SpaceX set to literally rock Florida with more and bigger Starship launches

SpaceX's Starship is coming to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida – and its plan to use the launch facility means the Federal Aviation Administration will probe the potential environmental impact of Elon Musk's most powerful rockets blasting off the US East Coast. NASA's Environmental Assessment (EA) for the whole affair was …

[MachDiamond]

No EA yet.

There isn't an Environmental Assessment done for Florida yet as was done (rubber stamped more like) for Texas. The announcement that the process was going to be started for Florida came in 2/24 if I recall correctly. They also need permission from Space Force, Kennedy Space Flight Center (which is just two pads) and perhaps even congress since the launch pads at Kennedy are historical landmarks. The Army Corp of Engineers is likely going to be required, forcefully so this time, to oversee construction work and be involved in the planning. While NASA has been put under the sword through relying on SpaceX to deliver a lunar lander system in short order, they aren't happy with how Starship and Booster have a tendency to go boom and aren't excited to have that happen in Florida.

Until and unless SpaceX can prove out Starship, expanding to Florida isn't likely to be in the cards. Just recently Elon let slip that the current iteration of Starship isn't powerful enough to lift 100t to orbit, only about half of that. IFT-3 was an empty test article and had dry tanks on both stages before completion of a sub-orbital launch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No EA yet.

> While NASA has been put under the sword through relying on SpaceX to deliver a lunar lander system in short order, they aren't happy with how Starship and Booster have a tendency to go boom and aren't excited to have that happen in Florida.

It's called rapid prototype testing. Why doesn't NASA use their own super heavy-lift vehicle. Even the James Webb Space Telescope was launched on a European Ariane 5 rocket.

[Noram]

Re: No EA yet.

I suspect NASA might prefer "not so rapid prototype testing" if it means there is less chance of it destroying their facilities, especially if as has been said those facilities have historical significance.

I'm sure if Space-X really dislike the conditions of use they can find somewhere else where the local governor can be persuaded to let them build a facility where they can destroy stuff near the site thinking they know better than the people that did the testing for the forces involved multiple times in the past.

From memory the launch pad in Texas they destroyed was basically known to not be up to the job with the forces involved because both the Russian and Americans had done studies and worked the maths and materials going back to the 60's, and Musk's idea was nothing new for the pad design and construction, and if you're building rockets with a view that it's ok for them to blow up on a regular basis, you probably should understand that the people that own the facilities you want to launch from might not be happy with that idea if it means risking their facilities..

[Spazturtle]

Re: No EA yet.

The construction company told elon it would take 5-10 years to build a pad that could survive daily launches without maintenance (as elon wants) so he went with a different company that built a pad in 6 months (and then proceeded to fail). The new upgraded pad will probably also start failing after a few launches.

[MachDiamond]

Re: No EA yet.

"It's called rapid prototype testing. Why doesn't NASA use their own super heavy-lift vehicle. Even the James Webb Space Telescope was launched on a European Ariane 5 rocket."

It's also called top-down design and that's fraught with risk as can be seen. Normal development starts with testing out sub-systems and components and once those are proved out, a few more parts are bolted on and that's tested. That's bottom-up design. SpaceX could use a Falcon 9 as a "mule" to test Raptor engines one or 3 at a time rather than 39 at a time to get the designed proved out. They still don't work correctly or meet spec. It could even turn out that an F9/Raptor might turn out to be a useful variant.

For something small and cheap, a top-down approach can be valid, but when something is very complex and expensive, a bottom-up approach is faster. If I have the lathe set up to make pintle injectors, it's quick to make several variants all at once to test until I have a design that works how I want it to. Once there, I can get on with the combustion chamber and other components to build up a motor. If I build the entire rocket motor in one go and test it all at once I can't be sure why it doesn't meet spec or goes boom. Even the F1 had design challenges that did mean going back and redesigning the injector plate when two engines were tested side by side and anomalies were found (swirling in the combustion chamber causing instability). If they had just tested multiple engines right from the start, finding the problem would have been a much slower process.

NASA puts together science investigations and, to some extent, spacecraft to carrying out those missions, they don't design and build rockets to launch things. Even SLS that NASA was forced to do was a set of specs sent out to bid.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Engine design philosophy

Raptors will not fit on a Falcon as they are a different shape. So redesign the mount points and they still will not work because the run on methane not RP1. So redesign the pipes and the tanks and you cannot launch because the Falcon launch infrastructure is not set up for methane. Build out new launch infrastructure, do some iterative testing with explosions and crashes into the sea then you get a rocket that will eventually be able to compete with Falcon 9. The goal is to make a step reduction in launch cost. For that you need a bigger rocket to make second stage re-use possible and to divide the per launch costs by more and bigger Starlinks. A Raptor based Falcon is all development cost with no progress. Starships are cheap because they are stacked rings of sheet steel. SpaceX churn out about one per month and there are a bunch of them in the rocket garden. Compare that to New Glenn: large blocks of aluminium machined out to orthogrid and welded together. So far Blue have made one test article for fit checks on the launch pad and nothing suitable for flight.

