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Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

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Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#171

Post by bell-cot »

gpm wrote: post #125
wolverine876 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's a more efficient place to build the facility, perhaps someplace with abundant water so that you don't have to spend all this energy to create it?

I don't think there is. You need water to your east (because you can't fly over people for safety reasons), for a really long way. As in launches from texas have to dodge Florida, Cuba and all the other islands over there. You need very low population density (because rocket launches and landings require large exclusion zones). You need to be in the US, because of export restrictions. You want to be as far south as p…

> or launching from tiny islands/ocean platforms which will have the exact same fresh water issues.

If launching from an ocean platform, then fresh water seems pretty easy to bring in via tanker. That's less workable at Boca Chica, or on most tiny islands - where ports for decent-sized tankers are scarce.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#172

Post by cma »

ericcumbee wrote: post #160
cma wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is for desalination why aren't they using solar, which wouldn't even need storage in that application.

Because you also get Methane as a by-product of natural gas production and that is the fuel for starship.

Methane is typically the vast majority of the gas, I figured they were burning it for desalination too, but it makes sense if they are burning just the other fraction.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#173

Post by lazide »

bserge wrote: post #131
lazide wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is currently no known way a Mars colony could be economically self sustaining or self contained. Literally zero. So unless there is something truly magical up someone’s sleeve, we need to keep Earth workable for us for the foreseeable future. And I think that is a good thing.

Fuck Mars, all those asteroids are going to be way more valuable for Earth. Getting to them needs the same exact industry.

Also more energy efficient as no need to climb back out of a deep gravity well!

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#174

Post by speedybird »

plorg wrote: post #146
speedybird wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think wildfire smoke makes a region unlivable, then consider that before deciding where to live. Wildfires are a natural part of the ecological cycle in some parts of the world. You can fault California for botching their forest management by suppressing fires and consequently causing larger fires later on, but either way you will have to cope with the smoke. (Also, the sky turning red is actually somewhat pre…

Sure, but when the smoke is bad enough to create bad air quality over half a continent away I think it's more than a "you chose to live in the wrong place" problem.

> bad air quality over half a continent away

If you mean that Californian fires are smoking out states like Nebraska, that's something I haven't heard of. But if you mean smoking out Seattle, the example used above by DisjointedHunt, that's not right. All of the west coast burns; from California all the way to Alaska. The smoke in Seattle mostly comes from fires in Washington and British Columbia.

And it really is a "you live in the wrong place" problem because there isn't a solution to that other than humans completely re-engineering the ecology of the west coast, which simply is not going to happen for a myriad of reasons. So either you learn to cope with it (as I and many others have) or you move further East. The fires won't stop.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#175

Post by agar »

whatever1 wrote: post #169
agar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> burn fossils for tourism purposes Like airplanes? Like cruise ships? Would it somehow be better if SpaceX just bought natural gas on the open market, reducing available supply and thereby potentially increasing price through market forces? Are you suggesting we tax carbon so SpaceX has to pay tax on the fuel they extract that could go towards clean energy investments? I'm not sure of the point you're making.

> Like airplanes? Like cruise ships? 1 space x launch for wealthy tourists emits the same CO2 as around 500 transatlantic flights that can haul 10’s of thousands of people between continents. Yet this forum is fast to propose solutions to make long haul flights unaffordable, in order to curb the emissions, but somehow when Elon Musk is involved, the calculation changes completely and it is fine to needlessly emit co2…

First, the primary use case of rockets (especially SpaceX) is satellite lift and ultimately Moon and Mars landing, not "wealthy tourists." Obviously the recent Inspiration4 launch shows that there will be tourist flights, but this appears to be the exception and not the norm (unlike Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic).

Second, there are approximately 100,000 airline flights per day worldwide; American Airlines alone flies 5,000 per day. Even 1,000 rocket launches per year would be equivalent to 5 days of traditional flights.

People disagree with the climate concern not because "Elon Musk is involved" - it is because critics are focused on the wrong thing. There are far more climate destructive practices with far less benefit to the good of mankind. All those 100,000 flights per day? That only accounts for about 2% of carbon emissions. A SpaceX launch, to use your figures, accounts for 0.00005%.

So why focus on this extraordinarily tiny fraction of climate impact? Is it because it's Elon? Because rockets look big and thus wasteful?

