Category Archives: Boca Chica Texas

Enlarge / A Super Heavy booster rolled out of SpaceX's production facilities in South Texas on Thursday.

Welcome to Edition 4.05 of the Rocket Report! We have a really big week in small launch: Virgin Orbit confirmed the viability of its LauncherOne vehicle with a second consecutive successful flight. Congratulations to the engineers and technicians who strove to make that rocket a reality.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Virgin Orbit does it again. Virgin Orbit demonstrated Wednesday morning that its first spaceflight in January was no fluke. The company's Cosmic Girl aircraft took off from Mojave Air & Space Port about an hour after sunrise Wednesday and flew about 200 km off the California coast. The 747 carrier aircraft then dropped the LauncherOne rocket, which proceeded to ignite, reorient itself upward, and blast into orbit. Eventually, the rocket deployed seven small satellites into an orbit about 500 km above the planet.

So what comes next? ... Virgin Orbit is hardware rich and had already begun building five new rockets in its Long Beach factory, Ars reports. But this preparedness has come at a cost. Founder Richard Branson has acknowledged that he and others have invested about $1 billion in Virgin Orbit to date, a very large sum for a relatively small rocket. LauncherOne has the capacity to send about one-half of a metric ton into low Earth orbit. The company says it has a variety of strategies underway to bring a return on that investment.

Relativity Space will move into a gigantic factory. The California-based launch company announced plans on Wednesday morning to move into a new factoryits third new facility in three yearsas the startup company continues to scale up its ambitious launch plans. The new factory, formerly a 93-acre Boeing facility that manufactured the C-17 aircraft in Long Beach, California, has 1 million square feet of work space, Ars reports.

New rocket, new factory ... CEO Tim Ellis said the new 3D-printing factory is needed to support the production of the proposed Terran R rocket, a fully reusable booster intended to compete with SpaceX's highly successful Falcon 9 rocket. Relativity is also rapidly growing, he said, and the company now has a total of 400 employees. Relativity plans to add 200 more people by the end of 2021 and then likely double the total by the end of next year. The new factory will accommodate about 2,000 employees.

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Blue Origin adds Wally Funk to first New Shepard flight. This is a pleasant surprise. On Thursday, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos invited Wally Funk, a member of the privately funded "Mercury 13" program that sought to fly women into space in the 1960s, to join him as a guest on the July 20 launch of New Shepard. Although they underwent tests similar to male astronauts, none of the Mercury 13 women ever went to space.

Oldest person to go to space ... "No one has waited longer," Bezos said of Funk, who will be 82 years old when the mission launches. For the 10-minute flight above 100 km, Funk will join Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, andthe winner of an auction who paid $28 million to join the flight. The company has yet to disclose the name of the auction winner. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

But waitBranson will attempt to beat Bezos. As noted above, Jeff Bezos is going to space on July 20. But later on Thursday, Virgin Galactic said its founder, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, will attempt to go to space on July 11. Dubbed the "Unity 22" mission, this flight on the VSS Unity spacecraft will carry two pilots (Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci) and four mission specialists, including Branson, Ars reports.

Battle of the billionaires ... Branson is clearly keen to be the first to space, and Virgin Galactic has changed its flight plans to accommodate his trip. Originally, the company's plan next called for a test flight with four employees in the passenger cabin. That test was supposed to have been followed by Branson's mission. Questions will be asked about whether Branson and Virgin Galactic are rushing things by putting him in space. For example, responding to the news Thursday afternoon, former flight director and space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale tweeted, "Talk about schedule pressure! Hope nobody cuts any corners."

Gilmour Space announces significant funding. The most prominent Australian launch company, Gilmour Space, said Wednesday it has secured $47 million in Series C funding to support development of its launch technology. This pyramid of cash suggests the company has a real shot at developing an orbital-class rocket.

Growing the team ... Company CEO and co-founder Adam Gilmour said the company remains on track to attempt the first orbital launch of its Eris rocket in 2022. The funding will allow the company to expand from 70 to 120 employees as it scales up to meet these ambitions. Founded in 2016, Gilmour is developing a hybrid rocket to launch small satellites. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

bluShift announces launch deal. The Maine-based small launch company bluShift has signed its first commercial deal, and Virginia STEM company MaxIQ Space is its dance partner. "This is a good omen of what's to come for bluShift," Sascha Deri, bluShift's CEO and founder, said during a virtual investor call last week, MaineBiz reports. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, so it's not clear how much, if any, money has changed hands.

Starting small ... bluShift uses a biofuel-based propellant for its rocket design, and the company recently launched a prototype rocket to an altitude of about 1 km. Future plans call for suborbital flights. Frankly, it's difficult to take the company too seriously, because bluShift's crowdfunding has so far raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it ultimately will need a lot more than that to reach space. (submitted by Telemark154 and Ken the Bin)

Roscosmos explores crew flights from French Guiana. The Russian space corporation is looking into the possibility of launching spacecraft from the Guiana Space Center in South America, Parabolic Arc reports. Those launches would carry cosmonauts to the new Chinese space station.

