61–70 of 641 posts
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"
> Pecan Island and nearby wetlands are high-value habitat for migratory waterfowl, shorebirds, wading birds, and other coastal wildlife. SpaceX is not developing the full footprint of the land and will preserve wetlands and wildlife habitat. Pretty cynical corpo-ambiguity-speak, even by Musk standards. We're supposed to be happy they're promising not to develop one-hundred percent of the land footprint? They will lea…
I agree, and the premise is that we're supposed to believe the remaining waterfowl are going to coexist peacefully with... rocket launches? Evolution has done stranger things, but my bet is that the birds will find somewhere else to be over learning to not be startled by nearby earth-rumbling explosions.
A rocket launch every hour or so as SpaceX is promising might be quite different.
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.
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It's for sun-synchronous orbits, almost assuredly. This is for space data centers. Man, I was hoping they would pick Alaska (as it's even better for launching into those orbits) - we could really use new industries other than just resource extraction, but Louisiana makes a lot of sense, I just am surprised that there's actually the available land there to do this. Interesting.
Space data centers still make absolutely no sense.
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.
Are "3,000 new jobs" enough to make a dent though?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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-...
SpaceX and Tesla are both successful companies doing really impressive things, but the more ambitious claims are almost always silently discarded. Including robotaxis, tesla semi-trucks, hyperloop, optimus, roadster 2.0, cheap whole home batteries, true FSD, Mars landing, nueralink, and more I'm sure. It is difficult for me to get excited about a decades long, ambitious project when the follow through rate is <10%.
I used to be interested in SpaceX development. Then I came to the realization that SpaceX is going to be used primarily for the militarization of space: hauling space based weaponry, weaponry drop ships, surveillance satellites, etc. I still feel glad for the SpaceX engineers and scientists who succeed and doing new and innovative stuff. But their employer is just like every other military contractor sucking on the u…