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New company aims at providing floating ocean-going spaceports for rocket companies

A new startup, The Spaceport Company, is building a floating ocean-going spaceport for smallsat rocket companies, with the company’s long term goal to provide a range of floating spaceports for rockets of all sizes.

The Spaceport Company is planning to demonstrate a sea-based launch platform in May, conducting four sounding rocket launches from a modified ship in the Gulf of Mexico. “That will help us prove out our logistical, operational and regulatory procedures,” said Tom Marotta, founder and chief executive of the company, during a panel at the SpaceCom conference Feb. 23.

Those tests will be a precursor to developing a full-scale sea-based platform, based on a ship design called a liftboat. That ship can sail to a location and lower legs to anchor itself on the seafloor. The boat can then lift itself out of the water and serve [as] a launch platform.

That first orbital platform would provide launch services for smallsat rockets capable of launching up to one ton, and if the company’s suborbital test launches go well and further investment capital arrives, could be operational by 2025.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

10 comments

  • Andi

    It might be a good idea to add “[sic]” to the last line of the quote, as the typo is in the original:

    “…serve a [sic] launch platform.”

  • Andi: In this case, rather than a “sic” I have instead inserted the missing “as” (bracketed) in order to make the meaning clear to my readers. Thank you however for pointing this out.

  • Andi

    Good idea, Bob, makes it much clearer

  • Ray Van Dune

    I don’t think Elon is going to be able to use their services. The probable reason that SpaceX dumped the Phobos and Deimos platforms is that they weren’t big enough!

  • pzatchok

    Have we run out of launch sites already?

    Some have yet to even make a launch.

    I for one see a long list of unfixable problems with rented launch platforms.
    For one what happens when a launch does not launch. There goes all the saved profit because either you have to pay for another day to either retry or take the rocket off the platform.
    Now everyone else’s launches are pushed back because of things beyond their own control.

    Musk did not cancel his because of it being small. He just saw no need for it anymore.

  • Edward

    pzatchok asked: “Have we run out of launch sites already?

    The article suggests that some of the current, most popular, launch sites are reaching their maximum launch capacities.

    Growing launch activity at Cape Canaveral is threatening to cause problems for launch companies as the pace of activity stresses infrastructure there. New spaceports, designed particularly for small launch vehicles, have run into problems. A proposed spaceport in Camden County, Georgia, took years to secure a license from the Federal Aviation Administration, but in a referendum last year county voters blocked the acquisition of land for the site, a decision recently upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court.

    Considering that half a decade ago these sites modified their launch support facilities in order to increase the launch capacity, we can see that there is a growing problem at existing coastal launch sites as launch cadences increase.

    Musk did not cancel his [platforms] because of it being small. He just saw no need for it anymore.

    Actually, as noted in the article, SpaceX’s announcement said differently. Shotwell said that Phobos and Deimos were not right for the company but that the company still saw a future need for platform based launches.

    Ray Van Dune may be correct that they were not large enough. Starship launches will have a sudden release of 11 million pounds (>5,000 tons), which will change the forces on any stationkeeping cables and will also change the center of mass. Can current designs for platforms handle that sudden release of weight? If SpaceX reaches its goal of three launches per day at each launch pad, each platform will need a source of 33 million pounds of propellants each day (1.5 million pounds per hour, constantly changing the buoyancy and center of mass), although this rate will likely only be needed during the favorable Mars transit times, every couple of years.

    Scott Manley has a video on how rocket propellants are made:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed_s3xysbR4 (18 minutes)

    The platforms will have to hold at least 9 million pounds of cryogenic propellants, more if the ground support plumbing lines must be chilled before each launch. Some amount of liquid nitrogen is also needed. These tanks will have to be protected from the heat and acoustics of launch and from heat and debris from any pad explosion.

    I’m sure that SpaceX learned many things about platforms from the two that it had owned. We probably will have to wait to find out what differences they need for launching Starships on platforms. Will Starship have to change? These issues may become priorities for SpaceX soon.

    If the Spaceport Company wants Starship as a customer then they will have to work closely with SpaceX, but I suspect that SpaceX wants to keep close control of its launch pads. They learned a lesson when NASA suddenly became concerned with the proximity of the Starship launch pad near the existing manned launch pad 39A. Can the Kennedy Space Center really handle close to 100 Falcon launches this year? Can it handle three daily launches of Starship?

  • Hi Bob
    I’ve been following Tom’s company for a while and we’ve discussed it as well as the gravity prescription for health in space on The Space Show. Your readers may know that Tom co-authored the book The High Frontier: An Easier Way. He contributed to a recent post on my blog on the gravity Rx and space settlement. Check it out here: https://spacesettlementprogress.com/the-case-for-free-space-settlements-if-the-gravity-rx-1g/

  • pzatchok

    Edward

    Your talking about the Cape and Space X.

    I was referring to the whole rest of the world. Space X will not be a customer of someone else’s private launch facility.
    The other problem I see with a private launch platform is, will governments allow military launches from it? That will limit the best paying customers.
    Another problem I see is if the platform is going to be floated around and then sank to stand on the bottom I can see a rather limited area it could be used. No open ocean launches, just coastal launches with the same environmental problems that are stopping any oil platforms and wind farms.

    The other question I have is. Will the support crew stay on the platform during launch? The launch itself can be done remotely from a different ship but the fueling and in some cases unfueling will need to be done manually. Will fuel be stored on the platform or will a ship need to be brought in for every fuel move?
    I for one do not want to be on a platform with half a million gallons of fuel on board and a promise that I will be safe in case of an explosion during launch.

  • Edward

    pzatchok,
    You wrote: “Your talking about the Cape and Space X.

    The United States has the only launch sites that have had to increase their launch rates from 1 launch per month per pad.

    The other problem I see with a private launch platform is, will governments allow military launches from it? That will limit the best paying customers.

    I don’t worry much about that. It is the commercial launches, launches for commercial satellite operators, that is increasing the most.

    Another problem I see is if the platform is going to be floated around and then sank to stand on the bottom I can see a rather limited area it could be used. No open ocean launches, just coastal launches with the same environmental problems that are stopping any oil platforms and wind farms.

    Sea Launch has solved these problems for the smaller launch vehicles, which is what The Spaceport Company is starting with.

    The other question I have is. Will the support crew stay on the platform during launch?

    They don’t for Sea Launch or for SpaceX’s landing ships.

    The launch itself can be done remotely from a different ship but the fueling and in some cases unfueling will need to be done manually. Will fuel be stored on the platform or will a ship need to be brought in for every fuel move?

    Does it have to be done manually? Starship is being designed differently. Either way, Sea Launch has already addressed this issue.

    I for one do not want to be on a platform with half a million gallons of fuel on board and a promise that I will be safe in case of an explosion during launch.

    It is a good thing that you don’t work for NASA, because all their manned rockets have been fully fueled when their crews entered their spacecraft. Indeed, there were arguments here on BTB that tanking operations were less safe after the crew were strapped into Dragon rather than tanking first and then strapping in the crews.

    When the ground crew went to the SLS to fix a hydrogen leak shortly before liftoff, the SLS was fueled, at least partially.

    Working around fueled rockets has been commonplace, but a couple of times it has resulted in disaster. NASA has been lucky so far.

  • Jeff Wright

    I want several old oil platforms mounted side by side—you that you might even have some production on side.

    Look out for do-gooders
    https://phys.org/news/2023-03-treaty-ahoy-high-seas-finish.html

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