Starship is awesome. It's the most capable and sophisticated rocket ever built. It's a major asset to the US military and its future capability. It has very significant launch safety issues in its current state. FAA enforcement is generally reasonable; they're professional and competent.
I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree.
> I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree.
Because some people are so rabidly anti-Elon that they would rather nail the feet of the human race to the ground than allow that "bad man" to succeed at taking us to the stars.
There were several people here on HN screeching that a few lumps of concrete strewn on a beach is an ecological disaster of unfathomable proportions.
Don't forget about the astronomers complaining about the global internet being provided by Starlink affecting their precious telescopes, while ignoring the minor detail that Starship will be able to launch a JWST-sized telescope weekly if they want to get above the atmosphere.
We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter.
> would rather nail the feet of the human race to the ground than allow that "bad man" to succeed at taking us to the stars.
This type of false equivalence and extreme hyperbole is why it polarizes people. The preferred terms of the conversation are so insane as to invite that specific outcome.
> affecting their precious telescopes
You also seem to feel entitled to adopt the position of a rank bully. Where does this entitlement come from? While reflecting on that, you might find a more charitable and honest answer as to the sources of polarization on this topic.
> We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter.
We'll have the future with or without Space X. This type of angry hype and blind argumentation simply underscore the above points.
> Because some people are so rabidly anti-Elon that they would rather nail the feet of the human race to the ground than allow that "bad man" to succeed at taking us to the stars.
There are good reasons people are anti-Elon, and I don't need to list them here now. Technological advancement is nice, and it can be a good thing that one "eccentric" billionaire puts a lot of money into this. But there are consequences, and it's good that there are people who are critical of this. It's ok that people like Musk are scrutinized. In my opinion, there's way more room for scrutinity by mainstream media instead of them instead of sucking up every word he says.
Is launch capacity the thing that holds back more space-based telescopes, and are those telescopes going to have the same availability to researchers as terrestrial ones?
If either answer is no, then the brag about capacity isn’t really relevant.
Polarization is characterized by people being driven to opposite extremes. That fact that you explain it exclusively in reference to just one of the extremes tells me you occupy the other.
I think this is only complicated because people aren’t able to hold competing thoughts in their heads.
There was a man who was massively effective in getting multiple once-in—a-generation revolutionary companies of the ground by sheer grind and lots of luck (yes..both). We should thank that man of yore.
But that man is now a convenient stooge for the right wing and a pointless edgelord whiling away his money on pointless projects.
Both of these can be true. It’s okay.
Here’s to hoping Tesla, SpaceX and all his other world changing companies succeed inspite of him and let him cement his complicated legacy.
Go Starship Super Heavy!!
PS: Shoutout to Gwynne Shotwell for being a massively effective administrator for this incredible rocketship of a company.
There's another duality of thought: I want SpaceX and Tesla to succeed. Regardless of my feelings about him, I acknowledge that Elon was instrumental in sparking the shift to EVs. Also, that having a dictator with a vision can allow companies to do audacious things that would normally die in committees (like reusable rockets, etc...)
That said, I have nothing but contempt for the man and am petty enough to have schadenfreude in any of his personal comeuppance.
Well safety comes first - this let's try it in production and see if it works for software - so a portion of youtube barfs - nobody harmed except missing their favourite cat vidoes.
The same with the FDA - we don't want a repeat of Thalidomide babies do we ???.
Oh those silly ground-based astronomers. Just give 'em a JWST so they stop yapping! Maybe you should tag along with the next Starship so I don't have to read garbage comments like this anymore.
> Don't forget about the astronomers complaining about the global internet being provided by Starlink affecting their precious telescopes, while ignoring the minor detail that Starship will be able to launch a JWST-sized telescope weekly if they want to get above the atmosphere.
Here comes elon zealot just copy and pasting empty claims and ignoring the actual facts we have. The lack of accountability is just staggering. And the only defense is a cave man ad hominem - oh they are just butt hurt anti-elons.
Elon Musk has a long list of bogus claims, outright lies and now currently on trail for fraud. His shtick is to make semi-revolutionary clam in X years, and before people start asking about that claim in near future he is making new claims about something completely new.
Thats why people are calling him out on his BS claims. So lets have a look:
The re-usability claims are all bogus, a make believe at best. For one, Starship is basically an early prototype rocket. Two, falcon 5 - a much simpler design - has current re-usability window at one month (as far as i remember). How do you go into weekly launches...
Empty claims of Elon Musk that they will work out the kinks are akin to Elisabeth Holmes claims. Or self driving tesla Next Year(tm), or underground tunnels, or hypelink, or amazing AI robot buttler all next year (tm).
Not to mention pretty strong evidence for Kessler Syndrome is already happening. And polluting orbit with starlinks are not helping.
global internet being provided by Starlink - you mean a toy for rich. Right? Cuz even tough it somewhat affordable now, for starlink to actually make money need and will cost way more.
>> I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree.
> Because some people are so rabidly anti-Elon
You know, polarization takes at least two poles. If some people are rabidly anti-Elon, so some people are rabidly pro-Elon.
> Don't forget about the astronomers complaining about the global internet being provided by Starlink
They do not complain about the global internet. They have nothing against the global internet per se. They complain about satellites. There are no fundamental physical laws stating that the global internet comes with littering the sky with thousands of bright satellites. They can be less bright at least, or probably one can use some military expertise on making flying objects undetectable by any means. Then come costs/benefits analysis and the question becomes too difficult for an armchair experts to grasp. So they instead prefer to construct a strawman they feel comfortable to fight.
When you allow yourself to use such a rhetoric devices, you shouldn't be surprised when the other side becomes polarized. They reciprocate and then you feel the right or even an obligation to throw some more shit into your discussion, and then you have no chance for a meaningful discussion.
