From what I recall, it’s planes (plural). Musk owns a long-range Gulfstream G650 that he mostly uses himself IIRC, and two smaller G550s that would likely be the ones he allows some of his higher-ranking peons to use.
That may be. I haven’t kept track in that much detail. In any case, SpaceX bought a 737 recently and gave it a nifty paint job, so the business jets probably won’t be needed now:
Better check those door plugs.
Sorry, I was speaking generally, and didn’t even look at the details. I was thinking of exactly what @Llama_Llogophile said right after me:
Another possibility is that plans changed. They were planning to fly out of SUS, and put the plane there, then decided they were going to fly out of CPS, so it had to go back.
Yeah, we discussed that in the Musk pit thread. It’s not clear if it’s intended as a business jet or for some engineering purposes related to SpaceX, though I can’t really imagine what.
It’s to ferry SpaceX employees between Brownsville and LA. Maybe to transport some light cargo. There’s no other reason that makes sense. SpaceX has an airport literally in their backyard. It’s a 5-minute walk to hop on a plane from the office. SpaceX in general has tight integration between engineering and manufacturing. Unfortunately, geography and the laws of physics demands separate locations. So regular flights with minimal fuss is the next best thing.
Hmm, actually I’m curious now. Hawthorne Municipal Airport has a runway length of 4956 feet. Is is possible to land a 737-800 there? Suppose it was fairly stripped down and only needed enough fuel to fly to Texas. Maybe the 737 is only intended for LAX, which is obviously a bit less convenient for employees.
ETA: I tweaked this post a bunch during revisions, so @Dr.Strangelove should double-check he’s responding to the final version.
The airlines fly fully loaded 737-800s into and out of John Wayne Orange County SNA all day every day. SNA’s runway is 5701 feet long and at the same near zero elevation. AFAIK, that is the shortest runway commonly in use by 737s in the USA.
That is very, very close to the bitter edge of legal performance and they can’t carry full passsenger loads and also real long range fuel. I’ve done it and it’s sporty.
The missing ~750 feet at Hawthorne comes to ~13% shorter than SNA. My take is they’d be very much limited on total fuel and payload. Any tailwind and they’d need to launch going the other way.
WAG: If they’re taking 50 engineers with laptop bags but no luggage they could probably make Texas. Otherwise there’s a fuel stop along the way.
All right, thanks. I’d mostly expect this to be a 50 engineers and laptop bag situation. They may have even ripped out a bunch of seats and other cruft. Still, dunno if they have any plans for Hawthorne here. It would be a lot more convenient, though.
If Elmo hadn’t have lost all those billions on Twitter, he could buy out the houses across the street (southwest), route that street underneath and extend the runway 1000’ feet or so. But as it is, the execs are better off shuttling to LAX.
Found this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/19f2e63/is_the_new_spacex_737_able_to_land_at_hawthorne/
One person says that 737s are regularly flown out of SDU, which has a 4341 foot runway. Sporty is right! Maybe they can add some rocket engines for a bit more oomph…
Another question for the experts:
Suppose you did need to squeeze some extra takeoff/landing performance out of your aircraft for just this sort of situation, and you didn’t care too much about costs (but nothing too extreme like remaking the whole thing from carbon fiber). What sort of things are possible? Are there newer (but compatible) engines with a bit more performance? Extra-light interior components? Or even just procedural changes, like weighing everyone and their luggage rather than having to rely on a (maybe pessimistic) statistical model?
I don’t know about you, but if I was to fly on a plane where the passengers weight made the difference between Junior Birdman and a smoking crater in the middle of town…I’d rather walk.
The military does use small rockets for just this kind of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO
You might have to do a lot more walking then, because passenger weight always makes a difference.
The FAA updated its passenger weight standard recently because Americans are getting too fat.
Just about any aircraft will have a bad day if, for whatever reason, all the passengers decided to get out of their seats and head to the back of the plane.
If any company is qualified to boost perf with rocket engines, it’s probably SpaceX. This 2-engine cluster has more thrust than a single 737-800 engine:
But I suspect the FAA doesn’t look too kindly on hydrazine propellant on general passenger aircraft…
Thanks for the replies. It sounds like the answer to my original question, why fly 20 miles, is “it happens.”
The various planes registered to Musk (or his subsidiary corps) are neatly displayed at Elon Musk's Planes .
I know that page shows the 737 as “(HHR - BRO)”, but going back a month or so on its flight history shows it operating out of LAX.
Strictly speaking, the runway at Renton Municipal Airport is 5,382 feet, and every 737 ever made has used that runway at least once.
It’s only 6 miles from there to Boeing Field, so they’re probably not taking off with a full fuel load.
Nor anyone on board but the two pilots.
Airliners are more like dump trucks than cars, where the difference between empty weight and max loaded weight is more (sometimes much more) than the weight of the vehicle itself. Ballpark an empty and dry but fully equipped 737 weighs about 80K lbs and can lift another 100K lbs max for a total of 180K lbs. That 100K carrying capacity must be split between fuel and payload, but my point is that the camel’s burden weighs more than the camel does.
The difference in takeoff performance between those two limit cases is spectacular. Folks who aren’t used to ferrying empty airplanes can get in trouble; stuff happens a LOT faster than you’re used to.
Procedural methods for extracting more take-off performance includes:
- Using full thrust. Obvious, but the vast majority of take-offs use a reduced thrust setting for take-off. This is automatically applied by the take-off performance software when required so it tends to be the first card to play when it should probably be the second or third.
- Taking off with the engine bleed air off. This supplies air for the pressurisation and air conditioning and you can get more performance if it’s off. Instead you can run the APU bleed air or just have it all off and turn it back on after take-off. Running some numbers for an A321 at my local airport, having the engine bleed air off gives an extra 1800 kg of available weight, or around 18 extra passengers and bags we could take, or about a 45 minutes of fuel.
- Input an accurate centre of gravity in the performance software. That makes a minimal difference, less than 100 kg.
- Offload freight.
- Offload passenger bags and passengers.
- We would only weigh passengers if it was thought they were heavier than average, eg a couple of rugby teams, not to try and achieve a lighter weight.
As for more powerful engines, an engine change isn’t practical but some aircraft will have permanently “derated” engines and you can get a more powerful engine just by modifying the software. Akin to an electric vehicle produced with identical batteries but using software to limit the range for lower priced models.
For example the Qantas B717s in Australia used to (maybe still do) derate their engines for winter when the performance wasn’t required.
RE: Masters Of The Air… I was doing some show-related surfing today and came across something that might be of interest to some folks: Pilot Training Manual For The Flying Fortress, B-17.