I think the context some may be missing here is that Blue Origin and ULA have been attempting to get the FAA to limit SpaceX's planned Starship operations in Florida on the basis that they will have too much environmental impact and impede theirs:
So this is basically SpaceX arguing back about how these concerns aren't valid or can be mitigated through more informed safety margins and co-operation between launch providers.
Notably, Blue Origin got its case thrown out, as NASA has demonstrated that Starship was selected for HLS over National Team option on technical merit.
Not that it stopped Bezos from lobbying for a second round of HLS contracts and securing a contract for Blue Origin anyway. But at least that resulted in a second HLS - instead of SpaceX's contract being clawed back.
I just thought once you are that rich, when doing "space races" that there was some sort of collaboration, due to difficulty, greater good? Im not sure why I see the space race differently
Once you're that rich, your ego won't let someone else's rocket be bigger/faster/better than yours. Otherwise we (humanity) would collaboratively be going to the moon first.
Anti-SpaceX people always do this "Wherever SpaceX is, go to Step +1, claim this step is impossible and therefore SpaceX is doomed". They have been doing this for 15 years.
Starship isn't doomed for that reason, all the technical stuff on starship looks pretty good.
What may doom it is the fact that Elon Musk has pissed off basically everyone, because means that he and his businesses are running into a lot of political danger, so he may find his space stuff banned for non-technical reasons.
"Doomed"? If you listen to every two-bit "Elon Musk bad" grifter, then, sure.
In truth, Starship needs orbital refueling to get to the Moon - but so does Blue Moon HLS. Artemis depends on someone being able to figure orbital propellant storage and fuel transfer either way.
Which may have been a conscious decision by NASA. Orbital propellant storage and refueling are technologies that unlock a lot of capabilities - so if you get into a silly race with China over who gets to reenact Apollo 11 first, you might as well get that out of it.
There's a lot of underhanded competition going around there.
Previously, there were a few rather suspicious "environmental groups" hounding SpaceX - the understanding was that someone was funding them to try to throw a wrench in SpaceX's plans. This here looks like more of the same.
This is not an update for SpaceX fans. It's aimed squarely at people who have opposed SpaceX's expansion in Florida at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral. These people have made arguments about safety and the environment as well as disruption to the operations of SpaceX competitors. Some of these arguments may be made in good faith but some are simply aimed at obstructing a competitor or political opponent. SpaceX is countering those arguments here.
To be fair, when a company's infrastructure construction, and planned operational activities have a significant impact on the local environment, it makes sense to explain and signal these up front. You can bet environmental groups and SpaceX's competitors are already lining up their objections.
Wonder which way they'd come down on this, seems like it might be a big (and free) attraction, if visitors could see the aftermath of those sunset launches. Seems like at ~60 miles away, the noise shouldn't be an issue.
Mostly, it's SpaceX detailing how increases in launch count and scale are necessitating infrastructural, operational and organizational changes at launch sites.
Oh how the times have changed. We went from waiting months from one Falcon 9 landing test to another and to the point where people are having to rethink how to run spaceports to be able to sustain SpaceX's insane "2.5 launches a week" cadence.
>as far as I can tell, this doesn't contain any real updates
I don't think that's true? Pretty rare to see incorrect info boosted so high without any factual challenge. Just lucky timing, I guess.
Can anyone point out where they previously read about these methane blast experiments and SpaceX sharing the raw data with regulators? This was news to me, and I follow SpaceX news pretty closely.
> you're aware that the space shuttle was "reusable" though, right?
Shuttle was reüsable on paper. It couldn’t unlock high-cadence launch because it was not built on an assembly line and had long, manual and error-prone refurbishment requirements.
Put practically, one couldn’t build a LEO constellation like Starlink or aim for in-orbit refuelling with the Shuttle. One can do the former with Falcon 9. One can attempt the latter with Starship.
