Quote from: DanClemmensen on 01/27/2022 02:56 pm<snip>OK, back to the original question: How will SpaceX ship SH and SS this year? building a dock at BC will require dredging a channel from the ship channel through the mud flat, and this will require all sorts of permits and approvals. Has anyone seen any evidence that such an approval process has been started?No need to dredge. Just beached a barge at high tide at the beach at the end of highway 4. Load the Starship or the Super Heavy onto the barge with a crane during the following low tide. Float the barge out at the next high tide maybe with the help of tugs along with dumping ballast water. Of course a temporary roadway extension of Highway 4 is required for the crane and the Starship transporter.
<snip>OK, back to the original question: How will SpaceX ship SH and SS this year? building a dock at BC will require dredging a channel from the ship channel through the mud flat, and this will require all sorts of permits and approvals. Has anyone seen any evidence that such an approval process has been started?
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 01/27/2022 02:56 pmQuote from: EL_DIABLO on 01/27/2022 09:14 amQuote from: DanClemmensen on 01/27/2022 05:59 amI have never been to BC, but when I look at a map, I cannot find a place to build a dock. All of the commentary about a dock has been about a location about 16 miles away on the ship channel near Brownsville. To the north of BC there is a big wetland between the ship channel and BC and that wetland is a wildlife sanctuary. To the south, the Rio Grande is non navigable. To the east, the beach is directly on the gulf and I don't think anyone will will be able to get permission for a dock there for a whole lot of reasons.They are wetlands but not a wildlife sanctuary.OK, back to the original question: How will SpaceX ship SH and SS this year? building a dock at BC will require dredging a channel from the ship channel through the mud flat, and this will require all sorts of permits and approvals. Has anyone seen any evidence that such an approval process has been started?- Dock at Brownsville port: check, already leased on south side near the new South Port Connector Road- South Port Connector Road: mostly check, was due to be opened at the end of 2021- Boca Chica Blvd.: also check, still exists, runs from junction with South Port Connector Road straight to the manufacturing site- Contract with company specialising with moving large heavy objects over land and sea: Check. Roll-lift do that as their bread and butter, and their SPMTs have been moving Starships and Super Heavies for years now- Water access to LC-39 from either the Atlantic or the Intracoastal Waterway: check. route is via Port Canaveral all the way to the turning basin, where a dock already exists for offloading large rocket bodies.- Road access from the turning basin to LC-39A: Check, Saturn Causeway was resurfaced recently, and stretches alongside the Crawler way all around to the far side of LC-39A, bypassing the HIF blocking the ramp the the main pad. No need for new docks, hovercraft, wetland dredging, etc, the route already exists.
Quote from: EL_DIABLO on 01/27/2022 09:14 amQuote from: DanClemmensen on 01/27/2022 05:59 amI have never been to BC, but when I look at a map, I cannot find a place to build a dock. All of the commentary about a dock has been about a location about 16 miles away on the ship channel near Brownsville. To the north of BC there is a big wetland between the ship channel and BC and that wetland is a wildlife sanctuary. To the south, the Rio Grande is non navigable. To the east, the beach is directly on the gulf and I don't think anyone will will be able to get permission for a dock there for a whole lot of reasons.They are wetlands but not a wildlife sanctuary.OK, back to the original question: How will SpaceX ship SH and SS this year? building a dock at BC will require dredging a channel from the ship channel through the mud flat, and this will require all sorts of permits and approvals. Has anyone seen any evidence that such an approval process has been started?
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 01/27/2022 05:59 amI have never been to BC, but when I look at a map, I cannot find a place to build a dock. All of the commentary about a dock has been about a location about 16 miles away on the ship channel near Brownsville. To the north of BC there is a big wetland between the ship channel and BC and that wetland is a wildlife sanctuary. To the south, the Rio Grande is non navigable. To the east, the beach is directly on the gulf and I don't think anyone will will be able to get permission for a dock there for a whole lot of reasons.They are wetlands but not a wildlife sanctuary.
