It's a slow news day, and as I wait for tonight's SpaceX launch, a couple of small stories caught my eye.
Starbase at Boca Chica, Texas, has voted to become a city.
A small city.
On Saturday, eligible residents—mostly SpaceX employees—voted 212 to 6 to incorporate a 1.6-square-mile patch of Cameron County, Texas, as the municipality of Starbase, according to results published by the county.
The source article doesn't say what the new city's population is, but I tend to think it's probably more than the 218 people who voted in the election. Starbase is where every Starship test we've seen has been launched from, and the other news item about them today - that the FAA has cleared them to have 25 Starship launches per year - those launches will be from Starbase.
Starbase serves as the launch site for SpaceX’s rocket program, which holds contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense to return astronauts to the moon and eventually reach Mars. The new Starbase city is led by Mayor Bobby Peden, SpaceX’s vice president of Texas test and launch operations. Starbase City also has two commissioners with ties to SpaceX, who will oversee planning, taxation, and local governance. Starbase’s new Type C city status allows a property tax of up to 1.5%, per the Texas Municipal League.
One of the stories around this is that SpaceX had wanted the ability to close the beach access road more often, or scheduled more to their liking. If you watch the weekly updates from the groups that report on Starbase, you'll notice they do a lot of the work that involves moving large things around the base late at night or before dawn. That's one way of minimizing how much they annoy the people going to the beach. Beach access will be Starbase city's equivalent of an annoying pebble in your shoe that you can't just get rid of. The ability to shut the roads to the beach that Cape Canaveral Space Force Station has just doesn't seem likely, the way I read this.
Photo of Starbase launch area. The sign is relatively new, and is reflected in a pond right in front of the wall it's mounted on. Image source: Teslarati
SpaceX has preliminary plans for the first Starships going to Mars.
Just short of two months ago, Elon Musk let interviewers know when he thinks the first Starship missions to Mars will fly. There isn't a specific calendar date, but it will be in the next launch window to Mars close to the end of 2026. The first missions will be unmanned, robotic missions, and the robots will be Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots.
“Starship departs for Mars at the end of next year, carrying Optimus,” Musk said. “If those landings go well, then human landings may start as soon as 2029, although 2031 is more likely.”
If, like me, you're used to thinking that those launch windows to Mars happen every two years. That's approximately every two years; the 2026 window is open at the end of calendar '26, while the '29 window is in the beginning of the year, a little over two years after launch.
There's no real data on what the mission might involve, but just getting there is quite an accomplishment. Sending an Optimus robot makes sense to me.
I read somewhere that SpaceX had floated the question of building a road around the production and launch facilities so that the current road is basically exclusively for SpaceX's use and the new outer road will be for traffic. And that the locals and the county shut that like of questioning down.
ReplyDeleteNow that Starbase is SpaceX's municipality, it will be interesting to see the physical borders of the land to see if SpaceX can build a road without county or state interference (except at the environmental level.) If there isn't room, will SpaceX annex enough county land that they then could build said road?
Lots of questions as to the reason for SpaceX to create the municipality of Starbase. Better control of all areas is obvious, but lots of other questions like the road and access issues, will there be a Starbase police force or will they pay for services from the county, will there be a Starbase fire force or, again, will they pay for services from the county, and so on and so forth.
Next year is going to be interesting to see how everything works out.
I saw that about the road to the beach, too. The road runs well inside the danger zone, and much of the beach is, too.
DeleteI figure the greens are gonna sue over this, try to keep it tied up in court. Like they did last year. They said the water used for fire suppression was poisonous and SpaceX had solid measured data saying it wasn't.
In concert with these future goals, lot of talk regarding constant thrust engines, which if I understand how orbital mechanics work, even a rather tiny amount of thrust, run constant with the required turnover and retro phase, drops travel time quite a lot. Considering many factors regarding the numerous risks of human space flight, would not be surprising when SpaceX incorporates a constant thrust engine in their future manned Mar's expeditions. Aside from the time factor should be some extra deltaV exchanging human consumables for fuel or increasing payload, saying it ends up a no brainer employing constant thrust engine tech, seems from how I understand things a win-win all around. What is all about notable CT engine R&D recently, then there was announcement mid winter by some Russian's, think it was announced by that Russian state high tech conglomerate, they have a viable operating CT drive, how it can reduce travel time to Mars to a few days.
ReplyDeleteYou've got the concept right that a relatively small amount of thrust can really impact travel time. Another benefit is if you can have enough thrust to create some force pushing people into seats and everything, like a simulated gravity, you reduce the problems like bone loss by minimizing the time in zero G.
DeleteThe Russian announcement is vaporware, but a UK company, that has been running in stealth mode and has UK funding, apparently has a working linear fusion drive with 2.5 pounds of thrust that they will be testing very soon in space.
DeleteThats right about the bone problems, good point. All the more reason for CT tech.
DeleteI would not underestimate the Russian's, they have consistently always lead the world in rocket engine designs, (till SpaceX), add to that they have a number of outstanding new jet engines on the market with some ingenious design features. If they are making claims about a CT engine, like to see where its supposedly false.
DeleteThe Texas Legislature nixed plans for Starbase City to control road closures.
ReplyDeleteI read that the new city will have a population of 282 to start with; if so most of the population voted.
ReplyDeleteI've also read of locals complaining about SpaceX (what few of them there are).
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
In the recent past, towns mostly controlled by one organization have been limited by federal and state governments in what they can do.
Jonathan
About the 2026 Mars mission, it will not be the traditional beer can sized scientific instrument. Since there is only periodic opportunity to go, SpaceX will push everything through that window while it is open. So, multiple rockets carrying everything they can think of. Robots, drones, a full nuclear reactor, rovers, construction equipment, construction supplies, factory equipment and everything in duplicate. Musk has the billions, but only one chance.
ReplyDeleteI doubt people will go this first trip, we do not have the technology in place to be comfortable they can survive. However, Musk would not have to ask for volunteers, he would have to turn away millions of them.
Best believe he's going to send his robot staff - that's why he developed them.
DeleteAnd... The Boring Company.
Musk is about 5 moves ahead of everybody else.