What about the incredibly important climate monitoring satellites they'll lift, or benefits like GPS, global internet, potential breakthroughs in space manufacturing, astronomy, or physics? Or even just the hope and excitement about the future that many feel in the face of otherwise depressing news everywhere. The massive size and lift capacity of the Starship (100 tons to orbit, 8m wide by 20m high or so) will transform activities in low earth orbit and beyond.

And I'll close by saying, yes I think Elon has earned a little slack - he has done more than most people on the planet to reduce global emissions. Tesla, Solar City (now Tesla solar), battery technology (which has been a massive impediment to clean energy storage), future electric long-haul trucks, and the supercharger network (to make extended travel on electric vehicles possible) all have reduced emissions tremendously - probably far more than the additional carbon from rocket launches (though I haven't done the math).

So that's my $0.02, anyway.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#176

Post by whatever1 »

agar wrote: post #175
whatever1 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like airplanes? Like cruise ships? 1 space x launch for wealthy tourists emits the same CO2 as around 500 transatlantic flights that can haul 10’s of thousands of people between continents. Yet this forum is fast to propose solutions to make long haul flights unaffordable, in order to curb the emissions, but somehow when Elon Musk is involved, the calculation changes completely and it is fine to needlessly emit co2…

First, the primary use case of rockets (especially SpaceX) is satellite lift and ultimately Moon and Mars landing, not "wealthy tourists." Obviously the recent Inspiration4 launch shows that there will be tourist flights, but this appears to be the exception and not the norm (unlike Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic). Second, there are approximately 100,000 airline flights per day worldwide; American Airlines alone fli…

Even ExxonMobil by itself does not contribute more than 0.00001% to the total global emissions, and they keep our infrastructure running.

So I guess nobody has to do anything about climate change since they individually represent a tiny fraction of the problem.

Then why do the peasants pay renewable energy tax?

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#177

Post by groby_b »

oceanplexian wrote: post #43
speedybird wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "he's at best exploiting loopholes and at worst operating extrajudicially. [...] But, more importantly, it's irrelevant to the problem at hand, sidestepping the regulation process" Again, the EPA exists, so where are they in this? What loophole is SpaceX using to skirt around the EPA?

IMHO SpaceX should get an exemption for national security purposes (For the same reason the US Military doesn’t need to abide by the EPA). Access to space is in the national interest. I don’t think something that has an immeasurable impact on the climate is anywhere close to being more important.

SpaceX can get a national security exemption the moment we nationalize them.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#178

Post by nsonha »

rpmisms wrote: post #147
Jweb_Guru wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk says a lot of dumb things. I'm about as far as a Musk fan as you can be. But acting like rockets are going to be powered by clean energy in the foreseeable future is just wishful thinking.

> But acting like rockets are going to be powered by clean energy in the foreseeable future is just wishful thinking. So were practical electric cars 20 years ago.

it was already practical? The 20 years was just for the economics to work it out.

If you want to make that comparison watch how long commercial clean energy air travel will take. Then we can make prediction about rockets, which, mind you, escape freaking Earth's gravity

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#179

Post by rspeed »

dragontamer wrote: post #170
rspeed wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it ignores is that to perform the maximum number of launches permitted under this new license will consume around 1% of the methane this would produce. This equipment will be be used, at most, a few hours every month, but he's producing numbers under the assumption that it would be running 24/7.

You seem confused. This topic is about the pretreatment plant, not the power-plant. You don't build a pretreatment plant if you're only using a fraction of its capacity. You'd instead just ship in pre-treated methane by pipeline or by truck. But that's not what SpaceX is asking for. SpaceX is asking for their own, private, pretreatment plant. For... some reason. (The underlying theory is: SpaceX seems to be trying to…

The pretreatment plant is for extracting pure methane from natural gas. That is in the document.

Re: Engineer demos how SpaceX is building fracked well gas plant

#180

Post by dumbfoundded »

wolverine876 wrote: post #127
ESGHound wrote: post #102

Heres a tl;dr from Reddit. I'm very tired as this is a big deal and no, I don't have a cohesive narrative throughout the series. I was trying to get as much information out there during the very short 30-day window for public comment. I believe public comment is super important for these types of projects. I have over a decade of experience in this specific field, and have worked as a regulator, for non-profits, and…

> I believe public comment is super important for these types of projects. Something I've always wondered: How is it that public comments have power? What stops officials from mostly ignoring them or misconstruing them? And if the comments do have power, what stops vested interests from hijacking them?

I'm not sure about these types of projects but public commenting for the FDA proposed regulations regarding hemp was actually really helpful for the industry.
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