
SpaceX Plans Facility Expansion at Kennedy Space Center - aphextron
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2018/06/08/spacex-plans-major-expansion-kennedy-space-center/685098002/
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chiph
Probably to support the increased launch tempo for their Starlink satellite
internet system.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_\(satellite_constellation\))

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indescions_2018
Would anyone be interested in creating a Space Coast Hacker House?

The idea is to assemble a small group of talented folks. Even digital nomads
who want to do a short stint would be welcome. And then solicit contracts, or
start New Space ventures.

Main benefit is of course proximity to rocket launches ;) For which we could
host viewing parties, outdoor BBQs, photo shoots, etc.

Region is known for relatively cheap rents (compared to South Florida). Great
weather. Year round golf, tennis, scuba. Not sure about high speed internet
availability. And it may be a cultural backwater. But that only leaves more
time for building ;)

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jonwachob91
When you say "culture backwater" are you referring the the fact that the Space
Coast has the highest ratio of engineers to population in the US, or b/c it
just not near a major city?

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friedman23
To Californians anything that isn't California is a cultural backwater. This
may also apply to New Yorkers. The amount of Californian "nationalism" I've
seen is surprising.

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garmaine
Anything that isn’t coastal Californian you mean.

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mixmastamyk
There are also plans to build facilities at the Los Angeles harbor, down in
Long Beach. Their finances must be in good shape to enable all these, no?

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walrus01
The facility in Long Beach is the BFR factory. The BFR diameter is too big to
move via road or rail, it can only be moved by barge or cargo ship.

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toomuchtodo
Could BFR be relocated in a self-propelled manner?

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walrus01
I am far from a rocket launch expert, but having been to the general area, I
think there is nowhere near enough empty space anywhere in Long Beach to
safely build a launch facility.

Also the US has a pretty firm policy of never launching anything over land.
There is no such thing as an eastbound launch from Vandenberg, for example.

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remarkEon
Could that change in the future, assuming reliability improvements? Though,
thinking about it a bit more I don’t really see why you’d _want_ to launch
eastbound out of Vandenberg. Not sure what you’d gain.

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Rebelgecko
Probably not. As their volume increases, even if their launches have a _really
good_ success rate of 99.9% [1], catastrophic failure would still be frequent
enough that you don't want to live under their flight path[2]. Even if they
have a 100% success rate from here on out, there would still be issues with
things like blowing out people's windows.

[1] They're at around 95% now, although gradually improving. Switching to a
drastically different launch vehicle like the BFR will probably bring those
numbers down, at least initially

[2] see [https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/12/16882600/china-long-
march...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/12/16882600/china-long-
march-3b-rocket-booster-crash-xiangdu-guangxi), or any of the cases where
rockets killed people on the ground

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kitsunesoba
The next few years are going to be interesting. Assuming it all goes according
to plan, this along with BFR/BFS will signal an end to the scrappy duct tape
stage of SpaceX’s existence.

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buvanshak
Is there any concern regarding the damage these frequent and big rocket
launches are doing to the upper atmosphere? Are people aware of such a thing?
Because I have seen very few discussion around the same....

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Robotbeat
It's a matter of scale. There's about two launches per week /globally/. But
for a _single_ airport, you might have a flight every two _minutes_.

There is some concern from solid rocket motors, whose exhaust is absolutely
terrible environmentally (big clouds of toxic smoke that erode launch
infrastructure, etc). Luckily, SpaceX doesn't use any of those.

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buvanshak
I am not sure. Why are you mentioning flights? I am talking about this [1] and
[2]. It does not have anything to do with regular planes..

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/spacex-launch-
last-y...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/spacex-launch-last-year-
punched-huge-temporary-hole-in-the-ionosphere/)

[2] [https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/25/spacex-rocket-carved-
gia...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/25/spacex-rocket-carved-giant-hole-
in-ionosphere/)

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Arnt
He's trying to say that rockets emit CO₂, but there are very few of them
compared to other things that also emit CO₂ at high altitudes, namely
airplanes. He's also saying that some rockets have significant other pollution
problems, but not SpaceX's.

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Robotbeat
Indeed. And there may come a time when such emissions are enough to matter,
but we should then just apply a proper tax to them (as well as airplanes).
That’d encourage using alternatives (like hydrogen which is actually a
superior rocket fuel from an exhaust velocity perspective but is harder to
handle and leads to greater dry mass) and also provide incentive to pull such
emissions from the atmosphere. Elon Musk has advocated such a broad carbon
tax, including on SpaceX’s rockets (which use kerosene and eventually
methane).

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mikece
Does SpaceX pay rent to launch from KSC or do they just pay for the expansion
and call it good?

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skriticos2
They lease the launch pads, e.g. 39a has a 20 year lease. They can probably do
a lot of spacey things on there for the duration.

[https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spacex-
signs-20-year-l...](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spacex-
signs-20-year-lease-historic-launch-pad-39a-n81226)

edit: looking at the article map, this is patch of farmland a bit further away
from the launch pad, so they probably acquired it for development.

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Animats
Whatever happened with their Brownsville TX facility? They put in some
antennas, brought in a crane, and put in some solar panels, but not much more
than that.

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agildehaus
They spent a long time stabilizing the soil there.

Some of the delay could possibly be attributed to the Amos-6 incident. Now
that they've rebuilt that pad, they can continue at Boca Chica, which explains
the recent activity there.

It's likely to be where the first BFR-related tests happen in the first half
of 2019.

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nickik
SpaceX is a total steamroller. Its insane. I think in 2005 nobody could have
quite seen this comming. Even Elon must be suprised.

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throwaway2048
Its amazing what billions in government subsidies do for a company.

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Denzel
Quite amazing... why wasn't ULA able to leverage their billions in government
subsidies so well?

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api
Elon is doing it wrong. You're supposed to waste government funding, not
deliver stuff.

I only half joke. He's threatening a massive gravy train by showing that
government really ought to expect more from private contractors. Why didn't
ULA do a reusable first stage? They got far more money from government than
SpaceX over the years.

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gleenn
Capitalism finally kicking in, where there is waste there is opportunity.

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AnimalMuppet
Am I the only one who misread "Expansion" as "Explosion" when skimming the
headlines?

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vvkmnn
Nope.