> We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter.
Or because he constantly stomps on experienced engineers with stupid ideas and puts the whole thing at risk. Literally EVERYONE said the cement base was a stupid idea and yet Elon had to trump his own experts.
Every time he forces his idiotic ideas on his engineers he puts the future of the whole business at risk. At least he’s been so distracted by the Twitter debacle the adults have been able to make decisions without having to cater to his ego and make him think the idea was his.
I'm a SpaceX fan and I've been excited to watch Starship's progress over the years, but this comment is a little premature. It might one day be the most capable rocket ever built, but it's not there yet. Starship has yet to reach orbit, the Raptor engines have a long ways to go before they become as reliable as the Merlin, and the recovery of the booster or ship are still a ways out too. There are still a lot of technical and regulatory hurdles Starship needs to cross.
There's also that the whole plan of Starship colonizing Mars is wildly impractical and all the numbers Musk throws out don't work; the second you try to start fitting the supposed 100 passengers in to Starship for example there's just not room even if you halve the NASA recommended space per person. Once you account for keeping them alive once they get there it makes the slave trade ships look luxurious. SpaceX is doing really neat stuff just dragged down by Elon's overhyping sales pitches.
Yeah, well they're trying but the FAA isn't letting them launch. It's possible the one they want to launch will make orbit, or maybe it will be the next one etc.. The point is it will never achieve anything if it keeps getting delayed by the FAA.
Because people hate Musk (understandably so) and since, apparently, we can't hold nuanced opinions anymore, then they must also hate whatever the man has produced.
By the way, I absolutely despise the man and his antics, but I don't want to live in a world where SpaceX fails, just to spite him.
I'm thinking about rebranding SpaceX with Gwynne Shotwell persona - I think she at least spends greater fraction of her time on SpaceX matters than Elon these days.
Same i didn't mind him before he went completely nutters, but i can love SpaceX, Tesla and the companies without loving him, it seems other people have decided everyone at tesla and spacex are evil because an idiot owns the company.
Why people hate him? Seems like a lot of “media” hates him and that’s what causes people to hate this guy, not the guy itself but the media. He does have some questionable behaviour for a CEO, but I highly prefer that kind of ceo that talks what he thinks rather than the one that reads from the brochure to make shareholders happy. Positives are far far more outweigh the negatives in this case.
My initial issues with Musk was that he tended to push ideas and time frames WAY beyond what was reasonable.
Tesla / Space X are already amazing in almost ever respect, it doesn't need all the silly hype machine on top of it. Yes, it is neat to think about Mars bases eventually but that should be a stretch goal not pushed as "It is 4 years away!".
Starship is an incredible achievement already and I suspect it will come together quicker than we anticipate (less than a decade, probably in the next 2-3 years) but Musk had always promoted time lines and ambitions that were silly. Like point to point public rocket travel by 2030. The thing cannot land yet and they are already thinking 50 steps ahead with a stated date. That doesn't detract from Space X's achievements but it does cast a shadow over them as a whole.
I’m of the belief that the reason he has so suddenly become hated in the last few years (because it’s really unjustified, if you look purely at his works) is a direct result of engineering by those who would suffer if he continued his ascent without public opinion against him. None of the public narrative about him (especially the Twitter stuff) or the reasons people generally mock him make much sense, or are very relevant to 99% of the things he is actually spending time and resources on. It’s 100% manufactured.
Starship and access to orbit, as well as Starlink (which cheap access to orbit enabled) are indeed insanely powerful geopolitical tools. Many of the existing geopolitical engineers would hate to see him not be firmly subordinate to themselves.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the FAA’s decision is being used as a bargaining chip here. You don’t get to do things like this in the USA unless you play ball 100% with the existing people who control access to orbit.
Nobody is richer or more powerful than the people who presently control the satellite-based weapons and surveillance systems that the US operates. Nobody will be able to be in a position to replace or supplant them without some sort of negotiation with them.
Imagine it: with a working Starship, Musk could replace GPS, Keyhole, and whatever the rods-from-god system is codenamed, in a matter of months (or perhaps weeks, if the payload design work is already underway), for anyone on the Earth who he thinks would benefit his goals. A lot of the leverage that exists against him (and can presently be used to constrain him) would be gone, never to return. It’s already fairly obvious that the geopolitical status quo on Earth is not very important to him.
The various replies in this thread witness that there is a purely irrational response to Elon's "harsh but mildly conservative" leanings that people can't seem to be mature enough to acknowledge that he has ramped up several major international corporations in a wildly entrepreneurial manner, yet these fools are focused on "yes well technically he had subsidies and a ruby mine" as if there's some cheat code he used that no one else like Boeing or Ford had access to.
> people can't seem to be mature enough to acknowledge that he has ramped up several major international corporations in a wildly entrepreneurial manner
Or you know, people acknowledge both but his dumbassery overshadows his genius by a long stretch.
Bezos, Zuck &co at least have the decency to shut the fuck up when they should, which is 99.9% of the time on 99.9% of topics. That's all he would have to do to be more appreciated
No other rocket even in the planning stage comes close to Starship. No other rocket organization builds rockets the way SpaceX does. There just isn't a comparison to what they're doing that justifies criticism that they're unsuccessful or doing it wrong. It's a different process.
I'm not saying that Musk is perfect, or that you're doing this, but people like to fault this wildly ambitious projects for what they haven't achieved. But when they do work they have an outsized impact on the status quo. When Starship succeeds (and I believe it's just a matter of time whereas Tesla FSD is still an "if") it will revolutionize space travel in ways that seem sci-fi today.
State-of-the-art today is building machines that cost billions of dollars and throw them away after using them one time!