I have never been to BC, but when I look at a map, I cannot find a place to build a dock. All of the commentary about a dock has been about a location about 16 miles away on the ship channel near Brownsville. To the north of BC there is a big wetland between the ship channel and BC and that wetland is a wildlife sanctuary. To the south, the Rio Grande is non navigable. To the east, the beach is directly on the gulf and I don't think anyone will will be able to get permission for a dock there for a whole lot of reasons.
Quote from: Zed_Noir on 01/27/2022 03:28 pmQuote from: DanClemmensen on 01/27/2022 02:56 pm<snip>OK, back to the original question: How will SpaceX ship SH and SS this year? building a dock at BC will require dredging a channel from the ship channel through the mud flat, and this will require all sorts of permits and approvals. Has anyone seen any evidence that such an approval process has been started?No need to dredge. Just beached a barge at high tide at the beach at the end of highway 4. Load the Starship or the Super Heavy onto the barge with a crane during the following low tide. Float the barge out at the next high tide maybe with the help of tugs along with dumping ballast water. Of course a temporary roadway extension of Highway 4 is required for the crane and the Starship transporter.Beaching a barge on a protected beach is likely to be a problem. I assume the beach is protected as a turtle nesting area. Am I wrong?
It seems a lot of the "just make a few modifications!" ideas are missing two underlying issues:1) Environmental studies take a long time to finish.2) The population will tolerate a fair amount of change, but half of the people on the gulf coast are environmentalists and the other half are conservationists. It's like a Voltron of anger when they work together.
Possible methods: *launch to orbit. Works for ship but not for the booster, and (apparently) to be licensed for only 5 per year *suborbital "hop". Works for both ship and booster, but no evidence for a landing site under construction anywhere except BC *Phobos and Deimos are candidates but no evidence that they are being built out for this yet. *barge. No evidence for any construction of a dock, and the nearest candidate is about 16 miles away. *use a hovercraft over the beach. That's a big hovercraft. No evidence that SpaceX is looking for such a craft.
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 01/27/2022 03:41 pmQuote from: Zed_Noir on 01/27/2022 03:28 pmQuote from: DanClemmensen on 01/27/2022 02:56 pm<snip>OK, back to the original question: How will SpaceX ship SH and SS this year? building a dock at BC will require dredging a channel from the ship channel through the mud flat, and this will require all sorts of permits and approvals. Has anyone seen any evidence that such an approval process has been started?No need to dredge. Just beached a barge at high tide at the beach at the end of highway 4. Load the Starship or the Super Heavy onto the barge with a crane during the following low tide. Float the barge out at the next high tide maybe with the help of tugs along with dumping ballast water. Of course a temporary roadway extension of Highway 4 is required for the crane and the Starship transporter.Beaching a barge on a protected beach is likely to be a problem. I assume the beach is protected as a turtle nesting area. Am I wrong?Surely not the entire beach. Just the turtle nesting area, otherwise no one will be allow on the beach during the turtle hatching season.
Quote from: EL_DIABLO on 01/26/2022 09:31 pmWhat is the point of shipping them from BC to KSC? It seems quite clear to me they'll manufacture locally in KSC.Eventually, yes. But it's going to take time to both build up the infrastructure to build vehicles in, the supply chains to provide parts and material, and to hire and train the standing army to work there. On the other hand, BC has been doing that for years.On the launch site site, LC-39A is cleared for build and has little prospect of not receiving a launch license once applied (FONSI already in hand), and no state-mandated public access concerns to limit flight rates. It also sits in the middle of an established orbital launch complex with existing range safety, tracking, telemetry, support personnel, etc, in place and a well-oiled machine for supporting Falcon 9 launches. LOX tankage is already present, so only LCH4 tankage needs to be built out (and at the BC launch site, it's possible that the LCH4 tankage built may need repair or replacement before it can be activated). Construction is actively under way, though of course the BC site has the advantage of construction mostly being complete. The upshot is a few months down the road there is the prospect of having a production site in Texas pumping out vehicles but unable to fly them, and a launch site in Florida ready to fly vehicles but with the nearby factory not yet ready. In that situation, a no-up-front-cost option (literally, until you call up Roll-lift and stamp out a contract you are not putting any money down on assets like enormous floating launch complexes) to get ships at A to the launch site at B is a no-brainer. When it comes to 'hop transport', there are to big barriers: first, the enormous cost of building both the floating launch complexes themselves (when looking at X, and then X-but-on-a-ship, the X-but-on-a-ship will probably have an extra zero stuck on the end of the price tag) and the supply chain to get propellants to them, they are hardly less vulnerable to permitting than any other launch site. A launch license will still need to be issues, so an environmental assessment will still need to be conducted, and you're back to square one in terms of timeline even if you ignore the time needed to build out the platforms themselves. "But they're only short hops"/"but the propellant load is small" etc do not matter one jot: the launch license for Astra's Rocket 3 and for Starship Super Heavy are the same launch license. And with the low flight rates (even the most optimistic annual rates for full-bore Starship are well below even private aviation let alone commercial) and a wholesale revamp of launch licensing just having been concluded, that situation is not likely to change any time soon.
