Odd, no mention of the Kwajalein launch facility.

NASA is SpaceX's prime customer

Don't know the numbers, but a quick peek at the launch manifest seems to indicate quite a few other customers.

As for inland launch facilities, your better off launching over an ocean in case of failure.

The Russians and the Chinese launch from inland facilities. There is plenty of land out west that has no population to speak off and is owned by the federal government where large space boosters could be launched in relative safety.

Yes, but Houston has not only a huge & established infrastructure (Interstates, Ship Channel, 3 major airports etc. ), but there is a lot of talent from the shuttle program looking for work, AND their biggest customer is here.

The closer to the equator the better the launch site. Thats why it is in florida besides being able to launch over water.

The rotation of the earth adds to the velocity of the rocket. Its the reason that europe launches from French Guiana. It is only 500 km north of the equator.

I believe the main reason to choose a spot near the ocean is to avoid damage in case of failure but is there a transportation aspect also? I know that the external fuel tanks for the shuttle were floated by barge from Louisiana to Florida. How does spaceX transport their booster?

mob:

Any rocket that is of the size of the spaceX rockets are generally shipped either by train (SRB's) or by military cargo planes (C17's generally). This is yet another area where the private industry is actually piggy backing on government resources actually.

The external tanks (and the stage I boosters for the Saturn V) were shipped by barge from Louisiana to Florida because they are too large and structurally delicate to be shipped by air (even if they were to use a beluga or a dreamlifter, the jolt from landing would probably damage the tank.

Yes, I know, it is odd that they are designed to withstand the rigours of launch but not to be transported, but with the External Tank, part of the rigidity of the stack includes having the two SRB's and the shuttle attached to it to provide some of the strength.

As to the reason for being close to the water, that is exactly the reason why, although they need to ensure that any stage separations do not occur where there is a likelyhood of anything dropping within 500 miles of human presence. (there is actually a small island in the south pacific where NASA paid money to the country to violate that international legal requirement).

JC:

That is really only the case if you intend to launch into a geosynchronous orbit. If you are just launching into space and not really concerned about the specific orbit (it really doesn't matter what orbit the space station is in for example), then you can launch from anywhere. You get a little bit of a boost launching from an equatorial point, mainly due to the bulge in the earth meaning that the earth is actually rotating a bit faster at the equator, but you also end up with logistics issues.

For example, ESA launches from Equatorial Guiana, a French territory in South America. Now nobody can say that ESA really gains anything by launching from there, they may gain a bit in payload, but the cost of transporting components from europe to south america more than offsets that benefit. Yes I know that this is not a valid example when referencing spacex, but the point is that there are many factors that need to come into play when determining an ideal launch point.

Phil

Wrong experience though. The people in Houston have never actually launched a rocket before, those people are in Florida.

Jonathan-2055273: no, the advantage of the equatorial location has nothing to do with the bulge, and everything to do with the latitude and hence the velocity of rotation, which is proportional to the cosine of the latitude (cos 0 degrees = 1, cos 90 degrees = 0). The speed in mph (or kph) of the Earth's rotation at the equator is circumference / 24 hours = 24,900/24 = just a shade under 1040 mph. At Cape Kennedy (lat= 28.5 degrees north), this is reduced to about 910 mph.

The only situation where this wouldn't help is if the orbit was polar.

mike, the reason why you have the initial velocity advantage is because of the BULGE

Your velocity difference by the way is negligible when it comes to launching something the size of a rocket.

Mike

And I didn't say that there was no advantage, just that it isn't that large of an advantage and that the costs of actually trying to launch to that advantage exceed the benefit. The only orbit where it really matters is if you are launching into a geo orbit because in those flights, you need to commit to a plane change which is extremely expensive.

The difference in launch capacity between say Korou and the Cape is around 5%, so if you have a launch that costs 100 million dollars, your extra costs to launch from Korou better not exceed approximately 5 million dollars.

Now the shuttle when launching to the space station is severely hit payload wise from one aspect, but not really overall. Why? because you have to put into your figures that the space shuttle is in itself part of the payload and you need to include its mass in those equations. The shuttle itself weighs about 120,000 pounds and the payload capacity of the vehicle is about 55,000 pounds to its KSC inclination orbit for a system launch capability of about 175,000 pounds. Taking say 10% of that off, to launch into the ISS orbit, which is at an EXTREMELY high inclination, you get about 157,500 pounds total payload, but because you can't cut from the shuttle itself, you get about a 37,500 pound effective payload, which is about right.

