It is amazing to live in an era where experiments in spaceflight are the norm. However, it is important to note that the Boca Chica facility is in a natural preserve and wildlife corridor, https://www.fws.gov/refuge/Lower_Rio_Grande_Valley/visit/boc... , and that when SpaceX started they promised that they wouldn't disturb the locals nor the wildlife. Promises that haven't been kept.
Sadly, SpaceX has behaved like an irresponsible corporate neighbor and is interested in using eminent domain to force the residents to leave. What will happen to the wildlife is something that still isn't clear,
> SpaceX can’t force the residents to leave, but the county can. In 2013, county commissioners established a corporation “to assist in the promotion and development of a spaceport project” in Cameron County. Under Texas law, the corporation has the authority to exercise the same right that lets governments take over private property and compensate its owners. When we met, Treviño, the county judge, told me that while he sympathizes with the residents, the use of eminent domain in Boca Chica Village is “probably a distinct possibility.” The law is on SpaceX’s side. A 2005 Supreme Court ruling expanded the definition of public use, the legal justification for eminent domain, to include economic development, and since then, states have taken advantage of that leeway: Texas, for instance, claimed dozens of homes to make room for a new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys. “That is something, unfortunately, that happens way more than it should,” Renée Flaherty, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm in Washington, D.C., told me.
> Flaherty first heard about Boca Chica in the fall. “Those people were already there and [SpaceX] brought a nuisance to them, and now it’s escalated to the point where the nuisance is so severe that they’re telling them that they have to leave their own property,” said Flaherty, a Texas native herself. If the county moves ahead with legal proceedings, she believes that the remaining residents would have a case for eminent-domain abuse.
If SpaceX wants to blow up rockets, they should be able to do so in a depopulated area that doesn't have species that are uniquely sensitive to explosions. There are at least fifty species of avifauna that exist nowhere else in the contiguous United States, it is an absolutely unique habitat for these birds as well as sea turtles that had been left unexploited and open to nature until SpaceX moved its operations, seeking a site closest to the the equator within CONUS.
I was initially skeptical of the importance of this site, but when the FAA initially granted them permission for this site, it assumed that such testing would not occur. SpaceX has expanded beyond this remit and is conducting extensive testing close to the habitat of several endangered species.
> Caught in the middle of this debate are the managers of the wildlife refuge, who, as public officials, may find themselves in the unenviable position of putting the brakes on a deal that the governor’s office and local politicians hope will be sealed sometime this summer. “We are here to manage the refuge for the wildlife,” explains Robert Jess, a project leader at the refuge. This swath of the Valley is home to a variety of animals, such as the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, the aplomado falcon, and the piping plover, that are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. The refuge scientists must balance their criticism of SpaceX with their obligations to their agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Se...
This feels like a bad faith argument. Farm land, ranches, the land cleared for suburban development. There are thousands of possible sites for such a place in CONUS that wouldn't pose a threat to both the humans and the native fauna.
There really aren't. You can build an engine test stand just about anywhere, but to actually launch a rocket into most orbits, you need the ocean to the east, and you need to be close to the equator. That means it has to be on either the east coast of Texas or the east coast of Florida, neither of which have much uninhabited land.
I have linked to maps above that show that you do not have to build in a wildlife preserve. Just a few degrees upwards they can have depleted agricultural land that is on sale for cheap.
The math on the ∆v savings suggests a paltry benefit for Boca Chica when compared against these sites.
And yes, they should build that engine stand elsewhere.
Hercules used to test-fire rocket motors within the Salt Lake valley. Back in the 1970s, I recall times of hearing a roar, looking at the west side, and seeing one or more tongues of fire. (I also recall times of hearing a boom, looking over, and seeing a cloud of smoke.) I was 14+ miles away. Rocket tests send noise a long way.
The location isn't arbitrary. For safety reasons, rockets launch over the ocean; for orbital mechanics reasons, they launch eastward, starting as close to the equator as possible. Of all the places that a spaceport could reasonably be built, Boca Chica is the least-populated.
There are plenty of other sites that satisfy the constraint. The only reason why Boca Chica was chosen was due to its closeness to the Equator. A few degrees upwards would not drastically change the ∆v savings acquired. Furthermore, a launch site does not need to be the development site for a rocket. They can test fire and develop rockets anywhere, including, say, farm land in Kansas or other states.
> This map highlights working land in Texas, including depleted land near the Ocean that would meet the requirements
Texas probably isn't a great launch site since the vast majority of launch trajectories would take you over populated land at some point or another. There are only narrow corridors between Mexico/Cuba and Cuba/Florida, and that's far too limiting to be worth using as a launch site.
> A few degrees upwards would not drastically change the ∆v savings acquired.
In this case, moving the launch site from Boca Chica (approximate latitude 18.5 degrees north) to southern Texas (approximate latitude 26 degrees north) would result in geostationary orbit insertion burns needing 139 m/s of extra delta v. Not entirely sure how that translates to restrictions on payload size/lifetime.
> They can test fire and develop rockets anywhere, including, say, farm land in Kansas or other states.
They can, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good idea. IIRC rockets tend to be awkward to move around, with larger ones needing barge access, so being able to develop, test, and launch from the same place probably makes things more convenient. Whether that convenience is worth the cost to the development area, though, is another question.
