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- Hacker News
- Ah, Louisiana — when even Texas won't let you pollute enough.by ramesh31
- by syndacks
- Can't launch south out of Texasby TripleTree
- From the hype video, it looks like they will be building towers in pairs. Hard to tell the distances, but if one explodes on the pad, will it's pair be in the blast radius? I'm guessing the plane will be to have a launch on one them and then move to the other for a faster launch cadence?by dylan604
- > In Vermilion Parish, the shoreline is eroding between 3.3 and 23 feet per year
What does this mean, how can a shoreline erode
by jackhalford - The oil and gas companies brought in huge massive drilling rigs in the 1930s-1960s. The marsh was too soft/soggy to bring in the equipment overland, so they just... dredged huge canals in the soggy marsh a couple feet deep. You can see this in the opening shot of the video with the boat in the narrow canal. Labor was cheap and they were making a ton of money. They would put the dredged mud on one side of the channel, at random, causing random tracts to flood and most of the plants died, and then the marshes slowly sank below the water. One EPA report says for every acre of dredging they did (and they did a LOT) cause 3 more additional acres of erosion. If you go zoom in on the area where they're building, there are big squares and rectangles of dredging material, surrounding what look like square lakes. The state has been trying to get the oil and gas companies to restore the land but not much luck. Part of this deal with SpaceX (allegedly) is to restore the land and close off the canals to prevent further erosion.by hadlock
- Grade school level Louisiana info (probably somewhat wrong): It's generally brackish marsh/swamp land. Basically think silt/dirt with a bunch of plants evolved for this specific environment.
Then you take a bunch of humans and you cut down all the really old cypress trees for lumber. To facilitate that process you cut channels through all the plants that are in the way so you can ship that lumber via new unobstructed waterways. You also do it for oil/gas exploitation.
So now you have a lot of infiltration of saltier or fresher water and less protection during storm surge and such. Lots of plants die and these plants were holding the dirt/soil in place (and the storm surge helps wash that away).
Also you re-engineer the original waterways that deposited silt/dirt and helped build these areas up so that they deposit silt/dirt in other places (also you harvest the silt/dirt for use in farming so it never even gets that far down the waterways in the first place).
by Brybry - How are SpaceX paying for it? it’s costing $100bn… but they don’t have $100bn…by fsuts
- More no-bid contracts, under the guise of building a "golden dome" that I'll bet my hands will never exist.by thrance
- I imagine they plan to rely on debt, which is the fashionable thing to do these days.
The wake up call might be difficult, for the whole country or even the whole world.
by joelthelion - Presumably this will be built out in parts over many years. It's not like they throw down 100bn and POOF there's the full thing completed magically.by boxed
- It’s hard to imagine that Cocoa Beach/Titusville isn’t receptive to this. I guess it’s probably cheaper? They don’t have to share the airspace with NASA and other launch companies and it becomes a fully owned and operated Freeport for Musk’s ventures.by kemotep
- I expect Musk picked Louisiana because it has some of the weakest corporate regulations of any state and will probably let SpaceX get away with almost anything.by UltraSane
- There's also a due south launch path at play.by beerandt
- They want to launch to sun-synchronous.by Tuna-Fish
- Seems geography constrained. There's wetlands sure but how much they re allowed to build that out, vs LA where any effort to keep the state from shrinking as it does seems fairly welcome.
- No expert - but from what I've heard, Florida and Texas are constrained for efficent polar (North/South) orbit launches due to restrictions over populated areas. Whereas Louisiana has the Gulf to the south so no/fewer restrictions to worry about.by checker
- > I guess it’s probably cheaper?
State of Louisiana was probably on their hands and knees begging. The construction would last decades and anyone with a strong back that can be told what to do and do it will have a job. It would help lift a lot of people in that area out of poverty.
logistically, i wonder how long it takes to ship from Starbase Texas to Louisiana via barge. It has to be easier to get Starships to Louisiana than the East side of Florida.
by chasd00 - A way to get back at Texas for datacenter restrictions?
Ten pads and thousands of flights per year sure will accelerate Golden Dome, err... I mean "going to Mars"
by mrtnmcc - It's just a ploy anyway, to get billions from the government through no-bid contracts. Doesn't matter what they build. Or if it even gets built, which I doubt it ever will.by thrance
- SpaceX just got $8B more for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...by zoomaboom
- Terrestrial datacenter legal restrictions are how SpaceX expects to make a lot of its money in the next 10+ years, so I would be less surprised to find them lobbying for restrictions than against, presuming they spend at all on it.
- It’s easy to be pessimistic about Musk timelines/ big tech but I am thrilled that ambitious, real world, hard projects are happening in the US again.by ianm218
- Heck. Yeah. I'm with you. This is GOOD.
Social media is unhealthy. You know what else is unhealthy? Hacker News' constant bashing of every. single. thing. ever.
by mrcwinn - I love that people see a website about one of musk’s ideas and go “wow this is real and happening” in the year of our lord 2026by jrflowers
- But its also hard not to be. I'm not a fan of Musk and it doesn't even have to do with Musk himself as its a common theme I see among a lot of the big tech companies or really any company doing a big project in my neck of the woods. An hour north east of me, there has been big on going data center projects for 10+ years. Sounds good right? I got a lot of family and friends in the trades. But I can almost set my watch to it. When work ramps up, its always good pay and 15 years of guaranteed work until suddenly its not. 8 months go by, suddenly everything is paused and all those contractors are out of work for a year and a half until things start up again. Then its rinse and repeat.by tcmart14
- You're being down-voted (and so shall I) but I think you're right. Despite all the animosity towards him, Musk is doing things that are economically meaningful for our nation.
We'll need a few more of "him" to dig us out of this situation I reckon, but overall I still hope it's possible.
(Anyone asking antagonistic questions can go ahead and save their fingers, I won't respond to the petty comments.)
- > Building a new space coast
But are they building it ghost to ghost?
- Lol this is a reference to Florida (though I love your Space Ghost reference), we have the Kennedy Space Center, and an Airforce base (I guess its a Space Force base now) which has led to this area being referred to as "Space Coast" adding this in case anyone else might be unaware.
Florida is more interesting than people realize.
- Elon-types won't "dig us out" of our mess.
Removing parasitic elements in government spending and policy will. This starts with politics. We first need a healthy, educated, engaged, and safe population. All else follows. These are all things Elon actively works against. You aren't part of his future.
by sockaddr