Maybe wait until it actually flies more than a few seconds without going off the rails before declaring it the greatest rocket ever built?
Right now they haven't even proven that the many engine design is actually workable, rhier engines failed at a spectacular rate in the single full test launch that they conducted (maybe because of the ill-conceived launch site, maybe for other reasons).
Eh, people were happy to call the N1 the most powerful rocket ever for years even though it mostly qualified as a bomb and not a rocket. Starship's paper capabilities are indeed impressive. If they manage to make it work then great.
> Right now they haven't even proven that the many engine design is actually workable
They don't need to prove it to people who accept as the only proof the demonstration of the fact. Remember you can have proofs in different ways, and professionals are fully aware of this.
Because Elon doesn't realize his childish douchebaggery has that much of an impact on how some people view what are otherwise his very legitimate accomplishments as a businessman.
Twitter/X most certainly not among those accomplishments.
"I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree. "
Because people like Elon and Gwynne have knowingly lied or purposefully mislead the public regarding Space X.
An example is the Point to Point travel, this is not every going to happen. Anyone with a bit of knowledge about rocketry etc. knows this has a zero percent chance of happening alone because of the noise it would case. In their presentation they had Zürich as a destination, Zürich is so small that you would blow out every window in the entire city. Launching starship in Zürich will never ever happen.
Not from Zurich, but from an ocean platform 20km from the coast of every big coastal city. High speed trains (350km/h) will go direct to the airport from every city less than 500km away. I agree landlocked Zurich will have a hard time to get a spaceport.
It's not like they could put out a public notice for all of the fish and wildlife to attend a planning & zoning meeting for their comment on the situation. Determining the effect of human endeavors on said fish & wildlife is a little more complicated that going door to door and informing them of their plans.
The Apple Newton would have been absolutely mind boggling if it existed in 1990. Even as revealed in 1992 (and released in 1993) it was still quite the technological marvel in many respects.
Its ultimate problem was that it was still ultimately more like a TI-83 graphing calculator than an iPhone. Much as people mocked the handwriting recognition, it was technology which could have been iterated upon. It turns out the key missing ingredient for the Newton was wireless internet access — and of course an internet worth connecting to.
>I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree.
A number of reasons, actually.
- Because the entire idea of "the Earth is fucked, so let's go set up camp on Mars" is a train of thought that's only applicable to the ultra-rich, and in the current economic environment that's (pretty understandably) an unpopular idea.
- Because after Starship's failed attempt at landing and highly-destructive launch earlier this year, people who care about the nearby wildlife refuge at Boca Chica are understandably not thrilled about continued ops there.
- Because the man behind SpaceX -- whose past achievements are admittedly impressive, at least in the spaceflight industry -- is increasingly associated with deceptive marketing, poor design choices, and incompetent product management, and when a corporation like SpaceX relies on significant funding from taxpayers that's a troubling combination.
- Personally, for me, coming from startups, "move fast and break things" scales terribly in terms of (for lack of a better word) social responsibility, and with the company's stated ambitions, I don't see this ending well.
SpaceX does a lot of cool shit, but let's not pretend like they're advancing the state of human existence here. They're a commercial entity, even if not publicly traded, but with Musk at the helm that feels like the tradeoff between being purely profit-driven vs having later-years Howard Hughes behind the wheel.
Anyway, it's pretty disingenuous to call Starship in particular "the most capable and sophisticated rocket ever built." So far it's capable of doing a significantly suborbital hop and failing to land. You could argue that it's failed at the one thing a spacefaring vessel should, by definition, not fail at.
I do trust in the FAA's judgement here, but I hope they work closely with Fish & Wildlife. The effects of climate change are increasingly endangering wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico, and having chunks of concrete the size of a living room flying into the water isn't helping.
I'm no fan of Elon Musk. Yet if you downplay the significance of cutting the cost of bringing mass to orbit by a factor of 1000, you really haven't thought through the implications of this enough. The whole "billionaires are going to leave earth behind" thing is as much of a dumb conspiracy theory as much of the stuff Elon is tweeting lately, by the way.
I think many of the issues that SpaceX has had with the Starship/Super Heavy project are due to the poor suitability of the launch/build site. The launch site itself is tiny and directly adjacent to protected wetlands, the only access between the build and launch sites is via a two-lane public road which is the only access to the also-adjacent state park beach, etc.
There were other sites under consideration, and I'm sure they had their reasons for passing on them, but it's hard to see offhand how they could be worse than Boca Chica.
My family owns some land in south Texas and my subjective sense from dealing with that reality and talking to people in the area is that you can’t throw a rock without hitting a protected wetland. In practice, the ubiquity of environmentally delicate tracts of land seems to be used by the state to restrict or permit industrial activities arbitrarily, likely based on political favoritism. If you think this is hyperbole, I suggest you look into the details of the various solar power projects in Texas.
Heard an anecdote from an architect in south Texas: if you have land there, and it rains enough, your land can become a protected wetland. Now you can't build on it.
It depends on your conception of what it means to own land. We don’t generally view land ownership as absolute in the way we would for say a coffee mug. In some sense all land is partly owned by society, the deed owner has many rights, but not absolute ownership.
I think one could make the case that the government must compensate landowners for putative environmental restrictions. After all, if it's really that important, surely the taxpayers would be willing to pay for it, right? Why make the landowner foot the bill for something that benefits everyone else?
That entire category of laws are commonly used to apply selective leverage. NIMBYs love this one trick. They can be selectively waived too. In fact earlier this month the Biden administration waived 26 laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction.
Humans using the land for recreation are far more destructive to wetlands than occasional rocket launches. Canaveral and Vandenburg have become de-facto protected wildlife refuges because humans with guns keep other humans away from them.
I know that if I was a turtle at Boca Chica I would rather deal with the occasional rocket launch than the ATV's that also use the beach.
