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Comment by Gustomaximus | Hacker News Reader

From article: "The super heavy lift launch vehicle will have a large blast danger area and pose noise concerns if launched frequently near populated areas."

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?

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>It can't be that hard to find a few remote areas and significantly cheaper being on land?

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.

The US doesn't fly rockets over land due to population - I'm sure this is probably law, but I don't know specifically. It's also easier to clear launch zones in water vs land, as vessels have maritime transponders (not sure of law or terminology here). Your last point is probably the most important - being close to cities but far enough away to not bother folks is the dance.

Where they're launching now is fairly remote, and they bought out anyone who lived nearby.

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.

Sea Launch did ride a semi submersible platform to the equator for every launch. But indeed, it was not profitable in the end.

I think it is really the number and frequency of orbital launches required for refueling that is the concern right now. SpaceX would love to get approval for unlimited orbital flights from Boca Chica, but it is four miles away from South Padre Island and it would probably require a massive deluge system and huge water storage to get approval for that. The can also launch from Kennedy, but they are trying to keep all three options on the table for now.

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 people are really not that far away. Much closer then at the Florida launch sites.

Do they have to clean up a crash if it happens in the ocean or let most of it sink?

I’d imagine a crash on land would require significant cleanup.

The same reason they currently land Falcon 9's on ocean platforms: because rocket trajectories are almost always required to go over water for safety reasons. The only time they use land landings is when there is sufficient excess fuel to return to the launch site (which is along the shore).

you need a HUGE area of exclusion incase if explosion, and it need to have a large down range uninhabited area (ocean or desert). it is actually very difficult to find a large coastal land area uninhabited, or large inland area that is uninhabited for hundreds of miles down range.

When it goes boom, they won't have to clean it up, that is all done automatically for them. And vanity of course - "sea launch master race vs peasant land launches."

More importantly, if it goes boom the pieces dont fall on anyone. There's a big difference in area between a launch site and the down range keep-out area.

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