What is the point of shipping them from BC to KSC? It seems quite clear to me they'll manufacture locally in KSC.
I would think that BC could pump out sub assemblies ready for stacking easier and faster than trying to come up with the infrastructure for moving a completed SH or SS. Assembling a High bay does not appear to take long if you have ordered it ahead of time. It is also not too hard to peel off some of the BC workforce to get things started. They could have this all completed long before there is a pad or integration tower.
As I mentioned in a previous reply I don't think there are any plans to ship anything anywhere anytime soon. What is made in BC will launch from BC and what is made in KSC will launch from KSC. Long term when the off shore platforms will be ready I think they will hop them. If that for whatever reason cannot be done they will be barged out, with edzieba's option being more likely, though I'd like the idea of a channel being dredged in the south bay (environmentalists probably less so). I mostly threw it out to discuss how feasible it would be to get permissions to do so.Obviously they are just my 0.02 cents, I could be wrong.
Surely not the entire beach. Just the turtle nesting area, otherwise no one will be allow on the beach during the turtle hatching season.
The Mil Mi-26 can carry about 1/4 of a starship by mass. It's probably as loud as a launch, too.
Quote from: ninjaneer on 01/27/2022 05:52 pm The Mil Mi-26 can carry about 1/4 of a starship by mass. It's probably as loud as a launch, too.Wildly inaccurate, multiple orders of magnitude difference. I was in the VIP stands when Apollo 13 launched. From 3 miles away my ears ached and the vibrations pounded through my torso like it was a sheet of paper. The amount of energy being released by that chopper is a minuscule fraction of that being burned in a SHLV.
Quote from: TomH on 01/27/2022 08:41 pmQuote from: ninjaneer on 01/27/2022 05:52 pm The Mil Mi-26 can carry about 1/4 of a starship by mass. It's probably as loud as a launch, too.Wildly inaccurate, multiple orders of magnitude difference. I was in the VIP stands when Apollo 13 launched. From 3 miles away my ears ached and the vibrations pounded through my torso like it was a sheet of paper. The amount of energy being released by that chopper is a minuscule fraction of that being burned in a SHLV.errr? Great to hear of such experiences.However what has it got to do with the quoted post or even the specific quote?Carrying (pieces of) starships by helicopter, is somewhat different from launching rockets!Maybe X industries could make a giant quadcopter (like a drone) to lift 200 tonnes to ferry the SS and SH? the downdraft would be outside the radius of the ships.
Rolling vertical to the shipping channel could be timed to occur at night, possibly over multiple days between a set of "way stations" to keep any given closure short. If we assume 7 hours total spread out over a week with a daily closure scheduled for that day's segment between 3AM and 4AM I doubt it would cause too much of a problem for people.Edit - For that matter, with appropriate security and traffic control is there any reason that other occasional night traffic to the port that might exist could not be allowed to pass by in a timely fashion?
Here's the route to the docks as soon as the new road is complete. It's desperately unexotic. (gmaps)
In my opinion we have a severe disconnect between the apparently-planned manufacturing rate at BC (my guess: 52 units/yr, a mix of SH and SS) and the approved launch rate to LEO from BC (5 per year). My guesses are as likely to be wrong as your 0.02 cents.Would you care to comment on my guesses? do you think the production rate will be less than 5/yr, or do you think SpaceX will get approval for more launches? At one point Elon was angsting because SpaceX needed 20 Starlink-on-Starship launches before the end of 2022.