I don't disagree, after all, the shuttles booster was(at least to my knowledge) more expensive them the reusable shuttle, but that's once again a qualifier to the statement that - without that qualifier, does continue to point to the shuttle.
> without that qualifier, does continue to point to the shuttle
The qualifier is only semantically meaningful. The engineering benefits one gets from reusability--low costs and high cadence--weren't there for the Space Shuttle.
The shuttle’s solid rocket boosters splashed down in the ocean via parachute, and were recovered and reused. The main engines and thrusters/rcs were also reused. Only the external tank was disposed. The issue with the shuttle (among many) was that the reuse was not actually economical due to the maintenance required between each launch.
I think its not really aspirational so much as it is long term planning. If you 20 years ago had told people the launch rates SpaceX is achieving now people would have laughed you out of the room. And this is not from SpaceX private launch site, but a government owned launch site. SpaceX has really been the driving force behind advancing the nations launch infrastructure and launch practices.
I don't see any reason why SpaceX should not continue to plan in such an agressive fashion, as there isn't really a clear reason that anybody can point out to about how its fundamentally impossible.
Its mostly competitors and activists trying to slow down SpaceX and post like this are trying to tell people 'look these are what we are planning and it will benefit everybody'.
The USSR averaged >1.5 launches/week from 1967 to 1989. SpaceX has exceeded that, but not by a huge margin. Once they start doing daily launches, it will be something people would not have believed 20 years ago. But we are not there yet.
It is a huge margin when you take into account the size of the rocket. Also, the area where SpaceX launches has so much more distractions and other users that it is more impressive.
The other way around. SpaceX benefits from modern technology and modern manufacturing capacity, which make scaling things much easier than during the Cold War. Overall production has grown greatly in most fields, and top companies often rival superpowers of the past in their field.
Labor cost have gone up not down. Rocket manufactre is still incredible labor intensive. The Soviet Union had very low labor cost. The only way SpaceX could do it is by innovating into renewables.
The Soviets did it mostly be mass manufacture of 1960 technology and most launches still today use the same tech.
Yeah it's a bunch of aspirational nonesense, their rocket is nowhere safe enough yet (or even in the near future), SpaceX is a proud member of the aspirational club alongside (the much loved by Hackernews members) intel foundry!
Why so? Falcons have reliably so many launches, they are undeniably the most battle tested rocket ever made. I genuinely have no idea, why are they not safe?
Yes, Boeing rockets have a much better track record on uptime, availability, and cost, like when that Boeing rocket famously saved the stranded astronauts after SpaceX demonstrated extended incompetence in getting a rocket up to space /s
I imagine this is ateast in part trying to smooth over some local concerns, about SpaceX's stated desire to have ~44 Starship launches a year. Locals are significantly concerned about what that would mean for the area. https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2025/0...
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see
That brave vibration each way free,
O how that glittering taketh me!
Probably a stupid question but if rocket launches really became as commonplace as airplane flights, would we see some kind of increase in global temperatures?
The short answer is yes. Airplanes account for 2.5% of CO2 emissions and rockets use massively more fuel than airplanes per flight (falcon 9 is ~10x fuel capacity of a 737).
But this is an insane scenario because there are about 100,000 commercial flights per day in the world. In all of 2024 there were ~250 orbital launches. So to hit the same rate as airplanes it would require a ~150,000x increase in the launch rate (or a ~15,000x increase to equal the CO2 emissions of airplanes).
I can’t see that happening for centuries, if ever. And if we haven’t figured out a way to deal with global warming in a few centuries the number of space launches and airline flights will probably both be zero.
They also disrupt ozone layers and leave combustion byproducts in the trail. CO2 raises temperature but dusts reduce temperature, idk which of those effects are dominant or if it makes sense to mandate an additive or something.
Not stupid at all. Definitely yes. Don't have the numbers on hand but it's orders of magnitude more CO2-equivalent released per kg-mile, especially when you factor in the fact that they are using methane.
Of course the reality is that this tech won't ever see adoption used that widely, but where is the break-even point?