More generally, if our goal is to help a certain type of environment, let's do that.
Let Musk buy up land a few miles away, convert it to more wetlands w/government help, permanently endow & protect it. The gov't could get 10x as much land protected as before - in exchange for giving up the few small acres near the launch facility.
It seems like everyone wins this way! Musk & SpaceX can do their work, environmental protection of land for the future & birds etc. has improved locally and nationally on net. The only ones who don't win are the bureaucrats who have approval over other people's productive work. So... this type of deal rarely ever happens.
> I know that if I was a turtle at Boca Chica I would rather deal with the occasional rocket launch than the ATV's that also use the beach.
If only it were that simple. If the occasional rocket launch is what causes that turtle's species to go extinct because it damages the shells of their eggs or the bright light disrupts their mating schedule or whatever that is all that matters to the turtle.
When I took the tour of Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral several years ago I was kind of shocked by the number of alligators there. It was a bit jarring to see a Space Shuttle on the launch pad and alligators all over the roads. Some armadillos and lots of birds as well.
Boca Chica is possibly the best launch location in the entire USA. Not many people realize that it is at the same latitude as Miami!
The major issue with Boca Chica was the (literal) handful of residents who lived there, some of which refused to move when SpaceX first came around with offers to buy their land. I don't know what is the current status of them.
I think the issues are political. Musk hasnt done himself any favors, it seems every person has a very strong opinion of him and therefore spacex, Tesla, and X. I’m sure there’s lots of “whoopsies” going on in the agencies looking at the launch license where approvals, reviews, or even emails stay in the todo pile for weeks. One dedicated person could double the time spent at any stage in the process.
This is why most CEOs and politicians never talk publicly except what the PR team and lawyers have carefully reviewed. When they give speeches they are written well in advance and carefully practiced. Once in a while a CEO or politician does and people at first like the candidness, but eventually (see Musk, Trump) they say something that someone doesn't like. Everyone has and thinks such thoughts that make us look really bad, but most of us get away with it because nobody is listening.
Cape Canaveral wasn't a super attractive location in 1950 either; swamps, hurricanes, a lot of mosquitoes, hot summers.
But, same as Boca Chica, it is on US soil, relatively close to the Equator and you can launch rockets eastwards over the sea. And in both cases, closures of the sea for launches don't disrupt important sea lanes.
These days launching East isn't that important as it used to be at the height of the Space Race. However some 1/5 payload advantage is still interesting, so the factor is definitely taken into account.
They looked at the other sites, as a requirement of the EIS and PEA. There are none better. The only other places already have people or are also basically protected reserves or whatever. You know of any prime beach real estate that DOESNT have people? SpaceX would gladly develop that instead! There are none. And the Florida launch site (already reaching capacity and not a suitable site for prototype testing) is, of course, also a wildlife refuge.
Closer to the equator makes it easier to achieve an equatorial orbit and some slight benefits from the initial speed of the Earth's rotation but Super Heavy is so ridiculously over sized it doesn't need it. Things like the ISS are highly inclined so they're easier to reach from Russia's launch site as your latitude is essentially the default inclination you're be in when you hit orbit without spending the fuel to change it.
I don't think NASA's Kennedy Space Center, nor Cape Canaveral Space Force Station are exempt from EPA regulations. SpaceX has had to perform Environmental Impact Studies for all of their launch sites there as well.
There is 1000s of miles of coast on the Atlantic, hard to believe there no other easier location on the entire Eastern seaboard.
I understand that there will be a performance penalty at higher latitudes, however that really shouldn’t matter to what bocca chica is used for by spaceX
- FAA would never give licenses 100s of launches from Texas ever, volume is always planned from be Florida , just for experimental flights the penalty shouldn’t be a factor,
- given the order of magnitude change in payload capacity with Starship and reusability the performance factor shouldn’t really be critical even for production ?
The current , past and inevitable future delays at Bocca Chica is costing spaceX a lot , they are cash flow positive and far ahead of competition so they can afford it, but this is certainly does not look like the most optimal plan .
Because the things that can't be changed are good. Namely, lots of empty land to expand into, near the coast for shipping, good geo-position, temperate weather, sparsely populated but still close to a city and airport. We can expand the road and the state/fed gov will sell SpaceX the wetlands to cover them with concrete if necessary.
I'm not a space person, so this may be a very basic question but how is this same rocket supposed to launch from locations on the Moon or Mars? The propulsion force is obviously less because the gravity is less there, but that really enough to overcome all of this work they have to do on Earth? At least at Boca Chica you can get a construction crew there.
The large lower booster only launches and lands on Earth. The upper section (the Starship) will be able to land and launch on other bodies, but it has only a fraction the number of engines.
There is a different version of Starship for landing on the moon. Supposedly, for Mars, the single stage part of the rocket has enough acceleration to get off of Mars on its own.
The more you look into it, the more it becomes apparent that Starship is optimized for launching very large constellations of LEO satellites, not for Mars colonization or even Moon missions. It's publicly pitched as a Mars colonization rocket because this pipe dream is the foundation of SpaceX's recruiting strategy. (It's easier to motivate rocket engineers with the dream of Mars colonies than with SDI contracts.)
Perhaps it's a good thing. If they can figure out how to launch next to protected lands without damaging them, then they can set up launch facilities virtually anywhere.
The FAA will complete a Written Reevaluation (WR) to the 2022 Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) evaluating the new environmental information, including Endangered Species Act consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If the FAA determines through the WR process that the contents of the PEA do not remain valid in light of the changes proposed for Flight 2, additional environmental review will be required. The FAA will post the completed WR on this site.
Not even a due date. Not sure it qualifies as "news".
