SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Starship spaceports
nasaspaceflight.com
nasaspaceflight.com
Semi-submersible rigs, of which this is an example, basically flood ballast tanks in lower pontoons to sink lower in the water for stability and then use typically 8 anchors to keep the rig in place. You can also use dynamic positioning although I think that was only used on drillships when I was involved.
They are designed to lodge and get partially buried in the sea floor soil.
Some oil rigs might be anchored more permanently to submerged concrete blocks or very heavy metal anchors, you basically drop them off a ship then when the rig moves into place you have divers connect the anchor cables to the previously submerged anchors.
Some also use steering engines for station keeping but that is usually for smaller exploration and mobile rigs.
Yeah, I'm just familiar with exploration rigs. I was actually trying to remember if the Ocean Odyssey, which ended up being used by Sea Launch, for a launch platform, had dynamic positioning or not. I think it may have but I left before it launched and wasn't involved in that aspect of its design.
At that point the exhaust might be the biggest problem but if you design your exhaust deflectors correctly they themselves can be used for station keeping as long as you don’t vent everything from one side of the rig I think you’ll be all right.
Deep enough ballast tanks and dynamic positioning should be more than stable enough for launch.
I think the rigs in the med use dynamic positioning even on a semi permanent basis because the Mediterranean is much calmer compared to say the North Sea or even the Atlantic.
With drilling, your big constraint was stresses on the marine riser (the big pipe that connects the drill floor to the subsea blowout preventer) and the parts connected to it. As I recall you wanted to keep your horizontal deviation at less the 2-3% of water depth.
Basically, the rig would be towed on station. Each of the four columns in the corners of the rig largely consisted of chain lockers and there were two big anchor windlasses at each corner. Each anchor would be lowered down in sequence and a work boat would carry the anchor out some distance with the chain playing out and drop it. It would then be tensioned using the windlass so that the anchor digs into the sea floor. This operation was then repeated. So you basically end up with a pair of anchors coming from each corner in some sort of a spread configuration.
I'm sure there were later designs that used dynamic positioning rather than anchors but those were just on drill ships when I was working.
Absolutely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broglio_Space_Centre . Italy was perhaps the pioneer in such uses?
1. Get to the SpaceX terminal somewhere (maybe a major airport because of connecting flights), security checks, check in luggage and board an helicopter.
2. Fly to the launch platform.
3. Disembark, get up to Starship.
4. Many Gs of acceleration.
5. Fall to destination.
6. Many Gs of deceleration.
7. Disembark, board the helicopter.
8. Fly to the airport, immigration checks, collect luggage.
9. Leave the airport.
The two helicopter hops cost time, maybe not much more than some long rides on airport buses. The acceleration and deceleration will be exciting but maybe not everybody fit to fly can withstand them. I guess it's not for everybody.
That would mean that a Starship decelerating to the destination would not create a classic "ball of fire" in front of it and risk a burnup.
Returning 1st stages of Falcon 9 do not require thermal protection either.
Neither will the ticket price be, I guess. At least at first.
A regular service for civilian customers, that is another story. Just like Concorde, it might prove economically infeasible.
Can starship land in Earth like gravity on a standard concrete area?
Concorde's heels were
1) No supersonic over water
2) Limited Range
3) Limited use to reclaim development costs and ongoing maintenence costs
4) Eating into their owners fares -- standard London-NY cost was £8k return, or £13k today. That's in the same ballpark as an F return pre-covid, so BA weren't making more money.
I think you meant no supersonic overland
Not many nimbys if you're 20 miles off the coast of NY going to 20 mile off the Singapore coast (not that nimbys would have any say in Singapore), and nobody en-route would even know it's flying overhead.
OK you have a 30 minute ride at each end from downtown, but that's not much more than going to JFK/Changi from downtown. 1 hour checkin and 1 hour flight, you're doing end to end in 3 hours rather than 22.
No. If you want it back, you land at a friendly base. The nominal use would not likely to be for insertion but logistics, like a really fast C-17.
It's intended to be quite cheap to build, however, so it's not impossible that it could be used one way (in a very high-value operation.)
> Can starship land in Earth like gravity on a standard concrete area?
