Daily Archives: March 20, 2021

SpaceX boss Elon Musk has said the next major flight test of the Mars-bound Starship craft is imminent.

Starship SN11 is already on the launchpad at SpaceXs Boca Chica facility in Texas, just two weeks after the previous SN10 prototype performed its own high-altitude test.

SpaceX does not typically announce Starship tests until a few minutes before they take place, citing the numerous variables that need to line up in order for it to go ahead.

These include hardware preparations, weather, regulatory approval and local road closures.

Cameron County is yet to issue any public notices for temporary closures of State Highway 4 and Boca Chica Beach, which need to be cleared for safety reasons.

Posting on Twitter on Tuesday, Mr Musk wrote that Starship SN11 is almost ready to fly, while also confirming that SpaceX is preparing the first ever orbital launch of the next-generation spacecraft by July.

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The hugely ambitious testing schedule of Starship comes after Mr Musk ordered SpaceX employees to prioritise its development over all other projects.

The technology billionaire hopes to welcome the first commercial passengers onboard for a trip around the moon in 2023, while crewed missions to Mars could take place as early as 2024.

SpaceX plans to build up to 100 Starships every year, with each one capable of flying three times per day while carrying up to 100 people.

The eventual goal is to establish a permanent human colony on Mars, which Mr Musk claims is essential to ensuring humanitys future survival.

Following the Starship SN10 flight test, which ended in a fiery explosion, SpaceX said the crafts development was progressing well, despite the rapid unscheduled disassembly.

These test flights are all about improving our understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration interplanetary flights, and help humanity return to the moon, and travel to Mars and beyond, the company stated.

Starship will be the worlds most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry in excess of 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.

More:

Elon Musk says Starship SN11 almost ready to fly - The Independent

Eighteen years ago the Secret Service agents guarding President George W. Bushs ranch in Crawford, Texas, received something of a shock.

Thick, low clouds stretched across the Central Texas sky late on the night of March 15, 2003, when suddenly the horizon lit up. The main house shook and rattled as a thunderous noise rumbled across the property. The alarmed agents were roused, but after a few seconds the light faded and the noise ebbed. The remote countryside quieted down for the night.

Several miles away, a small team of engineers and propulsion technicians at SpaceX celebrated what was only the second test firing of the Merlin rockets thrust chamber, the very heart of their brand new engine. Nothing had blown up, and that early in a rocket development program, anything short of destroyed hardware represented a win. As they poured celebratory drinks, the tired engineers did not realize their test stand pointed toward the presidents property, nor that the low clouds had amplified the blast that night.

The next morning, two black Suburbans waited at the front gate of the companys test facility in McGregor when the rocket scientists arrived for work. Some very serious Secret Service agents wanted to know just what had happened the night before. Bush was at Camp David that night preparing for the invasion of Iraq, but agents remained resident at the ranch throughout his presidency. Although SpaceX could not reorient the test stands, the company did gradually begin to get better about warning the surrounding community about future tests.

Unless you lived somewhere southwest of Waco in the 2000s, you probably did not realize that SpaceX had begun to build a major facility in Texas. And yet, those blasts in McGregor may prove to be a pivotal moment for the settlement of Mars, and history may deem them as consequential to Texas history as the Spindletop gusher.

This state, especially Houston, is NASA country. The astronauts live here, and for decades have trained for Moon missions, space shuttle flights and stays aboard the International Space Station at Johnson Space Center. The iconic Mission Control rooms in Houston oversee all of NASAs human spaceflights.

Texans might be forgiven for assuming this is how it will always be, but that may not prove true. In recent years, perhaps due to a lessening of political power, Johnson Space Center has ceded key influence to other NASA centers. The commercial crew program, which is responsible for getting humans to the International Space Station, is now managed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. And the program to develop a lunar lander for NASAs Artemis Program is not being led by Houston, but rather Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

NASAs role in human spaceflight is changing, too. Rather than launching its own astronauts, the space agency now buys rides to orbit from SpaceX, with its Crew Dragon vehicle, and from Boeing, with its Starliner vehicle. In this new era, SpaceXs third crewed mission to the station for NASA should launch next month.

The states fading political influence in spaceflight and the rise of commercial spaceflight suggest that if Texas is to maintain a key role this century, it may have to embrace entrepreneurs such as Musk as well as Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin has a suborbital launch site in West Texas, near Van Horn. In fact, it now seems plausible that human missions to Mars might launch not from Florida, but Texas; and not on a NASA rocket, but one built by SpaceX.

That certainly seemed improbable back in May, 2002, when Musk founded SpaceX with the express goal of settling Mars. He arrived in Texas only a few months later. Then, as now, Musk craved a hands-off approach from government officials when it came to his businesses. Developing rockets can be a messy, loud business indeed. Rocket engine development is really ugly early on, said Tom Mueller, vice president of propulsion for SpaceX in the companys formative years. It always is. Theres always so many things that can go wrong, and when they do, its usually pretty catastrophic.

