very near Brownsville. Given the ailing state of the oil industry, especially after the pandemic, it’s likely there will be rigs to be had for cheap.
One outstanding question is what sort of impact the launch pads would have on marine life, especially if something were to go wrong.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Sunday June 21 2020, @11:59AM (5 children)
Floating spaceports would be really cool if they were floating in the sky. Imagine if you could build them at, say 10k metres up, and launch the rockets (and land them again) from there. It would save a fair bit of rocket fuel, and you could have them more or less wherever you liked, and move them if and when required, depending on the mission.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 21 2020, @12:24PM (2 children)
If you have the technology to make a floating spaceport, do you even need a rocket?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday June 21 2020, @02:17PM
Yes, I have a ludicrous idea I might share with you, but it would be better in a journal.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 21 2020, @11:15PM
Yes, for two reasons:
A floating spaceport can't go very fast.
A floating spaceport can't go much higher than its station-keeping altitude, because they would be stationed at their maximum altitude.
If you want to go faster and higher (like into space) you still need a rocket.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Sunday June 21 2020, @08:06PM
I've seen a formal proposal for spaceports at 10 km up. The launch platform would be some kind of giant balloon.
(Actually, they were considering an inflatable tower, but they were relying on buoyancy for structural support)
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Sunday June 21 2020, @08:45PM
Airship to Orbit [jpaerospace.com] wants to build lighter-than-air "Dark-Sky Stations" for basically that purpose, though at 42km rather than 10. You'd take an airship from the ground to the station, and then transfer to the orbital vehicle.
Though in their case the orbital vehicle is a rocket propelled ultra-light airship that takes many days to accelerate to orbital speed as it slowly climbs out of the atmosphere entirely.