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Starbase, LA

spacex.com

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Re: Starbase, LA

#31

Post by cwal37 »

beerandt wrote: post #16
cwal37 wrote: post #7

I wonder if anyone read the copy on this page or if it mostly came out of an LLM. The "Restoring the shoreline" and Rebuilding the marshlands" paragraphs below the images are almost exactly the same. The first sentence is exactly the same.

Maybe, but there's some very specific legal language that cpra and the state requires everyone use in referring to some of these issues, and at least part of the land SpaceX is acquiring is involved in coastal restoration lawsuits or deep water horizon settlements or both. As an engineer working on cpra projects in the past, I've wanted to reword a variety things but was forced to use their legal language. It's mostl…

I did briefly consider something along those lines, but shoreline and marshlands are materially different, plus they've already changed the text.

Re: Starbase, LA

#33

Post by mrtnmcc »

A way to get back at Texas for datacenter restrictions?

Ten pads and thousands of flights per year sure will accelerate Golden Dome, err... I mean "going to Mars"

Re: Starbase, LA

#34

Post by ianm218 »

It’s easy to be pessimistic about Musk timelines/ big tech but I am thrilled that ambitious, real world, hard projects are happening in the US again.

Re: Starbase, LA

#35

Post by bhelkey »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #22

> Starbase, Louisiana will be built to support thousands of Starship flights a year. This self-sustaining spaceport will have propellant production, power generation, deep-water shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities, and an airport. Sounds really neat, but "incredibly ambitious announcement" from an Elon Musk company is starting to wear thin. Is this real, or will it join the graveyard of other incredi…

He often promises incredibly ambitious things that don't happen. But, with a fairly reasonable frequency, he promises incredibly ambitious that do happen.

For example, SpaceX is responsible for a massive spike in orbital launches [1].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...

Re: Starbase, LA

#36

Post by Tuna-Fish »

timcobb wrote: post #19

Why does this need to be built on the beach?

Because as China has shown, people get angry when you drop hundreds of tons of steel and propellant on people.

Rockets sometimes fail. SpaceX has one of the lowest failure rates in the industry, but that's still ~0.5%. When they fail near launch, they cause humongous explosions. Because of this, anyone with even a tiny bit of care for people launches over the ocean, so that when it goes oops, it only harms some fish.

The existing launch sites SpaceX uses are good for launching into prograde (Starbase, TX and Cape Canaveral, FL) and retrograde (Vandenberg SFB, CA) orbits, but they are all either unable or kind of marginal for launching into polar/very highly inclined orbits. (Starbase, TX cannot do it at all, Vandenberg SFB, CA has limitations on when you can launch, and Cape Canaveral, FL needs to fly a dogleg which reduces performance.)

Part of their plans for the space datacenters involve launching a lot of mass into sun-synchronous (which is very highly inclined) orbits. For that, they need a launch site with the ocean either to the north or to the south.

Re: Starbase, LA

#37

Post by sigmoid10 »

chasd00 wrote: post #2

Man if this actually starts to happen it's a good time to be a welder, concrete worker, or any general contractor or tradesman in Louisiana. Coastal Louisiana is some of the poorest areas in the US even more so than the valley in Texas where Starbase Texas is located. Probably 10-20 years worth of solid work building out that site.

If the figures in this announcement hold up, they're gonna spend like $20k per resident of LA. That's insane.

Re: Starbase, LA

#39

Post by stonogo »

timcobb wrote: post #19

Why does this need to be built on the beach?

It doesn't. It doesn't even need to be built, since the Stennis Space Center is already there and already has an excluson zone. This is a vanity project.
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