I wonder if they ever considered moving the launch site 5 or 10 miles south into Mexico. It would certainly change the regulatory regime and Mexico would gain a facility with access to space.
Are you familiar with the Boardroom Meeting Suggestion meme, where the guy says something audacious (or simply reasonable) and gets thrown out the window? Your comment fits that meme perfectly.
Yes, SpaceX is a private company, and no, they're not a weapons manufacturer at the moment... but only because the DoD has only asked them to loft surveillance equipment and not told them to launch warheads, and only because they've aimed for orbital targets above the atmosphere rather than on a different continent.
They've no doubt signed their life away on not exporting Merlin, Draco, and Raptor engine designs. You may be annoyed at the NSA's attempts to control and restrict "military grade cryptography" in the 90s, or at various bureaucracies that attempt to license which trades and businesses are allowed or not allowed to do various kinds of work. But in rocketry, they're deadly serious about their job.
I am actually reasonably familiar with ITAR, including part 121, category 4 (or IV). And Mexico has 'special trading partner' status under the USMCA (formerly NAFTA) and there are carve outs between the US and Mexico.
I recognize the reality of such a move would be complicated, require licensing and review, and have geopolitical consequences that everyone would want to weigh in on.
All that said, SpaceX could start that process in earnest (which is to say, announce it, start knocking down the regulatory hurdles) and that would give them tremendous leverage in their discussions with the FAA. It would take a while, it would take persistence, but the longer they pushed for it the closer it would get to reality. It would create a credible alternative (if somewhat longer) path to launch against the push back by the US Gov't agencies.
The politics of space flight are complicated, but they are politics.
I would think that the people here who watched Uber take on the politics of the cab monopolies, or the EU's politics of privacy reaching in and impacting US companies, would begin to understand that laws and regulation are an expression of the prevailing politics and when the politics change the laws change to support the current point of view. Those examples are clearly not as significant as national security politics but history tells us that even those change.
The crypto wars, which I was in the middle of, are a good example of going from "you can't do that" here are the laws, regulations, etc. To "okay fine."
To be clear, I don't expect SpaceX to advocate for building a launch facility in Mexico. Their somewhat mercurial "technical guy" with the billions of dollars at his disposal however doesn't seem to shy away from politically difficult strategies if he sees an advantage in them. That makes betting against SpaceX opting to build a launch facility further south not as safe a bet as it would be say for Blue Origin doing something like that.
The launch site is 20 feet from the border. (hyperbole, but they are pretty much on the edge. You can walk there.)
The FAA directions explicitly tell them they're bound, obligated to seek clearances from Mexico to do work which impacts Mexicans. I read the doc:
The VLA is approximately 2.2 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border and the LLCC is approximately 1.3 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border. ... SpaceX would coordinate with the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation–Mexico if any airspace, land, or water access restrictions in Mexico were required.
There's precedent for these sort of foreign enclaves that would still be a part of the host country but fall within the geographical borders of another. Mexico could be open to some sort of agreement.
France keeps French Guiana and the ESA gets to launch rockets there. It's strategically valuable.
It does lead to a question about how happy different branches of the US government are with each other.
I don't know how any of this works though; assuming everyone else was cool with it, does the FAA need to be consulted in such a scenario? Does the FAA have worldwide jurisdiction over launches by/for USA companies?
This will presumably matter in the (IMO unlikely) case of suborbital city-to-city civilian transport via Starship launches.
That would require an ITAR export license for Mexico, which shouldn't be too difficult since there are many defense manufacturers located in Mexico (ITAR is for weapons of course, but the same export controls apply to rockets)
This is structurally a reminder they are bound to meet the rules, which are government rules not the ones they want to believe apply, the ones a government can force on them and shut them down, for not meeting.
But, wrapped up in nicer language.
SpaceX must obtain a modified license from the FAA before it is authorized to conduct a second Starship/Super Heavy launch. The modification must address all safety, environmental, and other regulatory requirements. As part of that license application determination process, the FAA will review new environmental information, including changes related to the launch pad, as well as other proposed vehicle and flight modifications.
The VLA is approximately 2.2 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border and the LLCC is approximately 1.3 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border. ... SpaceX would coordinate with the Secretariat of Communications and Transportation–Mexico if any airspace, land, or water access restrictions in Mexico were required.
Ie, they have obligations to other economies, significant economies which the US government does not want to piss off.
I don't understand why so many people are so cynical about Starship being able to fly reliably when SpaceX has repeatedly demonstrated that they can build rockets.
It feels like if a prototype Toyota had a wheel fall off and everyone immediately assumed Toyota was incompetent and incapable of making cars. It just makes no sense.
I still think the belly-flop landing into the catch tower still seems… unproven to me.
I think it’s plausible that they can make it work, but I don’t think it’s a certainty that it’ll work out. I don’t really know what the backup plan is, if they can’t get the belly-flop and flip to a high enough level of reliability.
I also think the development timelines promised to NASA seemed… overly aggressive (as if they were Musk timelines, which never hold instead of Shotwell timelines, which usually only slip a bit)
SpaceX is trying to do many unprecedented things with the Starship. Any of those things could fail, because the approach they took turned out to be wrong in retrospect.
The same is true for all good R&D projects. If there is no real risk of complete failure, you are not being ambitious enough.
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I don't know why this topic polarizes people to such an extreme degree.
Because some people are so rabidly anti-Elon that they would rather nail the feet of the human race to the ground than allow that "bad man" to succeed at taking us to the stars.
There were several people here on HN screeching that a few lumps of concrete strewn on a beach is an ecological disaster of unfathomable proportions.
Don't forget about the astronomers complaining about the global internet being provided by Starlink affecting their precious telescopes, while ignoring the minor detail that Starship will be able to launch a JWST-sized telescope weekly if they want to get above the atmosphere.