Need a better inclination ... The Russian Soyuz vehicle currently launches from Kazakhstan, which is an ideal location to reach the International Space Station. But reaching the Chinese space station at an orbital inclination of 42.8 degrees would be strenuous. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said he discussed the possibility of crewed launches from French Guiana during a recent video conference with Philippe Batista, the president of the French space agency, CNES. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

A Falcon 9 flies eight times a year. SpaceX launched its 20th Falcon 9 rocket of the year on Wednesday, and the booster lofting the Transporter-2 mission completed yet another successful flight to orbit. This rocket core, named B1060 (booster number 1060), had previously flown into space seven times. Its first launch was a GPS III satellite mission for the US Space Force on June 30, 2020. With Wednesday's flight, the rocket has now flown eight missions in a calendar year, Ars reports.

Before and after photos are something ... That is a rate of one mission every 1.5 months. However, since early January, this same rocket has flown five missions, so B1060 is approaching a rapid cadence of one launch per month. This is unprecedented for the Falcon 9 rocket or any other orbital spacecraft in history. The rapid reuse of the Falcon 9 rocket also makes for some stellar visuals, and Ars photographer Trevor Mahlmann was able to get excellent images of both the launch and landing.

Super Heavy rocket rolling to launch site in South Texas. On Thursday, engineers and technicians at SpaceX's production facilities in Boca Chica rolled a large Super Heavy booster out of the high bay. This titanic rocket is bound for a test stand at the nearby launch site for ground tests. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said this rocket, which was built in just six weeks, will not fly.

Next rocket will fly ... According to Musk, the current plan involves testing this booster and launching the next one, which itself is currently being built. This next Super Heavy rocket will be mated with a Starship for an orbital launch. SpaceX sources have told Ars they are reasonably confident this flight will occur in July or August, but the company has yet to obtain regulatory approval for such a flight launching from the "Starbase" site in South Texas.

China will use superheavy rocket for solar power satellites. China plans to use a new superheavy-lift rocket currently under development to construct a massive space-based solar power station in geostationary orbit. Numerous launches of the upcoming Long March 9 rocket would be used to construct space-based solar power facilities 35,786 kilometers above the Earth, according to Long Lehao, chief designer of China's Long March rocket series, SpaceNews reports.

Commercial power by midcentury ... The project, according to Long, would begin with a small-scale electricity generation test in 2022, leading to a megawatt-level power-generation facility around 2030. Commercial, gigawatt-level power generation would be realized by 2050. This would require more than 100 Long March 9 launches and around 10,000 tons of infrastructure, assembled in orbit. This seems like an aspirational plan, but it reveals the scope of China's space ambitions. (submitted by pv and Ken the Bin)

SpaceX defends South Texas activities. In a letter to the Cameron County District Attorney, Starship Operations Senior Director Shyamal Patel responded to criticism of SpaceX's closure of two county roads near its Boca Chica rocket build site. (Discussed here, two weeks ago, in the Rocket Report). Last month, the DA said, SpaceX security barred access to public roads Remedios Avenue and Joanna Street, which are located just off of the main thoroughfare through the region, State Highway 4.

Will conduct more training ... Patel's response, first reported by Courthouse News, affirms that SpaceX does not seek to bar access to these public roads. The company is also providing "comprehensive training" to its security personnel to ensure that guards will not prevent members of the public from entering or remaining on these roads. "SpaceX continues to be committed to improving and bringing positive opportunities to the community," Patel wrote on June 17. (submitted by DanNeely)

July 3: Long March 2D | Jilin-1 satellite | Taiyuan, China | 02:50 UTC

July 4: Long March 4C | Fengyun-3E satellite | Taiyuan, China | 23:15

July 30: Atlas V | Starliner OFT-2 | Cape Canaveral, Fla. | 18:53 UTC

Listing image by Elon Musk

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Rocket Report: Super Heavy rolls to launch site, Funk will get to fly - Ars Technica

The worlds second-richest man is living in a rented home that costs about $50,000.

Elon Musk last month said his primary home is a $50,000 house in Boca Chica, Texas, that he rents from his private rocket company SpaceX. SpaceX operates a launch facility in the small south Texas town and refers to it as Starbase.

Only house I own is the events house in the Bay Area. If I sold it, the house would see less use, unless bought by a big family, which might happen some day, Musk tweeted.

Teslarati, a website that follows Tesla news, reported recently that Musks Starbase home was aroughly 400-square-foot prefabricated home manufactured by housing startup Boxabl, which specializes in easy to construct housing modules.

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On Thursday, Musk, who is worth about $167 billion, provided some more insight about his Texas housing situation.

I do live in a $50k house, but not this specific one, Musk said in response to a tweet showing a prefabricated home from Boxabl.

.@elonmusk may be one of the richest people in the world but he lives in a $50k dollar house that he rents from @SpaceX like this one. pic.twitter.com/dRMbga07QZ

In November, Boxable posted a video showcasing one of its Casitas it had just built for a high-profile client in Boca Chica.

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Elon Musk living in a prefab house that sells for just $50k | TheHill - The Hill

In true eccentric billionaire fashion, Elon Musk wants to build his own utopia. TheSpaceX leader is taking his operations to a new level, planting his flag in coastal Texas, and attempting his own space-centric colony. Whether you believe it or not, Elon Musks Starbase seems to move closer and closer to reality as he keeps hitting his creative stride.

Musk has a track record for announcing his wild ideas, and some come to fruition while others do not. HisBoring Companys tunnel: not the most successful project. But, launching an electric super-car into space? Somehow, that happened. Whats a new city in rural Texas to a guy who arbitrarily launched his own flamethrower line?