Raptors are tested on the ground at McGregor. They work fine on the ground. There are still explosions because SpaceX runs some tests to destruction to find the limits and because they are still experimenting to reduce costs, increase production rate, thrust and efficiency. It has been a while since I looked but over 350 Raptors have been manufactured and they complete about one per day. Raptors have been failing in flight because of overall system issues. The tanks have not supplied the required pressure. The pipes to the engines have leaked and caused fires that burn out the engine management computers. For any other launch company Raptors would be fine for stage 1 as no other company requires stage 1 engines to relight for landing. Most rockets need stage 2 engines that can re-light. Again this is a system issue. Starship was in a spin from which it could not recover. Most engines require the propellant to be settled before they can re-light.

Compare Raptor to the more traditionally designed BE-4. "Where are my engines Jeff?" was all over the rocket enthusiast corners of the internet for about a year. Tory Bruno showed remarkable patience - perhaps because Vulcan's upper stage had issues that resulted in an explosion causing delays beyond the late delivery of the first two BE-4s. Last time I checked only one of the second pair survived qualification. Tory's patience this time might be because there are no payloads ready for Vulcan.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Engine design philosophy

"Raptors will not fit on a Falcon as they are a different shape. So redesign the mount points and they still will not work because the run on methane not RP1. So redesign the pipes and the tanks and you cannot launch because the Falcon launch infrastructure is not set up for methane. Build out new launch infrastructure, do some iterative testing with explosions and crashes into the sea then you get a rocket that will eventually be able to compete with Falcon 9. "

So there's some mods to make. Car makers (other than Tesla) do a similar thing all of the time. The idea would be to have a test system to verify Raptors can operate in space, restart, etc. It would be less expensive to do that with 1 to 3 at a time rather than losing 39 at a time the way it's being done now even with all of the hacking that would be required on the F9. As far as fuel goes, not a big deal. The tank on Starship isn't insulated nor particularly different for CH4 than RP1. Plumbing sizes, valves and sensors are different, but easily solved. The goal isn't to have a fully optimized launch vehicle, but a test platform that's less expensive to iterate where many of the flight characteristics are already well known. Either a Raptor variant of the F9 or the F9 with Merlin engines could launch a second stage with a vacuum Raptor to do tests of that model with restarts and other regimes that will need full evaluations before the SX HLS. The F9 variant might also be a less expensive way to try out the chopsticks catching approach. They already know they can land a F9 with a fair degree of accuracy.

[Gene Cash]

Yes, there was a first assessment done for Florida, but it's now invalid because of all the Starship design changes, the unexpected occurrence of concrete dust rain from the first launch, all the pad redesign since then, and the fact that they've realized Musk is full of shit with his predictions.

4/10 was when the FAA said it was starting the 2nd EIS.

So what's the current books on the "chopsticks" working? How many attempts before they actually catch one w/o it going boom?

I think this is going to be on-hold until that happens.

[Catkin]

The chopsticks seem ridiculous but so did landing a Falcon 9 lower and that thing went boom a lot of times. I wouldn't write off SpaceX just yet, at the very least, as far as Starship reusability.

[Richard 12]

What's the margin for error?

The Falcon 9 initially comes down to hit the sea, then slews over to the barge or landing pads if everything still seems to be working.

The existing barges and landing pads are a much bigger target, and don't have any infrastructure nearby should the booster fail during terminal. Airfields don't put anything near the runway for the same reason.

Where does a Starship booster crash if the engines fail? The tank farm?

They've had several Falcon 9s land very heavily and over-crush legs or even break the barge. Even under nominal conditions the legs are a crush structure.

It seems like there's no margin at all.

[Gene Cash]

Re: What's the margin for error?

There's no margin, and are they actually expecting to put people on this with absolutely no escape system? Even the Shuttle had crappy mostly-useless ejection seats the first few flights.

I'm a complete space nut and I wouldn't fly it.

[MachDiamond]

Re: What's the margin for error?

"There's no margin, and are they actually expecting to put people on this with absolutely no escape system?"

For a lunar lander, there's no place for the astronauts to go if there were an escape system. The Artemis mission profile has the astronauts going to and from lunar orbit in the Starliner capsule on top of the Senate Launch System. The lander that SpaceX is being paid $3bn to develop is just an elevator to and from the lunar surface. There's the Dear Moon private circumnavigation of Luna, but that's on indefinite hold. The only application for Starship outside of a lunar lander is as a giant Pez® dispenser for Starlink satellites. Elon talks about Mars, but SpaceX isn't working on anything outside of the rocket.

[John Robson]

Re: What's the margin for error?

Starship could take on virtually any launch contract... and be cheaper than existing launch vehicles, not just per kg, but outright cheaper for the same payload.

Of course that assumes good reusability, but that's the entire design philosophy.

They know that sabatier works on mars, so their first trip there will be a test of ISR technology... Well, and the landing part... that's not going to be easy.

[druck]

Re: What's the margin for error?

Are they in need of a good kitchen knife on Mars?

[MachDiamond]

Re: What's the margin for error?

"Starship could take on virtually any launch contract... and be cheaper than existing launch vehicles, not just per kg, but outright cheaper for the same payload."