Musk found the wide open spaces he needed in McGregor. A Texas banker named Andy Beal had built up the site for his own rocket company, but abandoned the project after running into technical problems with his hardware, and warnings that NASA was more interested in preserving the status quo of launch companies than supporting new entrants to the industry. Local officials were therefore more than happy to lease the 100-acre site to Musk when he came calling in November 2002.

Back then, in many ways, the site remained wild, Texas ranch land. Early on Musk brought his father, Errol, for a visit. The two have always had a complicated relationship, and Musk endured a difficult childhood. But he credits his father with teaching him the fundamentals of engineering. Musk did not realize it, but as he built circuit boards and model airplanes as a kid, he was learning important lifelong lessons. My dad is an extremely talented electrical and mechanical engineer, Musk said. He tutored me, and I didnt even know it at the time. In 2003 the elder Musk lived in Los Angeles, and Elon thought he might be able to help with some construction work at McGregor.

As site manager Joe Allen took the two Musks around, they went into a building called the instrument bay, beneath what would become the Merlin engine test stand. Allen was tidying up the room as the others entered, but as he bent over to pick up one piece of paper, a diamondback rattlesnake hissed back. He returned the paper and calmly told the Musks to not approach the area. He walked out of the instrument bay, found a piece of steel, then came back inside and clubbed the rattlesnake. Errol Musk was evidently impressed. Allen heard him turn to Mueller and say, Youve hired that guy, right?

There were other critters, too. In central Texas, black field crickets lay their eggs in the fall, and then these eggs hatch in the spring. About three months later, the crickets reach maturity, the adults get wings, and each one starts frantically looking for mates. Thousands and thousands of crickets congregate into biblical swarms, which are particularly drawn to bright lights at night. They pile up like snow drifts at doors and walls. According to Allen, the best way to kill them is not insecticide, but Dawn soap or liquid Tide.

The soap suffocates them, Allen said. It works better than any insecticide that we would ever use. But when theyre dead, they stink like a dead horse.

The engineers and technicians fought the crickets every year with brooms and leaf blowers. But the swarms could rarely be kept at bay for long. At least they didnt bite. Black widow spiders are common in Central Texas, as well as the rattlesnakes.

From those humble beginnings SpaceX would go on to test three versions of the Merlin rocket engine, eventually reaching orbit for the first time in 2008. As I write in my new book LIFTOFF, covering the origin of SpaceX, these were desperate days for Musk and his small team of engineers and technicians. They almost failed on multiple occasions, but after finally having success with its small Falcon 1 rocket, the company received a handsome contract from NASA worth more than $1 billion to deliver supplies to the International Space Station.

Since then, the company has raced forward into the future. Last year it launched humans from U.S. soil for the first time since the space shuttles retirement. In recent years the company has also mastered the reuse of Falcon 9 rocket first stages, built the worlds largest booster in the Falcon Heavy, and launched and operated the largest fleet of satellites in the world more than any other company or country.

Through it all, the SpaceX team in McGregor played a pivotal role in testing rocket engines, and even rockets themselves. All new rockets go through the test site for pre-launch firings to ensure their readiness for space. In recent years the company has expanded its presence in Texas. It now has grand plans for the Brownsville area, including the possible incorporation of a new city, Starbase, at the Southern tip of the state where the mudflats along the Rio Grande River slide into the Gulf of Mexico.

Musk's recent expansion into Texas is not without controversy. No longer are his rocket tests waking up a few Secret Service agents. SpaceX's build and test site in South Texas is pushing aside the last remaining residents of Boca Chica Village, and roads to the nearby beach are closed on a regular basis. However disruptive his methods may be, however, he has a track record with SpaceX and Tesla of getting results. And so far, to be a part of what could be the next great leap in space, local and state officials have supported his efforts, and its potential to transform the South Texas economy.

It is here, beneath tents, that SpaceX is building its towering Starship vehicles intended to one day carry humans to Mars at a rapid cadence of one or two a month. Many of them have exploded on the test stand, or while attempting to land. But this is part of the plan. Legendary NASA flight director Gene Kranz famously said, Failure is not an option. But for Musk, when it comes to developmental test flights, failure is an option.

It is very easy to engineer a vehicle to death. NASA and its prime contractor, Boeing, have spent a decade and more than $20 billion to build a single Space Launch System rocket that may fly in 2022. During this process the vehicle has succumbed to paralysis by analysis, in which every possible contingency must be engineered out of the vehicle. There literally is no margin to fail, because it takes so long, and so much money to build a single rocket.

These days, Texas comparative light regulatory touch and go-it-alone ethos are facing fierce criticism in the wake of the winter storm that crippled our independent power grid. And yet, when it comes to space, the story is inverted. The slow-paced, federally funded ways of the past dont hold as much promise as they once did.

Musk has decided there is a better way. The acid test for any rocket is to go fly it. That way, you find the problems, fix them, and fly again until a vehicle is ready for prime time. He believes this is the fastest way to finish the Starship vehicle and get it into orbit and, by 2026, on to Mars with humans. Two decades of success in Texas suggest he may not be wrong.

Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica and author of the book Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX. He previously worked at the Houston Chronicle for 17 years and founded Space City Weather.