The Starbase, Texas project is ambitious, and its weirdly plausible. Heres what we know so far:

On the date of publication, Brenden Rearickdid not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.

Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2021/05/elon-musks-starbase-6-things-we-know-about-boca-chica-beach-texas-and-the-spacex-site/.

2021 InvestorPlace Media, LLC

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Elon Musk's Starbase: 6 Things We Know About Boca Chica Beach, Texas and the SpaceX Site - InvestorPlace

Welcome back to another Wednesday news roundup. Heres what you need to know today:

Already delayed once, the 2021 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo could be staring down an outright cancellation. The Tokyo Medical Practitioners Association is reportedly calling on the International Olympic Committee to cancel the Games over surging rates of COVID-19 infections. Tokyo and other prefectures are under a state of emergency through May 31, and the group claims that hospitals in the city are currently at capacity. If things dont calm down in the next few months, heat exhaustion could further strain the healthcare system. At the time of writing, only 3.5 percent of Japans 126-million-strong population is vaccinated.

H/t to Reuters

The 980-foot-tall SEG Plaza tower in Shenzhen was reportedly evacuated yesterday after it began wobbling, sending shoppers inside panicking. The tower, Shenzens 18th tallest, was completed in 2000 contains offices and a shopping center. The building began shaking at approximately 1:00 p.m. and was emptied over the next hour and a half, and seismologists confirmed that no earthquakes had hit the city that day.

H/t to The Guardian

Darwins Arch, a naturally formed stone bridge off the coast of the Galpagos Islands, has been felled by erosion. In a tweet, Ecuadors Ministry of Environment and Water confirmed that the structure collapsed on Monday, May 17, leaving behind only two stone pillars. Divers aboard a ship run by Aggressor Adventures were actually there to witness the failure as it happened.

H/t to Gizmodo

Whatever you may think of KAWSs art, you might be seeing a lot more of it soon. KAWS (whose real name is Brian Donnelly), will fly a 138-foot-tall hot air balloon version of his signature dead Mickey Mouse character, Companion, over Australia, China, Turkey, and Spain, following its maiden flight in the English city of Bristol, which is known as a global epicenter of hot air balloon-ing. Passengers will soon be able to buy tickets if theyd like to go up for a ride.

H/t to CNN

Aggrieved by stagnant wages and pandemic-induced job insecurity, workers at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan filed a petition on Monday, May 17, to hold a unionization election. Approximately 185 workers across all of the museums departments, citing how the museum had slashed 20 percent of its workforce since the pandemic began (despite receiving a Payment Protection Program loan), signed on. All of the Hispanic Society of Americas staff in Manhattan filed a petition for a union election two weeks ago, citing the same issues.

H/t to Hyperallergic

Elon Musks plans to build out a spaceport near the small, unincorporated town of Boca Chica, Texas, have been well documented (including by AN), but extant residents are now pushing back. SpaceXs last few Starship test launches have had, well, explosive endings, and Boca Chica residents are reportedly tired of being showered in steel, and having debris litter the nearby Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge. Worse still, SpaceX is reportedly not cleaning up after themselves even as the company scales up testing, and the noise and increased traffic could be disrupting wildlife there.

H/t to Texas Monthly

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Daily digest: Calls to cancel the 2021 Olympics grow louder, a wobbly tower in China, and more - The Architect's Newspaper

Perhaps in the distant future historians in far-flung corners of the solar system will note that the twenty-first-century Texas space program did not get off to a particularly strong start. The first proper test of the Starship, the (aspirationally) reusable rocket offered by the SpaceX corporation and launched from the southern tip of the Lone Star State, took place on December 9, 2020. The rocket climbed some 41,000 feet, halted as it was supposed to, and returned to its landing padmuch too rapidly. Crunch.

The second test, in February, crunched too. The next, on March 3, appeared to land mostly intact but exploded eight minutes later. On March 30, the fourth test didnt even make it back to the pad: near the apogee of its flight, it blew up with a calamitous boom, spreading shrapnel more than five miles afield. Looks like weve had another exciting test, announced the sheepish narrator on SpaceXs official livestream. Flying debris and pieces of Starship; theres stuff smoking on the ground in front of the camera! said the host of a privately run livestream, one of many catering to the companys fans, its lens pointed at the landing pad in the town of Boca Chica as steel chunks rained down with frightening velocity. Oh, the humanity!

A little more than two weeks after the last catastrophic failure, NASA officialsthose dinosaurs at the federal space programannounced a $2.9 billion contract with SpaceX to use a variant of the Starship as the landing vehicle for NASAs future missions to the moon. Elon Musk, the companys brilliant and eccentric founder and CEOand since December 2020, a resident, at least for tax purposes, of Austinhas long described the Starship tests as an iterative process. SpaceX expects failures, and it hopes to learn from them. On May 5 the Starship finally had a soft landingthough a fire, successfully extinguished, broke out on the landing pad. Still, Musk has a history of overpromising. In September 2019, for example, he predicted that the Starship would be flying earthlings into orbit by the end of 2020. Now, NASA expects him to have the rocket ready to touch down on the lunar surface with astronauts on board within the next few years.