Beg pardon, there have been no operational launches yet so to say it's cheaper is a belief, not a fact. SpaceX has spent over $2bn thus far in the Starship program so it will take many successful launches to amortize that cost. The claims of a lower cost will also require recovery (intact) of both stages which hasn't been demonstrated and reuse.

[_Elvi_]

Re: What's the margin for error?

In Elon's eyes ... making a name for it's self \more $$ is more important the space meat bags..

The mature boys in the games (NASA, ESA, Blue Origin, Roscosmos, Jaxa ECT) have escape mechanisms..

Here as an example: https://www.blueorigin.com/safety

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: What's the margin for error?

You mean like the tested and working escape system used when manned Dragons got to space atop a Falcon 9? That sort of thing?

There's lots to criticise Musk for without making new stuff up.

[Catkin]

Re: What's the margin for error?

Looking at the location for the tower and the direction it faces, I assume they intend to slew over the ocean first but I have no inside information to confirm.

[MachDiamond]

Re: What's the margin for error?

"The existing barges and landing pads are a much bigger target, and don't have any infrastructure nearby should the booster fail during terminal. Airfields don't put anything near the runway for the same reason."

The spacing between the launch pad and the landing pad at Vandenberg is closer than you might think. Just a short distance from the landing pad is a truck parking area where they stage tankers for LOx and LN2. Seen from the apogee of the booster, the two locations are the same couple of pixels. As long as the correct figures are in the nav system, it works, but we've all seen things like swapping imperial measurements for metric and a shifted decimal place. The list of things that can go wrong is a long one. Rocket design is trying to get the maximum power from the least mass so margins are shaved right to the bone on expendable systems and the bulking up on reusable craft drops their efficiency.

[John Robson]

Re: What's the margin for error?

The F9 also has to suicide burn because it's too light to hover... the superheavy can come down much more gently (at the cost of more fuel obviously)

That's a very different challenge in terms of landing - and they're doing a precision soft "catch" over water to start with...

[MachDiamond]

Re: What's the margin for error?

"The F9 also has to suicide burn because it's too light to hover"

The most fuel efficient trajectory on decent is to time the burn so the rocket stops right at the moment it touches the landing pad. In practice, there's still a tiny bit of downward velocity so there's less chance of coming up short by a couple of meters and going back up.

[MachDiamond]

"The chopsticks seem ridiculous but so did landing a Falcon 9 lower and that thing went boom a lot of times."

If the rocket can be recovered upright on the tower, it would be faster to recycle the pad provided everything goes well. If the vehicle is reusable in a quick enough manner, having at the pad cuts down on handling. When I was working on landers, we talked about this sort of thing as an approach to get rid of landing legs. The trick was having enough accuracy that the lander would be able to nestle back into the stand. We didn't move forward with those ideas since they'd only work on Earth using differential GPS and a miss would destroy part of our test site. If the moon gets a fleet of nav satellites/beacons, there could be a possibility of precision landing there, but in another couple of decades, there could be a better way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Booooooommmmbs innnnnn Spaaaaaaaaaace

Starship?

Pig’s Arse.

[Michael Hoffmann]

Literally???

ElReg, I expect better!

Yes, Florida is kinda swampy, but I doubt that even 44 of those launches will "literally rock" the state or even slosh it around a bit.

[herman]

Re: Literally???

Hmm, Valuejet 592 didn’t even cause much sloshing - it just disappeared into a black hole in the swamp.

[aerogems]

I mean, I know that with getting things into certain orbits there's only so many places you can launch from, but... Florida's set to be literally under water in the not too distant future. It's already just a giant sandbar. There's a lot of empty* desert space along similar latitudes in shitholes like Texas and Arizona. It's not like they'd build the launch facility near the gulf anyway, so they should be able to stay well out of reach of what rising ocean levels will subsume.

Anyway, at the rate Xitler, and others who think like him, seem intent on destroying this planet, we may need to find another one ASAP assuming we want the human race to be able to continue beyond another 100-years or so.

* Of humans anyway

[David Hicklin]

Florida has the advantage of launching over the Atlantic Ocean, so less likely to land on someone in the event of a RUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk is hoping that OJ Trump

is elected in November.

The Orange Jesus has promised to destroy the EPA and all that it stands for almost on Day 1 when he becomes dictator.

Elon the Almighy is not an environmentalist. He's just after the dosh.... It would not surprise me if we find out that he is one of those billionaires who have donated a few hundred million (or that obscene salary he wants from Telsa) to the OJ's Super PAC. Note... there are no limits as to what can be donated to Super PAC's.

As Elon the Almighty has said that he's tired of running Tesla, could SpaceX be the next LLC of his to get thrown on the scrapheap?

I hope you Mushmobile drivers are prepared for them to soon be only fit for scrap.

[John Robson]

Re: Musk is hoping that OJ Trump

Did you only pretend to take your meds this morning when nurse brought them round?

[Roj Blake]

FONSI

Can the FONSI fix broken jukeboxes with a nudge of the elbow?

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: FONSI

And water ski too?

[VicMortimer]

Re: FONSI

Anything to do with Xitler has definitely jumped the shark.