Full flow staged combustion engines like Starships do not have significant un-burnt methane. They run slightly fuel-rich, but that results in extra CO emissions rather than CH4 due to the temperatures involve -- methane cracks at 1200C, Starship engine temperature is 3000C.
Starship's operations in Boca Chica do emit methane during ground operations. The mitigation for that is to use a pipeline rather than trucks for delivery.
Solid rocket motors emit all sorts of nasty stuff, like aluminum particles.
They seem to like to iterate. The Falcon 9s flying now are essentially version 5. I can imagine they’ll keep experimenting with Starship designs for a while.
I think the context some may be missing here is that Blue Origin and ULA have been attempting to get the FAA to limit SpaceX's planned Starship operations in Florida on the basis that they will have too much environmental impact and impede theirs:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/theres-not-enough-room...
So this is basically SpaceX arguing back about how these concerns aren't valid or can be mitigated through more informed safety margins and co-operation between launch providers.
I’m shocked Blue Origin would compete in such a men’s spirited way ? Or am I misunderstanding something here as a naive britbong
It's not the first time. To some extent it's just how the government contracting game is played. Regrettably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin_Federation,_LLC_v....
Notably, Blue Origin got its case thrown out, as NASA has demonstrated that Starship was selected for HLS over National Team option on technical merit.
Not that it stopped Bezos from lobbying for a second round of HLS contracts and securing a contract for Blue Origin anyway. But at least that resulted in a second HLS - instead of SpaceX's contract being clawed back.
I just thought once you are that rich, when doing "space races" that there was some sort of collaboration, due to difficulty, greater good? Im not sure why I see the space race differently
Once you're that rich, your ego won't let someone else's rocket be bigger/faster/better than yours. Otherwise we (humanity) would collaboratively be going to the moon first.
Isn't Starship doomed anyways because of the refueling issue?
Anti-SpaceX people always do this "Wherever SpaceX is, go to Step +1, claim this step is impossible and therefore SpaceX is doomed". They have been doing this for 15 years.
Starship isn't doomed for that reason, all the technical stuff on starship looks pretty good.
What may doom it is the fact that Elon Musk has pissed off basically everyone, because means that he and his businesses are running into a lot of political danger, so he may find his space stuff banned for non-technical reasons.
"Doomed"? If you listen to every two-bit "Elon Musk bad" grifter, then, sure.
In truth, Starship needs orbital refueling to get to the Moon - but so does Blue Moon HLS. Artemis depends on someone being able to figure orbital propellant storage and fuel transfer either way.
Which may have been a conscious decision by NASA. Orbital propellant storage and refueling are technologies that unlock a lot of capabilities - so if you get into a silly race with China over who gets to reenact Apollo 11 first, you might as well get that out of it.
There's a lot of underhanded competition going around there.
Previously, there were a few rather suspicious "environmental groups" hounding SpaceX - the understanding was that someone was funding them to try to throw a wrench in SpaceX's plans. This here looks like more of the same.
I'm a big SpaceX fan, but as far as I can tell, this doesn't contain any real updates. It's just aspirational thinking.
This is not an update for SpaceX fans. It's aimed squarely at people who have opposed SpaceX's expansion in Florida at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral. These people have made arguments about safety and the environment as well as disruption to the operations of SpaceX competitors. Some of these arguments may be made in good faith but some are simply aimed at obstructing a competitor or political opponent. SpaceX is countering those arguments here.
To be fair, when a company's infrastructure construction, and planned operational activities have a significant impact on the local environment, it makes sense to explain and signal these up front. You can bet environmental groups and SpaceX's competitors are already lining up their objections.
Especially when that local environment includes Disney, the 800 pound gorilla of the area.
Wonder which way they'd come down on this, seems like it might be a big (and free) attraction, if visitors could see the aftermath of those sunset launches. Seems like at ~60 miles away, the noise shouldn't be an issue.