Musk has never been to space, but he seems curiously unbounded by the laws of gravity. In the past decade, he has been at the center of a succession of storiesexploding rockets, spontaneously combusting Teslas, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigations, and a defamation case brought by the hero of the 2018 Thai cave rescue, whom Musk baselessly called a pedophilefrom which he only emerges stronger. He has an army of passionate fans and an army of passionate detractors, both of which he enjoys juicing up. He ison some days, depending on Teslas stock pricethe worlds richest man, and he warps time and space around him like a bowling ball on a trampoline.There is perhaps no place where his weight is felt more than in Boca Chica, the unincorporated bayside community just north of where the Rio Grande trickles into the Gulf of Mexico. Before Musk arrived in 2014, Boca Chica was home to some of the most unspoiled beaches in Texas, along with a wide variety of threatened and endangered species and a modest community of some forty homes. In just a few years, a small SpaceX launchpad built near the beach, amid a wildlife refuge, has turned into a sprawling compound with hundreds of workers, assembly facilities, and rocket fuel storage tanks. In Boca Chica village, the company ushered out residents, many of them retirees, with what some locals claim were heavy-handed tactics, pressuring them to sell their homes. Local bird populations are under strain as human activity ramps up. During tests, public beaches are frequently closed with little warning or notice.

In exchange, Cameron County is becoming a mecca for Musk fans and space enthusiasts from around the worldand may, indeed, have become an unlikely launchpad to the solar system. Many local elected officials and business leaders in Brownsville see SpaceX as a way to give one of the poorest counties in the state a future. A mural with Musks face adorns Brownsvilles downtown, and the city is beginning to see the benefits of his patronage. About an hour after the explosion on March 30, Musk tweeted that he was donating $20 million to area schools and $10 million to the city of Brownsville.

For better or worse, Boca Chica belongs to Elon now. Hes even come up with a new name for the town. Creating the city of Starbase, Texas, he tweeted in March, From thence to Mars, and hence the stars. Local officials gently reminded the billionaire that he had to ask for permission first.

Its a gray day in April, and the wind is whipping so hard the surf has surged over State Highway 4, the only road that connects Boca Chica to Brownsville. Ive come to meet Stephanie Bilodeau, a biologist with the nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program. I used to love coming to work here, before all of this started happening. It was so pristine out in the flats, she tells me. There was never anybody out here. Now people come out just to see this, she says, indicating SpaceXs latest rocket, which looms over the landscape.

Originally from Vermont and now based in Harlingen, Bilodeau has spent nearly every week since 2017 at Boca Chica, surveying the populations of birds that depend on the mud flats, beaches, and wetlands here to feed, breed, or rest during migration. Elon always said this was the place to launch rockets because theres nothing here, that its just a big wasteland, she says. But thats just not true. Its an amazing place for shorebirds. Its got to be one of the best places for shorebirds in the country.

Glance at a map, and its not immediately clear why this place is special. As the sandpiper flies, its not far from the bustling Port of Brownsville and South Padres hotels, kitschy shops, and beach bars. But the ports long ship channel cuts off Boca Chica from the north, while the Rio Grande cuts it off from the south. In between is a wedge of land accessible by the two-lane State Highway 4, which is guarded by a Border Patrol checkpoint. It can feel very remote.

Much of the land here is part of the 10,680-acre Boca Chica tract of the Lower Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge. Kemps ridley turtles, the most endangered sea turtles in the world, nest on the beaches; dolphins swim in the nearby Laguna Madre. The only remaining breeding population of ocelots in the United States lives here. The last confirmed sighting of a jaguarundi in the U.S. happened nearby, in 1986, and there are rumors some may remain.

It is the birds, though, that set Boca Chica apart: egrets, falcons, pelicans, plovers, sandpipers, sparrows, and warblers, among others. There are many species of birds in the Rio Grande Valley that cant be found anywhere else in the U.S. But its a hard time for shorebirds up and down the Gulf Coast. Too much development, too many vehicles, a changing climate. The Boca Chica portion of the wildlife refuge is intended to provide a sanctuary.

When SpaceX first proposed a launch site in Boca Chica, the company suggested that its footprint would be minimal. After buying up tracts of private land amid the wildlife refuge, SpaceX told regulatory agencies that it planned to launch its proven Falcon rockets at the site, along with the Falcon Heavy, the same rocket, with boosters attached. An environmental impact review conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration found that the project was not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of sea turtles, ocelots, and other species. But after federal and state authorities gave their approval and construction began, SpaceX changed its plans. Instead of launching the Falcon, the company would use the site as a test facility to develop its much larger and louder Starship and the Starship Super Heavy configuration. The FAA approved the companys expanded operations, though it is now considering whether a new environmental study is required.

If the Falcon is a cigarette, the Starship is a Churchill cigar. The Falcon Heavy puts out about 5.1 million pounds of thrust; the Starship Super Heavy is projected to have more than 16 million pounds of thrust. Even when the Starship doesnt blow up, it shakes the ground for miles in every direction. Scientists say the shock waves could potentially cause deafness or brain damage in birds; the rocket engines spit out combusted chemicals. In the aftermath of the March 30 test, there were a couple hundred people on foot picking up debris, Bilodeau told me, but there was still a lot of junk around two weeks later when I toured the area with her. Large chunks of twisted steel littered the tidal flats, some of them sticking out of the water. Heavy equipment may be needed to remove some of the bigger pieces.