We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter.
This type of false equivalence and extreme hyperbole is why it polarizes people. The preferred terms of the conversation are so insane as to invite that specific outcome.
> affecting their precious telescopes
You also seem to feel entitled to adopt the position of a rank bully. Where does this entitlement come from? While reflecting on that, you might find a more charitable and honest answer as to the sources of polarization on this topic.
> We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present and ruffles the feathers of developers fired from Twitter.
We'll have the future with or without Space X. This type of angry hype and blind argumentation simply underscore the above points.
He's legit terrible as a person, someone who spends a significant amount of his time dedicated to trolling is not someone we should look up to
There are good reasons people are anti-Elon, and I don't need to list them here now. Technological advancement is nice, and it can be a good thing that one "eccentric" billionaire puts a lot of money into this. But there are consequences, and it's good that there are people who are critical of this. It's ok that people like Musk are scrutinized. In my opinion, there's way more room for scrutinity by mainstream media instead of them instead of sucking up every word he says.
If either answer is no, then the brag about capacity isn’t really relevant.
There was a man who was massively effective in getting multiple once-in—a-generation revolutionary companies of the ground by sheer grind and lots of luck (yes..both). We should thank that man of yore.
But that man is now a convenient stooge for the right wing and a pointless edgelord whiling away his money on pointless projects.
Both of these can be true. It’s okay.
Here’s to hoping Tesla, SpaceX and all his other world changing companies succeed inspite of him and let him cement his complicated legacy.
Go Starship Super Heavy!!
PS: Shoutout to Gwynne Shotwell for being a massively effective administrator for this incredible rocketship of a company.
That said, I have nothing but contempt for the man and am petty enough to have schadenfreude in any of his personal comeuppance.
The same with the FDA - we don't want a repeat of Thalidomide babies do we ???.
Here comes elon zealot just copy and pasting empty claims and ignoring the actual facts we have. The lack of accountability is just staggering. And the only defense is a cave man ad hominem - oh they are just butt hurt anti-elons.
Elon Musk has a long list of bogus claims, outright lies and now currently on trail for fraud. His shtick is to make semi-revolutionary clam in X years, and before people start asking about that claim in near future he is making new claims about something completely new.
Thats why people are calling him out on his BS claims. So lets have a look:
The re-usability claims are all bogus, a make believe at best. For one, Starship is basically an early prototype rocket. Two, falcon 5 - a much simpler design - has current re-usability window at one month (as far as i remember). How do you go into weekly launches...
Empty claims of Elon Musk that they will work out the kinks are akin to Elisabeth Holmes claims. Or self driving tesla Next Year(tm), or underground tunnels, or hypelink, or amazing AI robot buttler all next year (tm).
Not to mention pretty strong evidence for Kessler Syndrome is already happening. And polluting orbit with starlinks are not helping.
global internet being provided by Starlink - you mean a toy for rich. Right? Cuz even tough it somewhat affordable now, for starlink to actually make money need and will cost way more.
lmao, we managed to fuck up our very own perfect planet in 200 years of industrial revolution and the plan is to go transform a dead rock into earth
Elon or others I'll still find it stupid, this isn't minecraft
> We can't have the future because it slightly inconveniences the present
It's more like the present is (more than) slightly inconveniencing our future, and ego maniacs like Musk are a big part of the problem
> Because some people are so rabidly anti-Elon
You know, polarization takes at least two poles. If some people are rabidly anti-Elon, so some people are rabidly pro-Elon.
> Don't forget about the astronomers complaining about the global internet being provided by Starlink
They do not complain about the global internet. They have nothing against the global internet per se. They complain about satellites. There are no fundamental physical laws stating that the global internet comes with littering the sky with thousands of bright satellites. They can be less bright at least, or probably one can use some military expertise on making flying objects undetectable by any means. Then come costs/benefits analysis and the question becomes too difficult for an armchair experts to grasp. So they instead prefer to construct a strawman they feel comfortable to fight.
When you allow yourself to use such a rhetoric devices, you shouldn't be surprised when the other side becomes polarized. They reciprocate and then you feel the right or even an obligation to throw some more shit into your discussion, and then you have no chance for a meaningful discussion.
Or because he constantly stomps on experienced engineers with stupid ideas and puts the whole thing at risk. Literally EVERYONE said the cement base was a stupid idea and yet Elon had to trump his own experts.
Every time he forces his idiotic ideas on his engineers he puts the future of the whole business at risk. At least he’s been so distracted by the Twitter debacle the adults have been able to make decisions without having to cater to his ego and make him think the idea was his.
Yeah, well they're trying but the FAA isn't letting them launch. It's possible the one they want to launch will make orbit, or maybe it will be the next one etc.. The point is it will never achieve anything if it keeps getting delayed by the FAA.
By the way, I absolutely despise the man and his antics, but I don't want to live in a world where SpaceX fails, just to spite him.
Tesla / Space X are already amazing in almost ever respect, it doesn't need all the silly hype machine on top of it. Yes, it is neat to think about Mars bases eventually but that should be a stretch goal not pushed as "It is 4 years away!".
Starship is an incredible achievement already and I suspect it will come together quicker than we anticipate (less than a decade, probably in the next 2-3 years) but Musk had always promoted time lines and ambitions that were silly. Like point to point public rocket travel by 2030. The thing cannot land yet and they are already thinking 50 steps ahead with a stated date. That doesn't detract from Space X's achievements but it does cast a shadow over them as a whole.
Starship and access to orbit, as well as Starlink (which cheap access to orbit enabled) are indeed insanely powerful geopolitical tools. Many of the existing geopolitical engineers would hate to see him not be firmly subordinate to themselves.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the FAA’s decision is being used as a bargaining chip here. You don’t get to do things like this in the USA unless you play ball 100% with the existing people who control access to orbit.
