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Starbase, LA

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Re: Starbase, LA

#171

Post by njovin »

ericmay wrote: post #122
watwut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Musks money and twitter takeover did a lot of work to convince Americans vote for Trump. Then Musk joined the administration and continued digging the hole

Ok. The OP wrote: > You're being down-voted (and so shall I) but I think you're right. Despite all the animosity towards him, Musk is doing things that are economically meaningful for our nation. In the context of the US building big things, ramping up manufacturing, doing Space exploration, &c. and the person I replied to wrote: > Musk has done a huge amount to put us INTO this situation What situation did he put us…

I'll bite. Things we had in December 2024 that we no longer have today, all of which contribute to the success or failure of major initiatives:

- 2.9% inflation - Billions of dollars of grants for state-run energy projects - NATCAST - Healthy & stable funding for the sciences - Competent leaders at the federal and military levels to oversee large complex projects - Healthy partnerships with allies

Specific actions that have been taken by Trump (backed by Musk) that caused us to lose the above:

- Starting an unnecessary war with Iran - Cancelling grants for energy projects specifically in blue states - Imposing nonsensical tariffs on trade partners - Starting a full-blown trade war with Canada - Alienating other allies, ex. starting a middle-east conflict without any alliances (excl. Israel) - Specifically closing NATCAST because "illegal" - Gutting of science funding by DOGE & others - Removal of competent leaders & prioritization of loyalty over competence when choosing staff

I have a hard time taking anyone seriously when they bring up anything about Trump having a positive impact on manufacturing in America. For 4+ years he's been lying to the American public about how tariffs work and claiming that US consumers paying more taxes to the US gov't in the form of tariffs is going to 'return' manufacturing to the US. We have almost half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs in the US - explain to me again why this is a capacity problem?

Re: Starbase, LA

#173

Post by miltonlost »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #62
ceroxylon wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The wetlands around Cape Canaveral/Kennedy are thriving. Men with guns prevent people from getting too close to the rockets, and people do far more damage to wetlands than a rocket launch once every few days. A rocket launch every hour or so as SpaceX is promising might be quite different.

Kennedy is also surrounded my federally protected land. SpaceX? Noooope. Never trust Elon.

Re: Starbase, LA

#174

Post by miltonlost »

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #47
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…

I can count plenty of incredibly ambitious announcements from them that have turned out amazing! In fact, they are an outlier in how many they have challenges they have taken on and succeeded in. [x] Partially reusable rocket that dropped cost to orbit by an order of magnitude. And no, the space shuttle (while an amazing piece of engineering), doesn't really count. It cost a billion+ to refurbish and did nothing to m…

[flagged]

Re: Starbase, LA

#175

Post by ggreer »

UltraSane wrote: post #56
piloto_ciego wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Whether they make economic sense or not depends on launch costs. With current operational rockets (such as Falcon 9), the launch costs are too high for space compute to be profitable. All these projects depend on Starship succeeding. If you read Starcloud's white paper[1], they make the case that space data centers can be cheaper than terrestrial ones because of access to 24/7 solar power. I think failure is more likely than success for Starcloud and similar startups, but conditional on Starship lowering launch costs, it does look like the idea can make money.

1. https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf

Re: Starbase, LA

#176

Post by runako »

lesuorac wrote: post #64
UltraSane wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space data centers still make absolutely no sense.

When nobody lets you build a land data center they're going to make a lot of sense.

A hypothetical operational space data center will cost a multiple over a similar terrestrial facility. It would be cheaper/more efficient to offer a municipality or its citizens a fraction of that multiple to secure approvals, now that the bullying approach is running out of steam.

Instead of installing MWs of illegal gas generation and also still causing local electricity rates to spike, why not arrange to buy down the electricity of local ratepayers and also comply with existing laws & regulations?

It's worth asking why operators aren't doing that yet. I suspect it's because neither OAI nor Anthropic have an extra $50B-$100B to put out at the moment. We'll see what happens post-IPO.

Re: Starbase, LA

#177

Post by GenerWork »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #5
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #3

> Building a new space coast But are they building it ghost to ghost?

Lol this is a reference to Florida (though I love your Space Ghost reference), we have the Kennedy Space Center, and an Airforce base (I guess its a Space Force base now) which has led to this area being referred to as "Space Coast" adding this in case anyone else might be unaware. Florida is more interesting than people realize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Coast

Read "Building a new space coast" and I immediately wondered what our elected officials here in Florida must have felt when they saw that line. I'd love for SpaceX to greatly expand their presence here in Florida, but at the same time the coast is probably too built up here for SpaceX to have a facility like that unless they go into the panhandle.

Re: Starbase, LA

#178

Post by throwaway894345 »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #48
ianm218 wrote: post #34

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.

You're being down-voted (and so shall I) but I think you're right. Despite all the animosity towards him, Musk is doing things that are economically meaningful for our nation. We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon, but overall I still hope it's possible. (Anyone asking antagonistic questions can go ahead and save their fingers, I won't respond to the petty comments.)

> economically meaningful for our nation

3,000 short term jobs doesn't put a dent in the thousands of jobs he has cut, not to mention the losses to our economy due to the tariffs, immigration policy, and deficit spending that he caused.

> We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon

I'm of the impression that you can't corrupt your way out of corruption.

Re: Starbase, LA

#179

Post by simgt »

I wish Musk had stuck to bullying his employees instead of going after everyone, because SpaceX is still building a more interesting future. Although that apparently involves pouring concrete in a wetland.

Re: Starbase, LA

#180

Post by oceanplexian »

rtkwe wrote: post #75
chasd00 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't fix everything wrong in the state but it's > 0. There's a lot of additional economic activity that comes with the construction too. Restaurants get busier, Walmart gets busier, lots of auto repair/servicing will be needed etc. Som e people will move for construction and end up staying there. It can be a shock to the local communities though but i think the positives still outweigh the negatives.

The biggest issue is these kinds of construction jobs are temporary. It's similar to but not quite as bad as datacenters where you get a very short term influx of skilled highly paid labor but those jobs don't stick around after the construction is over. Starbase will require more people on site at least.

The construction is temporary but what are the economic impacts of having a fully operational spaceport that launches 20,000% more tonnage to orbit than the Florida Space Coast?

Probably a great deal of long term economic impact.

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