Although I'm just reading about it now, this seems to be a bit of old news. It has to do with the two half-billion-dollar offshore oil platforms that SpaceX bought back for just $7 million in mid-'20 and renamed Phobos and Deimos, after the two moons of Mars. Around the same mid-20 time frame, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that SpaceX was “building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth.” In reality, the company has done very little to Phobos or Deimos. Phobos’ deck was half-cleared in fitful bursts of work, but Deimos was left almost untouched.
Early this week, a commenter on NASA Spaceflight.com said that the two were scheduled to leave the port in Pascagoula, Mississippi that they have been languishing in for unknown destinations. That's when it became known that SpaceX had sold the two platforms.
However, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told reporters after a presentation at the Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Space Transportation Conference Feb. 8 that the company had sold the rigs after concluding they were not suited to serving as launch platforms.
“We bought them. We sold them. They were not the right platform,” she said. She didn’t disclose when SpaceX sold the rigs or to whom.
Shotwell said the company needed to first start launching Starship and better understand that vehicle before building offshore launch platforms. “We really need to fly this vehicle to understand it, to get to know this machine, and then we’ll figure out how we’re going to launch it.”
That last part, about needing to first start launching Starship and really get to know it before committing to a specific offshore platform with very specific modifications is almost a "well, duh!" moment, it's so very logical and reasonable. Another addition to the list of times I think Shotwell made or is making the right call.
Perhaps even exceeding CEO Elon Musk’s infamously lofty ambitions, Shotwell said that SpaceX has “designed Starship to be as much like aircraft operations as we possibly can get” in the hopes of enabling “dozens of launches a day, if not hundreds of launches a day.” No rocket family in history has launched more than 61 times in one calendar year, making Shotwell’s Starship cadence target hundreds or even thousands of times more ambitious than a 1980s rocket record that’s still standing four decades later.
May I point out that the historical record of 61 launches in one calendar year was set by the Soviet Union in 1980 and was tied for the first time last year by Falcon 9? Oh, and the Russians needed to launch that R-7 rocket 64 times to get 61 successes, while Falcon 9 (including two Falcon Heavy launches) had 100% successes. Even one launch per day would be record shattering, let alone "dozens... if not hundreds of launches a day."
Let's not yet get into pondering whether the US Fed.gov agencies would allow that many launches. SpaceX fought long and hard to receive approval for up to five orbital Starship launches per year from Boca Chica, Texas. They also have approval for up to 24 Starship launches per year out of the Kennedy Space Center pad "just up the road." 24 Starship launches per year? I can hardly wait! I'll have to drive up closer to the pad to watch one of these.
One of the two oil platforms. Poking around a few links, this appears to be the one called Deimos. NASA Spaceflight.com photo by Jack Beyer.
Well, don't forget that SpaceX pulled the DrawWorks from both platforms, and they now are used to raise/lower the chopsticks at the OLIT. They made out like a bandit just for that reason alone!!
ReplyDeleteJust no benefits using a semi-submersible drilling rig for offshore launches. Far too expensive, far too complicated. These are flagged vessels with enormous operating budgets just to keep them on the water. What value does a constantly-moving platform miles offshore and dependent upon supply lines bring to a space launch, one wonders?
ReplyDeleteOne of the concepts is to use them for launching Starships point to point on Earth, not into space. Essentially a supersonic airplane. I think the whole thing about being offshore, though, is about the FAA limiting them to 29 launches per year; 24 from the KSC and 5 from Texas. The idea seems to be that being in international waters might remove or reduce the FAA's involvement.
DeleteThis comment isn't so much on-topic, but this morning I was thinking about space stuff while getting ready for work and it occurred to me that if Andy Weir was writing _The Martian_ today, he wouldn't be able to include the whole sub-plot about NASA needing to beg the Chinese for help because no one else had a rocket that could get a re-supply to orbit in time.
ReplyDeleteToday, NASA could just pick up the phone and let Space X know the date they needed to launch by. If they wanted to have stand-bys just in case the first one didn't make it, they could order that to. Someday they won't even have to call - there will be an app for that.
In fact, THAT would be a super-cool movie scene: a bunch of NASA people in a conference room talking about the need to send up a bunch of supplies, an engineer pulls out a smartphone and look at it for a second, and says, "SpaceX can go on Tuesday."
Some other NASA flunky: "We can't be ready by then."
NASA boss-guy: "When can we be ready?
"Ten days from then."
NASA Boss nods and says, "OK." (engineer swipes right.)