Nobody is richer or more powerful than the people who presently control the satellite-based weapons and surveillance systems that the US operates. Nobody will be able to be in a position to replace or supplant them without some sort of negotiation with them.
Imagine it: with a working Starship, Musk could replace GPS, Keyhole, and whatever the rods-from-god system is codenamed, in a matter of months (or perhaps weeks, if the payload design work is already underway), for anyone on the Earth who he thinks would benefit his goals. A lot of the leverage that exists against him (and can presently be used to constrain him) would be gone, never to return. It’s already fairly obvious that the geopolitical status quo on Earth is not very important to him.
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Or you know, people acknowledge both but his dumbassery overshadows his genius by a long stretch. Bezos, Zuck &co at least have the decency to shut the fuck up when they should, which is 99.9% of the time on 99.9% of topics. That's all he would have to do to be more appreciated
I'm not saying that Musk is perfect, or that you're doing this, but people like to fault this wildly ambitious projects for what they haven't achieved. But when they do work they have an outsized impact on the status quo. When Starship succeeds (and I believe it's just a matter of time whereas Tesla FSD is still an "if") it will revolutionize space travel in ways that seem sci-fi today.
State-of-the-art today is building machines that cost billions of dollars and throw them away after using them one time!
Right now they haven't even proven that the many engine design is actually workable, rhier engines failed at a spectacular rate in the single full test launch that they conducted (maybe because of the ill-conceived launch site, maybe for other reasons).
They don't need to prove it to people who accept as the only proof the demonstration of the fact. Remember you can have proofs in different ways, and professionals are fully aware of this.
Twitter/X most certainly not among those accomplishments.
Because people like Elon and Gwynne have knowingly lied or purposefully mislead the public regarding Space X.
An example is the Point to Point travel, this is not every going to happen. Anyone with a bit of knowledge about rocketry etc. knows this has a zero percent chance of happening alone because of the noise it would case. In their presentation they had Zürich as a destination, Zürich is so small that you would blow out every window in the entire city. Launching starship in Zürich will never ever happen.
Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_International_Airport
The other side will form the opposite opinion to signal that it is different.
The fact in of itself of polarisation of public discourse exists because there is a polarisation industry innocuously named social media.
It has subverted political discourse and education too.
Despite this, there are still enough reasonable people for science and scientific progress to continue.
However, one may right well feel pessimistic about the future.
Its ultimate problem was that it was still ultimately more like a TI-83 graphing calculator than an iPhone. Much as people mocked the handwriting recognition, it was technology which could have been iterated upon. It turns out the key missing ingredient for the Newton was wireless internet access — and of course an internet worth connecting to.
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A number of reasons, actually.
- Because the entire idea of "the Earth is fucked, so let's go set up camp on Mars" is a train of thought that's only applicable to the ultra-rich, and in the current economic environment that's (pretty understandably) an unpopular idea.
- Because after Starship's failed attempt at landing and highly-destructive launch earlier this year, people who care about the nearby wildlife refuge at Boca Chica are understandably not thrilled about continued ops there.
- Because the man behind SpaceX -- whose past achievements are admittedly impressive, at least in the spaceflight industry -- is increasingly associated with deceptive marketing, poor design choices, and incompetent product management, and when a corporation like SpaceX relies on significant funding from taxpayers that's a troubling combination.
- Personally, for me, coming from startups, "move fast and break things" scales terribly in terms of (for lack of a better word) social responsibility, and with the company's stated ambitions, I don't see this ending well.
SpaceX does a lot of cool shit, but let's not pretend like they're advancing the state of human existence here. They're a commercial entity, even if not publicly traded, but with Musk at the helm that feels like the tradeoff between being purely profit-driven vs having later-years Howard Hughes behind the wheel.
Anyway, it's pretty disingenuous to call Starship in particular "the most capable and sophisticated rocket ever built." So far it's capable of doing a significantly suborbital hop and failing to land. You could argue that it's failed at the one thing a spacefaring vessel should, by definition, not fail at.
I do trust in the FAA's judgement here, but I hope they work closely with Fish & Wildlife. The effects of climate change are increasingly endangering wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico, and having chunks of concrete the size of a living room flying into the water isn't helping.
There were other sites under consideration, and I'm sure they had their reasons for passing on them, but it's hard to see offhand how they could be worse than Boca Chica.
I'll be that person and ask "do you have evidence of this"?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration...
The laws waived:
National Environmental Policy Act
Endangered Species Act
Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act)
National Historic Preservation Act
Migratory Bird Treaty Act
Migratory Bird Conservation Act
Clean Air Act
Archeological Resources Protection Act
Paleontological Resources Preservation Act
Safe Drinking Water Act
Noise Control Act
Solid Waste Disposal Act
Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act
Antiquities Act
Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act
Farmland Protection Policy Act
National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act
National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956
Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act
National Trails System Act
Administrative Procedure Act
Eagle Protection Act
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
American Indian Religious Freedom Act
Federal Land Policy and Management Act
Perhaps someone can expound cos I'm a brit. Thanks
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I know that if I was a turtle at Boca Chica I would rather deal with the occasional rocket launch than the ATV's that also use the beach.
Let Musk buy up land a few miles away, convert it to more wetlands w/government help, permanently endow & protect it. The gov't could get 10x as much land protected as before - in exchange for giving up the few small acres near the launch facility.
It seems like everyone wins this way! Musk & SpaceX can do their work, environmental protection of land for the future & birds etc. has improved locally and nationally on net. The only ones who don't win are the bureaucrats who have approval over other people's productive work. So... this type of deal rarely ever happens.