Yes. They're doing that right now. Taking off from a flat pad, however, is unlikely, at least in current configuration. A "tactical" version with pre-main-ignition "hop" engines, like planned for the lunar lander version, might allow such ops (providing you can provide large quantities of liquid methane and oxygen on site!)
(And the carbon costs of rocket-powered passenger services are maddening. This is not a service that anyone should support.)
If you've got a problem with that I imagine your real issues are about status envy not environmentalism.
If SpaceX/energy company deploys a new nuclear power plant (and one day fusion) to provide the energy, why should you care? It's a new energy source and not competing away your personal idea of worthwhile energy use.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/12/spacex-rocket-emission...
In addition, methane combustion produces 2.75kg of CO2 per kg of fuel, while kerosene produces 3kg CO2 per kg of fuel. If they are able to fit 20% more passengers than a 747 due to the larger internal volume then they would be within about 66% efficiency on a CO2 emissions per passenger basis.
It's not about the generation. Burning methane results in a 1:1 emission of CO2 [0]; literally the equivalent of just dumping pure carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-products-of-methane-burne...
But Musk needs this process to become economical so that Mars can become economical.
(The same tech may, ironically given Tesla, compete with batteries for the energy storage PV calls for).
Take CO2 from air => Turn it into methane => Put it into rocket => Burn it back into the air
The bad part with burning fossil fuels is that you are putting carbon in the form of CO2 into the air which was previously locked under ground in the form of coal/gas/oil. If you are burning carbon that you extracted from CO2 in the atmosphere, there is no such problem, assuming you didn't use fossil fuels to extract that carbon.
It's not that simple. What you're describing is free energy. We're still burning fossil fuels to extract the methane. Maybe that could be powered by renewables one day. But as of now, it is not.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/former-playwright-ai...
Those two helicopter hops probably make the trip 100x more dangerous by them selves.
Not for coastal ops. It falls in the more dangerous category.
All rig workers are required to pass HUET- Helicopter Underwater Egress Training.
The gyro forces of the rotating blades ensure any splashdown is followed immediately by the helicopter inverting itself- so underwater and upside down. It also involves the immediate need for survival swimming, with a presumption of a burning oil slick at the surface that must be splashed clear each time you surface, until you can clear the wreckage.
And since the water might be dirty, or covered in oil slick or debris, this training is often done blindfolded.
Is the blindfold rule new? I never heard about it when I took HUET.
Tesla's use case is likely less dangerous than the helicopters that fly VIPs all around NYC simply because the airspace will be so much less cluttered allowing for higher faster flights that are more tolerant of things going wrong.
The Gulf of Mexico already has the highest amount of helicopter traffic in the country. It's always cluttered. I'd expect most of the local helicopter services and pilots that ferry the oil industry would be also be ferrying for SpaceX.
>Tesla's use case
The SpaceX use case is based on high frequency launches. You don't get high frequency by sticking to Space Shuttle blue-sky launch requirements. (And the safety-obsessed oil industry isn't flying in weather it shouldn't be.)
But it's still coastal weather, and even blue-sky launches are going to require pre-dawn (or after dark), foggy and/or windy flights out to the rig (and back to shore).
If it's point-to-point rocket travel, daylight at the launch site means it's likely to be dark at landing, and vice-versa. Otherwise flight windows are going to be very restricted.
If anything, time windows are likely to be more constrained for launches than for the oil industry (who might have a day-long+ window for personnel changes), which means more flying when you have to, not waiting for when conditions are ideal.
Interesting. Never heard of that in the 80s. I wasn't a "rig worker" but I was an engineer who flew out to drilling rigs a lot.
He also would have like to do the proper bail out (parachute course ) but never got a chance.
Estimates are order zero. Amortization on more frequent (because quicker) flights. Rocket vs airliner simplicity. Fuel is only a fraction of airline opex.
And I'd expect the US Government to be heavily involved in ensuring that to be the case.
1) Get into a rocket, lift-off, land on the platform. 2) Play with a complimentary Space Grenade Launcher™ on the rim of the platform while you wait for refuel. 3) Go to space for some time 4) Land in your destination platform 5) Summon your Tesla over the under-the-ocean tunnel 6) Go home.
Many Gs of deceleration: for the passenger, acceleration and deceleration have the same effects.
Hundred(s) of people per flight, on helicopters? High Gs?