That payload would be about the same whether the shuttle was launched from Korou or the Cape.

To be honest, I am not sure why it is a big deal to consider a velocity difference as a major impact when the difference is made up within the first 15 seconds or so after liftoff. It just isn't a major factor (using your number, the velocity difference is actually higher)

Latitude doesn't matter - if you are going to the ISS then you must launch into a plane inclined 58 degrees to the equator, no matter where you launch. In Star City for example, that is almost due east. A plane change for a massive vehicle requires way too much energy and is out of the question. As far as the location of the launch site, that doesn't matter either - currently Houston controls the entire mission as soon as the vehicle clears the launch tower, and the people who know how that is done are ALL in Houston, as well as all of the training facility (simulators, neutral bouyancy lab, and personnel). For Earth science, the higher the orbital inclination the better, since you eventually fly over more of the Earth's surface. Equatorial orbits are good for one thing only, geosync satellites. Pretty boring to look out the window and see the same old equator every time you go around...

David:

I know that, but a plane change for any vehicle is too much given the cost of that plane change is in relation to its mass.

And the location of the launch site does mean everything. Yes in the case of NASA missions houston controls everything once the vehicle clears the tower, but my example was that of ESA, which has a similar situation in that mission control is in France. But the rockets are built in France as well. The cost of transporting their rockets to South America isn't 0, it is a lot of money, as well as the cost of temporarily moving people back and forth from France to Korou. That is as much a logistics issue as to where mission control is.

As for the orbit of the space station, you don't want the space station to perform earth science, what you want in that case are sun synchronous orbit satellites (a specific type of polar orbit). The space station itself would probably be slightly more effective in a Cape orbit (about 27 degrees inclination) because you never actually cross into the south atlantic anomaly which is where there is an increase in radiation from one of the radiation belts dipping down. Again, looking out the window is not what you spend 10,000 dollars per minute for astronaut time.

My understanding is the West coast rocket launches are for polar orbital trajectories only.

Robert-2722194

You are correct.

Yes - you wouldnt want an exploded rocked with possibly a nuclear reactor onboard raining down over Las Vegas (or maybe you would, I dont know - lol)

What do you mean "crazy years"?

digging trenches to hell won't make us go back to space. We may need some trenches for infrastructure purposes but none need be so deep as to reach past the river styx.

Try this link. You never know... http://jobsearch.usajobs.gov/a9nasai.asp

Roddenberry created the character James Kirk, who was born in Iowa. In the original time line of Star Trek, I believe the starships (Including the Enterprise) where all made at the San Francisco Fleet Yards (Which included an orbital dry dock base orbiting around Earth). In the Next Generation, the starships were made at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards on Mars.

Only in the reboot JJ Abrams Star Trek did it show the Enterprise being built in Iowa

I'm not a uber trivia nut of the star trek but I'm a trekkie none the less, but does the JJ Abrams 'Star Trek' actually ever say that the ship yard Kirk goes to is in Iowa? Just because he shows up on a motorbike doesn't mean it has to be near his hometown. Although it is more likely. And wasn't the ship that was being built a different vessel? I thought McCoy and Kirk were transported to the Enterprise via shuttle craft (after some time at the starfleet academy). (I admit the film isn't fresh in my mind, I just remember the scene where McCoy points Kirks attention to the shuttle window and a view of the Enterprise.)

Also, are there any cliffs like the one at the beginning of the film in Iowa?

And finally, isn't Iowa pretty flat? Could that play into the reasoning behind building a large star ship there?

You gotta think that with ease of transportation in the Star Trek universe that materials transportation wouldn't be quite as vital as in our real world. Parts and materials would be shipped to wherever the manufacturers decided was best to make a shipyard.

;-P

Definitely a cool dude, spending money on the space industry is going to pay of big time for him.

mob_barley

He would be the 1st to make any real money. Historically it's been a bad investment. Hopefully you're right, that's the only thing that will keep the march to space going right now.

mv, he is going to have to hit about 40-50 flights a year before he can start making a real profit.

How do you know he need to hit about 40-50 flights a year to make a real profit? I don't think maximizing profits is his primary goal. He is already a billionaire.

Besides there is no model on how to run an Aerospace company like a for profit company. Government/NASA cost+ contracts only encourage additional complexity and delays, it allows the contractors to make more money. If they stream line things it means they make less money. If a cost+ contractor saves NASA $100 million they lose the profits they would of made off of that $100 million. If a for profit company saves a $100 million they save it.