Celia Garcia outside her home.

Photograph by Eli Durst

A yellow-headed blackbird spotted in Boca Chica.

Photograph by Eli Durst

Left: Celia Garcia outside her home.

Photograph by Eli Durst

Top: A yellow-headed blackbird spotted in Boca Chica.

Photograph by Eli Durst

This time of year, Bilodeau is looking for snowy plovers, wading birds that stand six inches tall and weigh little more than an ounce. Their young are speckled puffballs whose bodies are barely bigger than their legs. Theyre not yet endangered, but their numbers have been falling quickly. In the general vicinity of the launchpad, weve seen a decline in the number of nests, Bilodeau says. Where she used to find dozens, she has this year found just one, far down the beach from the launchpad. Its not just the rocket launches that are disrupting wildlife, she says, but also the attendant traffic, the construction, the presence of people, the noise.

Birding is big business in the Rio Grande Valley, an international destination for avian aficionados. One estimate has it that birding adds about $460 million to the local economy every year. Bilodeau knows many in Brownsville are thrilled to have SpaceX here and may not even be aware of the birds. But its hard for her not to be emotionally invested. A few years ago, before SpaceX activity picked up, she watched one snowy plover try, and fail, to build a nest and produce hatchlings six times. It was hard not to be rooting for her to succeed, she says. Though the nest failures were due to natural causes, she worries about all the new threats.

SpaceX has plans to expand its facilities and launch rockets more frequently. The company is building an orbital launchpad, which will be the tallest building in the region. Musk envisions Starbase, Texas, as a much larger company town to support his projectswith more workers, more housing, more traffic, more visitors. I just dont see how they can build a city here. Theres not enough room, Bilodeau says.

Its unclear whether Musk is aware of any of the complaints, but he has offered a solution. The night before I walked the beach with Bilodeau, Musk tweeted: If we make life multiplanetary, there may come a day when some plants & animals die out on Earth, but are still alive on Mars. I ask Bilodeau if she can foresee the snowy plover nesting on the red planet. Probably not, she says.

Boca Chica village sits in the shadow of the SpaceX compound. Just a few years ago the village was little more than two streets of a few dozen one-story houses and a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Celia Garcia, a retiree in her seventies, bought two houses in Boca Chica in 1992 and 2003. She moved into one in 2019, intending to spend her retirement there, and planned to use the other as a rental home to supplement her social security checks.

It was our heaven, our little piece of heaven that God gave us, she said. And then with SpaceX, everything changed. Before SpaceX barreled into town, Garcias house, which looks out over South Bay a mile and a half from the beach, was part of a place with a strong sense of community and abundant wildlife. Today, she said, youll see more roadkill than you see animals that are alive roaming the area.

After 2018 the company built infrastructure on all three sides of the village: a solar farm to the south, a company-run RV park with chic Airstream trailers to the west, and storage facilities to the east, behind the shrine to the Virgin. Agents for SpaceX urged the villagers to sell quickly while the county officials publicly warned that eminent domain could be used if they refused. Some residents say the offers were not generous, though they were coming, indirectly, from one of the richest men on the planet. Some accepted the buyouts because living under the shadow of the company had become so onerous. It was as if I didnt own my own home, said Cheryl Stevens, who sold her house in 2019. Garcia says she will only accept a buyout if its sufficient for her to buy replacement homes near the water. SpaceX declined to comment for this article. My multiple attempts to reach County Judge Eddie Trevio Jr. and county commissioner Sofia Benavides, who represents Boca Chica on the Cameron County Commissioners Court, were unsuccessful.

Each launch is preceded by a series of tests, which are often announced on short notice and then delayed. For safety reasons, the county orders residents to evacuate their homes and closes State Highway 4, along with the public beach. The tests, and explosions, often break windows in the village. And because the county government was so steadfastly behind SpaceX, Stevens said, there was absolutely nobody that wanted to hear about what the villagers were going through, nobody that cared.

Today, whats left of the town exists in a strange kind of superposition between the old and the new, Boca Chica village and Starbase. Some houseseleven, by Garcias countare still owned by the old residents, gently worn and painted in earth tones. The rest have been repainted black and white and gray. All the new homes sport Tesla chargers in front.

Though Texas is strongly identified with the space program, it only got one piece of the pie when NASA doled out patronage in its early years: the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, now the Johnson Space Center. Alabama designed the rockets, Louisiana built them, and Florida launched them. SpaceX, on the other hand, tests its engines in McGregor, near Waco, and assembles and launches rockets in Boca Chica. And someday, perhaps, astronauts launched from South Texas will take orders from Houston again. Theres also Blue Origin, a lagging competitor of SpaceX owned by Amazon magnate Jeff Bezos, which is testing rockets near Van Horn, 120 miles east of El Paso. After a decade of doldrums following the end of the space shuttle program, Texas is back in the business of space.