Texas is a great launch site because it has all the required points, south, starting eastwards over the gulf, corrupt government, no taxes. plus if you look at their the beaches it's clear that they destroyed all of them for oil/chemical/nuclear money over the decades already. Even if it has a wildlife protected area sticker attached to it, this means nothing in Texas.
Iterative development involves failure. You don't learn without failure. I suggest you not make snark comments that indicate how little knowledge you have.
Well considering the progress of Falcon 9 and Dragon relative to the rest of the aerospace world, I’d say they are the adults in the room.
Their development methodology is specifically set up to test a lot of hardware and fail a lot in a bid to go faster than a more modeling or analysis heavy approach.
Love to see SpaceX experimenting like this. What's so cool is they've specifically increased the rate of prototype construction (now reported at around one every two weeks) to allow them to increase the aggressiveness of their testing:
More prototypes -> More OK to blow them up -> More audacious testing -> Faster learning and faster progress.
Experimentation is good. Fast experimentation is better! So many people talk about "moving fast", we need to celebrate SpaceX for actually embodying this idea.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 66.2 ms ] threadSadly, SpaceX has behaved like an irresponsible corporate neighbor and is interested in using eminent domain to force the residents to leave. What will happen to the wildlife is something that still isn't clear,
> SpaceX can’t force the residents to leave, but the county can. In 2013, county commissioners established a corporation “to assist in the promotion and development of a spaceport project” in Cameron County. Under Texas law, the corporation has the authority to exercise the same right that lets governments take over private property and compensate its owners. When we met, Treviño, the county judge, told me that while he sympathizes with the residents, the use of eminent domain in Boca Chica Village is “probably a distinct possibility.” The law is on SpaceX’s side. A 2005 Supreme Court ruling expanded the definition of public use, the legal justification for eminent domain, to include economic development, and since then, states have taken advantage of that leeway: Texas, for instance, claimed dozens of homes to make room for a new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys. “That is something, unfortunately, that happens way more than it should,” Renée Flaherty, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm in Washington, D.C., told me.
> Flaherty first heard about Boca Chica in the fall. “Those people were already there and [SpaceX] brought a nuisance to them, and now it’s escalated to the point where the nuisance is so severe that they’re telling them that they have to leave their own property,” said Flaherty, a Texas native herself. If the county moves ahead with legal proceedings, she believes that the remaining residents would have a case for eminent-domain abuse.
- https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/02/space-x-...
If SpaceX wants to blow up rockets, they should be able to do so in a depopulated area that doesn't have species that are uniquely sensitive to explosions. There are at least fifty species of avifauna that exist nowhere else in the contiguous United States, it is an absolutely unique habitat for these birds as well as sea turtles that had been left unexploited and open to nature until SpaceX moved its operations, seeking a site closest to the the equator within CONUS.
I was initially skeptical of the importance of this site, but when the FAA initially granted them permission for this site, it assumed that such testing would not occur. SpaceX has expanded beyond this remit and is conducting extensive testing close to the habitat of several endangered species.
> Caught in the middle of this debate are the managers of the wildlife refuge, who, as public officials, may find themselves in the unenviable position of putting the brakes on a deal that the governor’s office and local politicians hope will be sealed sometime this summer. “We are here to manage the refuge for the wildlife,” explains Robert Jess, a project leader at the refuge. This swath of the Valley is home to a variety of animals, such as the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, the aplomado falcon, and the piping plover, that are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. The refuge scientists must balance their criticism of SpaceX with their obligations to their agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Se...
The math on the ∆v savings suggests a paltry benefit for Boca Chica when compared against these sites.
And yes, they should build that engine stand elsewhere.
These are the wildlife appraised portions of the state, https://tpwd.texas.gov/landwater/land/private/agricultural_l...
There are plenty of other sites that satisfy the constraint. The only reason why Boca Chica was chosen was due to its closeness to the Equator. A few degrees upwards would not drastically change the ∆v savings acquired. Furthermore, a launch site does not need to be the development site for a rocket. They can test fire and develop rockets anywhere, including, say, farm land in Kansas or other states.
https://www.txaglandtrust.org
Texas probably isn't a great launch site since the vast majority of launch trajectories would take you over populated land at some point or another. There are only narrow corridors between Mexico/Cuba and Cuba/Florida, and that's far too limiting to be worth using as a launch site.
> A few degrees upwards would not drastically change the ∆v savings acquired.
In this case, moving the launch site from Boca Chica (approximate latitude 18.5 degrees north) to southern Texas (approximate latitude 26 degrees north) would result in geostationary orbit insertion burns needing 139 m/s of extra delta v. Not entirely sure how that translates to restrictions on payload size/lifetime.
> They can test fire and develop rockets anywhere, including, say, farm land in Kansas or other states.
They can, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good idea. IIRC rockets tend to be awkward to move around, with larger ones needing barge access, so being able to develop, test, and launch from the same place probably makes things more convenient. Whether that convenience is worth the cost to the development area, though, is another question.
Their development methodology is specifically set up to test a lot of hardware and fail a lot in a bid to go faster than a more modeling or analysis heavy approach.
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1266446536772407296
More prototypes -> More OK to blow them up -> More audacious testing -> Faster learning and faster progress.
Experimentation is good. Fast experimentation is better! So many people talk about "moving fast", we need to celebrate SpaceX for actually embodying this idea.
Bravo!