See the article here:

Space City Weather's Eric Berger: Your flight to Mars will start in Texas. SpaceX has the ticket. - Houston Chronicle

This picture is a crude photoshop to provide visual analog but is in no way created by or associated with Elon Musk, Starbase, Tesla, etc.

A couple weeks ago, I saw in the news that Elon Musk said he wanted to create a city called Starbase in Texas. It was reported that SpaceX has approached Boca Chica county officials with the idea of incorporating the city.

Starbase does sound kinda cool and its certainly doable for someone with as much money and influence as Musk has. Although, he is a polarizing figure a lightning rod of veneration and criticism. His companies have made contributions to our society but have also been found to violate labor laws. Musk has made all sorts of pronouncements with varying levels of follow-through, so his Starbase idea zipped through the news cycle with moderate coverage.

But something about this idea stuck with me. It made me think about how the reason many of us in society laud Musk is because we have accepted a kind of innovationism the idea that all of societys most pressing problems can be innovated out of. Technology is the all-purpose hammer in a world full of nails.

Some of our problems certainly do and will call for technological solutions, but we shouldnt be so quick to presuppose that solutions are better because they come from the market. However, I do think mainstream society has tacitly accepted a key part of innovationismyou move fast, you break things, and in the process, you learn how to build better.

But this system of ideas ironically accepts the status quo as immutable, while it (to re-appropriate Adrian Daub in What Tech Calls Thinking) sublimates the concept of revolution. Innovationism is often a simultaneously rejection of social status quo and a rigid defense of market status quo. It presupposes that the market and those with power will only help society if their investments are protected instead of, for example, tech billionaires paying their fair share of taxes to public goods, services and institutions can be properly funded.

With things like automation and AI, innovation is often taken as a value in and of itself. But to what extent is it merely a more charismatic version of neoliberal optimization and efficiency thinking figuring out ways to make more money with less workers, and to privatize profits and socialize risk? If Im not mistaken, Musks move to Texas was largely to avoid Californias coronavirus restrictions and avoid taxes. Starbase seems connected to Musks worldview and the logical conclusion of innovationism instead of improving cities through public policy, you just create a new one.

Daub wrote that disruption plays to our impatience with structures and situations that seem to coast on habit and inertia and has become a way to lean in the direction of more capitalism, of cast-off fetters and a more untrammeled expression of market forces. I like to think of disruption as the expensive electric car that innovationism drives. To put another way, if you want freedom, you dont share, you just pick up your ball and go play somewhere else. And maybe even more than that, you pick up your ball and go build your own playground.

In some ways, Musk is the quintessence of how we think innovation works the singular genius within a larger progress narrative that proves the power of the individual and the market. Behind this guile is often billions and billions in government subsidies. Innovationism makes us forget that we fund the development of all the cool thingamajigs that goes into our iPhones but then we have to go buy the iPhone, ostensibly paying for it twice. In similar ways, we hear how cool Starbase sounds without questioning how the techno-libertarian impulse would clash with the concept of the public that cities rest upon and that keeps them running.

If Starbase is to truly a city and not just the grounds for his factory, Musk will face various logistical realities and challenges of cities the creation and upkeep of infrastructure, garbage collection and sanitation, unions, public investments, hearing the concerns of the residents (who are stakeholders in how the city functions, and therefore, unofficial shareholders in SpaceX), how local governance affects business, how born-raised-locals and gentrifying forces have different concerns and incentives, etc.

Is he ready for this, or does he just want a city?

Go here to read the rest:

On Elon Musk, Starbase, and Innovationism | by Joshua Adams | Mar, 2021 | Medium - Medium

The crashing of the waves on the beach. Seagulls flying with glee. The sand between your toes. The sun on your sunblock covered face. Kids at a distance cheering with glee. A fruity beverage in hand. The many sights, sounds, smells and feels of summer on the beach. Austin Rocks except for lacking the beach scene. That's what a road trip is for to the Texas Gulf Coast.

DO512 created a Texas beach guide that's a perfect way to find the view for you. See which one fits you best. Worst thing that happens is you might have to visit another if it wasn't quite right. Research with a fruity drink that can be handled.

When planning a beach getaway, be sure to plan for social distance from other parties and follow all the COVID-19 health guidelines in the area. Mask Up around others!

Texas Beach - Drive from AustinBoca Chica Beach 6 hoursCrystal Beach 4 1/2 hoursGalveston Island Beaches 3 1/2 hoursRockport Beach 3 1/2 hoursMagnolia Beach 3 hoursMustang Island 4 1/2 hoursNorth Beach / Corpus Christi 3 1/2 hoursPadre Island National Seashore 4 hoursPort Aransas 3 3/4 hoursSecret Beach Best kept in ATXSouth Padre Island 6 hoursSurfside Beach 3 1/2 hours

Dotting the coast of the Gulf of Mexico are some of the most beautiful beaches around. Make plans to head south! https://t.co/kqNemM3A70

Link:

Which Texas Beach is calling you?Research is part of the fun - RADIO.COM