If only it were that simple. If the occasional rocket launch is what causes that turtle's species to go extinct because it damages the shells of their eggs or the bright light disrupts their mating schedule or whatever that is all that matters to the turtle.
The major issue with Boca Chica was the (literal) handful of residents who lived there, some of which refused to move when SpaceX first came around with offers to buy their land. I don't know what is the current status of them.
But, same as Boca Chica, it is on US soil, relatively close to the Equator and you can launch rockets eastwards over the sea. And in both cases, closures of the sea for launches don't disrupt important sea lanes.
Boca Chica is perfect.
Will the super heavy need to launch from as near to the equator as possible? Or does it require higher latitudes?
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I don’t think the area around Boca Chica is very important and the land around is not special or worth more than having a launch facility.
The only "safe" place to launch is in Florida on land that was grandfathered into being an EPA-free zone back in the 1960s by NASA.
I understand that there will be a performance penalty at higher latitudes, however that really shouldn’t matter to what bocca chica is used for by spaceX
- FAA would never give licenses 100s of launches from Texas ever, volume is always planned from be Florida , just for experimental flights the penalty shouldn’t be a factor,
- given the order of magnitude change in payload capacity with Starship and reusability the performance factor shouldn’t really be critical even for production ?
The current , past and inevitable future delays at Bocca Chica is costing spaceX a lot , they are cash flow positive and far ahead of competition so they can afford it, but this is certainly does not look like the most optimal plan .
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East facing also isn't even remotely a requirement for a launch, Israel launches westward on a regular basis
This does assume the rocket can refuel on Mars.
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The FAA will complete a Written Reevaluation (WR) to the 2022 Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) evaluating the new environmental information, including Endangered Species Act consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If the FAA determines through the WR process that the contents of the PEA do not remain valid in light of the changes proposed for Flight 2, additional environmental review will be required. The FAA will post the completed WR on this site.
Not even a due date. Not sure it qualifies as "news".
This does NOT mean a launch license has been granted but is a good sign one could be granted very soon!
(I think we could get a launch license announcement today or tomorrow, just my opinion though)"
https://twitter.com/Space_Time3/status/1717205486888489291
Yes, SpaceX is a private company, and no, they're not a weapons manufacturer at the moment... but only because the DoD has only asked them to loft surveillance equipment and not told them to launch warheads, and only because they've aimed for orbital targets above the atmosphere rather than on a different continent.
They've no doubt signed their life away on not exporting Merlin, Draco, and Raptor engine designs. You may be annoyed at the NSA's attempts to control and restrict "military grade cryptography" in the 90s, or at various bureaucracies that attempt to license which trades and businesses are allowed or not allowed to do various kinds of work. But in rocketry, they're deadly serious about their job.
SpaceX cannot run to Mexico.
I am actually reasonably familiar with ITAR, including part 121, category 4 (or IV). And Mexico has 'special trading partner' status under the USMCA (formerly NAFTA) and there are carve outs between the US and Mexico.
I recognize the reality of such a move would be complicated, require licensing and review, and have geopolitical consequences that everyone would want to weigh in on.
All that said, SpaceX could start that process in earnest (which is to say, announce it, start knocking down the regulatory hurdles) and that would give them tremendous leverage in their discussions with the FAA. It would take a while, it would take persistence, but the longer they pushed for it the closer it would get to reality. It would create a credible alternative (if somewhat longer) path to launch against the push back by the US Gov't agencies.
The politics of space flight are complicated, but they are politics.
I would think that the people here who watched Uber take on the politics of the cab monopolies, or the EU's politics of privacy reaching in and impacting US companies, would begin to understand that laws and regulation are an expression of the prevailing politics and when the politics change the laws change to support the current point of view. Those examples are clearly not as significant as national security politics but history tells us that even those change.
The crypto wars, which I was in the middle of, are a good example of going from "you can't do that" here are the laws, regulations, etc. To "okay fine."
To be clear, I don't expect SpaceX to advocate for building a launch facility in Mexico. Their somewhat mercurial "technical guy" with the billions of dollars at his disposal however doesn't seem to shy away from politically difficult strategies if he sees an advantage in them. That makes betting against SpaceX opting to build a launch facility further south not as safe a bet as it would be say for Blue Origin doing something like that.
The FAA directions explicitly tell them they're bound, obligated to seek clearances from Mexico to do work which impacts Mexicans. I read the doc:
There's precedent for these sort of foreign enclaves that would still be a part of the host country but fall within the geographical borders of another. Mexico could be open to some sort of agreement.
France keeps French Guiana and the ESA gets to launch rockets there. It's strategically valuable.
You think the US government would allow that? Or are you under the illusion that SpaceX doesn't have close ties with the DoD?
I don't know how any of this works though; assuming everyone else was cool with it, does the FAA need to be consulted in such a scenario? Does the FAA have worldwide jurisdiction over launches by/for USA companies?
This will presumably matter in the (IMO unlikely) case of suborbital city-to-city civilian transport via Starship launches.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K_1jqgCjxA
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But, wrapped up in nicer language.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-06/PEA_for_Spac...Noting:
Ie, they have obligations to other economies, significant economies which the US government does not want to piss off.It sounds like a lot of words to say that they need more time.
It feels like if a prototype Toyota had a wheel fall off and everyone immediately assumed Toyota was incompetent and incapable of making cars. It just makes no sense.
I think it’s plausible that they can make it work, but I don’t think it’s a certainty that it’ll work out. I don’t really know what the backup plan is, if they can’t get the belly-flop and flip to a high enough level of reliability.
I also think the development timelines promised to NASA seemed… overly aggressive (as if they were Musk timelines, which never hold instead of Shotwell timelines, which usually only slip a bit)
The same is true for all good R&D projects. If there is no real risk of complete failure, you are not being ambitious enough.
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