There are also good economic reasons for wanting to choose a state that cares far more for commerce than they do for environmental or local concerns. Which also favors TX & FL, but favors TX more.
Most of SpaceX’s governmental problems are Federal, not state. had they chose to set up shop in e.g. CA (ignore the orbital dynamics), they’d find the CA government agencies themselves in their shit, and also find the CA government agencies heavily lobbying the Feds to go hard, not easy or blind-eye, on every jot & tittle.
SpaceX learned this lesson well with the Falcon 1, which launched from Omelek Island. The regulatory environment was easier. But every other aspect about it was a complete pain in the ass. You really want your site to be where normal people live. That rules out crazier options like offshore launch platforms, too (though they did pursue that to some extent).
Florida isn’t the only option on the East Coast–there’s also Wallops Island, VA. But that’s it. Everywhere else is too built up already.
I’m not sure if SpaceX ever considered Wallops, but it’s probably too small for their needs, and has the same problem as Florida–it’s already a functioning spaceport. So they’re going to be pretty risk-averse.
For all the problems that Texas has, all the other options seem to be worse. They’ll fly out of Florida as soon as the rocket proves reliable, and it’ll likely be the primary location in the long run. In the meantime, where they are still blowing things up on a regular basis, Texas is fine.
The Soviet scientists had planned to euthanise Laika with a serving of poisoned food. For many years, the Soviet Union gave conflicting statements that she had died either from asphyxia,[20] when the batteries failed, or that she had been euthanised. Many rumours circulated about the exact manner of her death. In 1999, several Russian sources reported that Laika had died when the cabin overheated on the fourth day.[4] In October 2002, Dimitri Malashenkov, one of the scientists behind the Sputnik 2 mission, revealed that Laika had died by the fourth circuit of flight from overheating. According to a paper he presented to the World Space Congress in Houston, Texas, “It turned out that it was practically impossible to create a reliable temperature control system in such limited time constraints.”[5]
Over five months later, after 2,570 orbits, Sputnik 2 (including Laika’s remains) disintegrated during re-entry on 14 April 1958.[21]
The European Space Agency’s primary launch facility is in French Guiana. It’s just about optimal in terms of latitude, and it has plenty of ocean to the East. It’s not on the European mainland, but then, no spot on the European mainland would be very good for latitude or eastward water, and it is at least on a major continent, and in the territory of a European nation.
The Russians, meanwhile, gave up on both water (settling for sparsely-inhabited taiga, instead) and on latitude, in favor of security and secrecy, and launch from a far-northern latitude.
I can’t help but think that French Guiana is a major factor in the ESA’s inability to significantly improve their cost efficiency, or even deploy their next-gen rockets. The Falcon 9 is the diameter it is so that it can be transported by road from California to Florida. The ESA’s rockets have to travel by boat, which is much slower and more costly. Plus, if there’s anything wrong with the rocket, the fact that it’s constructed on a different continent and in a different hemisphere just makes everything slower to resolve. It’s probably the ESA’s least-worst option, but that’s not saying much.
Starship of course can’t be transported by road (except for the engines), so they’re constructing it next to the launch facilities. Maybe someday it’ll launch in one place and land in another. Regardless, they don’t have to wait for a slow boat.
China likes their landlocked spaceports as well. Fine as long as you don’t mind occasionally dropping a booster on a village somewhere.
I’m imagining that scene from The Naked Gun where Leslie Neilsen is standing in front of an exploding firework factory and saying “Move along, nothing to see here!”
But wait: do Canadians really call an 18-wheeler a semmie rather than a sem-eye? I’ll have to remember that the next time I’m impersonating a Canadian.
Actually barge/ship cost is lower per ton per mile than rail, and much lower than by truck. It’s simply the distance from Europe to French Guiana that makes it take so long (and regardless of all other factors, time is money on any project). Back in the 1960s the fact that Saturn stages could be shipped by coastal waters or barge navigable rivers may have won the race to the moon. The USSR was limited to what could be shipped by rail and so its N-1 lunar class booster had to be built on site with no previous testing.
I’ve read that China would VERY much like to be able to land its boosters like Falcon 9.
Sure, it’s cheaper per mile once you get it on the boat. But SpaceX can truck their boosters straight from LA to Florida without any extra rigamarole. And time = money, so every extra day that the boosters aren’t being transported saves money. It’s even easier for them now that so few boosters have to be transported (just the upper stages).
They’re making pretty good progress:
Granted, that puts them on par with SpaceX in 2013. But I expect them to make more rapid progress from there since the path has already been cleared.
Of course, there are a lot of things you need to get to a launch site besides the actual rockets, and most of those other things can still be produced locally. A continent, even if it’s a relatively poor continent, is still a heck of a lot better than a tiny island in the middle of nowhere. And all of your personnel at the site can still live in a First World country, which is the sort of thing the personnel at a space launch site tend to put a high value on.
French Guiana is certainly much better than Omelek Island in terms of transport, labor availability, etc. But it’s still a 9+ hour flight from Paris, and their people are working while yours are asleep. None of these things are dealbreakers on their own, but they each add some cost.
But you’re a big proponent of the fundamental difference between “new space” and “old space”. What’s “wrong” with ESA and Ariane is entirely that it’s “old space” through and through with the extra burden of European political cooperation-and-work-sharing (read as “sclerosis”) to the max.
IMO that’s a problem you solve only by building an all-new new organization with all-new people on strictly “new space” commercial grounds. Not by moving a launch site, even assuming one could be magic-wanded into the right geographical position.
Except that the only reason it needed to be shipped at all was because the Apollo Project was spread out over all of the states for political reasons, so every senator could tell their constituents it was helping them. Absent that, of course you just put your rocket factory right next to your launch site (wherever that is).
Yeah. A close launch site gives you the ability to rapidly iterate, among other things–but your organization has to be able to make use of that capability. Which isn’t too likely for the ESA/Ariane.
I don’t think it’s really possible for Arianespace to reinvent itself from scratch. Europe needs more credible space startups so that the ESA can pull off a kind of SpaceX-style bootstrapping. NASA of course was an enormous help in the rise of SpaceX, giving them launch contracts that others would not. They made good use of those contracts, and here we are now.
But the ESA seems even more crippled than NASA in pulling this off–specifically, in how they have no choice but to spread the wealth out among the various member states, and to do so in a way that encourages their existing infrastructure (see: Italy’s solid rocket booster industry). NASA has this problem too (part of why the SLS is a disaster), but it seems they can get away with doing otherwise in some situations. Maybe it’s just that NASA is better funded: the existence of SLS (which is designed to spread the wealth) makes it possible to throw a few bucks toward SpaceX and others as well.
I dunno. The forces that drive bureaucracies to behave in certain self-destructive ways are fascinating to think about, but frustrating as well since they are so powerful and self-reinforcing. I don’t see a way out for Europe, at the moment. They need a dramatic shot in the arm and I don’t see anything on the horizon.
Well, the US vs. China will be interesting. China is behind but making significant progress. I wonder why their bureaucracy seems to move so much more quickly than Europe?