Perhaps something more like...?
1. Fly to coastal airport with SpX marine terminal. Board high-speed passenger ferry. Security, immigration, and luggage processing on board.
3. Disembark. Board Starship. (Maybe motion-compensated gangways? [1] - fun tech)
4. Few Gs acceleration.
5. Fall to destination. A comfort challenge - limiting head motion helps a lot.
6. Brief couple of Gs. It's only ~100 m/s terminal velocity.
7. Disembark. Similar ferry.
9. Leave airport marine terminal.
About accelerations, many people scream when they are in a car braking or turning at some low 0.x G, so I wonder what a couple of Gs would be to them. Anyway, there will always be plenty of planes and they'll be much cheaper too.
Nod. And given the difference in duty cycle from supply ships and oil rigs, they might be mounted on the rig rather than the boat. Removing the "it has to fit folded up on the ship" constraint. And with luggage perhaps containerized onboard the ship, the containers would need to be transferred too.
Starship might end up even more robust to weather than airliners. As are boats. But seaplanes combine the vulnerability of planes, with the those of poor boats. Taking off in a swell, is not a happy thing. I suppose SpX could hypothetically do JATO rocket-assisted seaplanes. :P
But consider the number of passengers. And choices of flying formations of existing seaplanes for each launch, or "let's create a brand new large airliner, and make it a seaplane too!" (even without the seaplane bit, those can be 'bet the aerospace company' gambles), or... order some ferries. Maybe even rent them to start.
Instead of helicopter, ferry can do.
Overall the process will be not dramatically different from modern airport experience.
What about a seaplane? Depending on the number of passengers, that might make sense.
I also wondered about Hyperloop tunnel starting under the seabed, which a submersible capsule could dock with, but that seems much less realistic.
It's not like you need to park these ex-oil-rigs in the super hardcore sea state areas many of them need to operate when actually drilling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Point_Floating_Bridg...
That's a bit different from a "modern airport experience." We would usually take helicopters out but if weather didn't cooperate (or the oil company we were working for didn't want to pay for it), we would sometimes take work boats.
Added: I assume though if someone wanted to do so, they could design an enclosed capsule of some sort that people could sit in and that capsule could be lifted with a crane which would be a bit less "exciting."
In this case, the helipad is just where they drop the basket, since it's already a designated clear zone.
If docks were feasible, they'd use them on existing floaters. They don't.
Also they have the tech with actively stabilized gangplanks to make the link between the more stable rig and the docks.
The general public is going to get something looks like elevators, even if their all just baskets suspended from a wire. Honestly saving ~17 hours NYC to Auckland is going to be worth some inconvenience. However, a bigger issue is how calm the weather needs to be before their going to launch rockets, though that means people aren’t going to go out to the launch platform in bad weather.
>However, a bigger issue is how calm the weather needs to be before their going to launch rockets, though that means people aren’t going to go out to the launch platform in bad weather.
I'm honestly not sure why you wouldn't just use helicopters. They're not that unsafe if flown in good weather. VIPs fly in them all the time.
Really, a 40+ MPH boat ride gets you to a launch site 8 miles out to sea in around 5 minutes which is both safer and good enough to not really benefit from using a helicopter.
I think the start ship on earth concept is a pipe dream, I give hyperloop a better chance of succeeding.
That said, they probably have to run hundreds of thousands or millions of non-crewed launches before they can demonstrate it’s safe enough for civilian use. Current tech must be in the range of 3-4 orders of magnitude more dangerous?
If so, we’ll be riding these way before UAVs.
For anyone interested I think the term is "Seasteading"
And for the SV crowd, a little pie-in-the-sky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueseed
I would expect the cost of running them for a year is far more than 3.5 million.
One of the effects is that flying an almost-empty rocket is really easy. When landing, the Falcon 9 first stage actually has too much thrust to even hover stably with one ninth of engines running and that at only partial thrust.
So an empty rocket flying doesn't produce nearly as much noise or pressure waves. So, you could do it like this:
1. The light, almost unfueled rocket stands at airfield
2. People board the light rocket
3. The light rocket flies a short hop to an oil rig (20 km or so). Only one rocket engine needed for takeoff and landing.
4. The light almost empty rocket is fully fueled at the oil rig. It becomes a heavy fully fueled rocket. People stay inside.