And so, perhaps, is Cameron County, where more than a third of the children live in poverty. Josh Mejia, the executive director of the Brownsville Community Investment Corporation, says the economic benefits of SpaceX have helped insulate the city from the COVID-19-related recession. UTRio Grande Valley has its own building at the SpaceX compound, where researchers work on a project called STARGATEthats Spacecraft Tracking and Astronomical Research into Gigahertz Astrophysical Transient Emission, as you might have guessed. Mejia, who grew up in Brownsville but left as an adult to pursue opportunities elsewhere, hopes the boom will help reverse the regions brain drain. There are the jobs, of course, but also the sense of possibility SpaceX brings. In December, he watched with awe from the roof of city hall as the Starship took off for the first time. To see that shimmery rocket go up, and to even see it blow up, from as far away as we were, it was a sight to see, he said.

It is also bringing a new kind of visitor to the area. Among the trickle of gawkers and picture-takers on the day I visit are Frank Gugliuzzi, of Canada, and No Bugmann, of Switzerland. The two men recently met by chance at the construction site of Teslas new Gigafactory, outside Austin. Bugmann is quiet and pensive, Gugliuzzi giddy with excitement. Having bonded over enthusiasm for Musk and his products, they decided to caravan together to Boca Chica (Gugliuzzi drove his Ontario-plated Tesla Model 3). Their week in South Texas has been thrilling; last night, Musk responded to one of Gugliuzzis tweets, a video of the Gigafactory, shot from a drone. Guliuz-zi is considering moving to Texas.

The pair stare up at the rocket on its pad. It is a handsome ship, made from shiny stainless steel. Its broad fins make it look like a spaceship that a comic book artist in the fifties might have drawn, phallic in an uncomplicated way. The facility is thick with tanks and silos of liquid oxygen and methane. Gizmos spin and whir. Gugliuzzi says they may stay in Brownsville until this Starship launches, which could be more than a week away. I wish I could stand right here when it launches, he says. It would probably be pretty hot. Nearby, another group of onlookers clambers out of their car. What does this place mean to Gugliuzzi and Bugmann, I ask? What could draw these two so far from home? Gugliuzzi laughs and shrugs, as if the answer is obvious. Its the future.

This article originally appeared in the June 2021 issue ofTexas Monthlywith the headline Flight Risks.Subscribe today.

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Elon Musk Is Turning Boca Chica Into a Space-Travel Hub. Not Everyone Is Starstruck. - Texas Monthly

E

xperts are calling for urgent action to tackle cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death among women across the world.

Conditions affecting the heart or blood vessels such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke are responsible for 35 per cent of deaths among women globally each year.

A report published in The Lancet journal thats led by the Mount Sinai Medical Centre says women are under-represented in clinical trials and action is needed urgently to tackle inequalities in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.

In space news: China now joins the US on Mars after successfully landing their own spacecraft, the Zhurong rover. The countrys state media announced on Saturday.

And, SpaceX plans to launch a prototype Starship vehicle from its base near Boca Chica, Texas, and do a nearly round-the-world uncrewed flight that will splash down off the coast of Hawaii.

Bitcoin dropped to a three-month low on Monday as investors sold cryptocurrencies in the wake of Tesla boss Elon Musks hinting over the weekend that the carmaker is considering or may have already sold some of its bitcoin holdings.

Bitcoin fell more than nine per cent to lows of just over $42,000, its lowest since February.

Greenpeace are calling on the government to take action as they claim our plastics are still being dumped in other countries following more debris found in Turkey. American telecoms giant AT&T is nearing a deal to combine its media assets, and, how sharks use the Earths magnetic field to travel long distances.

You can find us in your Spotify Daily Drive or wherever your stream your podcasts.

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Heart disease now top cause of death in women worldwide - Evening Standard

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Two prominent space advocacy groups are cheering the new generation of Mars explorers.

While NASA's newly landed Perseverance rover is getting the lion's share of coverage in the United States, both the United Arab Emirates and China also entered Mars orbit successfully in February.

The Planetary Society's CEO Bill Nye expressed optimism that China's Tianwen-1 mission might open up opportunities for collaboration between the country and the United States, which have had tricky international relations for decades over matters ranging from intellectual property to security concerns and human rights. Notably, Tianwen-1 is a planned triple mission an orbiter, lander and rover that hopes to touch down on Mars this spring.

Related: The boldest Mars missions in history

"Here is an example where the collaboration is going to be between scientists," Nye told Space.com. "Yes, I understand the concern of the military. The technology, they don't want to transfer it without [addressing] pirating, abuse of intellectual property rights and so on. But just that people are talking that scientists in China and scientists in the West are talking about Mars is really significant."

The Mars Society's president, Robert Zubrin, called the Chinese effort "a remarkable thing" after other recent achievements by the program, including the first lunar farside landing in 2019 and a lunar sample return mission in 2020. "It's now merging into its rightful place with the world's leading countries, and certainly this will encourage a lot of Chinese to become scientists and engineers. I think that's why they did it," Zubrin told Space.com.

The UAE's Hope mission is also attracting attention for its emphasis on bringing science and engineering expertise to the tiny Arab country, which is investing heavily in education in preparation for a post-oil economy. Nye said that the old joke about the complication of rocket science applies in Hope's case, calling the achievement "not trivial" because the UAE made it to orbit on the first try. "It's not easy, man. And they done it. It's really fantastic," he said.

The UAE, China and previously India (whose Mars Orbiter Mission arrived at the Red Planet in 2014) represent a new generation of planetary explorers. Traditionally, Mars has been the province of large space agencies from the United States, the Soviet Union and Europe.

