The Starship, SpaceX's under-development giant
rocket designed to send people to Mars, can
also be set to send people around the planet
in under an hour.
Now It's no secret that SpaceX as well as
founder Elon Musk, want to develop floating
spaceports which will provide launch sites
for the company’s Super Heavy-class launch
vehicles.
SpaceX will use these larger rockets to get
its forthcoming large payload rockets Starship
to the Moon and Mars, as well as point-to-point
travel around the Earth.
Nevertheless, plans to actually develop marine
launch platforms seemingly lacked teeth for
a long time.
That is, until this week: when SpaceX posted
two jobs for engineers who will assist "design
and build an operational offshore rocket launch
facility."
Neither posting mentions about "Starship,"
but both are located in Brownsville.
The Brownsville city in Texas sits approximately
30 minutes west of the state's southeastern
tip, that is exactly where SpaceX is building
and testing Starship rocket prototypes, amid
Boca Chica Village, a community of retiree-age
homeowners.
The company has been expanding its testing
and development site in the area, and has
also sought to increase the resources dedicated
to its operations in the state.
In this video Engineering Today will discuss
why SpaceX wants to build an offshore spaceport
near Texas for Starship rocket?
Let’s get into details.
On Tuesday, 16th June, CEO Elon Musk answered
to a report about a SpaceX job listing.
The post, spotted by a Twitter user named
"Cowboy Dan Paasch," is an opening for an
offshore operations engineer.
This engineer will work with a team to "design
and build an operational offshore rocket launch
facility."
Musk responded to the post by writing that
"SpaceX is building floating, superheavy-class
spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel
around Earth."
To realize that ambition, SpaceX will have
to find a way to efficiently pack pressurization
systems, fueling, and propellant; a likely
skyscraper-sized launch tower and crane; one
or maybe 2 landing pads along with a launch
mount; crew quarters, propulsion, major power
supplies, and much, much more upon a huge
ship.
Even though the post is exciting news itself,
Musk also suggested on Twitter that these
inter-Earth flights could start taking off
relatively soon:
But, it’s not very clear if the floating
spaceports Musk is proposing would be fixed
or perhaps in case they'd follow in the much
smaller footsteps of SpaceX’s current booster
recovery drone ships.
The developments suggest SpaceX's plan for
inter-Earth travel is a key aspect of the
plans for Starship.
The SpaceX Starship rocket was first unveiled
under the title "BFR" by Musk in September
2017,in which he updated the world on SpaceX's
plans to build cities on Mars and populate
them with a million people or even more.
Musk detailed plans for inter-Earth travel
at exactly the same event, which could enable
passengers to get around the world in under
an hour.
A flight from Los Angeles to New York, that
would usually take five hours and 25 minutes,
would have only twenty five minutes with the
SpaceX Starship.
London to Hong Kong, a ride that typically
takes 11 hours 50 minutes, would have only
34 minutes.
During the presentation, Musk shared the video
recording of SpaceX Starship rocketing passengers
from an ocean platform near New York City,
consequently landing them later on a similar
floating spaceport near Shanghai.
Musk named the high-speed transportation concept
"Earth to Earth."
Depending on concepts published by the company
in 2017, it can be determined that SpaceX
Starship’s floating launch facilities will
probably gauge a minimum of 300m (1000 ft)
long and about 100m (330 ft) wide and displace
numerous tens of a large number of tons.
For reference, these kinds of a platform will
be a lot more compared to 10 times bigger
than SpaceX's football-field-sized drone ships
and considerably bigger compared to the common
American city block.
"It will be real," Musk wrote Tuesday.
The idea of ocean-platform launches is not
new.
An organization called Sea Launch, for instance,
first launched an orbital-class Zenit rocket
from a platform in the Atlantic Ocean in March
1999.
Despite the fact that SpaceX needs operational
experience launching rockets from ocean platforms,
it has landed in excess of four dozen first-stage
rocket boosters — the most costly part of
a launch system, given the various complex
engines attached to their base — and landing
them on drone ships.
The boosters are then repaired and reused,
saving SpaceX millions of dollars per use
and allowing the company to be price-competitive.
At the point when a Twitter user raised Sea
Launch and its Zenit rocket, Musk reacted:
"Zenit is an order of magnitude smaller than
Starship system & doesn't come back & land."
Now it seems SpaceX is prepared to make the
jump, with safety as a driving factor.
The spaceports form a vital part of SpaceX
program.
Musk suggested in November 2019 that SpaceX
will need to construct the spaceports roughly
twenty miles from the shore, to fly Starship
with less risk to the ground.
This will help ensure appropriate noise levels,
considering it will offer daily flights.
That's quite a distance when compared with
regular airports: New York’s John F. Kennedy
is simply more than twelve miles from Grand
Central Terminal.
Musk suggested the spaceports could link up
with the hyperloop, a vacuum-sealed pod transit
system that Musk claims might achieve 700
mph.
"We need to be far enough away so as not to
bother heavily populated areas.
The launch & landing are not subtle.
But you could get within a few miles of the
spaceport in a boat," Musk tweeted on Tuesday,
adding that a jet-powered Incat ship additionally
appropriate for land-to-platform transportation.
These would not be fun flights.
While flights to Mars would allow for ample
cabin space for people to comfortably share
the area, the inter-Earth flights would hold
1,000 individuals without any space for amenities.
As for the cost, Space Review estimated in
October 2017 that it could work out to somewhere
around $1,200 per person.
The idea is that by traveling at the edge
of, or beyond Earth’s atmosphere, you can
greatly reduce the fuel cost and duration
of flight.
SpaceX is getting seriously interested in
building the ocean based spaceports of its.
These platforms may be utilized for a variety
of missions, and officials have explained
before that they plan to work on several projects
all at once.
The firm can work on a lunar base, for example,
while simultaneously working on a Mars city.
If it works as Musk envisions, the system
could launch several times a day and minimize
the cost-per-pound to launch something to
space by 1,000-fold or more.
To that end, Musk has encouraged his staff
to make Starship "the top SpaceX priority"
and has enrolled about 1,000 staff to work
on a production facility for the vehicle in
Boca Chica — what the CEO sees as the key
to making a viable, low-cost system.
SpaceX is currently in the midst of a crash
program to develop Starship into a safe and
fully reusable launch system.
It's unclear whether these ocean-based spaceports
would host the first SpaceX Starship flights.
Musk recently claimed that the company is
pursuing both sea-based and land-based launch
facilities in Boca Chica, in Texas and NASA's
Launch Complex 39A in Florida, so things are
still undecided.
Regardless, hiring engineers is a strong sign
that SpaceX really is seriously pursuing all
three options.
SpaceX even recently received a NASA contract
to develop Starship into a lunar-landing vehicle.
The company also aims to fly Japanese fashion
billionaire Yusaku Maezawa around the moon
in 2023, then fly the first customers to Mars
in 2024, Musk reconfirmed in a June 4 tweet.
Amid that work, SpaceX is hoping to get its
high-speed Earth transportation system up
and running.
The ultimate goal with the scheme may be to
replace grueling long-haul airplane flights.
Musk is known for his bold proclamations of
establishing bases on the moon and Mars for
interplanetary travel, but “the hypersonic
travel around Earth” that he imagines could
be more immediately impactful.
"There will be many test flights before commercial
passengers are carried," Musk tweeted on Tuesday.
"First Earth to Earth test flights might be
in 2 or 3 years."