5. Heavy fully fueled rocket takes off with all engines blasting with massive noise.
6. Most propellant is expended during acceleration. Heavy fully fueled rocket becomes light almost empty rocket.
7. The light almost empty rocket lands at destination airport with one engine.
8. People offboard
9. Goto 1.
A crash with a rocket is both more likely and more devastating, and thus should happen away from population centers. Even if the return trip is less noisy.
Also rockets pollute, which is another reason to keep them far away from people.
Some rocket engines use oxygen & hydrogen fuels which, after combustion, turn into water. I'm not sure I'd count water as pollution.
The falcon rocket's use RP-1 which is kerosene, so the exhaust is just H20, and C02 - Granted C02 isn't great, but it isn't too toxic.
You can also just use electrical pumps with no weight or size constraints, since it's not flight hardware. Large scale LNG pumping solutions at least are off the shelf items for LNG tanker ships. There also exist solutions for what to do with the gases in the LNG tank when it's filled. Oxygen tank contents you can of course just vent to the atmosphere.
Falcon 9 first stage flight lasts 2 minutes and 34 seconds. Tanks go from full to empty. [1] You could design the refueling operation to be ten minutes if it provided some benefit to you.
1: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/01/07/falcon-9-launch-timeli...
There are other reasons though why flying a lot of people routinely won't be a thing.
So yeah, maybe!
Would be pretty funny if SpaceX could refuel a Starship faster than Tesla can recharge a Model S!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtAC6s4PYj8 "SpaceX Starship sea launch concept" by SpaceXvision
There's also an official video by SpaceX showing a sea platform at 0:25minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0
P.S. Wasn't me that downvoted you, I don't downvote anything.
He's our generation's Howard Hughes, genius but flawed. That doesn't mean he isn't moving the needle forward in a very meaningful way but at the same time I don't believe every word he says.
Hell, maybe they can build a catch system surrounding the launch pad and vacuum in to capture the pollution. You just need big or many motors - probably could use Tesla's motors?
Maybe what they can capture at the level of the landing pad is moot though...
With all that said, oceans tend to be pretty windy around 90% of the time so things that cause air to be still on land are much more rare in most parts of the ocean.
AFAIK, this is primarily so you can reuse the engine without major cleaning/refurbishment, but it should also significantly reduce pollution.
Noise, on the other hand... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sound pollution is the real issue, and the shockwave.
Why a sea platform vs a remote area? It can't be that hard to find a few remote areas and significantly cheaper being on land?
Any other reason to do this? Ability to move? Stay within range of key cities where remote areas are harder to find?
I’d imagine a crash on land would require significant cleanup.
I wonder if it's really about that. Presumably if you could launch at the equator it would be a little cheaper to get to space, but having floating platforms that far away might eat up those benefits and more.
I'm very curious about the reasoning behind this.
The reality is that they bought the platforms for cheap, but haven't made any renovations yet so for now it may just be a backup plan.
The shore along the oceans tend to be the most populated areas on the planet. Unless of course they have some terrible geographical issue like being a bottomless swamp or unscalable mountain.
In addition you want to generally launch to the east to get a boost with the earths rotation. In the US the east coast is generally flat and mostly easy to build on, which means a ton of people live along it.
Not sure if any other steps will need to be taken for greater protection (for the ceramic heat shielding etc).
Engines are more sensitive in that regard (think salt crusts, etc.).
If they get it working with one, they can get it working with most, and then they can create launch sites off the coast of many countries.
Edit: for clarity, it's a massive financial bet building a platform -- they have specific purposes and take a long time to plan and build, but the deployment environment (physical/political/economic) is volatile relative the build timespan. That doesn't matter in boomtime, any hits are absorbable, but it is not boomtime. The above Scottish example, a fair % of the rigs in the firth at any one time are "new" (as in unused). They get kept in hopes of refits, not scrapped; it's too expensive to scrap.
Once they're old enough to not be useful as oil rigs the price falls to the scrap floor pretty quickly.
The scrap value is still pretty high since they're chock full of all sorts of industrial and maritime machinery that can simply be unbolted and sold.
I'm a huge fan of what SpaceX is doing, but to simply ignore environmental impact here would be quite blinkered.