But changes in spacecraft technology such as miniaturization and cheaper rockets are enabling smaller space agencies to shoot much further into space than ever before. Satellites are smaller and more powerful thanks to advances in computing; the first-ever cubesats reached Mars in 2018 with NASA's InSight mission. Rockets are also lighter and cheaper, due to the number of companies and countries manufacturing them in the past decade and ongoing improvements in metrics such as mass and materials.

Both Nye and Zubrin pointed to the context in which these newer space missions are happening, too. When NASA and the Soviet Union were slinging early missions to Mars in the 1960s, the two countries were competing in a political- and military-driven "space race" for dominance, which also fueled much of the push behind the Apollo moon landings between 1969 and 1972. While national pride is still on the line with these newer Mars missions, Nye and Zubrin acknowledged, they see a new emphasis on bringing the softer benefits of science and engineering to the public with each successful launch.

"What we're striving for here is not dominance, but who can achieve the most expansive human knowledge," Zubrin said, adding that as each smaller country makes it to Mars, it inspires other countries to go. "If you were to say in Chile right now, 'Why don't you do a Mars mission?' it seems more possible because the UAE did it."

The likelihood of these missions learning new things abut the cosmos is also exciting. "They're doing it because it brings out the best in people, it brings out the best in their scientists and engineers and inspires the country, and you're going to make discoveries that you didn't anticipate," Nye said of the new countries' achievements. "You're going to learn more about the cosmos. Then there's the practical things predicting the [Martian] weather and [testing] communication."

Both the Mars Society and the Planetary Society advocate for space regularly among politicians and the American public, looking to gain more support for their individual mandates. The Mars Society, established in 1998, calls for exploring Mars and "creating a permanent human presence on the Red Planet," according to its website. The Planetary Society blends in goals of space technology and giving individual humans worldwide a voice in planning through a mandate of "empowering the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration."

The Planetary Society's short-term goals on Mars includes supporting ongoing planning for the sample-return mission and parsing early results from the NASA Ingenuity helicopter, which made the first-ever powered flights on Mars this year.

Related: Mars helicopter Ingenuity spots Perseverance rover from the air (photo)

"We have a helicopter sitting on Mars, everybody, this is not trivial," Nye pointed out. Although he spoke with Space.com before the landmark flights, he noted the importance of the sorties and the project as a whole.

Adding a helicopter capability will be "really extraordinary" not only for the sheer value of flying, but also to give valuable context to geologists. "Rather than relying on orbiting cameras which are extraordinary and give you amazing detail of the Martian surface [you will] be this close to [the surface] with this drone Come on. It's just going to be fantastic."

Zubrin added that he wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX's Elon Musk brings people to Mars in the near future. That said, he isn't quite in agreement with Musk's methodology, although they do share some elements such as using Mars resources in-situ for spacecraft fuel.

Simply put, Zubrin's "Mars Direct" mission calls for an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) that launches uncrewed to Mars and arrives at the Red Planet six months later; subsequently, a new ERV and astronaut habitat would fly to the Red Planet every 26 months to bring people and supplies to Mars. Musk's Starship, by contrast, will zoom off to Mars by itself and then lift off itself at the end of the mission; there are no plans for a separate Mars base and Musk hopes to go quickly, as soon as 2024.

Zubrin says he doesn't feel Starship is suited for a Mars takeoff due to its sheer size, but he did express admiration for Musk's vision; the two men met early last year in Boca Chica, Texas, nearby where Starships typically launch. Zubrin says his impression is Musk wants to "get to it" with Mars exploration rather than waiting for a space agency like NASA to support him. "He is purpose-driven and he doesn't do anything in order to please someone else," Zubrin said.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Welcome to Mars! Bill Nye and Robert Zubrin hail new Red Planet visitors. - Space.com

SpaceX is getting ready to launch its fifth high-flying Starship from its Texas rocket facilities.

A version of this mega-spaceship is set to become NASA's next moon lander, the vehicle that could put boots on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

Starship Serial No. 15, or SN15, is the latest of a series of Starship prototypes that SpaceX is launching up to 6 miles above Boca Chica, Texas.

As SN15 approaches the peak of its flight, it should shut off its three truck-sized Raptor engines one by one. Then the spaceship should tip sideways and plunge back to Earth, using four wing flaps to control its fall.

As it nears the ground, SN15 should reignite its engines to flip itself upright again and gently lower to the landing pad. This is where its predecessors have failed.

The first two prototypes that soared to high altitude, SN8 and SN9, slammed into the landing pad at high speed and exploded immediately. The third, SN10, landed in one piece but blew up 10 minutes later. The fourth, SN11, exploded in midair as it relit its engines for landing.

The SN8, SN9, and SN10 explosions. Gene Blevins/Reuters; SPadre.com

For SpaceX, explosions during rocket development are par for the course.

"They use a different development philosophy than the government does, which is: Fly. If something goes wrong, they try to fix it. Fly again. If something else goes wrong, they try to fix that," John Logsdon, the founder of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council, told Insider after the fourth Starship explosion. "People have complimented SpaceX on how quickly they move."

But, he added, "the fact that they've had these early development-program problems means that there will have to be a record of success before anybody except an extreme risk-taker is willing to get aboard."

Success may be even more critical now that NASA has chosen Starship to land its next astronauts on the moon.

