25 thoughts on “SpaceX’s Louisiana Purchase”

  1. SpaceX also said they will be building launch facilities outside of the USA. Will they be able to find something similar to this Louisiana site?

      1. Grok favors Trinidad for their current capabilities and Guyana for its near term potential. It looks like the Louisiana site is especially special.

    3. What was actually said was “we are constantly exploring to find viable sites to expand Starship operations in the future, both domestically and internationally.” There’s a lot of daylight between that statement and “will be building launch facilities outside of the USA.”

      If this Louisiana deal solidifies, I think SpaceX will have its hands quite full building the site out to its intended scale for quite a few years yet. From a standing start SpaceX might be able to have an initial Pecan Island launch site built and operational in 30 or so months, but it would be at least a few more years before this site could become SpaceX’s largest Starship facility.

      There would be no real need for any foreign location until whatever the natural limits of the Pecan Island duchy turn out to be become apparent. Given what SpaceX is already building at Starbase and at KSC/Canaveral on, comparatively, tiny scraps of land, the ultimate maximum scale of a Pecan Island spaceport is almost unimaginable. SpaceX may well never require any additional terrestrial footprint to support everything it intends to do inlcuding Mars.

      1. I’m a little curious as to how well the permitting process will go for land-based operations. Noise and wildlife concerns, EPA, FAA etc. I thought the older plan was to advance sea-launch platforms for this reason. But then w/o a sea-bed pipeline to supply CH4 (maybe the GOX could be pulled from air or seawater amd liquidfied on site given enough electricity or maybe just also pipe in the GOX and liquify. But would need a lot of electrical power at sea. Or supply with tankers. Sounds expensive. I think this Plan B would work better / faster / cheaper… If SpaceX can keep the regulators off their back.

        Harkens back to the days of the “direct-to-the-moon” 60s using the Nova rocket. Which would have been such a sound exciter. Walter Cronkite would have needed a better bunker. Dwarfing the Saturn V, it was envisioned launches from an isolated South Pacific island somewhere near the equator… IIRC.

        1. Speaking of sound exciters…. Those pressure waves coming off the Pad 2 full 33 engine, full duration SuperHeavy static fire as shown in the video were impressive.

          1. My ideal stereo system finally has a subwoofer worthy of my consideration…

        2. The Left keep trying to jam Elon up with wildlife and other environmental issues but they wind up firing blanks. Both Vandy and KSC/Canaveral have been cheek-by-jowl with wildlife refuges for decades. So is Starbase. And the critters are fine with that in all three places. The two ends of Pecan Island that flank the piece of property SpaceX is allegedly about to close on are already wildlife sanctuaries so pretty much a similar situation. The wildlife refuges and the general remoteness of the place make for few neighbors anywhere nearby so the NIMBY factor is also minimal.

          The only way SpaceX will get hassled by regulators again is if the Democrats somehow take back significant government power at the federal level. That looks less and less likely with each passing day, especially anent the White House. Louisiana, itself, is thoroughly red and there is no real prospect of that changing.

      2. There would be no real need for any foreign location until whatever the natural limits of the Pecan Island duchy turn out to be become apparent.

        Or the US becomes hostile to SpaceX. Some post-Trump president could declare war on rich people, for example.

        1. Well, yeah. Or the crab men from Arcturus 4 could invade. I don’t give the latter a much lower probability than the Democrats taking the Presidency anytime soon – or quite possibly ever again.

          Political parties in the US have failed and disappeared before. The Dems have had a good long run, but they enjoy no patent of immortality. And their current leadership are either batshit crazies, clinical psychopaths or elderly geezers too afraid of the crazies and psychos to push back – and one elderly geezer who is, himself, batshit crazy. They’ve irrevocably tied themselves to a lot of 80-20 and 90-10 issues that cannot credibly be jettisoned. That is not a formula for future success.

          Especially given that the entire funding model of the modern left is corrupt deals with donors who want something and institutionalized theft of government funds to advance their agenda. Both require being in power to accomplish. Deny the Dems any consequential power for an election cycle or two and they’ll dry up and blow away because no one will give them any money anymore and they won’t be in office to steal any either.

          Cut off the oxygen and the fire goes out.

  2. I can only imagine Elon has plans to build a site in Japan. Because if I was Elon, I would definitely Japan and I feel confident in this assessment.

    If he doesn’t, I’ll be profoundly disappointed in him.

    1. “Japan is actively developing technology to commercially extract methane hydrate (“burning ice”) from its deep-sea floor, targeting 2030 for private-sector commercialization. As a nation with limited natural energy resources, Japan has successfully conducted the world’s first offshore extraction tests, with large deposits located in the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan”

      1. “Developing…”

        They have been working on hydrates for two decades now and I doubt it will be cheaper than a gas well somewhere else. That’s the point I was trying to meet.

        1. They would simply vent methane, rather than try to sell it.
          Or they needed the infrastructure to sell it in volume to customers.
          What if oceanic methane didn’t need to transport methane to some city on land, but instead sold it at/in the ocean. Or there was a high volume demand for Methane at the ocean site where they were mining it.

          1. And as I recall, one gets freshwater from oceanic methane mining, what if there was also a large volume demand of fresh water in the ocean. So could sell methane and water.

  4. Anyone else notice the phraseology in the OP title? Did Musk have to attend court at Versailles to arrange the purchase? lol

    1. The results could also be as profound as Manifest Destiny! Space-ward Ho!

      1. I miss Spaceward Ho!. Likely for nostalgic reasons as much as anything, but it was a pretty fun game in the day.

  5. Methane and oxygen can be manufacture from seawater and atmospheric carbon dioxide. All that’s required is electricity. As on Mars, just as easy on Earth. And then the launch pad can be wherever. Natural gas will be cheaper on Earth, but so what? Mars is the goal.

  6. Q: How do you get to orbit from Louisiana without overflying a hell of a lot of people?

    A: You don’t.

    1. Better answer: consult a globe. The ideal polar launch trajectory from Louisiana is across the neck of Mexico, far eastern Veracruz and Oaxaca states. Relatively low population and a fast transit IIP/ We already launch across Cuba without permission. The lowest population trajectory is via the Yucatan Strait then across the Darien Gap of Panama with effectively zero population. We already do that too from Florida. These trajectories can also reach an SSO.

  7. Of interest, IFT-12 is exiting the Gulf via the Yucatan Strait, the south of Cuba and north of Jamaica across the Lesser Antilles on the way uphill.

    1. Pioneering the route that will be taken in future by launches from Pecan Island.

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