The big issue is that the keep-out zone for rocket launches includes the cruise ships out of Port Canaveral, which is where Disney Cruises are based.
And a significant fraction of all other Cruise traffic in Florida.
Our non-disney cruise sailed out from there. There was lots of signage about how the waterways would be closed for the SpaceX launch the next day.
Mostly, it's SpaceX detailing how increases in launch count and scale are necessitating infrastructural, operational and organizational changes at launch sites.
Oh how the times have changed. We went from waiting months from one Falcon 9 landing test to another and to the point where people are having to rethink how to run spaceports to be able to sustain SpaceX's insane "2.5 launches a week" cadence.
Can anyone point out where they previously read about these methane blast experiments and SpaceX sharing the raw data with regulators? This was news to me, and I follow SpaceX news pretty closely.
Remember when reusable rockets were aspirational thinking?
Hmm, you're aware that the space shuttle was "reusable" though, right?
Because in this context, your question would squarly land around the time before STS-1 was launched in '81
For this to be about space x, you'd have to add some qualifiers - like "privately owned"
> you're aware that the space shuttle was "reusable" though, right?
Shuttle was reüsable on paper. It couldn’t unlock high-cadence launch because it was not built on an assembly line and had long, manual and error-prone refurbishment requirements.
Put practically, one couldn’t build a LEO constellation like Starlink or aim for in-orbit refuelling with the Shuttle. One can do the former with Falcon 9. One can attempt the latter with Starship.
I don't disagree, after all, the shuttles booster was(at least to my knowledge) more expensive them the reusable shuttle, but that's once again a qualifier to the statement that - without that qualifier, does continue to point to the shuttle.
> without that qualifier, does continue to point to the shuttle
The qualifier is only semantically meaningful. The engineering benefits one gets from reusability--low costs and high cadence--weren't there for the Space Shuttle.
The shuttle's rockets were not reusable.
The shuttle’s solid rocket boosters splashed down in the ocean via parachute, and were recovered and reused. The main engines and thrusters/rcs were also reused. Only the external tank was disposed. The issue with the shuttle (among many) was that the reuse was not actually economical due to the maintenance required between each launch.
> the reuse was not actually economical
Well - yes :) That is what reusable actually means. Anything's "reusable" if you spend enough money. The idea is it's worth doing.
No, I was born after DCX
They were very much still aspirational after DC-X. Getting to an altitude of just over 3km with essentially no path to orbit doesn't count.
Also a summary of their efforts so far, lots of info I’ve not seen discussed much (though I am a fairly casual follower of SpaceX)
I think its not really aspirational so much as it is long term planning. If you 20 years ago had told people the launch rates SpaceX is achieving now people would have laughed you out of the room. And this is not from SpaceX private launch site, but a government owned launch site. SpaceX has really been the driving force behind advancing the nations launch infrastructure and launch practices.
I don't see any reason why SpaceX should not continue to plan in such an agressive fashion, as there isn't really a clear reason that anybody can point out to about how its fundamentally impossible.
Its mostly competitors and activists trying to slow down SpaceX and post like this are trying to tell people 'look these are what we are planning and it will benefit everybody'.
The USSR averaged >1.5 launches/week from 1967 to 1989. SpaceX has exceeded that, but not by a huge margin. Once they start doing daily launches, it will be something people would not have believed 20 years ago. But we are not there yet.
It is a huge margin when you take into account the size of the rocket. Also, the area where SpaceX launches has so much more distractions and other users that it is more impressive.
The other way around. SpaceX benefits from modern technology and modern manufacturing capacity, which make scaling things much easier than during the Cold War. Overall production has grown greatly in most fields, and top companies often rival superpowers of the past in their field.
Labor cost have gone up not down. Rocket manufactre is still incredible labor intensive. The Soviet Union had very low labor cost. The only way SpaceX could do it is by innovating into renewables.
The Soviets did it mostly be mass manufacture of 1960 technology and most launches still today use the same tech.