I do think if SpaceX goes public there may be a bit more pressure to turn a better profit but as long he maintains the controlling interest that won't matter. If NASA funds dry up, I do think there are other billionaires that could get excited about the idea of their name getting attached to the first Mars landing. You know the first Trump Tower on Mars or the Apple (computers) Mars Lander. It would make me vomit but don't underestimate the power of having your name attached with something that school children in 10,000 years will read about.

PhillyJimi:

Because I have done the numbers, and I don't believe he is a billionaire anymore, his divorce proceedings indicated that he had all his money tied up in tesla and SpaceX IIRC. SpaceX has spent about a billion dollars in investment so far, (I don't know where it all went, but a lot of it would be into fixed assets like building etc... so it won't directly show up in the rocket development costs). Now just figure out how many rocket launches he would need to start making a profit. His figure may not quite be my estimate, but it would be pretty close.

The question in this type of investment however isn't the number of launches per year during the startup phase, but how long until you can get to that point, and most importantly, how patient are the investors.

And cost+ contracts do no such thing, cost+ contracts always have a minimum cost attached to them, but allow for risk to increase the cost. You have a cost+ contract when you have a lot of risk components. They are commonplace. With a fixed price contract, what you get is a HUGE fudge factor put into the bid and if the costs come below the bid amount beyond a certain amount, then the client gets a rebate. ESA has a fixed bid policy and NASA has a cost+ contract policy.

The only real effectual difference is that ESA doesn't commit to anywhere near as many projects because they get sticker shocked out of doing it in the first place.

From a project management standpoint, the difference between the two types of contracts is who incurs the risk, and when you incur the risk, you also should have project ownership. In the case of NASA, NASA generally owns the project, defines all the requirements and owns the process. Because they have that ownership, they also reasonably should own the risk associated with that development, which means that the contract should be a Cost+ contract because the client in that scenario owns the cost risk.

If NASA were to hand over the project risk, essentially handing a high level set of requirements and saying go do it to the vendor, then the vendor should own the cost risk as they own the process.

By the way, I am an owner of a private company, and we do both cost+ and fixed cost contracts. The decision as to which one to choose depends on the specifics of the project, and the level of technical risk is just one of the factors. The potential amount of requirements change risk is also a factor, because on a cost+ contract, if the client requests the requirements change, then the process for making that change is streamlined because of the cost+ nature (the budgeting is pretty much already there). In the case of a fixed price contract, then the change management process becomes much more complicated because the client is requesting a change that hasn't been 'authorized' in the contract.

Now I wasn't trying to write a thesis there, but the reality is that the nature of the projects that NASA and the Defense Department conduct make it extremely difficult to have a fixed price contract policy.

Launching from a high altitude really doesnt help. Rockets dont just go up. They go fast enough so that when they go around the earth faster than they fall back down to it. So its all about velocity. The reason they spend most of their fuel in the first part of flight is to generate this velocity. They would still need to generate this velocity at any altitude. Also, the closer to the equator you are more boost you get by the spinning of earth.

Your are correct about the mag lev but only in the extent you get velocity from it.

There are lots of ways to bypass tree huggers and environmentalists. Just look at the mountain top mining that still persists. I'm not saying it's a good thing (actually I'm against chopping off the top of mountains) but what I am saying is that if there is good money in it politicians will make it happen because the special interests will pay for it (which I am also against). But that's the reality we live in. Might as well use it to our advantage and build some cool mag lev launch system. Leverage our technologies to gain the advantage.

I want to see them clear the mountain top off of K2, yeah teach those pesky mountain climbers how its done in west virginia.

only for suborbital launches.

ok, just to try to explain why Arizona is not a good location. When a rocket is launched, it basically flies largely vertically during its ascent. This is to get the vehicle stack outside of the thickness of the atmosphere before it tries to attain escape velocity. The space shuttle SRB's for example were jettisoned within 200 miles of the cape after launch.

Now think of launching a rocket from Arizona using that same mission profile. Exactly where are you going to drop those spent rocket components. They can only be dropped (internationally) if there is pretty much no chance that they will land within 500 miles of a settlement. That isn't going to happen from Arizona. (that is an international rule, if a national government wanted to void that, it would be their prerogative to do so, but wisely enough, the FAA has made the regulations such that any risk should not be borne onto anyone that is not part of the organization conducting the launch).

I would say that the only part of the midwest that might be suitable would be the part of texas that starts to approach mexico, but that would not be suitable for launches that have an inclination higher than the latitude of the facility (the space station for example).