The agency announced Friday that it was working with SpaceX to turn Starship into the lunar lander that will jump-start its Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon. NASA hopes to land its first crewed Starship there in 2024, but a new report from the NASA Office of the Inspector General found that it's "highly unlikely" the agency will meet this deadline.

SpaceX's Starship human lander is designed to carry NASA astronauts to the moon's surface during the Artemis mission. SpaceX

SpaceX's founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has ambitions beyond the lunar surface. Musk has said he plans to build 1,000 Starships that carry people and cargo to Mars. Ultimately, he hopes to establish a settlement there. Flying Starships to orbit would be a major step toward that goal. For now, though, SpaceX is trying to land the prototypes without blowing them up.

Musk said Thursday on Twitter that the company was aiming to launch SN15 sometime in the next week. However, the Federal Aviation Administration has revoked its airspace-closure notices for the area. A Cameron County judge has issued a local road closure for Wednesday, indicating that SpaceX may anchor SN15 to the ground and ignite its engines a crucial pre-launch test called a "static fire."

Airspace and road closures are both required for launch. They can change day-to-day depending on SpaceX's plans and the FAA's launch-licensing procedure, so a new flight opportunity could open up soon.

During the test flight, SpaceX is likely to stream live from the launchpad and from cameras inside the rocket's skirt, where the engines are. (We'll embed SpaceX's live feed below once it's available.)

The up-close cameras have provided stunning footage of past Starship flights, like the below footage of SN9.

In the meantime, a few rocket enthusiasts and fans of the company are broadcasting live from Boca Chica.

NASASpaceflight broadcasters are likely to cover the critical static-fire engine test. It's unclear when that will happen, but the earliest opportunity is Wednesday.

LabPadre, a YouTube channel from Louis Balderas, who lives just across the bay from Boca Chica, offers six unique views of the Starship launch site. Below is the channel's main 4K-resolution feed.

For a more distant view of the launch site broadcast from the top of a hotel resort in South Padre Island about 6 miles away check out SPadre's 24-hour live feed.

This post has been updated with new information. It was originally published on Monday, April 19, 2021.

Originally posted here:

SpaceX is preparing to test-fly a new Starship after the last 4 exploded - Business Insider

In late October 2001, Elon Musk travelled to Russia with the hope of buying three intercontinental ballistic missiles for $20 million. Flush with cash after co-founding PayPal, his plan was to use the rockets to blast a robotic greenhouse to Mars and grow plants using Martian soil.

Mars Oasis, as the project was known, would produce the first oxygen on the Red Planet and would serve Musks greater goal of reigniting public interest in human space exploration.

But the Russians did not take the young dotcom millionaire seriously and no deal was ever made. Instead, Musk set about creating SpaceX to build his own rockets for a fraction of the price.

Nearly two decades later, and roughly $200 billion richer, Musk is on the cusp of building a rocket capable of inter-planetary space travel and has already secured a multi-billion dollar contract with Nasa to use it to land astronauts on the Moon.

Starship is currently humanitys best chance of reaching Mars, with no other private company or government space agency yet to put a program in place that will send humans any further than the Moon. SpaceX is hoping to achieve crewed missions to Mars before the end of the decade.

This ambitious timeline involves building up to 100 Starships every year, with each one capable of carrying up to 100 people. By 2050, Musk believes it will be possible to have established a self-sustaining colony on Mars, thus ensuring the continued survival of our species.

For any of this to be realised, SpaceX first needs to prove that its Starship craft can launch and land and relaunch and land again and again reliably, safely and affordably not just on Earth but also on the more hostile environments of the Moon and Mars.

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SpaceX Starship crashes in huge fireball explosion

SpaceX only began testing Starship prototypes in January 2020, but it has done so at an astonishing rate. After two successful 150m hops at its Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, the firm began a series of high-altitude flight tests at a frequency of nearly one a month.

The first four of these ended in explosions but each one achieved new milestones in the spacecrafts development and advanced SpaceXs schedule towards conducting an orbital Starship flight by July.

Alongside Starship, SpaceX is also building a Super Heavy booster that will also be fully reusable and capable of supporting regular rocket launches from Earth.

When combined, this two-stage rocket will measure 120 metres in height and will be the worlds most powerful launch vehicle ever developed.

According to SpaceXs user guide for Starship, the Starship and Super Heavy systems will allow for space-based activities that... have never been possible before.

The craft itself will also be unlike any spaceship that has ever flown before, featuring private cabins, large common areas, centralised storage, solar storm shelters and a viewing gallery.

In announcing its involvement in Nasas Artemis program, SpaceX said the Moon missions will lay the groundwork for human exploration to Mars and beyond.

Next year will mark 50 years since a human last set foot on the Moon. Musk may have already achieved his goal of recapturing peoples imagination when it comes to the possibility of exploring the Solar System in the near future.

The Mars Oasis project may have never been realised, but the drive behind it remains. Musks ambition has only grown, and with Starship he could finally succeed in extending life beyond Earth.

If we make life multiplanetary, there may come a day when some plants and animals die out on Earth, but are still alive on Mars, he tweeted ahead of the latest Starship SN15 flight test. Lets make the sci-fi future we want real!

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SpaceX Starship: What actually is Elon Musks spacecraft that will take people to the Moon and colonise Mars - The Independent