I don't think the comment is just about cadence but also that it's not being achieved by a nation state, at least that's my interpretation.
Until SpaceX wasn’t aspirational, anymore.
The danger of continually making aspirations a reality.
Yeah it's a bunch of aspirational nonesense, their rocket is nowhere safe enough yet (or even in the near future), SpaceX is a proud member of the aspirational club alongside (the much loved by Hackernews members) intel foundry!
Why so? Falcons have reliably so many launches, they are undeniably the most battle tested rocket ever made. I genuinely have no idea, why are they not safe?
I'm obviously talking about Starship, which is mentioned 208 times in their article.
You obviously want that they fail. Your "the rocket is not safe and will never be" is what is aspirational.
That's not what OP said, though.
Huh? The Falcon9 has the best reliability and safety record of any rocket in history, and it's not even close.
Yes, Boeing rockets have a much better track record on uptime, availability, and cost, like when that Boeing rocket famously saved the stranded astronauts after SpaceX demonstrated extended incompetence in getting a rocket up to space /s
Previously:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45294806
I imagine this is ateast in part trying to smooth over some local concerns, about SpaceX's stated desire to have ~44 Starship launches a year. Locals are significantly concerned about what that would mean for the area. https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2025/0...
> Liquefaction is a process where saturated, loose soil loses its strength and behaves like a liquid, often occurring during events like earthquakes.
That would be quite an environmental impact!
Has anyone written a history of launch pad characteristics and assignments and upgrades and conversions at Cape Canaveral/Kennedy ? So many stories.
Probably a stupid question but if rocket launches really became as commonplace as airplane flights, would we see some kind of increase in global temperatures?
The short answer is yes. Airplanes account for 2.5% of CO2 emissions and rockets use massively more fuel than airplanes per flight (falcon 9 is ~10x fuel capacity of a 737).
But this is an insane scenario because there are about 100,000 commercial flights per day in the world. In all of 2024 there were ~250 orbital launches. So to hit the same rate as airplanes it would require a ~150,000x increase in the launch rate (or a ~15,000x increase to equal the CO2 emissions of airplanes).
Most of the falcon9 fuel is liquid oxygen. A Falcon9 holds less kerosene than a 737 ER.
You are thinking of the 777 ER, which holds more kerosene than the first stage of Falcon 9 (and slightly less fuel than both stages combined)
The 737 is a much smaller plane, and its fuel capacity is near the ballpark of 10x smaller.
I can’t see that happening for centuries, if ever. And if we haven’t figured out a way to deal with global warming in a few centuries the number of space launches and airline flights will probably both be zero.
They also disrupt ozone layers and leave combustion byproducts in the trail. CO2 raises temperature but dusts reduce temperature, idk which of those effects are dominant or if it makes sense to mandate an additive or something.
Not stupid at all. Definitely yes. Don't have the numbers on hand but it's orders of magnitude more CO2-equivalent released per kg-mile, especially when you factor in the fact that they are using methane.
Of course the reality is that this tech won't ever see adoption used that widely, but where is the break-even point?
Rocket launches emit less CO2 than a trans-pacific airline flight.
> CO2-equivalent
I think what they were trying to get at is GHG emissions in general which there are more of than just CO2.
Full flow staged combustion engines like Starships do not have significant un-burnt methane. They run slightly fuel-rich, but that results in extra CO emissions rather than CH4 due to the temperatures involve -- methane cracks at 1200C, Starship engine temperature is 3000C.
Starship's operations in Boca Chica do emit methane during ground operations. The mitigation for that is to use a pipeline rather than trucks for delivery.
Solid rocket motors emit all sorts of nasty stuff, like aluminum particles.
Has SpaceX revealed what they plan to do with the Texas Starbase once they start launching Starship from Florda? Will they just stop using it?
They seem to like to iterate. The Falcon 9s flying now are essentially version 5. I can imagine they’ll keep experimenting with Starship designs for a while.
To infinity, and beyond!